The Compass Chronicles: Javier and Mickey discuss Recovery and Redemption with Jessica L. Morris

A clear sky, a cigarette in the cold, and a question screamed upward: “When do I get to have my turn?” Jessica L. Morris takes us back to the moment her life cracked open, then walks us through what came after, including years of depression, suicidal thinking, and addictions that nearly took everything. Her story is raw, specific, and deeply relatable for anyone touched by family alcoholism, religious trauma, or the exhausting cycle of trying to numb pain with food, alcohol, spending, or perfection.

We talk about the unexpected turning points that actually lead to addiction recovery: a sister drawing a line, a counselor naming the real barrier, and a first meeting where nobody wanted anything from her except for her to come back. From there we dig into forgiveness, amends, and the hard truth that healing often requires both spiritual surrender and practical mental health support. Jessica shares why therapy, recovery community, and faith are not competitors, and how each can carry a different part of the weight.

We also explore her book Higher Powered and the idea of “dying to self” as a daily practice, not a dramatic speech. Jessica explains surrender in everyday terms: letting go of the fantasy life, showing up to what’s in front of you, and staying open to God’s purpose in ordinary places, even a hospital hallway after surgery. If you’ve been asking what to do next, her advice is simple: pray “help,” pray “thank you,” and keep your heart open.

Find Jessica’s books, blog, and spiritual direction work at jessicalmores.com. If this conversation helps you, subscribe to Compass Chronicles, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Jessica

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hey everyone, good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. This is the Compass Chronicles Podcast. My name is Javier. I'm here with my uh co-host Mickey, and we're gonna have a great show today. We're gonna be talking to an amazing person, author and writer, and all that amazing stuff. And she's we're gonna let her introduce herself and and have a good time. And Mickey, welcome again.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Hi everyone, welcome to Compass Chronicles and excited to be here today. I know we're gonna have a great conversation, and I can't wait to get this started. So let's let's dive in, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

All right, then Jessica, again, thank you for coming on the show. Truly appreciate it. And just let people know who you are and all that stuff, and we'll go from there.

The Night Everything Shifted

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Okay, who I am. I am, let's see. Wow. The first thing is I I'm a Christ follower. That's the most important thing. And that that everything comes from there. It hasn't always been that way, though. I've come a long way. So let's see. I am a writer, I'm a poet, I'm a spiritual director, I am a woman in recovery from two really devastatingly almost took me out addictions and also the family disease of alcoholism. Grew up in alcoholism and then went down that path myself, which is, you know, usually sometimes what happens to people not thrilled about that, but also know that it has brought me to where I am today. And for that, I am so grateful. So if that's what I had to go through to get here, I'm okay with it. So yeah, that's me. And I'm a wife and a cat mom. I love dogs, but they're they, you know, have to go outside in the snow, and cats don't. So yeah, yeah. But other than that, oh, and I'm an aunt. I love being an aunt. I have a a niece who's getting married in June. She's the first one, so I'm very excited about that. Yeah, so that's me.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Exciting. First off, I love your cat mom because I'm a cat dad. I have two myself. Big fan of cats. I love dogs, like you said, but I'm not I'm in a wheelchair, so I can't walk them out. You know, go ahead, we he'll take me, you know. So I have a couple of questions, like we always do, and I and you can answer as you want. So the first one is your story starts in a really raw place with childhood pain, distress of faith, eventually addiction. What was the turning point where you realized something had to change?

A Sister’s Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Oh. Wow. That's a hard question because it was the turning point. It took me about probably about six years of really black darkness. I was, I had run away from organized religion because my dad was an alcoholic and he was also my minister. And I couldn't understand that. I couldn't rectify it in my mind. I didn't run away from Jesus. I ran away from God. I was terrified of God. I figured, you know, God was the one who put me there. And Jesus was my best friend, and he loved me, but God was actually the one in charge. So I had kind of a warped view of what religion was, what that relationship was. And after college, I was still doing that go back to school and party with my friends there, you know, while they were still in school. And I was doing temp jobs. I didn't have any direction. I was living at home. And I went to this party and it was freezing cold January, Pennsylvania. And I went outside to smoke a cigarette and no one would come with me because it was so cold. And the it was one of those nights where the sky was just absolutely clear and there were a million stars. And you know, at this point in my life, I think I was about 23. All my friends were getting married. You know, everybody would, everybody had good jobs and they were, you know, doing the things that they had studied in college. And I was working temp in a frame factory and living with my parents and overweight and you know, like all those things. Couldn't get any of that under control. And I was just yelling at God. I I remember looking up at the sky and just being like, when do I get to have my turn? You know, like everybody's having their life move forward, and here I am, you know. And really, when I look at it now, I think, oh, I was such a victim. You know, I was such a victim. But at the time, I thought it was everybody else's fault. My parents' fault, my siblings' fault, you know, I didn't get a good education, all this stuff, right? And so I'm yelling at God, and it went from being freezing cold to I felt this warmth come over me. And I knew with every ounce of my being that if I turned to my left, Jesus was standing right there, and not a silhouette, but Jesus, like hug, feel him, like just total human presence. And I immediately became terrified and ran back into the party. Didn't even look. And the six years after that were what I consider hell on earth. It was absolute darkness. I was suicidal beyond anything. I had had suicidal thoughts prior to this, but this was just like, I mean, if not for my cat at the time that a friend had suggested I adopt a couple years after this, I probably I would have killed myself. There, I mean, I remember her. I was thinking one time, how am I gonna do it? And I was, I had it all planned out, I had the pills ready, the whole thing. And she just pranced her little hiny in the living room. And I know animals don't talk to people, but it was like she just looked at me and said, What about me? Who's gonna take care of me? You know, she knew exactly what I was thinking, and it was about a year after that incident that I got into recovery, but I never again thought of killing myself. So the the thing that happened though, that where I knew I needed to make a change was that my el my oldest sister, who practically raised me, she's six years older than I am. She, she and my other sibling, I have two other siblings, they all, I'm the youngest, they all came to visit in my new apartment. I had moved to a new new city. And it was one of those nights where we were all drinking beer together and all that kind of stuff. And I didn't think it was any different than any other, right? And they were all gonna stay overnight, and that was the plan. And I woke up and everybody was gone except for my older sister. And she said to me, She just was so blunt, she looked right at me and she said, I watched you drink last night and it scared me. And I am not gonna watch you ruin your life the way daddy ruined our family. And she left. And she was my best friend. And I went to a fr, and and of course, at first, I need to be honest and say, at first, I was really angry at her. Like, how dare she compare me to him? You know, because I I used the word hate with my father for a long time. And I was in that hate mode, especially at that time in my life. But a good friend of mine where my new job was, the reason I got the new job was because I knew somebody there was a counselor, and she suggested a counselor that I started going to soon after that because I wanted to prove to my sister that I wasn't an alcoholic. So I was gonna go to a counselor and get fixed. Meanwhile, my food addiction, like I figured I'll put the alcohol down to show her I don't have a problem with that. My food addiction went ballistic and I gained probably about a hundred pounds in that year. It was horrible. And I because it was like I couldn't stop, I couldn't diet anymore, I couldn't control it anymore. I just was completely out of control. And the counselor sent me, after I was with the counselor for just under a year, she she said to me, Look, I want to help you. You have a lot of family issues and you have a lot of problems that we need to get into. But until you have these addictions under control, I'm not gonna be able to help you. And she said, Because anything that we do, it's not gonna stick. This is these things are in the way. And she sent me to recovery. And she's and and I was, I was, I have to tell you, I was befuddled by this because I had been in counseling on and off for about 10 years. And not one of those people said, I think you need to go to recovery. I, you know, like none of them even pointed to it. And here's this woman, I'm paying$90 a week, and she's telling me, I can't help you. I need you to go here. And they don't charge anything. Like, what is that? I was just like, okay, well, whatever. I didn't have a really great opinion of it because my dad had been in recovery for his alcoholism for about, I want to say, four years at that point. And he was sober, but he was still kind of a jerk. And so I just assumed that meant it didn't work. But I really liked this counselor, and I wanted to follow what she was suggesting. And so I thought, I'll go once, you know, and and then I can tell her I went, and then we can get on with it, right? And I went into that first meeting and I couldn't believe I was exactly where I needed to be. I knew it immediately. The people there were so amazing. In hindsight, I I actually write about this in the early parts of my most recent book. They were Jesus speaking to me. When I couldn't look directly at him, he was talking to me through them. They invited me back. They didn't ask me, they didn't ask me for anything, they didn't ask me to do anything. They just said, please come back. Just please come back. And that's that was the turning point. I know this is a really long answer to your question, but that was the turning point for me. These people didn't want anything from me other than to see me again.

unknown 11:38

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

They thought that was unheard of in my life before. Like, so that was for me the turning point is that first meeting.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

That is wow. That that I think that can resonate with a lot of people in a way where, you know, church wise, anyway, when you're a pastor or something and you see the negative in it and you realize this doesn't look right. And you know, I think unless God Himself takes you out of there, you're gonna be stuck because you don't understand. So I I I thank God that He pulled you out of that place. But I think everyone will understand, you know, everyone deals with like they call church politics, or they may have a a father like you had a pastor, and the one on the altar is not the one that's home. And and I've seen that personally because of church and being friends with parents who are pastors. So yeah, I I agree, and I wholeheartedly understand that. So, but thank God that he bought you out of that. Amen.

Recovery Meetings And Real Belonging

SPEAKER_00 12:39

So I don't know. Mickey, you have any questions or yeah, I think it's interesting because I can resonate with you like a hundred percent. Our stories are almost like identical, except for the fact that my mother wasn't a pastor and it was my mother, not my father. I have one question to ask you though how long did it take you to find forgiveness for your father, or have you done that yet? Was that a part of your process and your healing? Because I know that for myself, until I found the forgiveness for my mom, I blew it was just a blame game. I was the victim, I saved the victim until I found the forgiveness over her. And once I got that forgiveness over her, it switched my mentality to now I can love her and and understand what happened between us and why we ended up where we ended up. And now we can shift and start working on a new type of a bond. So I want to know if you if you ever encountered that.

Forgiving An Alcoholic Parent

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Yeah, oh, absolutely. It it took a long time. I was 29 when I got into recovery. And thanks be to God, the first woman I asked to guide me in the program within probably six months, she sent me to a certified addictions counselor. She said, You have a lot of problems that I can't help you with. And I, you know, I'm just another schmuck in the program. So go see this guy. And he was the one who insisted I get help for my alcoholism too, because I was pretending like it was just a food problem. And one of the things that she had told me in the food program is that we don't drink alcohol here because it has sugar in it, and that's the major substance. And so I was like walking around pretending like I just had this food thing. And I was what they call stark raving sober. Like I hadn't had a drink, but I was a lunatic. And he he, this counselor got me go. And one of the things that he did that sort of broke the ice on my relationship with my dad was he said, Jessica, just because you have the same illness as your father doesn't make you your father. Right. So we're just, I'm just asking you to look at it. I'm asking you to take responsibility for your part in it. And then we did significant work. I was probably, I probably worked with him for about four or five years in in women's therapy group on a weekly basis, treatment weekends. I mean, it was really intense on my father, another of my childhood perpetrators, my whole family. We, I mean, it just, you know, it's a mess when you grow up in alcoholism. And be my father died in 2007. And I was, so I was 37. So I was eight years clean when my father died. And the year prior to that, or two years prior to that, I was able to sit down across from my father in my therapist's office. I and I have to give my father a lot of kudos on this one because I lived about two hours away from him. And I did not feel safe going to be just with him. Because even though my dad was sober, he was still very good at manipulative brain play. And I just didn't feel safe with him. And but I wanted to make amends to him. I wanted to thank him for the things he did do for me as a child, you know, those things that I was able to recognize. And so he drove two hours to sit with me in a room for an hour. And there was one moment, and I get a little choked up even thinking about this. There was one moment where my therapist asked him a question, and I know he wanted to get real and be honest. I could see it. And and I talked to my therapist about it after the fact, and he said he could see it too. But it was almost like as soon as he felt himself being vulnerable, it like something snapped inside him, and he, you know, just kind of sat up and went on with the, you know, and it was so I look back at that moment and I think, oh, you know, so close. But what's beautiful about it, and I love your question, Mickey, because for for me, you know, some people say forgiveness is a once and done thing, but for me, it's an it's an uh it's kind of a cycle of loving the unlovable. You know, it was impossible for me to forgive my father until I understood. And I understood by doing all that work and by recognizing my own crap because the love and mercy that God gave me, how dare I not provide that to another person, especially my father, who, by the way, was only 19 when he got married to my mom. And she because she was older than he was and she wanted to start having babies. And, you know, and so he was in just as sick of his situation as the rest of us, you know, as we were moving along. And it doesn't excuse the behavior, it just helps me to understand in his since he's died, I feel a healing energy from him that I it's hard to even explain. Wow. Like when I had cancer, I felt him present with me. He shows up in turtles because he he was part of this like turtle group and that I don't know a lot about because I didn't have a good relationship with him before he died, but he he was part of this turtle group. I think their their tagline was like, be comfortable in your own shell or wherever you go, be comfortable in your own shell. And so now he shows up in turtles. Like, I'll see a turtle, like I'll be thinking about him, and a turtle magnet will be on a car in front of me. Or on Father's Day, the one year he, I and my one sister had said he showed up to her in spirit, and they were all talking about, oh yeah, he did that for me. And I was pissed. Like, he hasn't done that for me since he died. And we had just moved to this neighborhood, and it was Father's Day, and I was, I was out doing my walk. And I remember I was just like, you know, uh, you know, I'm the one who's doing all this work. Nobody else is doing all this work, you know, in the program and getting well and everything. And you don't even show up for me. And I came around like this corner, and here's this little box turtle just walking across the room. I can tell you I've only one other time saw a turtle there. So, you know, and I've lived here a long time. So, so yes, the that's the long answer to yes, I've been able to find forgiveness for him, for my mom, you know, everybody else that I felt made me a victim, you know. It's but it's like I said, it's an ongoing thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah, thank you for that answer.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

I appreciate it. Absolutely. And I'm a huge advocate of mental health therapy because I have therapy. I go every Wednesday. I it's necessary. And one of the things I I see or I notice when it comes to the church and therapy, they kind of don't mesh well together. And that was the goal originally of trying to get people to understand that if God gave someone that man to help you, then why wouldn't you go to that person, right? It put it in your life. So, how were you able to deal with your faith and also therapy? Dealing to because people say, Oh, well, you should rely on God, God will take care of everything, you know, and pray, pray, pray, but there are things that just don't do that's chemical imbalances, there's addictions, there's so how did you mesh both in a way?

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Well, at that point, like I said, I had left the organized church when I went to college, basically. So when I was 18. I had not been involved in any kind of organized religion when I got into recovery, and and my recovery family really became my church. I mean, it was the I remember too, when I was in seminary many years later, one of my professors who was also a minister said to me, I had been talking about recovery in the class, and he he pulled me aside afterwards and he said, you know, I've been in, I've been a minister for a long time. And he said, I feel spirit a lot more in the basement of the church than I do in the sanctuary. And it that spoke volumes to me. And I agree with him, you know. I mean, I I feel the spirit moving whenever I go to a meeting. It's absolutely amazing. So that and the people in recovery are not at all judgmental about going to counseling. In fact, they're they're the ones pushing you there. Like maybe you should go see a counselor. You need some help.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

We always have that one person or two people outside. Listen, you're out of your mind, go get help or do something like that. Yeah, exactly.

Faith And Therapy Can Coexist

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Exactly. So so, but I will say that the and also I think that's getting to be at maybe a little bit more of a liberal place than it was back in the day. Because the woman who was my counselor was also a reverend. She was a spiritual counselor, the one who sent me to recovery. So I think it's just a matter of where you go, what your church denomination is, maybe. But I think we're getting a lot better at that than we used to in our society today. I I could be wrong, but and I mean, I even go to I my husband and I do belong to a church now. And I remember recently my pastor got in touch because I am a spiritual director, and my pastor got in touch with me because one of our congregants asked him, you know, do you know any counselors that I and so he was asking me for a reference. So, you You know, it it wasn't really an issue for me because at the time I wasn't involved. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Yeah. Cause I I just uh see that often where pastors, if you go to them, a lot of pastors don't know how to deal with that. I think that's your pre a prerequisite when you're in uh seminary. I believe that there should be a class to teach people how to deal with people with mental issues or or internal issues. I think that's what God wants us to do as well. You know, He works on the inside. We, you know, so so I have another question for you. Your book, Higher Uh Powered, centers on the idea of dying to self.

unknown 23:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

For someone hearing that for the first time, what does that practically look like in everyday life?

Dying To Self In Practice

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Okay. So the the idea came from my master's thesis, which was on personal eschatology. And eschatology is a fancy way of saying the end of the world. It's really the study of the end times. And what I did was I put the word personal in front of it because what happened to me when I was in seminary, and I was just there to learn. I didn't want to become a minister or a spiritual director. I didn't even know what that was at the time. I just wanted to learn it for myself, you know, read the stuff for myself and interpret it for myself. And I remember we were talking about the book of Revelation in my intro to New Testament class, and we had spent the whole semester talking about how Jesus spoke in metaphor and symbol and parable, and how you always need to look beneath what he's saying. There's always a hidden message, you know, those sorts of things. And I'm sitting there and our my professor said something about there are some theologians, some academics who believe that the book of Revelation is really just a symbol for something other than what we think it is today, like the end of the world, you know, the apocalypse. Apocalypse actually means revelation. It doesn't mean end, it just means revelation, like something new is happening, right? So sitting there in the class, and I remembered the moment that I shared with you earlier when I was outside that party. And I thought about what Jesus says in the New Testament about his second coming. And one of the things that he says is that if you turn from me, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I thought to myself, that's what those years were between when he showed up to me and when I got into recovery. I was in a personal hell, my little man-made hell walking around here on earth. And I, and then I thought about the people that I was in recovery with. And that was a similar story. And it just started to sort of from there. I wrote a little note in the margin of my, I still have the notebook. It says, could this be my thesis idea? Maybe Jesus, when he was talking about return his second coming, he was talking about returning for each one of us personally. Because guess who can do that? He can, right? He's the God of impossible. Why couldn't he do it for everybody? Right. And when we're ready, when we're at the time when we're going to accept him and and to change our lives. And so what's happened to me in regards to that is that what I've learned is that everything, when I got in, when I first got into recovery, they told me everything you think you know, it started with the food. Everything you think you know about food, healthy eating, exercising, all that out the window. I don't want to hear about it. Shut up, stop talking, listen to us, we'll help you. It was really like I had to on and I would have also been, there was a time in my life when I was lecturing at a commercial weight loss program. So I knew everything there was to know about calories and fat grams and exercise and all that. I couldn't do it though. You know, like I knew it, but that knowledge did nothing for me. I couldn't stop myself from becoming almost 300 pounds, you know, and so they were there to help me get to the place where I could actually live a healthy, balanced life. And I had to forget everything. I had to stop looking at calories. I had to stop, you know, all that. That just transferred then into my day-to-day life. I had to forget everything that I thought I knew about my where was I at age 29 when I showed up in recovery? I had no friends. My mom was the only one left who would answer the phone because that was right after, like when I was 29, right around when we got call waiting. So people knew I was calling. There's there's a tech, there's a tech alert for you, you young people who know who's calling you every time your phone rings. Back in the day, you just had to answer it and hope it was somebody you wanted to talk to. You know, so but I mean, we so we had just gotten called waiting right around that time, and people just stopped answering the phone when I called. Like I didn't know I was about to get fired from a second job that I I, you know, had moved to because I knew I was gonna get fired from the one I had before it. I mean, I I was miserable and alone. So everything that I thought I knew about having a good life got me miserable and alone, right? So I had to stop doing that. And a lot of that was like Mickey said earlier, being the victim, you know, and I'll I'll never forget this is one of the greatest things anybody ever said to me when I was complaining about my family at one point, you know, and she said to me, you know, Jessica, she said, I heard once something that I think will really help you. She said, We're victims until we're 18. And after that, we're volunteers.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

And that was a huge, huge turn for me. And that's when I learned I started to learn that I had to put myself down every day. Like I had to stop pretending that I knew what was going on. I had to die to the things that I thought were most important. And in doing that, my entire life is just changed in a beautiful, miraculous way.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Amen. I mean, just like the word says, die to self, right? We have to die to ourselves to live for Christ. And that's not an easy thing to do, especially pride when we're prideful. We're uh well, our emotions are we're just prideful human beings. We don't think we need any help, especially if I'm a man. So men are kind of like very prideful. Uh, I see that with my dad now who's in the hospital. He's very, you know, very stern, very like, I can do this. He can't, but he'll try. You know, he'll fall. And he says, But I'm okay. Like your pride is gonna kill you as one day, pop. You know, it's it's it is one of the things that I think hurts a lot of people when they realize that they have to give in to themselves, they have to give up, they have to stop fighting because we're it's just in our nature, right? So, but that's I mean, to come out of that and be in a place where you're right with God and just being comfortable is a miracle in itself because people don't realize how believing in God is a comfort, it's not a a job, per se. I mean, it's not easy, but it's that comfort that you get at the end knowing that all this is just temporary. None of this is real in the sense of reality. So I have another question for you, and I and it really it's funny because we're talking, but I look at my questions, I got the heck with the questions. It's just you know, it just feels like it's comfortable to talk. So I know that you mentioned a lot about dying to self, also, but like for someone hearing that the first time, like a lot of people don't understand that. Like, what does that practically look like in your life and how you would explain that to someone who has that question? Like, how do you die to self? How do you do that?

Daily Surrender In Real Life

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Well for me, it's about surrender on it. I surrender my life on a daily basis, and what that means is that the things that here's a great example. When let's just say when I first got into recovery, I was in a place where this is what I wanted for my life, right? I wanted to be famous, I wanted to be rich, I wanted to have a wonderful, gorgeous man in my life who had a lot of money and loved me and brought me flowers all the time. Basically, I wanted a Walt Disney World ending, right? That I was gonna live in forever. I used to hold Oscar parties in my home, like when the Oscars would happen. I would invite all my friends over and we would watch the Oscars together, and I would create an Oscar trivia contest for them leading up to it, and then there'd be prizes, and I wanted to live in that world, right? Desperately. I tried, like I tried to get involved in different entertainment things over my lifetime, and it it never panned out. Thank you, God. Today, my life is really from that standpoint, from that 29-year-old standpoint, really boring. I I write, I write poetry, I get up at four o'clock in the morning to talk to God for a couple hours before the sun comes up and to listen to God and to just be with the word. I have a husband who is not a celebrity, but who works really hard and who's also in recovery. And we have a lot of moments that are difficult in our in our marriage. We've been together for eight, well, we've been married 18 years, been together for 21, but we've gone through some really difficult times where we were separated at one point, you know, like all kinds of stuff. And I wouldn't change any of it. I wouldn't change any of it. I don't have any kids. I never really wanted kids because I was afraid I would continue the cycle as a parent. But I love being an aunt. And, you know, I love that I live in this little tiny townhouse and nobody knows who I am. And I go out and take walks and pet the dogs in the neighborhood. And that might not sound like daily surrender, but it is. It's letting go of that fantasy that I thought my life was supposed to be and accepting whatever God puts in front of me today, right? And so for today, it was you guys, right? It was I'm I just got the proof, the second proof to my next book that's coming out. So before we sat down to talk, I went through that to make sure that they did all the things that I asked them to do on the first proof, and they did, and you know, and so I sent that back, and then I'm talking to you, and then I'm gonna go pick up my car from getting the oil change. And you know what? Maybe that's where God wants me today. Maybe there's somebody at the Honda dealership, you know, that needs some light. I'll just share with you recently I had a hip replacement. I'm actually tomorrow's five weeks out from my hip replacement. Thank God. I'm a new woman, but they send you home the same day, right? So I was getting so they had right after surgery, the physical therapist comes in to show you how to go up and down stairs and get in and out of the shower and all that kind of stuff. And they the physical therapist was doing these things with me, and it was time for me to stand up on the walker. And I went boop, I just my blood pressure dropped significantly, and I was out, and they want to keep me overnight, right? They have no bed because it wasn't planned. So now I'm on a stretcher in recovery waiting for a bed for like nine hours. And thinking to myself at one point, I'd be a horrible prisoner of war because I am so uncomfortable. And if I had to do this for 24 hours, I think I'd kill myself, you know. But there was this nurse who kept coming in and out to check on me. And we were talking and laughing and enjoying each other's presence. And we had a we had a bet. Would she get to go home from her shifts before I got a room? You know, and so it was an hour, she'd come in and she'd be like, two hours till I go home. I'm gonna walk in, you know, and we would just keep doing this, and then finally I got a room and she was gonna be going home in about an hour. And she said to me, She said, I just need you to know I was having a really crappy day. She's like, and it was really nice talking with you. And I remember as I was being wheeled up to the room, I thought, you know what, God, if that's why I had to stay overnight, okay.

unknown 36:12

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

That's and that's to me, like myself wanted to be in a nice room with a TV that I could just, you know, just chill. He might just want me somewhere else today, and I have to be open to that, whatever that is. And sitting around complaining about it is not like if I was just sitting in the bed complaining the whole time, I would have brought nothing to that woman, right? You know, and so instead of that, I was just she'd come in, we talk, you know, we and I asked her a lot of questions about her family. She was uh immigrant, her parents were immigrants, and she, you know, I mean, like it just was so cool.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

That's a really good put it in your life, and you were there for her, and she was there for you. And exactly, you both and God works that way, you know, He puts people in your life that are just dead temporarily, but that temporary becomes permanent, right? Yeah, just you've met people, I've met people where that just one instant that I'll remember you for the rest of my life. I mean, I'll see you again, but I'll remember you, and and I think that's where God comes in and says, This is for you to remember and take with you. So I think that's amazing. And God is, I can't even compare what God does in all our lives. Uh, if people would understand that, I think there'd be a lot more people who believe and accept Christ. So, again, everyone, all the information for uh Jessica will be in our show notes. Everything I have one question, and then I'm gonna ask you to tell where people can find you and and contact you. So we always ask this question of all our guests. Uh, you can answer it as you like and as comfortable as you like. What's one piece of advice you give someone right now who feels stuck and doesn't know their next move?

Simple Advice For Feeling Stuck

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Pray. Even if you don't believe in God, just say help me, open me. Because here's the thing. The last thing I was gonna say about the surrender thing is if I'm not surrendered to God's will, I can't see all those wonderful things because I'm too busy looking for the things that I think are gonna be best, right? And if I'm so busy looking for Hollywood, let's say, to happen in my life, I'm gonna miss the wonderful man at the meeting who asks me out on a date because he doesn't look like Brad Pitt or whoever it is that I'm you know what I'm saying? And so pray for help and ask to be open to receive and say thank you, even if you don't receive. You know, I always say to people if the only prayers you say are help and thank you, that's good. You're good because God knows what you need. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Amen. Yeah, amen. Uh Mickey, you have anything to say?

SPEAKER_00 39:08

She wanted to bring up a point in your introduction. You're talking about your book, Higher Powered. It says it reaches deep into the soul of every reader to excavate the garbage and the debris that gets in the way of personal relationships with God. I love that because I tell people a lot of times we drive around like garbage trucks all day long. And it's some of it we put on ourselves, some of it's dumped on us. But what we forget to do is we forget to take it to the dump. And I love what you're saying. You know, you can't surrender all if you don't empty yourself. And that's where dying to self comes from is emptying yourself of ridding all of that debris and that garbage and taking it to the wayside so God can replenish us with what with what he has for us, which are the promises of his word, the blessings of his word, the daily attributes, the attributes, the affirmations. There's so much that God wants us to have, but he can't he can't pour into us if we're driving around in that filled up garbage truck. And so I love that you mentioned that in your introduction because for me, I can totally resonate. I drove around with the garb, you know, with this garbage truck for years. I was piled on, you know, like I said, the victim. I played the victim mentality role with the same situation that you had, you know, with your father. Of course, mine was with my mother, you know, raised by the alcoholic, you know, parent and not knowing what to do. I mean, my mom got me drunk when I was 16 months old. She thought it was funny. It was a joke to her. And then when I started drinking, made fun of me for being drink for drinking, you know, like you know, it was just like that manipulation was so horrible. But I carried a lot of that with me until I had a manifestation of it. And once that manifestation hit, kind of like you said, that that six years of that that darkness of hell, that's a manifestation period where things have to have to be be brought to the light in order to be disposed of. You can't surrender at all if you can't see it. You're in the darkness. So I love that you shared that with us today. It's so important. I hope our listeners understand that if you're if they're driving around in that big old garbage truck full of stuff, just surrender at all. Just go and unload it and let God replenish you because that's what God really wants to do. So I just wanted to say that because I I I enjoyed reading that introduction and I could totally resonate with what you're saying.

unknown 41:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Yeah. And you know, if I could just say real quick to that, you know, that's that, that's what the counselor was saying to me. I can't help you with these problems until you get rid of this crap first. Like I had to put the addictions down before I could even receive the help I needed to get rid of that garbage. You know what I mean? And because what addiction is, is trying to fill a hole that is not that that lives inside of all of us. It's for God, it's not for other stuff. And we go grabbing after, you know, whether it's social media or I mean, we can be addicted to anything, you know. I was addicted to movies for a long time. I was addicted to TV or, you know, whatever. I and and I I went into massive debt after I got my addictions under control because I started to lose a whole bunch of weight. And I was like, well, I have to buy new clothes. But, you know, then it became this, you know, free-for-all, you know, where I was rationalizing the things that I was buying, and within one year, I was$20,000 in debt. Like that's how fast we can switch our addiction, you know, if we're not careful. Oh, geez. I got just got a major echo. I don't know if you guys okay. Um, but anyway, so that's maybe that's God like putting an exclamation point on it. We we need to put him in that, we need to go to that place with God in our inner selves rather than try to fill it with other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

I would like to add to that, if you don't mind. What I what I see about that is I love that your counselor told you that for one, because a lot of times you can't get into the root of the problem if you're covering up with, you know, those addictions that you're covering everything up. When you when you go get that drink, it's to cover up a problem. The problem isn't the alcohol, it's the problem that you're covering up. If you're gonna go get that sandwich or that Snickers bar or drink a soda, whatever that is, the food addiction, it's to cover up the problem that you're that you're not willing to face. So I can see that being the barrier, you know, putting up the wall, the roadblock that says, you know what, I'm gonna put this food here so I can't, I don't have to look at the problem over here. I'm gonna sit here and eat and eat and eat and eat, and I'm gonna act like that problem is non-existent. And so I love that she told you that because there's so much clarity that comes from somebody that says, Hey, you you I can't help you unless you knock down this wall, the wall of addiction. And it's so vital to people. And I I I love that you're sharing that because and I hope everyone's listening because it's so important that you go to the source, you seek out the help, you surrender it so that you can get to the root. You can't get to the root if if it's blocked with the weed. The weeds are gonna block you from the root. You've got to take care of it. So, yeah, I I just I loved everything you've said today. It's been amazing, and I'm just real excited that I got to listen to your testimony.

Where To Find Jessica And Closing

SPEAKER_01 44:07

So it's been modern. Yeah, we love it. I mean, it's it's an inspiration to me and to make it to a lot of people who are listening that no matter what situation you're in, God is always gonna be there. Uh, all you have to do is say help. Just a simple help. I mean, I get up every morning before I hit the floor, I say, God, I'm gonna mess up today. I know I'm gonna screw up, but I I ask, help me out. Understand that I'm gonna mess up. You see, I want Would understand that God, you can talk to God like we're talking right now. We don't need those big thous or this and now God is the greatest. No, hey God, I'm pissed off today. Why help me figure this out? And obviously, God will do what he can, but he also puts people that will answer you and talk to you. That's why I believe a lot in mental health therapy and people like you who talk about their trauma and making that will help people understand that your trauma isn't you.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

All right, your trauma isn't you. That's not who God made you. So, you know, and and this has been eye-opening for me, and I and I hope for all the listeners. Uh again, Jessica's stuff will be in the show notes. Uh, if you want to say where they can find you, I would that would be great.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

The best way is my website. It's jessicalmores.com. You can find my books there. Information about spiritual direction. I also have a blog where I I post a lot of writing, mostly poetry these days. I started as a poet when I was in fourth grade, and then I tried to put the kibosh on it because I knew I wasn't going to make any money from it, and stopped doing it for a long time during those dark years. And I it really is the poetry collection that I'm working on right now that I'm hoping to publish, maybe by the end of this year, I have to find a publisher for it. It the title of it is This Is How God Speaks to Me. Because when a poem comes out of me, that's how I feel. It's coming out of me. It's not I'm writing it, it's it's information that I'm receiving from the one who loves me more than anybody else. And it it's it's a beautiful, it's like a prayer, it's it's like a prayer meditation thing for me. And so those years that I turned it off, you know, like and when it's when I when I started to write poetry again when I was in seminary, it just started to spill out all over the place. It was kind of like we've been in here for all this time. So, yeah, so so you can find everything there, jessica lmorris.com.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Awesome. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show. We will have you back again for sure because there's a lot of stuff we could have talked about today.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

But well, we could talk about movies and TV and all that. Of course, we can do all that.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

You're more than welcome. As you know, we're we're one podcast split into three. So we talk to you, you you kind of hit both. So, you know, you'll be either in our author page or our whatever page you fit perfectly in there. We thank you again for showing for coming on, and uh, we thank God that He's blessed us with you. And I hope that we stay in touch and we keep communicating. Mickey, as always, thank you so much for rocking with me and rocking with all of us here. And again, this has been the Compass Chronicles podcast. We hope you uh enjoyed the show. We ask that you leave a remark, a response, sign up, and just say hello. And we'd love to hear from you. So take care again and God bless.