How God Helped Me Find My True Worth | A Story of Healing, Purpose, and Faith

Have you ever questioned your worth or wondered if your struggles had meaning?

In this powerful and personal episode of *Dear Daughters of God*, Stephanie shares her journey through chronic migraines, professional pressure, and a deep spiritual awakening. From her work as a charter school administrator to the moment God used her words to save a life, she reflects on how each experience shaped her and helped her fulfill *the measure of her creation*.

Discover how distorted thoughts can be challenged, how faith can be healing, and how God places you exactly where you're needed—even when you're at your weakest.

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more real stories of divine purpose and healing: https://www.youtube.com/@DearDaughtersofGod
📘 Learn more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and David Burns’ book *Feeling Great*

📖 Scripture Highlight:
"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made." – John 1:3

🎙️ Hosted by Stephanie Eccles, storyteller and founder of *Dear Daughters of God*

#FaithStory #ChristianTestimony #HealingThroughGod #MentalHealthAndFaith #DearDaughtersOfGod #CBT #FindingYourPurpose #GodsPlan #ChristianPodcast #TrueWorth #WomenOfFaith

Thanks for listening! I'm on Instagram as deardaughtersofgod. Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/invites/contact/?i=1iyjqx0cq4kbk&utm_content=qr66nqv

Transcript

Stephanie (2): 0:00

you jump over bags and Trina you call yourselves dancers, lets be dancers. and I look at the, height and I think that's impossible. this is nuts. I not doing it I refuse. But

0:22

This episode was videotaped live as I gave this speech at a women's conference, and I act out much of the story because it needs acting out. So I encourage you to look it up on YouTube on the Dear Daughters of God channel so you can get the full effect of this story where I explain how God helped me find my purpose. thank you for listening and now onto the story.

Stephanie (2): 0:51

Welcome. I'm so glad you, you welcome to have the ability measure of your creation My name is Stephanie. SI, by way of introduction, I was one of those women in the eighties that got married as was a teenager. Yes, it is true. I fell for a handsome man named Rich and we got married when I was 19 When the children came along, I lied to them and told them I was 20 because it sounded better. But they figured it out. It wasn't long before they figured it out. Yes. Well, it all worked out and 38 married years later, we grew. From two to six to 20, 20 of us and I introduce myself this way because being a mother and a wife and a grandmother have been the greatest blessings of my life, and they've certainly propelled me towards the, fulfill the measure of my creation. But I'm not going to talk about lead as dear people. Today. I'm going to talk about another part of my life The professional part of

2:05

my

Stephanie (2): 2:05

life specifically that as a charter school administrator, where I served for 15 years. If you had asked me as a young adult, what are you going be? I would've never said as a charter school administrator, but the Lord had difficult plans that he realized that it was in this role. I'm gonna have the opportunity to develop latent talents within me Feel free to come in and come sit down. We're glad your here. So I want to share an experience. From that to time in my life this, specifically was when I was at Excelsior Academy. I was the executive director there, and when I arrived it had one beautiful school, 650 students, grades kindergarten through eighth grade, and over the years that I was there, I was given the opportunity to grow that school with a capable team and we did just that. We grew into two schools much greater campus and 1400 students. At the time this experience occurred we had been just given permission by the Utah State Board of Education to double our school size again, which is very hard to get it takes over a year. of trial and hard work but although we been given this permission go to 3000, it was now our opportunity to have been reflect as the administration was it. Right. For Excelsior to take this leap of faith, was it? Right? And so we were meeting with realtors, contractors, finance people, all of these people. It was a very intense time in my career. On the personal side, I was having some annoying health issues and I kept them to myself except my closest friends. I'd had'em for a couple of years. Starting at COVID time, and this was a couple years after COVID. These health issues included spasms in the back of my neck, flu-like symptoms every two to three weeks, and, sinus, pressure, regular on either side of my nose. I visited the ENT and there wasn't a sinus infection, and I see in his wall a poster that says Fix your chronic run nose. And I was like, that was another issue I had. And I was thinking, is this menopause? You know, I'm certainly have the right years, but it just doesn't seem to be in the menopausal category. Well, I looked at that and thought maybe that would take care of the sinus pressure. Then I certainly had chronic my nose. It was a simple procedure. You have it at five o'clock at night after work and you're back at work the next morning. All they do is. Freeze the inner insides of the nasal membranes its a cryo procedure. So I had it done in the procedure, I had a sharp, sharp pain, the tip of my left nose, but I didn't say anything about it because its suppose to hurt. Well, the next day they'd said, you'll get a brain freeze headache, expect that that, like when you sip on a slurpie too fast. And I did. I got that brain freeze headache. And then. The following day, I had a low grade migraine and I was familiar with migraine because as a child I had developed migraines developing age of eight, and they were quite severe, great deal of pain. I passed out sleep for several hours and wake up hours later. Crazy. I grew out of them somewhere in my teenage years, so after that low migraine, I had another one. And another one, within about two or three weeks, I was having migraines every single day and they were getting progressively worse, but there was something unusual about this migraine. They came with a stabbing pain in the wee hours of the morning, two to three o'clock in the morning, stabbing pain in that part of my nose where that procedure hurt so very badly. In the left side of my nose, my cheek, and my eyeball stabbing pain, wake me up and suddenly. Then it would turn into a hot coals shooting through the crown of my head, that sort of pain. This was going on every single day, and I was the person that needed to be able to work every single day, which I was. And so I have, I wanted to do something to help myself through this health crisis so I can continue on in my duties. So I reached back to what I learned in graduate school about cognitive behavioral therapy. Aaron Beck, the developer of CBT, he said this about CBT, what is common behavioral therapy? He said, the way you think determines the way you feel and the way you act. Aaron Beck had many students of cognitive behavioral therapy and one of those students name was David Burns. Also another psychiatrist, David Burns, popularized CBT. He brought it to the masses by writing the book, feeling good, and then re publishing it to feeling great. What was so wonderful about feeling great was it was written for everyday people and it was full of techniques that you could use to help yourself through. Whatever you're going through and it had a technique in their called talk to yourself as if you were your very best friend. Um, it was easy to understand. He said, you're much kinder to your friends and forgiving and understanding than you are to yourself This is the way Burns described CBT. He described it this way. Thoughts create emotions. By challenging distorted thoughts, people can drastically improve their mood rather quickly. So the idea is CBT teaches us that. People have distorted thoughts and they feel very real. They feel truthful. They feel actual, but they're not. They're not real. And even though they're not real, they feel real and they affect the way we feel, and that feeling that emotion affects the way we behave. So I have looked that technique of talk to yourself as if you're very, your very best friend, and used it to get to work every day. I started calling myself, sweetheart, in all sincerity in the morning after having a very hard night, starting around 2:00 AM I said to myself, sweetheart, you are stronger than you realize you have strength beyond your understanding. You can do it. Get out of bed. The Lord is with you. Say, you haven't called me this at Excelsior Academy. There are hundreds of kids out there waiting for you. They need you. It was this type of conversation I would have with myself that will keep me going during this health crisis. Well, it was at this time that Tooele County, which is where Excelsior schools located, there was a tragedy at the local high school just a few blocks away from my school that ended in the 8th grade A teenage boy died by suicide. It was such a heartbreak and a stab stab in the stomach to those that knew and loved him. And for me, after the initial shock, it was like a wake up call. I felt like the students at Excelsior, I asked protect them. with what? With knowledge. By teaching them a few simple techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy before they go to what I consider some of the hardest years you've ever like high school. So I grabbed a couple of my counselors and I said, let's create some classes. Students learn better in classroom size groups, not a big assembly Let's create a little workbook we only have a few days left of school. We can do this, and I was now going to teach five class in a day, and they were each gonna teach some classes of cognitive behavioral therapy. At this point, I've had at least 60 days in a row of these migraines as described. I was weak and both physically and emotionally, I knew I needed help. I said to my husband. Would you give me a priesthood blessing? I need extra help to make it through this day. It will take great energy to fulfill that duty and my own duties So, and I also said to him, I know exactly what needs to be said. Let me tell you, I need to be healed Make sure that happens. Second, I have a calling heal me, have the Lord heal me. So he started the blessing. In a blessing. There was just a little bit that was about me. It was, it was about, um, that I think the strength that I needed, the endurance I had, that felt in weeks and, and that I also would be given the words to say but that's all it was said about me and the rest was about a certain student that was whose life was in a fragile condition and this student, student needed these lessons to save the student's life. I went into this blessing thinking I knew exactly what needed to happened, and came out realizing, okay, I am ready to be a part of the The Lords will. I went to school the next day. I had a migraine as usual, starting at two A. I had strength. That I haven't felt in weeks. I had words come to me freely and I'm gonna share with you the story that I shared with these students that happened to me at a time that was their age. To help them understand distorted thoughts. And I'll share with you a portion of the story considering the time that we have, and this is how of a story goes when I was 14 years old, I said, why did you dance? With the, the University of Utah's ballet department. And after that I was recruited onto their ballet company called Utah Ballet, and they, um, performed a Utah and around the Intermountain West This meant I went to high school. until about 11:00 AM and then the University for the rest of the day Every day you had a technique class. The company had a technique. Class was two hours long, and this technique class was taught by, I'll call her Ms. Vladamir She was the director of Utah Ballet. Let me tell you this, Vladimir was very demanding, she was quick tempered, and she was known to make dancers cry. It was the end of the two hour class and then we were headed to rehearsal At the end of the ballet class, there's always a big leap combination. It really is exhilarating You start in the back corner and you start like this. and you Chasse', you go into a big leap combination, chaine', lots of turns, and then you plant the landing, traveling across the large studio from the back front and the right when We are about to finish. We hear bang on the piano. and Ms. Vladamir says, i-i-i-i-i I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I can't stand to watch you dance, you gimme nothing. You gimme nothing. You call yourself dancers, you hardly leave the floor Go, go, go, go get your bags. And I thought great. She's sick of us. We're out. of here So I run to get my bag thinking let me flee. I tried to get my bag and she says no, no, no, no. You bring your bag to the center of the room all of you Bring your bag to the center of the room. pile them in, in the center of the room. Trina, where's Trina? Don't back up. Come here. She takes Trina by the shoulder And she places Trina carefully on top of the bag and she says to the rest of us now. You do the combination and you jump over the bags and Trina you call yourselves dancers, lets be dancers. and I look at the, height and I think that's impossible. This is nuts. I not doing it. I refuse. But Ms. Vladamir she's looking at me and she's looking at all the dancers but especially me because I'm her rising star. And she would not take her eyes off me, and I was starting to be pushed forward in the line and what was I going to do. So I started to pray. Father, please, please give me strength beyond my own. Give my height beyond my own. I don't want to kill Trina. I don't want to decapitate Trina oh, and I, chasse and I leap I looked up out, I look, look up, and I chasse' And, and then I chaine' I turn and I do not. decapitate Trina I leap right over her, completely over her. And I landed little shivering and grateful and I walked towards the back of the studio just so grateful that we're both living. And then the next thing I hear, is another smack from Ms. Vladamir and she said it's not good enough It's not good enough Do it. again Do it again Trina you ducked your head Well, for the sake time, I'll end that dramatic story there, but it continues to climb in it's drama and I went back to the students and now I tell them about distorted thoughts and I said, it was at this time that I remember distinctly my mind being crowded with thoughts like this. Your body just isn't right. Your legs. Your legs, your legs are not long enough. If they were longer, you could have leaped like that all of the time. Yes. And I don't think they're powerful enough or strong enough. I don't think your footwork is, fast enough. I don't think you have the talent to be amongst this caliber of dancers. That's what I was hearing and it left me feeling embarrassed, anxious, worried. And then I wanted to hide away I couldn't, but I dreamed of there being some sort of catastrophe that would keep me from going to dance class because I knew I would have imminent failure. So at the time, I knew nothing about distort thoughts, but this is how I was feeling it. Now, knowing about thoughts. I could challenge that by saying this. Well, wait, I minute, I am a lyrical dancer. I've been told that, and I've been told that even so, I can leap a little bit like a gazelle that I am obviously very high, but with grace and it's these very legs at this very length that have helped me with those leaps Yes, yes. These are the legs that have done it and I wouldn't be the youngest dancer of this company by far, recruited to dance with adults if I didn't have the talent to be here. Ah, that's how I challenged, distorted thoughts. And at that time, I felt to look over this way and my eyes met the glare. of a certain boy. As I'm talking about how to challenge distorted thoughts and I can see in his eyes understanding and a sense of relief as it, it rolled off his shoulders and then the spirit bore, witness to me that this was the certain boy that was spoken of and that. His words spoken through me had just saved his life, and in that moment, I knew I had taken a leap towards the measure of my creation. The Lord Jesus Christ wants us to succeed by following his example. In his mortal ministry, he healed the sick and he gives us through divine design opportunities to heal one another. Like that moment, it's like the scripture says. All things are made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. John chapter, one, verse three, all those moments think of them in your life where you come upon someone, where they've become upon you. He created those moments, well, three years more have passed and I continue on in my migraine journey. I decided to retire early from being a school administrator. And now I have another calling, and I get to now focus on moments when the Lord has put his hand in our lives and helped us to fulfill the measure of our creation as the host of Dear Daughters of God a video podcast. It's on now. It's on YouTube. It started on an audio platform. It's still there, but in the last 10 videos I've added YouTube. So now you can see these stories unfold. I tell the stories of my sisters and brothers where they've seen the hand of God in their lives And by noticing that that hand of God they better understand the measure of their creation. And I invite you to find us on the YouTube under the channel, Dear Daughters of God, and be inspired as to what your calling is on this earth. And as it changes from season to season, by paying attention to when God's hand is in your life as I was taught to bow by the very best Ms. Vladamir I continue on in that tradition As I say, farewell until we meet again. Goodbye