Dr. Tabatha Barber on Faith, Medicine & Real Healing

Your life can look successful—and still feel like survival mode.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Tabatha Barber, a triple board-certified physician turned functional medicine leader, to talk about surrender, shame, and what real healing actually looks like.

We unpack her journey—from teenage mother to physician—and the prayer that changed the course of her life. We also dive into why traditional healthcare often becomes “sick care,” and how root-cause healing (hormones, thyroid, gut-brain, stress) connects back to mind, body, and faith.

Her message is simple: your body isn’t broken—your approach is.

👉 Start her program here: https://book.fasttofaith.com/bonus#row-pWUq-iXRa48

(I just purchased this myself—let’s go through it together.)

Read more on Dr. Tabatha:

Dr. Tabatha Barber is a triple board-certified physician — and one of the most distinctive voices in faith-based women's health today. Her story begins where most would have stopped. A teenage mother and high school dropout, she rebuilt her life through faith and perseverance — earning her doctorate and certifications before realizing the very system she trained in was missing the whole point.

Today, as owner and medical director of Her Higher Health, creator of the Fast to Faith Coaching Academy, 40 Day program, supplement line, and international bestselling book Fast to Faith, Dr. Tabatha brings one message to every stage and microphone: your body is not broken — your approach is.

She is known for doing what no one else does: mapping Scripture directly with how the body works — showing women that Romans 12:2 is the original neuroplasticity protocol, that Genesis 2:7 describes the gut-brain connection, and that God designed healing to happen in community. Using her signature FAITH IT™ Method, she helps women understand that Scripture and science have been saying the same thing all along: true healing starts in the mind, moves through the body, and is sustained by faith.

If this resonated, share with someone who needs it, subscribe, comment, and follow us @atfortifywellness.

Where are you being called to surrender control right now?

Transcript

Welcome To Fortify Wellness

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to the Fortify Wellness podcast. I'm Mattina Mahoney, founder of Fortify Wellness. This is season 11. I built Fortify after having to rebuild my life from burnout, from trauma, from feeling like I was holding it together on the outside, but not okay on the inside. Fortify connects you to the right support for your mind, body, and soul. Therapy, coaching, fitness, and meditation all in one place. Because most people don't need more content, they need the right support. So this podcast is where we talk about that. Real conversations, real tools, no fake positivity. Because if you're tired of just getting through the day and you actually want to feel better, you're in the right place. A quick note before we begin: this podcast isn't medical advice, but it is a space for real support. Season 11 starts now. Let's get into it. I'm so excited to welcome our next guest, Dr. Tabitha Barber, a triple board certifying physician and one of the most distinctive voices in faith-based women's health today. Her story begins where most would have stopped. A teenage mother in a high school dropout, she rebuilt her life through faith and perseverance, earning her doctorate and certifications before realizing the very system she trained in was missing the whole point. Today, as owner and medical director of her higher health, creator of the Fast of Faith Coaching Academy, 40-day program, supplement line, and international best-selling book, Fast to Faith, Dr. Tabitha brings one message to every stage of microphone. Your body is not broken. Your approaches. She is known for doing what no one else does, mapping scripture directly with how the body works, showing women that Romans 12.2 is the original neuroplasticity protocol, that Genesis 2.7 describes the gut-brain connection, and that God designed healing to happen in community. Using her signature faith it method, she helps women understand that scripture and science has been saying the same thing all along. True healing starts in the mind, moves through the body, and is sustained by faith. I am so excited about this conversation. Let's get into it. Hi, Dr. Tabitha. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I am so excited for this conversation. Thanks, Betina.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Me too. So, of course, you've done such incredible things in your life, but I like to kind of strip away all your titles. So when you take away author, doctor, mother, etc., who are you at your core?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I love this question. First and foremost, I am a child of God. I am a sinner saved by Jesus. He is my Lord of Lord and King of Kings. And I base everything off of that. So that's my foundational identity.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

I love that. Me too. Um, I'm always trying to grow closer to God every single day. And I think it's such a huge foundation of who I am. And I think a lot of our listeners as well. So I was so inspired by your story from when you were in high school of everything you went through on the Candace Cameron podcast. I was listening to that, and I was so drawn to how vulnerable you are because I don't think most people understand how hard it can be to be vulnerable. Can you share a little bit about that adversity, that defining moment in your life that really shaped you into who you are today?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Oh my gosh, so many moments. But um, I was a lot like you in that I was full of shame and I didn't want people to know who I truly was or what I had done, you know, how bad of a sinner I really was. And it wasn't until I fully surrendered in my 40s that I finally was freed from that. So I lived a lot of my life trying to be who people thought I was. Um, I was trying to live up to that expectation and to the person I knew deep inside that I could be and I was capable of being, and that God was calling me to be. But I didn't know how to shed that shame layer for so long. And so um, you know, people say fake it until you make it. I say faith it until you make it. Like God continued to do a good work in me and cleanse me. Um, but I went through decades of like falling back into my old patterns, into my old sins and ways of thinking and being because I was trying to fill a void that uh you just can't fill. It's it's a God void. God has to fill that void. And it I really didn't understand that for the longest time. So I know somebody listening right now is just like I they're at the end of themselves, right? I had to come to the end of myself and finally surrender and submit to authority because you probably know a little bit of my background. I was a wild child. I didn't want to listen to authority. I thought rules were meant to be broken. I lived in Saturday school in detention. Um, and all it did was give me consequences, it gave me a life that was just nonstop struggle. And I just thought that like that was my lot in life. And the truth of it was so much of what I was doing was self-induced because I was confused. And it wasn't until I actually started reading the Bible and having a relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit and God that things shifted. And so I'm praying that someone listening today reaches out and says, God, I want to know you. I want you to be my father, I want you to be my provider, my husband, whatever you need, like stop looking at the food, at the men, at the finances, at the shopping, whatever you're using to fill your void, we have to go to God instead. That is the only way that we're gonna make any progress and get unstuck.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

What was the rock bottom moment where you had to faith it till you made it?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I laughed because there's so many. Like, I wish it was one and done. I wish that I learned my lessons the first time. You know what I mean? Like, I have been married and divorced three times. I am a messy Christian. I I'm stubborn, I don't learn quickly. I think my way is the best way, and so God really has to um break me down. At one point, he said, You are like a wild stallion, and I had to break you and show you what it was like to submit to me. And truthfully, that is where the freedom is. So um three years ago, I'll just use this example because it's so recent. Um, I was on my third marriage, and I had committed that I was gonna do everything in my power to be a good wife and make this a loving home with a blended family and show his children love and like show our children what it means to be in a healthy relationship. We went to church every week, we did all the right things, we went on vacation together. I thought we were connecting, all the things. Um, but I was out in California at a business faith-based conference, and we got baptized in the Pacific Ocean. Wow. And yeah, it was really powerful, a huge group of like 30 women. But before I walked into the ocean, I said to God, if there's anything in my life that's preventing me from living out your will for me, that's keeping me stuck and not glorifying you, Lord, I want you to remove it from my life. I went home two days later and I found out my husband had been cheating on me for over a year and was like living this fake life. Yeah, can you imagine like how devastated I was as a 48-year-old woman, knowing I now have three failed marriages, and I had given everything thinking I can change this man, I can help save him, I can bring him to Christ. And God was like, that's not your job, that's my job, and I'm gonna deal with him. You were never supposed to marry him, and now we're gonna clean up the mess and we're gonna make the best of it. And that day when God broke my heart on purpose to better my life and help me to be closer to him. That was a really eye-opening moment for me. I was like, okay, God, some of the pain that I feel is self-induced because of my bad consequences and my stupid choices. But sometimes it is for my betterment and for your glory. And I need to trust that no matter how painful it is, and stay obedient to it and not go back, even though that would have been quote unquote easier, right? So here I am two years later, and I am a single mom. I'm alone for the first time in 35 years, running my household and my life by myself. But I say I'm married to Jesus, and it's been a wild ride, but I wouldn't change it for the world because I have grown so much and now I'm dependent on God in a way that I never was before, and I know that's what He wanted for me.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That must have been a really challenging experience, and I'm sure for some people it could sort of cause them to question their relationship with God. How did you deepen your relationship with God through that experience?

Rejection As Protection Through Pain

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You can go two ways. I could have been really angry and like, God, how did you let this man do this to me after you know the pain I have been through? This has happened to me before. Like, why? But I didn't go that route because number one, I had asked him to remove it, and so it was really obvious when it happened, and God said, His rejection is my protection. He might be coming home every night, but he is rejecting you on a grand scale. He is smearing your name, he's making a mockery of you and of me going to church, holding your hand, living this fake life. And if you're done with it, I'm done with it, you know? And that's what we need to understand is God gives us free will, he doesn't force himself upon us. And but as soon as we start asking for him to move in our lives, he will, and he'll do it in a big way. And we have to trust that he sees a bigger picture than we see. We can only see tiny pieces of the moving puzzle that we're living in. He sees all of it from the beginning to the end. He knows the heart of my ex-husband. He knew what was going on in his mind. I did not. And so I chose to trust that however painful it was, that God was making a way. And just like you mentioned, you know, I was a teenage mom, a high school dropout. Somehow I trusted God to like get me into medical school and become a doctor and all these crazy things that I couldn't even fathom on my own. And he was like, We're doing it again. I'm making a new way for you in the wilderness. I'm giving you streams in the wasteland. Like, just continue to trust. And I'm not saying it wasn't painful, I'm saying that you can do anything with Christ. I didn't try to do it by myself. That was the thing.

Why Medicine Misses Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 13:31

I have a story of overcoming it, like kind of my testimony that I don't usually share, but I was struggling a lot with PTSD and very open about my experience after having an assault. And I was very angry. I never questioned my relationship with God. I always felt connected with God. I think I deepened my faith when I just kept surrendering to God, saying, like, I need you to help me. I'm facing so much PTSD and I'm very depressed. I need you to help me. And I had a vision of a flashback with God hugging me. And I swear to you, it I never had another flashback again. And I didn't share that with many people because I thought people would look at me like I was a little crazy. But it just, it was such a beautiful moment. And ever since then, I just said to God, God, like I'm gonna continue to surrender to you. I'm gonna continue to just let you trust you, trust the journey you had me on. And I do believe that God does not give us anything that we can't handle, even when they're painful, there's meaning in what feels broken at the time that there's meaning. And I knew I was going to be on a journey that he had bigger plans for, and I think it's what brought me here today, which is such a beautiful full circle moment. And now I feel his calling is for me to help other people. And I know that's that's where we have our common thread. And I'm so inspired with your story, as you mentioned, with you know, your your beginning stories of, you know, going to a, I think it was a Catholic high school, having your daughter and rebuilding and kind of defeating all of the odds. And I kind of want to hop, skip, and a jump a little bit over to a to kind of a completely different topic, but it's gonna, it's gonna kind of all come into a package here. Um as a triple board certified OBGYN, um, I was I on your side, I was very inspired by how you're speaking about the medical profession and how you kind of transitioned into functional medicine. And I became very, very passionate about research and functional medicine after I survived my trauma. I was dealing with so many differing gut issues, and I just felt very much gaslit in the medical industry. And I'm kind of curious for you, because this is something we talk a lot about on this podcast, is you know, why are doctors not trained so well in illness? You know, why why are we not treating patients to stay healthy?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

This is a complicated question, but there's a couple things that I really want your listeners to understand. Number one, most doctors are well-meaning. Like I loved my patients, I loved my job. I thought I was helping women when I was doing surgery on them, right? Um, but it turns out that wasn't necessarily what they needed oftentimes. They needed for me to treat the root cause of their issue, but I didn't know that. I wasn't trained to understand that. I was trained to remove the offending organ. I'm OBGYNs are surgeons. That's what they are. They're not hormone specialists, even though we call them women's health experts. Really, we spend four years in a surgical residency learning how to do hysterectomies and laparoscopies and um C-sections and vaginal deliveries and procedures in the office. So we're looking to the wrong people for help with our hormone issues. But even deeper than that is the medical system is not a healthcare system. It is a sick care system. It is in the business of keeping you sick because that's how they keep you as a patient. That is how they make money off of you. And it breaks my heart to say that because I've dedicated my life to it. Um and as a doctor, I didn't understand that until I myself was so sick that I had to look outside of it. Conventional medicine failed me. I had failed back surgery, I had raging Hashimoto's thyroid disease, I had chronic irritable bowel syndrome, uncontrolled depression despite five different medications. Like the system was failing me from every direction. I had to leave and go find this whole world I call health and wellness that I knew nothing about. Like, what? Diet matters, exercise matters. We need vitamins, like what? And the saddest part is that I did learn some of that stuff in my first year of medical school, way back in the day, or in undergrad. I was a physiology major. I studied how the body cells function together. And I know the importance of vitamins and minerals and protein and fats and all of these things. But when you get into that sick care system, you that all goes out the window. All you think about is like, I have 15 minutes to help this person stop complaining about whatever they're complaining about with some quick fix. So, what medication can I give them? What surgery can I schedule for them? What procedure can I do on them to get them to be happy and go away? Like that is the truth of it. And it's not that we don't care, um, although some doctors unfortunately probably don't. Um, and the biggest problem I see is that doctors think they do know it all, that they have learned everything, that the sick care system does teach us everything. And the truth of it, it doesn't even scratch the surface. It was born out of acute care, trying to save your life kind of stuff. So yeah, I did save people's lives and babies' lives, and I did really important stuff, but the majority of the time, I was just managing disease and managing symptoms and helping people live to see another day. I wasn't actually giving them any health back or making them well or reversing any disease. It wasn't until I studied functional medicine that I realized there's so much that I did not learn as a doctor. And at first I was angry, but then I realized like now that I know better, I have to do better. And I had to leave that world.

Leaving The OR For Functional Medicine

SPEAKER_00 20:32

And what was that breaking point for you to leave and transition into functional medicine?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

So I took four months off and healed myself, avoided a second back surgery, got my Hashimoto's under control. I got off like half my medications, but then I had to go back to work as an OBGYN. And I said to like the administrators, the managers, all the people who, you know, are my bosses, I need to do functional medicine Fridays. I I have patients who would really benefit from doing stool testing and hormone testing and more of this deeper work and working on nutrition. And so they were like, okay, you can do that. We'll bill you for time. You can see a couple patients on Fridays. I I don't even know how long it lasted, maybe four or six weeks. And they were like, no, we're losing too much money. You need to be back in the OR. This is not going to work. And God was like, and we're done. So you can imagine. I come from nothing. To me, the salary that I was making, the 401k plan that I had, all of this security that I worked my entire life to get, God was like, I want you to walk away from all of it. That was so scary. But I had to trust him that he was going to make a way. And that, like, I had to give up part of my identity. I thought I was a surgeon. I thought my hands were to heal. And he was like, we're doing a new thing. And you need to trust me. And it was really scary. I was the major breadwinner in the house, you know? So all of a sudden my paycheck was going to go away. And then COVID dropped. And I really had to trust God at that point. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to pay the bills or keep the house or do any of the stuff. Um, but I just leaned in harder. And here we are today in a much better space.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

I love that story, and it's very brave. And it's, I think it's for me, it's been like, you know, there's a time in my life where it was tough to trust God, and now I do trust God. Can you break down a little bit more what you mean by that for those that don't understand? Like, how do you really surrender to God during those life-changing moments?

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Well, finances are a great example because like you have to have money to pay the bills that are coming in every month. I mean, it's that's just what it is. And we quickly went through anything we had saved up when I left my job. And I did not have a paycheck coming in. I joined a wellness center, and I was supposed to make money off the patients I saw, but they did a horrible job in managing it. And um, I just was not making money. And, you know, I would have conversations with God like, how am I gonna pay these bills? You know, and he would say things like you are covered, you are protected, and I and I would get frustrated, like, what does that even mean? Like, literally, the mortgage is due in three days. I don't have the money. And I would just hear the Holy Spirit say, Pray to God, just pray. And I started asking God for my daily bread. I'm like, you need to magically make a check appear. Like, money needs to come from somewhere. I need to cover these bills. I'm trusting that you're gonna do this, but I have no idea how. And he did the craziest stuff. I would get like refund checks from insurance companies. I got paid from the hospital two years after I left it randomly one day. They said they found something they owed me. And like wild stuff would just start happening. And the more that I would thank him and acknowledge him for it and like tell people what he was doing for me, it felt like the more he was doing it. He was like almost showing off, like, okay, you want to trust me? Let me show you what I can do. And I got to the point, this is really important, where I didn't care about this stuff anymore. He he broke me down so much that I was ready to sell my house and give up my stuff. And I was selling little things off. And when it finally came time for me to be like, okay, I can't afford my house anymore. And that's okay, because all I need is you God, like everything shifted. He was like, No, you can keep your house. In fact, we're gonna do better than that, and things started increasing. I think what he wanted from me was for me not to care about this stuff as much as I cared about staying in alignment with him and staying in, you know, my plans with him. He's like, if you can't trust me, then we can't do this. And so I would encourage anybody listening, like, you gotta grow your faith. And I did that by reading the word more, praying more, learning how to pray powerfully, studying, like getting faith-based mentors, um, all of that. That was really important for me to do, and you can all get through it, but God's after your heart. That's what he wants from you. He's not gonna change your circumstances, he's gonna change you. That's what he wants to do.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yes, he's gonna break you down so that you surrender to him and trust him through all the seasons of life. That's such a beautiful testimony. I feel like I've like wanted to cry a couple times already.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I know you gotta be careful what you ask for because I'm telling you, when you say, Lord, give me patience, he doesn't give you patience, he gives you an unbearable circumstance where you want to rip your hair out and you can't possibly be patient. That's how he gives you patience, right? Same thing, dear Lord, give me security. Oh, he'll give you security in him, not in things. So it's like I didn't understand that for the longest time. And so when the lessons came, I wouldn't pass the test. I didn't understand, but now I get it, and now I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm ready. Let's pass whatever test you got for me. I I'm here for it.

Obedience Over People Pleasing

SPEAKER_00 27:34

I love that. And it you have such integrity to like leave an environment that you knew wasn't suitable for yourself or for the patients anymore. And can you tell me a little bit about that transition into the functional medicine work that you do today?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, I think when you know that you're not supposed to be doing something anymore, and you continue to do it, it erodes your self-worth, it erodes your purpose in life, and um you have to make a choice. Do I want to please man or do I want to please God? And most of the time that's in opposition. Most of the time, if you're trying to please people, like making my managers happy that I'm making enough money every month, I'm not actually doing the will of my father. And so that is a really challenging thing for people because I've taken care of thousands of women, and I can't even tell you the countless number of women that have stayed in jobs that they hate, that they know they shouldn't be doing. They've stayed in situations where it is like eating away at their humanity, and it's pushing them further away from God because they are living way out of alignment of how they're called to live. And you get to a point where you almost don't even know how to be obedient or surrender to God because it's so foreign to what you're doing. Um, and the saddest part is I see this in the church, I see this in quote unquote Christians, people who claim that Jesus is their savior, yet they live like the devil owns them, you know? And so you do have to get vulnerable with yourself and really do some soul searching and say, like, if I honestly take a look at my life, am I proud of this or am I ashamed of this? Am I wasting it? Am I gonna regret this on my last day? You know, I did a a session uh in one of my masterminds, and we wrote our eulogy. We looked at like, if I'm dead tomorrow, what are they gonna say at my funeral? And am I okay with that? And there was a lot of stuff. I was like, I gotta clean this up. This is not okay. If I go tomorrow, this is not how I want to be remembered. This is not the legacy I want to leave my children. This is embarrassing and gross and shameful. Like, you know, so we have to do that self-reflective, deep work, but we can't do it alone. Like, we can't self-help our way out of stuff. We have to ask the Holy Spirit to show us our blind spots and to show us where the shame and the sin is and help remove it from our lives. Because, you know, even though I loved my patients and I wanted the best for them, I did think I was the healer. I did think I, you know, I had an ego. I was a surgeon. I can fix you, I can heal you, let me take care of it. And that showed up as me specialing everybody. Like, I'm not on call, but I'll come in and do your delivery because it was feeding my ego and making me feel so important. And they were, you know, like, you're the best doctor, you're the only one we can have. And really, that is that's not okay, but it looks okay to the world, right? Oh, she's a great doctor, look how sweet she is, how selfless she is. She gives up all of her time. And the truth of it is, there's always a selfish mode behind some of that stuff. And if we don't start to kill our ego out in the open and admit this stuff, it will destroy us. It was destroying me.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Did you kill your ego by just proclaiming to God and surrendering to God? What was your path to killing ego?

Ego Control And Marriage Dynamics

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Um, it's been a long journey. First of all, was giving up the fact that my identity wasn't a surgeon. So me leaving that job was part of it. Um, and admitting that someone else could deliver those babies or do those surgeries. That I wasn't that special or unique. And um, that was really hard for me because I felt like I can do it way better, you know, and I think a lot of mothers feel that way, and they don't let their husbands parent because like I know how to do it better. Let me just do it, let me clean, let me cook, let me drive. Like I see women take over their households and step out of their position, and it really demeans their husband, and it doesn't allow him to be the head of the household. And then they complain, my husband doesn't help, my husband is my extra child, you know, he's not an equal partner. But maybe you've put him there because of your control freak issues of I can do it better. And those are hard pills to swallow. That's really hard, you know, especially if you're in an alpha position in the workplace. So I was the boss, even though I had bosses, like I was the chief of staff. So I was the head of the doctors, head of the department, head of the, you know, all the stuff. And when I went home, I wanted to continue to be the boss. And that doesn't work well for a man. The, you know, that's just not their nature to take the backseat, especially when you're telling them how to do yard work, how to fix a car, those manly things. That's very insulting and demeaning. And so I see a lot of strife in marriages when women don't understand that their ego is getting the best of them. And when you can surrender some of that control and say, God, show me how to be a better wife, show me how to be a better employee, show me how to actually do things from a spirit of giving and not of ego. Um, then things can start to shift, but it's usually a painful shift. There's a it's a hard transition, but it's so worth it.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

It can be tough, especially like you said, you're a cheapest off. And when someone is a founder or CEO and then they come back to their home, they that's just how you operate all day. It's really hard to shut it off. And recently, I have loved to shut it off. I love to come home, clean, cook, you know, and it feels good. It feels natural when you have a partner that is aligned in faith, and you have you're putting Jesus first. I think that the surrendering to your partner as a woman and following Christ and understanding that he has a bigger plan for you, it changes everything. And I spent years super depressed, really, really angry at certain experiences I've ex I've had in my life and and deepening my relationship with God. And that's like ever-evolving, you know. I'd like to get deeper and deeper, but it has changed so much over the last decade for me, and I feel very blessed.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

That's wonderful. And I think, especially in marriage, you have to go through that growth together. You both have to be searching for God and wanting that relationship and having Him be at the center of your marriage because if you are unevenly yoked, it is hard. It is such a struggle. And I'm not saying to give up, like keep praying for your husband. I have, you know, a mentor who is an absolutely beautiful woman, and she just said this recently to us like, who else is praying for your husband? Probably nobody in the whole world. So if you're not, nobody is. And who, like, how can he even fight the fight? You have to be praying for him to get close to God and to have some realization. And so I would encourage women to evaluate how are you showing up? Because a lot of the times you're showing up the same way at home that you are at work and you are in your health. Like women, they get super controlling or super denial. That's another thing that I see is women will just they'll compartmentalize. Like, I don't need to take care of my body because I'm spiritual, I'm doing this, or I'm so successful at work, and everything spills into everything. It all is connected, it will all start to affect each other after a while, and so it's hard to keep that balance. I think that's what most women are looking for is like, how do I balance all these aspects of my life, my health, my jobs, my family? And I can tell you the only way to do it is to start with God. Like, you gotta start your day in the word, you gotta start your day in prayer, you gotta end your day in the word, you gotta end your day in prayer. And with those bookends, like everything else is doable because at the end of the day, none of it matters if God's not in it.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

I love that advice of like starting and ending your day with prayer. How do you stay connected during a really busy life day to day during your day with God?

Daily Practices To Stay Connected

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Because I find a great question.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

It can be like it can be very challenging. As much as you want to like as much as I want to say hour to hour, I'm constantly trying to think about how I can stay rooted in God constantly all day, in addition to working out, eating well.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

So there's a few things that I've figured out. One of the first scriptures that really hit me when I started reading the word was that I should pray incessantly. The Bible says to just pray all the time, and so I started to teach myself how to talk to God throughout the day, no matter what I was doing. I'm doing the dishes, I'm driving, um, I'm actively journaling or whatever. Um and I was really intimidated by the Bible. I'm gonna be honest with you. I didn't think it was pertained to me. I didn't understand like the purpose of it. I just thought it was some history book of some old men. Um, and so I didn't really want to read it. Um, and I started just meditating on one scripture that I found off of Google. I was like, Google, tell me the best scriptures for my life. And I started just meditating on them and asking God, what does this mean for me? What are you trying to tell me? And it turns out that's an ancient practice called Lectio Divina of meditating on one scripture. And that changed everything for me because I started to hear from him how those scriptures were meant for me in that moment in my life, in that day. It's not a history book, it's live and active. That's what it says in the book of James, and we have to trust that. Um, and so I started listening to worship music. I got rid of my regular radio and I got the message on XM. I got Christian workout downloads on Apple, Christian 90s list, whatever you can find. And I just started pouring that over my brain. And I'm telling you, I wanted to be a rock star when I was a little kid. I listened to the heaviest metal, the worst stuff out there, um, lots of rap in the 90s. And now I love listening to worship music, and I had to retrain what I liked, what I desired. And so you can do that, but it takes effort. And, you know, you mentioned like we're all so busy, there's just no time. To me, it's priorities. What is your priority? You're gonna come to a point where you need God more than you need anything else, and that is when you will pick the worship music. You will read the scripture, you will meditate on it, you will read the rest of the chapter. Um, and then you'll tell somebody a little testimony of like what happened to you that day and how God sent you a check unexpectedly, and you paid the mortgage, and like it will snowball, but you gotta get to that point where that's what you want more than anything. And sometimes it's just making a decision, like declaring it out. Jesus, I just want you more than anything else in this life.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Wow. And so for mostly it's millennial women and a few Gen Z women that are listening in 2026. What's your advice? I know we've already sort of touched on all these points, but what's your advice to just surrender? Like the first step to just surrendering to God and allowing him to be the go-to rock in their day-to-day life.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Yeah, so I have a millennial daughter, and I like to think I understand you guys a little bit. Um, I was raised totally different than you guys. I think we overly compensated and like were afraid to give you anything hard, any challenge. We're like, let's make life easy, let's prevent all struggle. And that's not realistic, and that is not how God works. If you start to study the old testament, you will see God loves a struggle. God loves to see the overcomers, like he will cheer you on all day long because he knows that you can slay that giant with that sling. Like, it is incredible. And so God has really made it clear to me that as a mother, it is not my job to help my children avoid their testimony. It is not my job to move that mountain or to carry them over it. It is my job to cry with them and walk with them through it. And so that has been really helpful. And what I understand about your generation is that feelings matter. I come from a generation where we stuff our feelings, we lock them in a drawer, we don't pay no attention to them because they're nothing but trouble. And so you guys are like, feelings are everything. They're they're they're who I am. And I'm here to tell you that neither of those extremes are the way to live, because the truth of it is, even though feelings are real, they're legit chemical reactions. In your body that you're experiencing physiologically that doesn't make them true. Sometimes you're feeling a past memory that was true that no longer is. Sometimes you're feeling something that never was true that keeps replaying. Sometimes you're feeling something that you're interpreting incorrectly. And so I would just encourage you to take every thought captive because that is what we're told to do in the Bible and to renew our minds every day. And so acknowledge the feeling, but don't automatically assume that it's for you, that it's true, and that it's beneficial. Because it might not be. It might be a lie that you've believed since childhood. It might be a misunderstanding of the situation. It could just be trauma stored in your body that's no longer serving you, that used to protect you, but now holds you back. And so I really want women to realize that it's okay to have feelings, but they cannot run your decisions. They cannot be what drives you during your day. You still have to check everything against the word of God. Is that actually true? Because I don't think it is. Where your blood was boiling, like you can't even talk. You're just in a rage and you're like, I gotta go now before I like blow up. You could start retelling that scenario to someone and feel that exact same chemistry that you felt five years ago when it first happened. That physiology is real, but it only lasts like 90 seconds. The chemicals will flood through your body, you'll feel the heart race, the palm sweat, all the things. But if you breathe through it and you don't keep feeding it, it will dissipate and go away. But if you feed it, if you continue to gossip, you continue to complain and just like stew on it, those chemicals will keep being produced over and over again and to the point where we get addicted to them. We get addicted to those adrenaline feelings of like, yeah, I'm outraged or whatever. I'm so sad he broke my heart. And then we get used to those feelings and we continue to vociferate on it because we would need to feel it again. And so we are contributing to a lot of the dysfunction that we are experiencing. And awareness is one of the biggest first steps that you can do is like, wait a second, I was feeling fine until I started talking about what happened five years ago with my friend right now. Okay, I need to hand that over to Jesus and ask him what the truth about that situation is. And I know what Jesus is gonna tell you. He's gonna tell you to forgive and let it go and to move on. And when you don't forgive, he doesn't forgive. That's what the Bible says. So you really have to do this deeper work because if you're holding resentment, you're holding anger, all these things, then you will be judged as you are judging. I mean, that's just the truth of it. And and you don't want that, right? So I love what you have done. You have taken the worst trauma someone could ever experience, and you're like, no, I will, I refuse to sit in anger, in bitterness, in unforgiveness, and I'm going to actually do the opposite and like bless the world with my tragedy. Like, if everyone could do that, could you imagine how amazing this world would be? It would be unrecognizable.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

I think when you forgive, you you remove the weight of the pain.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Exactly. You know, it doesn't have any power anymore.

Whole Body Healing And Fast To Faith

SPEAKER_00 48:45

It doesn't, and that deep work that you're talking about, which I know so so deeply, is is it's hard for people to get there, you know, especially if they don't have the skills to get there, you know, and and even if they are connected to faith, they might go, well, you know, did I deserve it? Or, you know, or question their faith, which actually I never did, even throughout all of that heartache and pain. I never questioned my faith. It was more just deepening my faith to trust God and to trust his process and to know that, you know, he had bigger plans for me, that anything that he throws our way, we can handle. Um, in terms of that balance that you spoke about before, where, you know, you you mentioned to women, like, yes, you have the spiritual side and you need to take care of the food that you're putting into your body, because you know, the gut affects the brain and and all the the physical side and the spiritual side. How do you balance all of those things? Because I I I know from my own experience, having a functional medicine doctor, all of those things play a huge role in what I what I spoke about, which is the healing journey and deep that deep healing that you're talking about, finding that balance. You know.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Well, that's essentially why I ended up writing my book, Fast to Faith, was I needed women to understand what is going on in their body and how it is all connected to their soul, to their spirit, to what they're feeling, what they're desiring, what they're experiencing in their trauma, all the things. And nothing is happening in silos, even though you go to the gynecologist for your heavy period and the psychiatrist for your depression, that's not how it works. It's actually all connected. And so I wrote Fast of Faith from the standpoint of like, what does every woman need to understand about her body? The different aspects, like how your thyroid functions and your gut and your immune system and your sex hormones, but how is your belief system and your mind affecting your gut in your immune system? How is your spiritual life affecting those things? Um, and then I had to like explain why and where conventional medicine is getting it wrong and leading us astray and actually making it worse in a lot of regards because they're giving us medications and doing things to us that are giving us new symptoms and new problems. And so it's really confusing the picture. And at the end of the day, symptoms, the things you're experiencing are just messages. Your body's just trying to talk to you, it's trying to tell you what's making it upset, what it needs, what it's lacking. And if you can start to understand your body, then you probably don't need to go to the doctor. That's how we survived for thousands of years. Like we did not have all these crazy hospital systems up until a hundred years. Yet our population went from what it was in Jesus' time to 7 billion. So obviously, we know how to survive, we know how to multiply and heal, but we're we're really doing ourselves a disservice by looking to the white coats and expecting them to heal us. It is all within us. God gave us bodies that were designed to heal. You, you know, I can cut you open, remove your uterus, sew you all back together, but I don't actually heal you. Your skin cells grow back together, your muscle cells grow back together, your body does that healing work, and we need to respect that and acknowledge that and support that. And so if women really want to like take back control of their health and understand that, then like you got to read the book. It's all there for you.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

This was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. I need to read the book. I've been wanting to read it for a while. Now, this is this is God speaking for you that I have to read the book.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

And it's on Audible for those of you who don't like to read it, you can listen to it too.

Share Follow And Closing Reminder

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Tabitha. Oh, as always, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If this episode resonated with you, please follow us on all social media platforms. Our handle is A T F O R T I F Y Wellness. A T F O R T I F Y Wellness on IG and TikTok. So you don't miss what's coming next. If someone came to mind while you were listening, send this episode to them because those are always the conversations that matter most. I'll see you in the next episode. And this is your reminder that you're not alone, and today is the day to fortify your life. See you soon.