Welcome to Real Talk With Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D.
Today's guest has walked through some of life's most devastating storms and live to tell the story.
Stephanie Franklin-Suber. Stephanie is an author,
a certified Christian health coach, and contributing author of the Breakthrough Method.
Stephanie also the founder of Rebuild you'd Temple God's Way.
Stephanie teaches a powerful framework centered on healing and and wholeness through the integration of body,
soul and spirit.
Today, we're exploring a question that many of us have asked during difficult seasons.
What happens when life completely falls apart? And how does God rebuild us?
Welcome to the show, Stephanie.
Thank you.
I'm so excited to be here.
I am so excited to have you. Thank you so much.
So, Stephanie, I'd like to start out by asking my guest this. Can you tell us about your childhood and where you grew up?
Yes.
I was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
the home of the Philadelphia Eagles.
I grew up in a loving, close knit, churchgoing family.
My parents worked incredibly hard and they sacrificed greatly to give me opportunities that they could only dream of.
They instilled strong values in me. They taught me the importance of faith,
education,
responsibility,
perseverance,
and doing everything with excellence.
I learned early in my childhood that you have to work hard,
you need to keep going no matter what,
and to take responsibility seriously.
And those were the values that shaped me and helped me to become disciplined and determined and resilient.
But later in my life, I had to learn that excellence is not the same as perfection.
That strength is not the same as striving to be the best at everything.
And that perseverance is not the same as doing everything in your own strength.
So when I look back, I. I can see how God used my childhood, my family,
and even my natural drive to prepare me.
But along the way, he had to teach me how to surrender that drive to Him.
And what began as responsibility and obligation and perseverance eventually became surrender and stewardship and service.
And so now I'm a wife married 43 years to my high school sweetheart, Rashard. We have a wonderful son, Michael.
And my ministry,
my coaching,
my books were all Inspired by my 20 year faith and health journey through cancer,
years of chronic illness and a sudden cardiac arrest.
It's my lived experience that has reshaped my understanding of faith and health and
stewardship of the life that God has entrusted to each of us.
Through each season of suffering,
God showed me that he cares about every part of me,
every part of us.
Our physical health,
our emotional health, our mindset, our Spiritual health.
And so my story is one of God.
I don't say interrupting.
I say lovingly redirecting my life through each season. So I went from striving to control
outcomes to learning how to trust God in the middle of uncertainty. What began as survival became surrender.
And ultimately, God rebuilt my life from
the collapsed ruins,
from the foundational.
And so today, I try to help others understand that God cares about all of you and that even after collapse,
he can rebuild what feels like rubble.
You can reclaim a life of health and wholeness. And he wants each of us to be healthy and whole so that we can serve him and walk in the fullness of the abundant life that Christ died for us to live.
Yes, absolutely.
And it all comes full circle in life. That's the amazing part about it. God always brings things full circle.
So, Stephanie, looking back now, was there a specific moment when you realized God wasn't abandoning you in the storm, but was actually rebuilding you through it?
Oh, Reginald.
When I reflect on my rebuilding journey,
I have to begin with who I was,
because that gives me the perspective,
because there were so many moments.
You know, most of my life, I've loved God deeply, been committed to serving him faithfully at home, at church, at work,
wife, mother, elder, attorney. And based on my upbringing,
I carried these roles with a strong sense of responsibility and obligation. But I was very driven,
an overachiever, a perfectionist, a people pleaser.
And at that time, I believed that perfectionism was a badge of honor and that pushing through challenges was a sign of strength.
And I just approached every area of my life with this mindset of perseverance.
Internally,
I was under constant pressure.
Pressure to perform, pressure to meet expectations,
pressure to do everything well.
And I believed that slowing down was not an option. I could not see that constantly striving and pushing and performing and overriding my
limits was negatively affecting me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I equated depletion with faithfulness,
exhaustion with endurance.
I ignored the signals my body, soul, and spirit were sending me. And I kept trying to fix myself
in my own strength.
I knew deep down I was not well.
But God stepped in,
and he redirected my life in a way I never would have chosen.
So my journey began in 2006.
I was 48 years old.
I was at the height of my career.
I had the corner office in the big law firm.
I was a partner. I was successful.
I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer.
And the doctors gave me a grim prognosis.
Maybe I would have five years to live.
Because my mother had died of cancer at age 49,
I felt like family history was repeating itself.
The cancer diagnosis was a brutal wake up call.
I was forced to confront the truth that in faithfully serving everyone else,
I had neglected stewardship of my own health.
And during that first season of suffering,
I learned that trusting God was not theoretical.
It was deeply intimate and personal.
I was forced to slow down,
to turn to God and to lean on him in a way I had never done before.
Because, see, I could not accept that there was no hope for me.
I knew that God was my hope.
And I realized that my health was not separate from my faith.
They're deeply intertwined.
I learned how to trust him in a profoundly personal way.
And I'll just say Psalm 23 was my anchor.
I just remember vividly when they were wheeling me into surgery, Even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for you are with me.
And I clung to that truth because I realized I was not walking through that cancer valley alone.
I was fighting for my life.
I had no choice but to surrender my cancer journey to him.
And now,
against all medical odds, Reginald,
I'm here with you today, 20 years cancer free.
Oh, man, that's amazing.
And, you know, in that cancer, I
will say, was the first season of
physical collapse that forced me to slow
down and rebuild my personal relationship with
God from a place of humility.
But my journey didn't end with remission. I expected my life to return to normal, but it did not. And what followed were years of chronic
illness and complications and ongoing health challenges. My body had been ravaged by the cancer treatments.
Healing was unfolding slowly, unpredictably.
I had survived cancer.
I knew that I still was not well.
But instead of slowing down,
I continued to push forward.
The more I pushed,
the more my body said no,
and the more that striving impeded my recovery.
Chronic illness exposed the cost of living a life of.
Of constant striving.
And it began teaching me that rebuilding required more than physical recovery.
My body was signaling that something deeper needed to change.
But I refused to listen.
And then in 2012,
the ground just
crumbled under my feet.
My youngest sister,
Sandra,
she died suddenly.
And then just a month later,
after we had buried her,
her husband could not see a future without her, and he committed suicide.
And that level of grief and guilt, you know, what did I miss?
What didn't I see?
That just shattered my soul.
And I didn't understand at the time how deeply that Emotional trauma would impact my physical health.
I internalized the grief,
the guilt and the pain.
And over time, my body began to carry what my soul had not processed and released.
Inflammation around my heart forced me into long term disability and I had to give up my law career.
Another long season of suffering followed. But God used my grief in that season of emotional collapse to reveal that what we carry emotionally affects us physically as well.
And then,
just when I thought I had finally turned the corner in my
health and I was stable, the pandemic
locked down in 2019,
that just triggered uncontrollable emotional eating.
In the isolation,
in the fear,
in the depression,
I gained 60 pounds.
It seemed like it was overnight.
I was just using food to try to stuff and meet unmet emotional needs.
My thoughts were consumed with self condemnation,
with shame.
My spirit was crushed and empty and I just spiraled out of control,
physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
And I will say to you, I was in a pit,
a dark pit of hopelessness.
But God met me there again and he began to do an even deeper work in me.
In that season of suffering, it became clear to me that what was draining my spirit was draining my body and draining my soul.
My questions started to change. I had trusted God with my cancer journey.
Or was I trusting him completely with my entire journey,
with every area of my life?
Where was I holding back most of my life? You know, I had been striving in my own strength to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother and church member and attorney.
And I was always looking in my own understanding for the right pill or treatment to erase the pain of grief and sorrow.
I was constantly searching for that perfect diet or exercise program to fix myself.
But he showed me that I had to surrender all of me to him without reservation.
All my broken body,
all my wounded soul,
all my weary spirit.
And I began to learn how to surrender differently,
anchoring it all my faith, my health, my life in Him.
And I began embracing my identity as his beloved child,
made in his image. And I began to truly believe that, that Christ had died so that I could not just survive,
but live and thrive and have life in abundance to the full and overflowing.
That season of spiritual collapse forced me to examine the deeper broken places of my life that I could no longer cover with performance and productivity and perfectionism.
In 2023, God directed my path from law to Christian health coaching and I founded Rebuild you'd Temple God's way. And that was in 2023.
Yet the true turning point in my journey came in 2025. Two years later,
my heart stopped suddenly.
By God's grace,
I was in my doctor's office at the time.
Had I been anywhere else,
we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I survived 50 minutes of CPR,
not 15, 50 and then extensive thoracic surgery
to rebuild my broken sternum and ribs
and collapsed and punctured lungs.
That moment of clinical death was a moment of complete collapse.
I had nothing left to manage,
nothing left to perform,
nothing left to control.
My life was fully in the palm of God's hands.
In that stillness,
I realized I confessed to my husband I had veered off course.
I had reverted to old patterns of striving and a stressful lifestyle.
In my passion to help others achieve health and wholeness,
I had started neglecting my own health again and again.
My merciful God stepped in and he
used this complete collapse to bring and
to begin rebuilding my temple, body, soul
and spirit from the inside out.
And he moved me from a life of striving into a life of full surrender.
I had no choice but to trust him with every,
every part of my life,
all of me.
I had to stop completely.
I had to surrender fully.
In the quiet,
in the intensive care,
in the hospital,
in the acute rehabilitation facility,
I read my Bible.
My husband took my phone.
And so I started at the beginning and I read it with fresh eyes.
And I embraced that his plans for me have to be good and not evil and filled with a future and with hope.
In this rebuilding process,
he has shown me a new way to serve him through my testimony and my writing.
And now I am celebrating one year of a miraculous cardiac arrest survivorship.
So what I learned through every season of suffering,
every season of collapse, is this.
God does his deepest rebuilding in us in those moments when our lives completely fall apart.
Cancer forced me to slow down.
Chronic illness exposed the cost of striving.
Grief revealed what had not healed in my soul.
Emotional eating gave me clarity on the emptiness in my spirit.
And cardiac arrest that just stripped away every illusion of control I had.
But every collapse was an invitation from God to rebuild my temple differently,
to go deeper,
to rebuild my body with stewardship instead of self neglect.
To rebuild my soul on surrender instead of striving,
to rebuild my spirit, on faith instead of fear.
I learned the hard way that trusting God is not trusting him for doing
what I expect or what I plan
for, what I even pray for.
It's trusting that even when everything in
your life has crumbled and collapsed,
that he is still faithful,
he's still present and he's still rebuilding.
And even when that rebuilding happens, little by little,
he is always working and always moving.
And so what felt like the end of my story became the foundation God used to rebuild my health and my life with greater purpose,
deeper faith,
and a new calling to serve others.
Yes, absolutely. That is so amazing.
So, Stephanie,
many believers struggle when healing doesn't come quickly or doesn't look the way they expect it.
How do you encourage people to maintain faith and hope during long, uncertain healing journeys?
Well,
I'm going to say this first.
Stop trying to rebuild alone.
Start by sitting with God and being honest with him about your fear,
your exhaustion,
your disappointment,
your frustration.
God cannot heal and rebuild the broken parts of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge.
So stop hiding.
Stop holding parts of ourselves back from him and just let him in fully.
He's present even in this,
even now.
And even if the rebuilding hasn't happened the way you expected or hoped for or prayed for,
that doesn't mean God is not working.
It doesn't mean that he's not with you.
But I also say,
take a step of stewardship each day.
Just one.
Sometimes his rebuilding is gradual.
And it starts with one honest prayer.
It starts with one healthy choice,
one new boundary,
one act of rest,
one step of obedience.
Because the small steps of faith matter when God is rebuilding.
And finally, embrace that your faith is not separate from your health.
Your body matters,
your thought, life matter matters.
Your will, your desires, they matter.
Your emotional health matters. Your spirit matters. And God cares about all of it and all of you.
Collapse was not the end of my story.
It's not the end of your story.
God can take our ruins and build a new foundation for restoration and renewal and realignment and transformation and use it all for his glory.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So well put. So, Stephanie, looking back over everything you survived, what is the greatest lesson God taught you through your rebuilding process?
I'm going to say that God rebuilt my purpose by rebuilding me first
through
every season of collapse. He taught me what true stewardship was.
He showed me I can't continually pour out to others and neglect myself.
The seasons of suffering that he allowed have changed the direction of my life for the better.
I can walk in accordance with his plan and purpose for me,
not my own.
He taught me that even when his rebuilding happens over time, it's little by little and layer by layer,
just the way that he gave the promised land to the Israelites.
He works in us,
and he gives us what we can handle as we move through his rebuilding process.
And when his rebuilding process Is little by little,
I just hold on to the fact that he's always present.
He is even in the waiting.
He's in the uncertainty.
He's in the ongoing challenges.
And honestly, I take comfort in Psalm 91.
That is my go to scripture.
I dwell in the secret place of the Most High God. I am stable and fixed under the shadow of the Almighty, whose power no foe can withstand.
I am assured that even in long seasons of suffering,
uncertainty, waiting, he's always with me.
And through that little by little rebuilding process,
he gave me a new calling.
That's how rebuild your temple. God's way was born.
That's how the triune temple journey, my framework, was born.
And that's how the signature faith and health collection was formed.
God built through my suffering what he built.
That's the message I share with others.
He cares about every part of us,
body, soul and spirit.
And trusting him not just for the outcome,
but in the middle of his rebuilding process,
that's where true transformation begins.
It does. Transformation is through the journey. It's not at the beginning, it's not at the end. It's going somewhere between beginning and the end. Going through the journey. That's when transformation has.
Yeah.
So, Stephanie, I have what I call quick fire questions. You ready?
I hope so.
Right or wrong answer? It's just your answer. What's one word that describes God's faithfulness?
Incredible.
Got it. How do you trust God with a journey you didn't chose or you didn't choose?
I know he loves me.
I know from His Word that His plans for me are good and not evil and filled with the future and filled with hope. And I know that he works all things together for my good,
whether I understand it or not.
He knows what I cannot know.
He sees what I cannot see.
And so I lean not on my own understanding. And I trust him and I commit all my ways to Him.
And I trust him to carry me and sustain me and take me where I can't go on my own.
Yes. So what scripture carries you through your hardest season?
Psalm 23.
Psalm 91, definitely.
But I'm also going to say Psalm 30 and also the healing Scriptures and just declaring,
I will live and not die,
and I will declare the works of the Lord.
Psalm 30.
I love that because it says, I cried out to you, Lord cried out to you in desperation.
You heard me and you rescued me.
You restored health unto me and you brought me back from the pit of the grave.
That's my story.
You know, my cardiac arrest is miracle.
He Raised me from the dead.
So just trust him.
How can I not?
Yes,
exactly. I think it takes things to happen to make people really learn to trust God. I mean, a lot of people say they trust him. You know, when you'd be like, man, I really was, really trusted him, like I should have.
But now I really understand what trust
is because it really is. You get to a point, I call it coming to the end of myself.
When it's just me and God.
He brought you into the world,
and when you leave this world,
he is going to be there.
And it's always about you and him and your relationship.
When I come to the end of myself,
that's when he does his best work.
But I have to let him.
The more I hold on and try
to keep doing things, my understanding, my
plan, my way, he'll sit back and let me fumble and stumble and bumble around.
Yeah, and we'll stumble and bumble around a lot longer than we should have been if we stay in the way. Yes.
Yes.
But he's just. He's so faithful through it.
All the things that you don't think
you can make it through,
like my sister died. I'm just.
I just felt that he was carrying me because I couldn't go through that alone.
He's faithful in the hardest seasons,
and I hit rock bottom a few times. And what I found there at the bottom, in the dark,
when it was just me,
God was there and he was waiting for me and he was holding me close to Him.
Yes. He's there all the time. He's there all the time.
Yeah.
So, lastly, Stephanie, what's one piece of advice you would give someone facing a health crisis right now?
You know,
I'm going to say that God meets you exactly where you are in your journey. He knows where you are.
He meets you moment by moment. Not when you're strong on,
but when you're weary and when you're weak,
you know? So my story is really for anyone who feels exhausted physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
You've tried everything. You're not experiencing the results you had hoped. You love God, but you feel depleted and overwhelmed, and you're carrying pressure silently or you're trying to hold everything together.
Anyone who's been in a long,
hard, uncertain journey,
rebuilding after collapse,
still looking for answers.
Scripture reminds us his power is made perfect in our weakness. And I just encourage you to take just one small step of faith every day.
Not from pressure,
but from grace.
First,
stop trying to rebuild alone.
When I cried out to God in desperation,
in humility.
I can't do this alone.
I need you.
I was honest with him about what was broken and I asked him, you know, we go to him when it's all said and done right and we say, God help me, I've made a mess or everything's falling apart.
Start with him.
What part of me, Lord, needs to be restored?
What part of me needs to be renewed? What part of me needs to be aligned with you and just take a step of stewardship.
Body, soul, spirit. One honest prayer, One healthy choice,
one new boundary, one act of rest,
one step of obedience.
Because rebuilding after collapse is not about your performance.
It's about God's rebuilding process.
It will be done in his way,
in his timing,
according to his will.
And it may not look like you imagined,
but trust that he loves you and that he's walking with you in every step of your journey and he is still writing your story.
I'm not someone who's arrived.
My journey continues and he's still writing my story.
So I just say,
even after collapse,
when everything around you is like shifting sand,
God can rebuild your life from the foundation up from the ruins of the rubble.
Well put. So well put. So Stephanie, where can people connect with you? Purchase your books and learn more about your program Rebuilding the Temple God's Way.
Well if anyone would like to learn
more, please visit my website, Rebuild you'd
temple God's way.com there you'll find the signature faith and health collection,
an overview of my framework, the Triune Temple Journey.
The books are available on my website and through my website you can purchase on Amazon or you can go to Amazon directly.
But everything I share,
it flows from how God rebuilt my temple time and time again in my own faith and health journey. And the resources are designed to gently walk you through how to restore your body,
renew your soul and realign your spirit.
So if you're in a long uncertain journey,
whether it's physical, emotional, mental or spiritual,
the resources are there to walk alongside you and support you.
I would like to say that the signature faith and health election,
my framework,
all of that came out of the rebuilding process.
It's a scripture centered way for you to care for your whole person by accepting that your body, soul and spirit, you're a temple of The Holy Spirit.
First Corinthians 6:19 to 20.
It's a testament. My business,
my coaching,
my teaching,
my health journey,
it's all a testament to God's mercy, grace and miracle working power in my life.
And there are three simple steps.
One Restore your body. That's through action.
You honor God the Father with stewardship of your physical health.
Step two is renew your soul through surrender by yielding your thoughts and your will and your emotions to God the Son for healing and inner peace.
And step three is realign your spirit through communion by cultivating intimacy with God the Holy Spirit,
so your identity and your purpose are rooted in Him.
So it's not about fixing yourself.
It's a five book devotional and discipleship collection.
It's about returning to God's sacred design.
It's about looking at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem,
which reflects God's triune image as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Holy Temple in Jerusalem had an outer court,
a sacred place of worship,
an inner court,
a sacred place of worship,
and the holiest of holies,
the innermost place of worship.
And our bodies reflect God's image and the design of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
Your body is the outer court of your temple,
the inner court,
your soul.
And your holiest of holies is your spirit. And so the collection grew out of my own journey of God rebuilding my temple through illness and recovery.
Just like the Holy Temple in Jerusalem,
because it was destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt time and time again.
Awesome. There you have it. Stephanie Franklin-Suber. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Reginald. It was a joy to be here.
Absolutely. And thank you for all the insight. It was beautiful.
Thanks for listening to Real Talk with Reginald D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk With Reginald D. Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. See you next time.
