Circle 31 Podcast

Note: Please note that the text below is an uncorrected transcript of the audio captured for this podcast. We pray the Lord uses these words to bless you as you seek Him!

Kendra LeGrand: Alright, everybody. Last episode of the Circle 31 Podcast. We're Breaking Free From Body Shame, and we have a very special guest with us. You might have seen her on the roundtable. Her name is Cailah. And Cailah, we're so excited to hear from you, but I'm gonna say something, OK, that has to do with you that I think just, has really stuck with me.

So you mentioned on the roundtable, you said you, at first, did not volunteer to be part of the conversation. OK? And then when you finally decided to do it, you emailed me, and the last thing you said was, “I have a body that carries the Spirit of the living God. And because of that, I can face whatever comes tomorrow.”

And that's when I knew not only did you need to be part of the conversation and share your story, which I'm so grateful you are, but you needed to wrap this thing up. Because I think you've done so much work to get to the place where you can look at your body and say, I have the Spirit of the living God in me. And because of that, I can face tomorrow. So I'm gonna turn it over to you. You share your story. We're gonna chat. But I just wanted to say thank you for saying yes and for being here.

Cailah Garcia: Kendra, what an honor it is to be here with you ladies today and wrap up this conversation. I have just been so touched by this book, and I love that we get to just chat about all of the incredible things we're learning. And I love that, also, we're in the middle of it. Right? We're sitting in the middle of, like, what God is doing in us and through us each and every day, and I love that it's a work in progress. It's a work in progress.

You know? And I really I love that you brought that line up because I when I wrote it, I was like, Yes, Kendra. I'm so full of faith right now, and I know this is what God wants me to do. But there are also days where I'm like, God, where are You? What are you doing? What's going on? And I I just felt really pressed that that conversation needed to happen. So, for me, a little bit about myself. I'm 30 years old. I turned 30 last October. Let's go. Welcome to the 30 club.

Kendra LeGrand: It's a great club. I'm in it.

Cailah Garcia: I'm in it right now. It's a good club. Yeah. And I just love being in 30 club. But, I am a mom to two kids, and I they're actually my foster kiddos. And I always knew that I wanted to become a mom. It was a huge part of, like, my passion for children and my passion for family and the importance of, like, building community and building family. And that was always something that my husband and I wanted for our lives. But I remember at 15 years old, I got diagnosed with a chronic illness, and it kind of derailed my story, what I had built up as, like, the perfect version of what Cailah's life could look like.

Being told at 15, there is a big chance that you will never have biological children. I was like, What? God, what are You doing? My dad's a pastor and I always had a big faith to believe God for big things, and he always instilled that in me. And I was like, OK. But what do I do now? When what I felt like was something God had given me a passion for was probably not going to happen in the way that I wanted it to or really envisioned that it would. And so, you know, just walking through that season of reconciling the goodness of God with living with very real pain was really hard. And I think it's something that I'm still walking through.

You know, last week even, I had a situation. I think I shared this in the roundtable where I was having a really bad flareup with my chronic illness. And I was like … I texted my boss, and I was like, Hey. Today is not the day. I am gonna show up in the ways that I can show up, but I am struggling.

And I think this book … I love that this book gives us permission to sit in that space and recognize that God wants us to like … God intentionally wants to meet us in that space, in the spaces where we're like, I just don't know. I don't understand why I have this chronic illness that it causes me to experience pain in my body on a daily basis. And I don't understand why I haven't been able to have biological children when I really have the desire to be a mom. I have children now, and I'm so grateful.

And the story is so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. But, God, where is this tension? How do I navigate this tension? And I love that even though I'm still in the middle of walking through something really difficult, I can have security knowing that my body is the vessel of the living God. And that in him and in me, I have the opportunity to be a part of something so much bigger than I could have imagined. And so that's a little bit about myself and a little bit about where God has taken me through.

But I kinda wanna ask this question and turn it over to you ladies because I would love to hear what you guys think about this. But I wanna talk about when we feel like our body is failing us, how can we remind ourselves that our value is not tied to our physical condition? Because I think we have so many women that we know of or ourselves that are just navigating really hard things that are so much deeper than what we can see on the surface level. And sometimes those things are chronic that they deal with on a daily basis. How do we reconcile those two? Have you seen it happen? What does it look like for you? I'd love to hear from you.

Jess Connolly: I mean, first of all, I just wanna tell you that little mini sermon you just gave before, I what I wanted to say is, like, alright. We're good. We can shut this down because that was wonderful and wise and beautiful. And if no one has held up a mirror to you as you speak like that, I want you to know that that is what freedom sounds like. That's what freedom is, period. Like, you are free. You sound free. You are a leader of freedom. Not many people can speak like that with the conviction and clarity and confidence you have in Christ alone, period.

Bless God. That's what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you for that. I mean, I think there's a question behind the question you're asking, and that is: Who told us that a perfectly functioning body is possible?

Who told us? And the truth is right now in 2025, everyone is telling us that our aim should be to live perfectly, That our aim that we can somehow manipulate our bodies and shift our bodies and eat the right diet and move in the right way and do the right things to somehow mitigate pain. But you and I cannot beat the curse. We live under the effects of a fallen world, and you can eat all the right foods and still have a tragic accident. And you can do every single right thing and still stub your toe and still experience pain and still have things break.

We just do not live in a “1+2=3” economy. We don't. We live in a fallen world. And so I think this is hard at a cellular level in our bodies because it's our bodies. So our bodies are not a part of us. We are our bodies, heart, soul, body, spirit. We are all one holistically, in the same way that Jesus, our friend and Savior, was and is an embodied Savior. And so this matters so much. We we can't escape our bodies. We can't get away from them. And so when we experience brokenness in them, we feel the fallenness of the world in the body. But I think I think we answer truly that question with this question of, like, who told us that we can beat the curse? And it is only the enemy. It's only the enemy of our souls.

And we know this because, again, our friend and Savior, Jesus, came and experienced life in a broken body and died and died. His divinity did not did not conquer death until he chose to. You know what I'm saying? But, like, he experienced pain in his body for us. He didn't just rise with our redemption in hand. He rose with our eternal life in hand. And so I don't know. I just, I think you're asking an important question, but I think I think there is, a real heaviness here in our culture because we're trying to beat the curse. We're trying to outrun our own humanity. So yeah.

Cailah Garcia: I think that's so good. I think it's heavy, but it's good. And I think it for me, that just gave me an incredible shift in perspective because I think for so long, I thought, like, OK, God. What are You doing? Why is it this way? Why am I sitting in the in the reality of, like, this is here. Shouldn't it be? If I'm doing all the right things, shouldn’t then You honor that and I find You favor? But it doesn't work like that.

We live in a fallen world, and there will be pain and suffering. Jesus himself, I love that you brought that up, even experienced suffering in his body. That's so real. So that then he could connect us back and understand and say even in Scripture that I have experienced everything. Like, how mind blowing is that? [Jesus says,] I have experienced and walked through everything that you could have experienced, and yet I still went to the cross. And yet I sacrificed my life so that there could be full redemption and full healing and full eternal bodies where we don't have to experience any of the pain and suffering and hardship that we have to today. And I love that that is brought up in the book. Like, the earth, what we're experiencing now is not the ultimate goal. Like, we have eternal bodies that God has already set aside for us that in them are no sickness, no pain, no trauma, no hardship. Like, what a beautiful picture.

Ellen Adkins: It's amazing too just thinking about that idea of Jesus being embodied. And having a body that felt pain and suffering. And so, like, for me, I know, like, when I experience pain or suffering in my body, I am actually able to look more like Jesus. And one day, hopefully, a very long time from now, like, even in the moment of death, you're gonna be able to look like Jesus. You know?

And so I think being able to root our lives today in that reality, also having tremendous hope knowing that like we believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. And so knowing like we will be embodied once more with a perfect body in eternity is tremendously hopeful for me.

Jess Connolly: Tell them, Ellen. OK.

Ellen Adkins: OK. Yeah. I will. I did.

Cailah Garcia: And I think this, like, just really connects beautifully back to the concept of revival in the last few chapters of the book. Oh my goodness have I taken notes on those chapters! I was like, Chapter 9 is my favorite chapter in the entire book because I think we finally get to, like, the core of where it starts. And I love, Jess, that you talked about prayer, repentance, and reconciliation and that process that leads us to revival.

And I would love … I know we don't have much time left, but I'd love for you to just kind of talk a little bit about that process and talk about what revival looks like. And how we step into it.

Jess Connolly: Yeah. I love that. I love talking about repentance, and I feel bad for my kids sometimes because I talk about repentance so much. But the reason why I like to talk about repentance is Acts 3:19-20 tells us, repent therefore that times of refreshing may come. And I wanna live a refreshed life. I wanna live a full life.

And so, I love that you even asked about the process of of, like, repentance through revival. Yeah. Because the other thing I'll tell my kids very often when I'll say, like, hey, let's talk about the process of repentance. Even when you're just apologizing, you know, to your sibling, repentance is not over until you feel refreshed and until you walk away feeling free. That is the fullness of repentance because that is how good our our God is, that he literally covers our sin and sends us out motivated by his grace.

And that does spark revival in us. That makes us wanna share good news. And so when we apply that to our bodies, even when we experience shame, when we feel insecure about our bodies, when we get mad at God about the brokenness of our bodies, to go to him and say, You know what? I'm now believing and coming into agreement with a lie that the world would tell me. I wanna come into alignment and truth, about what You would say about my Kingdom body.
Now change my mind about that. Let me change my actions about that, and now let me walk away feeling as free as I am. It sends you to other people. It sends you to tell other people about it.

And truly, I mean, in the in the same way that we see this in the New Testament where we're told, like, always be prepared for the hope to have an answer for the hope that you have. Right? I think the same is true with body freedom … When we just start to live free, if we don't say a word to anyone else, people will start to ask, like, “Why do you seem so at ease in your body? You know? What what's your deal?” And then you get to tell them, “Oh, well, interestingly, my body is good. Even if you don't think it's good, even when it feels broken, even when experiences brokenness, it is still made good by a good Father.”

Cailah Garcia: Yeah. So good.

Kendra LeGrand: So good. And that's that's why, Cailah, here in week four, you brought in the revival portion of this whole thing. So thank you so much for sharing. And I think that's it. That's all we got. Right?

Ellen Adkins: Yeah. That's all we got.

Kendra LeGrand: We got all we got.

But that was good. And so we're very grateful just for all the people that that got to speak into this these little episodes. So we have a few more days of reading. We'll be with you over on Circle 31, and we can't wait to end this thing together. Bye, everybody.

Ellen Adkins: Bye.