Living the Grace Life

Where is God when life around you is dark—when trauma has turned your life inside out? Healing from trauma is possible, even when pain runs deep and hope feels out of reach. But moving from survival to wholeness often means facing what has been buried and inviting God into the places that hurt most. 

⚠️Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion about sexual assault and deep trauma.

Lisa Saruga is a licensed professional counselor who knows firsthand how trauma can leave pain hidden between layers of fear. Thirty-five years after she was assaulted on her college campus, Lisa's cold case was reopened—and with it, deep wounds she had carried for decades.

In her book, The Trauma Tree, Lisa explores the difficult journey of recovery and what it means to welcome God into our deepest pain. Her story offers hope that even when the world doesn't offer a happy ending, we can discover God's presence with us through the darkest places.

In this episode, we talk about:

Healing from trauma can feel like throwing a mountain into an ocean. The journey is intense, and healing doesn't always come with the happy ending we hope for. But Lisa reminds us that we don't have to walk through the darkness alone—or remain stuck in survival mode.   

"There's nothing wrong with your brain. We just need to figure out how to heal it."

"There's something powerful about seeing God write brightness into our future."

"It is well with my soul because Jesus is there."

Psalm 27:13- I am confident that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

🌿 Lisa's book The Trauma Tree

National Sexual Assault Hotline:

En Español

Website: LisaSaruga.com

Ep. 86 How to Forgive When Forgiveness Feels Impossible with Johanna Henderson

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps us bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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Where is God's welcome in weakness and wreckage? What happens when God's mercy doesn't arrive the way you want it? Where is God's presence in grief?

Lisa Appelo went to bed happily married and woke up a widow and single mom to her seven children, ages 4-19. In the wake of tremendous grief, she discovered that many of us are grief-illiterate, with little understanding of how to begin putting the pieces of a shattered life together again.

Lisa believes that the way through grief isn't a method; it's a person—the God of all comfort. As we lean into God's character, He meets us at every point of our pain and becomes our comfort in the middle of it. 

In this episode, we explore how God's Presence in grief offers comfort, sustaining grace, and hope when life feels undone.

We talk about:

Grief is disorienting and can leave us feeling isolated and undone. But you don't have to navigate it alone. Let today's conversation remind you that the God of all comfort meets you in your pain—not with a formula to fix your grief, but with His Presence in sustaining you through it.

"The way through grief is a Person—our God of comfort."

"God never expects us to show up all put together or fake that we’re fine. He says, ‘Come to me. Bring it all to Me.’"

"God’s goodness does not start and stop. There are seasons where life doesn’t feel good. But His goodness has not stopped for us."

Psalm 147:3- God heals the broken-hearted and bandages wounds

🌿 Lisa's book God of Comfort

Website: LisaAppelo.com

Ep. 84 Grateful for COVID? with Evelyn Sherwood

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps us bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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What do you do when you discover the disconnect between you and Jesus? If a cluttered or hoarded home mirrors a hoarded heart, how do you address emotional hoarding?

Laurie Davies, speaker and author of Emotional Hoarding: Letting Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Stuck, believes we can live free, but cleaning house is hard. Laurie helps us recognize the emotional clutter that keeps us bound and discover how God's grace invites us to let go.

In this episode, you'll discover:

If regret, anger, bitterness, shame, or false guilt have gotten too cozy in your life, let Laurie's relatability, biblical wisdom, and authentic sense of humor lead the way from emotional hoarding to living free.

"Let God's love go where you don't think it belongs."

"If the invitation is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, then I want to free up every bit of capacity that's in me to love Him that way."

"When we look at people the way God sees them, that's when we can tell grace has gotten into us. It's in our inner workings now."

Genesis 4 - The Story of Cain and Abel

🌿 GIVEAWAY: Enter here through October 19 for your chance at a free copy of Laurie's book

Website: LaurieDavies.com

Ep. 87 I Don't Have to Hold It All Together with Nichole Suvar

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps us bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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How do you trust God when your heart is breaking? When you can barely breathe, afraid after your life has changed irreparably?

Learning to trust God on the unwelcome days isn't easy. In this episode, Jennifer Sakata shares three ways to trust God when life turns upside down—through honesty with God, recognizing His Presence, and finding courage to take the next step when the way forward doesn't make sense. 

In this episode, you'll discover:

Sometimes learning how to trust God isn't about trying harder to have faith. It's about adjusting the direction of our faith—recognizing where God has been present all along, risking honesty with God, and receiving courage to step forward with God when it doesn't make sense.   

"Trusting God means leaning into the promise that God and His Presence never leave."

"Learning to trust God in the unwelcome places requires stepping into situations and circumstances that don't make any sense to us—things we can't control and don't understand."

"We have to close our eyes to all the impossibilities and still ourselves to the small quiet voice Who says, 'You are safe with me.'"

2 Corinthians 12:9 - God's response to Paul's thorn in the flesh

🌿 FREE downloadable: The Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating

Ep. 18 Sometimes I Forget with Julie Sunne

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps us bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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Do you ever find yourself struggling to pray? Or compare yourself to that friend for whom prayer seems to come effortlessly? If God wants me to pray—and I want to pray—why is prayer so hard?

What if struggling to pray doesn't mean you're doing something wrong? Shellie Tomlinson, author of Don't Try to Pray Like Her, invites you to experience prayer, not as a formula to master, but as time spent with a God who actually wants to be with you. 

In this episode, we talk about:

Through her desperation, Shellie learned to embrace prayer. Through her words and this conversation, she invites you to do likewise.

Because prayer isn't about getting the words right or unlocking some secret pathway. It's about spending time with God, who wants to spend time with you.

"God always loves first."

"It's not my desire for God that transforms me. It is being in His actual presence that's transformative and prayer takes us there."

"Our inheritance as children of the Most High is communion with Him."

John 7:37 - An invitation to bring your thirst to Jesus

🌿 Shellie's book Don't Try to Pray Like Her

Website: BelleofAllThingsSouthern.com

Ep. 92 Awaken Delight: God is Delicious with Stephanie Rousselle

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps us bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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What does it mean to be uniquely made by God—and how might embracing the person He created us to be open the door to newness of life?

Psalm 139 reminds us that we are beautifully and wonderfully made. But sometimes, the life in front of us tells a very different story. We're impatient and tired, overwhelmed and distracted, distant from God, and unsure of where we belong. We may love the idea of belonging, yet still decide that belonging must be somebody else's story. 

Author Mary Rooney Armand wants us to see ourselves differently—as beloved, forgiven, and freed children of God. In this conversation about her book Uniquely Made, Mary and Jennifer talk about what it means to receive the identity God has already given us and walk forward in the newness of life Christ offers.

In this episode, we talk about:

Mary Rooney Armand is one of those people who lights up a room with her Southern smile and genuine welcome. Listen in to discover what it might look like to welcome the identity God has given you as a uniquely made daughter or son of the King.

"God didn't just use flawed people. He used their stories to build His Kingdom, and that's the nature of grace."

"We are all extended the same cup of grace."

"There's no expiration date on God's grace, forgiveness, and on His ability to use you for His purpose."

Romans 6:4 - Walk in newness of life

Website: ButterflyLiving.org

Ep. 91 Grace and Belonging: Welcome to the Grace of God | Season 3 Opener

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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How do you know a fake from the real thing? Think imitation vanilla versus that luscious flavor scraped straight from the vanilla bean. One is manufactured; the other contains the substance to awaken delight. 

What if the same is true of our spiritual lives? What if delight isn't something we produce—but something we receive as we awaken to the goodness and Presence of God? 

Stephanie Rousselle is a former atheist who once resolved to live inside the fullness of God's grace for seven days. Thirty years later, she is still proclaiming the life-changing truth she discovered: God is delicious. In her book Awaken Delight, Stephanie invites us to rediscover delight as a gift from God and a way of experiencing His Presence. 

She describes delight as "the quiet revolution that reshapes how we endure pain, love others, and understand our own heart." Stephanie invites us to a fresh awakening and a deeper understanding of what it means to "taste and see that God is good."

In our conversation, we explore:

If you've ever found yourself exhausted trying to manufacture spiritual feelings or make yourself "better" at faith, this conversation offers a different way. What if delight begins, not with striving, but with receiving? What if God Himself is the deepest joy we've been looking for?

"God has used the way he has wired us to welcome him."

"There's absolutely nothing you can do for God to make him love you more. And there is nothing you can do for God to make him love you less."

"True happiness is found in delighting in God, not in the fleeting pursuit of happiness our culture endeavors."

John 15 - Abide in the Vine

🌿  Awaken Delight 5-Day Devotional

Website: GospelSpice.com

Ep. 90 Grace Says You Belong Here with Jennifer Dukes Lee as Host

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

When have you felt the most welcome?

Not just included or invited, but truly welcomed—that deep-in-your-bones feeling that says, I belong here.

In this Season 3 opener of Living the Grace Life, Jennifer Sakata explores grace and belonging, and what happens when we recognize God's grace as His welcome to us.

Grace and belonging aren't yours because you've earned them or deserved them. They become yours as you receive them from the God who created you in His image.

After two seasons of exploring what it means to live with grace in the middle of real life, Jennifer returns to the heart of the message: grace was never meant to stay a theological idea.

God's grace is meant to do something—to change us, impact us, and transform us in ways we could never manufacture on our own.

And that transformation begins with the welcome of God.

In this episode, you'll discover:

Season 3 is an invitation to discover grace as the welcome of God—and to explore what changes when we stop striving to earn our place and begin receiving the welcome that God has already extended.

Reflection question:

Key Scripture: Genesis 1:27 

"Grace was never meant to be just a theological idea. Grace is always meant to change us, impact us, and transform us. It all begins with the welcome of God."

"The welcome of God is never forced or manipulated. And it's not put on one moment and removed for less-than-stellar behavior the next."

"God's welcome reminds us that we belong—no matter what."

Ep. 90 Grace Says You Belong Here with Jennifer Dukes Lee as Host

🎁 My FREE gifts to you: Go-To Grace Songs to Deepen Your Faith & Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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Grace says you belong here. Two years of Living the Grace Life have brought us back to the heart of the message that started it all: God's grace welcomes us, meets us in the hard places, and reminds us that we belong.

What began as a tiny God-whisper in front of a blank canvas eventually made its way to a hot-tub conversation—and then into the launch of Living the Grace Life podcast. Two years and 90 episodes later, we're gathering around the table of God's welcome to celebrate what grace has been teaching us along the way.

In this special two-year anniversary episode, Jennifer Sakata turns the mic over to author, speaker, and friend Jennifer Dukes Lee, who takes on the role of host and asks Jennifer some fun, thoughtful, and deeply personal questions about grace and the journey of Living the Grace Life.

In this episode, we talk about:

Underneath all the laughter and reflection is this reminder: Grace comes, even in the hard places. It doesn't require holding it all together or having all the right answers. Grace grows in us as we remain connected to the Vine—in the big things and the beautifully ordinary ones.

If you've ever felt like you don't measure up or somehow missed your invitation to the Table, let this anniversary conversation remind you:

You belong here.

And Jennifer Dukes Lee? She's not only a seasoned-through-life author, but also a queso-loving, bright lipstick-wearing, loud-singing harmonizer whose love for Jesus shows up as real grace in real life.

"God is never stingy with grace."

"Communion is the ultimate place of welcome without words—where we not only see the cost of God's welcome, but also experience freedom because of it."

"Lord, I belong to you. And so do they."

🌿  Go-To Grace Songs Spotify Playlist 

Website: JenniferDukesLee

Ep. 69 How to Love Your Morning with Jennifer Dukes Lee

🎁 My FREE gift to you: Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

What if surrender isn't the end of your story, but the beginning of something beautiful?

What if the places you feel most emptied are the very places God is preparing to grow the richest fruit? And what if the life you've been longing for isn't found in striving harder, but in the art of abiding?

In this third and final episode of our Summer Book Club: The Grace of Surrender, Jennifer joins author and artist Bette Dickinson in the vineyard to explore what it really means to surrender, abide, and bear fruit.

Drawing from John 15 and Bette's book, The Art of Vinemaking, this conversation challenges our culture's deeply rooted connection of fruitfulness with productivity. Instead, Bette invites us to embrace a vine-over-fruit mindset—one that prioritizes abiding with Jesus over striving to produce.

Together, Jennifer and Bette discuss:

Whether you consider yourself a wine connoisseur or have no interest in swishing reds and pairing food, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on what it means to bear fruit and how God grows something beautiful through the slow, sacred work of surrender.

**This episode is the final conversation in our Summer Book Club series: The Grace of Surrender. If you've joined us for the series, I hope this conversation brings the themes of surrender, abiding, and grace together in a meaningful way that leaves you wondering—not, What fruit am I producing? but rather, Am I abiding in the Vine?

"Our souls were never meant to bear the weight of endless harvest."

"The vinedresser's primary concern isn't fruit - it's flourishing."

"When we abide in the vine, we don't lose ourselves; we become more fully who we were created to be. Our uniqueness isn't erased; it's brought to life."

🌿  Bette's books The Art of Vinemaking

🎶  Bette's go-to grace song, Come Tear Down the Walls by Common Hymnal

Website: bettedickinson.com

Ep. 88 How to Live in the Freedom of Surrender with Mary DeMuth

🎁 My FREE gift to you: Prayers That Change Us

👉🏼Living the Grace Life is the place where real grace meets real life. Host Jennifer Sakata helps bridge the gap between grace as a theological idea and lived practice in everyday moments of faith, encouraging listeners to experience forgiveness, freedom, and trust that they then extend to others.

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