00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: What if parenting wasn't about shaping children into obedience, but learning how to love them into wholeness? What if motherhood itself is a mirror of grace, messy, forgiving, and still unfinished? So many of us are parenting with ghosts in the room. Old rules, old fears, old voices telling us that love must hurt to be holy. But Nadia Horning's story is proof that we can stop the inheritance of pain. She's a mother learning to raise her children with the tenderness she was never shown. To choose connection over compliance and to practice grace in the everyday chaos of family life. Together, we explore what it means to reparent the child within us while raising the ones beside us to heal backward and forward at the same time, because maybe the gospel of motherhood isn't about control, but about redemption. It's about grace showing up with open arms. I'm your host, Jeremy Johnson, and this is Grace. Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Nadia Horning. She is a mother, advocate and storyteller working to break the generational cycles that wound children under the guise of goodness. Her passion is raising kids with kindness, humanity and grace, values that were shaped through her own journey of healing and self-compassion. Nadia's voice has been featured on podcasts and in an upcoming documentary work, and her story reminds us that grace doesn't just heal us, it changes what we hand down. 

Nadia, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

00:01:37 Nadyia Horning: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

00:01:40 Jeromy Johnson: You have quite a story from what I hear. In fact, they're even looking at making a documentary based a little bit on your life. Not a huge documentary from what you said, and we'll probably touch into that a little bit later so we can get to know you a little bit more. Would you mind sharing a little bit of your story, your spiritual story, maybe what it was like growing up for you and how you got to this space of grace?

00:02:05 Nadyia Horning: Certainly. I was born in nineteen eighty to two military parents, and by the time I was four, we had lived in two different states in one country. I was in Georgia at the age of four, when my parents were approached, um, and visited by a independent Fundamental Baptist church in the, in the neighborhood. And that really reshaped on the trajectory of their life and as a result, our US kids lives. I had a baby sister at the time, and, um, they they got fully involved. They became Christians.

00:02:43 Jeromy Johnson: Can I ask you something? You said independent fundamental Baptist church.

00:02:48 Nadyia Horning: Yes.

00:02:48 Jeromy Johnson: Okay. That's a lot of, uh, words connected to Baptist. So what makes a Baptist church independent? If they're part of, like. Right, the Baptist church.

00:02:57 Nadyia Horning: I didn't obviously know this at the time, but, um, historically, um, in the South, you have two different branches of, of Baptist churches. There are definitely more. But what's predominant is independent or Southern Baptist. It means they're unaffiliated with any centralized organization like the Southern Baptist Convention. Um, so a pastor can start or be hired to govern a church outside of any other governing bodies. And the church members vote them in and decide, you know, you know, it's just very autonomous. It has no overseeing governing body. Now, ironically, what's missing from this is that a lot of independent Baptists are like group members of specific India Baptist associations, if you will. It's kind of like signing up to volunteer at a local, you know, nonprofit, and they're not telling you what to do, but you you're associated with them because you believe in their ideology and their mission. But independent Baptists as a whole has no overseer, which is very different than Southern Baptists.

00:04:05 Jeromy Johnson: So they're kind of functionally nondenominational, but they hold to the Baptist theology. But then they're loosely connected, but very independent.

00:04:14 Nadyia Horning: Or cannot be. I think the bigger church, the more metropolitan the area. A lot of big churches have some sort of like, like membership to some sort of association that they tie themselves to. So, for example, my parents ended up becoming Baptist Bible Fellowship Missionaries, which is a independent Baptist organization that has a college. It has a mission sending agency, and it has a string of churches that people quote are members of. But those churches don't have to report to the the the mission organization or the the structure to make their own church decisions. They're just it's kind of like who you're friends with.

00:04:53 Jeromy Johnson: Well, thanks for that background. Uh, and little side note there. So yeah. Go ahead.

00:04:58 Nadyia Horning: So fundamental evangelical is a description that I use to really paint the difference between, um, someone who says, I grew up religious, I grew up going to church, um, versus, say, another type of church experience. Um, fundamentalism and evangelicalism has a specific characteristic and expression to it that really, if you're familiar with it, you'll immediately know exactly what I'm talking about and would be able to empathize with my experience. So I always lead with that because, um, it took my parents, who did not grow up in religious homes, who were hippies, who, you know, were very normal, average Americans who did a whole had a different lifestyle. And on suddenly. Now they're Christians and they're they're changing the way they dress. They're changing their habits for, you know, what they drink and eat. They're, um, they're shifting to, um, a, a spiritual hierarchy that demands they, they live, eat, act and behave a certain way. And so obviously.

00:05:58 Jeromy Johnson: They had a powerful conversion experience that, yeah, one day they're living this way. Boom. Yeah. Next day they're burning all their records and stuff.

00:06:07 Nadyia Horning: Exactly. My dad threw the alcohol down the toilet. He got swept up into the energy of, like, um, missions and and like, winning the lost and studying the Bible and following all these, you know, Christian rules that the church would teach them. Um, this is how you live a Christian life. And it was very subtle and very progressive, obviously, in the first beginning years. But it wouldn't take that long before it was fully blown into this new identity of my family life. And I unfortunately, because I was four, I don't have a lot of memory or knowledge of what my family life was like before that experience. My mom says she professed Christ in her youth, and then she was kind of yearning to go back to church and yearning to be a part of some sort of church community. My dad did not want to have anything to do with it, and he eventually, um, through a series of experiences, ended up becoming a Christian and went wholeheartedly into it. So when I was six years old, we actually moved to Jacksonville, Florida, because he had been called to preach. And the pastor of our church in Georgia, where they became Christians, encouraged him to go get his education, to become a pastor or to become a preacher. And we went to this church in Jacksonville, Florida, for about five and a half years. And while he was getting his education, he was working full time. And there was the three of us kids. And my I had a brother who was born, um, a couple of years after their conversion, before we moved to Florida.

00:07:37 Jeromy Johnson: So that's all he knew?

00:07:39 Nadyia Horning: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think they did end up treating him a lot differently than in his his primitive years, if you will. Then what my sister and I experienced, things would get harder and harsher later for us, but I think he. Yeah, he was subject to it his entire life. The church we were at in, in, in Georgia was very conservative. So you only read one version of the Bible. You girls didn't wear pants. You didn't go to the theater. You didn't drink. Um, but music and like, some elements of, like, you know, standards of living weren't as, like, hardcore yet at that stage of their relationship with Christianity. So it wasn't going to be until they moved into Jacksonville, Florida. And then they were at this huge megachurch with a college and a huge like they had so many church programs and ministries and stuff That things which really shift my opinion left on my experiences. We went from my mom. I remember my mom packing up my pants and putting them in the top part of our my closet. I could watch Rainbow Brite and suddenly that was gone. I could watch Smurfs and that was gone. She-Ra and He-Man and that was gone. You know, there was always this idea of like, what are you wearing? And how short or long is it? And I think as I got older, that would get a little bit tighter and tighter and tighter. As far as the control, they, um, got swooped into that idea, an ideology of ministry. So when you become a Christian, how can you serve? How can you make a difference? People are dying and going to hell. So this is what really guided a lot of their decisions, which involved them going to Florida and going to this particular Baptist college. And we lived there for five and a half years. And I would say our life there was challenging. We lived in a very poor home off of Normandy Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida. And, um, my my dad worked third shift. He went to school. My mom worked briefly, but then eventually, um, stayed home with the three of us kids. And I think around the age of ten. So I've been there maybe nine. So maybe three or four years into the Florida experience, my dad decided that he was called to go to Ukraine as a missionary. And this also pivoted all of our normal home habits. We suddenly were pulled out of a private school and we were starting to be homeschooled. Prepare for what's called deputation. Deputation is a formal word for independent Baptist. It's a period of time where they go around to raise support, to be able to live off of that support in a foreign country. And so, um, when I was around ten, I believe we, I was fourth, fourth grade was my last year and a public or private educational system. And in fifth grade we started homeschooling.

00:10:28 Jeromy Johnson: And then so this was early nineties at this point.

00:10:31 Nadyia Horning: Yeah. So in nineteen ninety, I believe I was um, I was ten years old, and I think that was my last year. And then the fall of ninety one through ninety two is my last two years in Florida, where I was homeschooled for fifth and sixth grade.

00:10:43 Jeromy Johnson: And homeschooling is really starting to pick up in popularity.

00:10:46 Nadyia Horning: Exactly. I think they had two major, um, homeschooling curriculums. It was the Ace program and Abeka book. Um, my mom homeschooled us at home. We didn't have videos or any kind of thing like that. It was just all curriculum. Two years later, um, so during this time, before I get to what happened two years later during this time, and I've done a lot of reflection of my childhood to try to piece together a narrative. So I may have some of this wrong. Um, because when you're a kid, your brain is developing. You don't really. You try to piece together and make sense of your childhood, but it may not always be exactly right. But from what I can see, things got harder for me. As in Jacksonville, from comparatively to whatever my life might have been like in Georgia. So this is where the the foundation of corporal punishment really was introduced into all three of our lives in a way that I still have a lot of memories for. Um, I remember having a lot of conversations about, um, just a lot of criticism and and judgment. So, for example, when I was ten and I got a spanking, my mom said, I don't think you're a Christian. Even though I said the prayer at six, I gotten baptized. But my behavior told her, well, you can't be a Christian if you're acting like this and you're a kid.

00:12:04 Jeromy Johnson: So then as a kid, you're thinking like, I can get saved and then lose my salvation, and then what do I have to do? Like super confusing. I feel like as a kid.

00:12:15 Nadyia Horning: And they don't believe in losing your salvation. This is one of the tenets of independent Baptist is once saved, always.

00:12:20 Jeromy Johnson: Saved, always saved.

00:12:22 Nadyia Horning: Her theory was you. You may not have meant it or you didn't know what you're doing. I don't actually remember her saying that. She just said, I don't think you're a Christian. And I'm looking at her shocked. I'm like, wait, what? And so I asked Jesus into my heart yet again at ten years old, and I got baptized yet again. And, um, but but really, throughout all of those years, um, there was a lot of uncertainty. We were poor. Sometimes we'd have money, sometimes we wouldn't. Um, my parents both punished me, you know, equally, I really didn't have any breaks or space from either one of them. Um, with with their judgment and and their their response to my behavior. I have blocked a lot of my memory on what motivated those experiences. But I do have I can see a trend where it always seemed to happen outside the house. So if I go to church and we're at Awanas or we're at some sort of service, I know, right?

00:13:18 Jeromy Johnson: I totally remember Awanas.

00:13:20 Nadyia Horning: Yeah, I poured myself into approved.

00:13:21 Jeromy Johnson: Workmen are not ashamed, Aimed.

00:13:25 Nadyia Horning: Mean kids don't know that kind of stuff. They just want the prizes, right? They want to.

00:13:29 Jeromy Johnson: Correct.

00:13:29 Nadyia Horning: The relay races. They want to memorize the Bible verses so they get the trophy. And so I was motivated by pure intrinsic value, not because I gave a $#!% about the Bible, I couldn't. That was just a kid. Um, we would do Bible drills in Sunday school and I always, always went. So I was very competitive and wanted to win and wanted to be acknowledged and seen. And so I would pour myself into what was available for me. But, um, I remember always like sometimes I would come home in the car from church and mom would say, you're getting a spanking. And I think it always tied back. If I compare it to a teenage years where that was still happening, it always had something to do with maybe I wasn't leaving, maybe I wasn't listening, maybe I was, I disappeared and then they couldn't find me. I don't really know what happened, but it always seemed to have some external facet to it that I didn't come home and I'd get a spanking. And so.

00:14:22 Jeromy Johnson: So hearing you share this a lot of fear and eggshells like you're in the car and you're like, I don't am I going to get a spanking for God only knows what happened at Awanas or whatever. Wow.

00:14:36 Nadyia Horning: And I eventually, as I got older without smart, you know, I, um, I would hide belts under the bed and so that they didn't use them on me, my sister and I would stuff tissue paper. Yeah. On, on our backside. So that we did not it didn't hurt as much. So there was always these efforts that we did to curtail, um, the physical pain that we were forced to endure for so many years. It was a mixture, though. I lived in a neighborhood I had, I got to play and ride my bike. I had awanas, I had friends, and eventually, though, we left and, um, we started traveling on the road to raise support to go to Ukraine. And we got this wilderness travel trailer, twenty four foot travel trailer, um, that we had hoped to pull with a suburban to be able to have a place to live while we're on the road. But it actually never worked out. We, um, we ended up staying in hotels and families houses, and then we'd always go back to our Bethel Baptist Church in Georgia, um, as our home base. So in between travels, we would go back, um, to Georgia in this twenty four foot travel trailer that was our home for two years. So my my Jacksonville, Florida spiritual experience was is just such a mixture of like learning these little habits. I had to read my Bible every day, you know, I had to read, do my devotions, I had to pray. I had to go soul winning sometimes. And I had all these biblical and spiritual tasks that they were teaching me and incorporating into my life. But it was also mixed with a hybrid of love and condemnation. I was actually just talking about this with, um, today about how, um, one of the really tricky parts about living in a hybrid home is you get anxious. You learn to develop an anxious attachment style because one day it could be great and fun and dandy, and the next day you're in trouble. And there's no pattern to follow or learn except for a void, or to perform as best as you can so that you didn't get in trouble. I would feel guilty for turning the TV on without permission, and it was a show. I was approved to watch stuff like that. So it just very always cautious rule follower and I did everything I could to avoid pain. I never got in trouble at school, even though my sister did or somebody else might. I never did because I wasn't going to get hurt. I would always play it safe. Fast forward to when I was twelve. We we we left Florida and we started traveling. We were there for two years, traveling to hundreds of churches all over the US.

00:17:05 Jeromy Johnson: Raising money for support to Ukraine.

00:17:07 Nadyia Horning: We had a we had a slide projector, a power like a presentation that we would use in our in our meetings at these church services and our family sang. We were all musicians. I would play the piano and sing. My dad would play the piano and sing. And as part of our package and in presentation, our whole family would sing to to portray this need and call for supporting our family to go to Ukraine, because the need was great. The Iron Curtain had fell and it was ripe for harvest, and those people had been under communism for seventy years. And these great opportunity to get in there and plant some seeds. So, um, after two years of visiting a thousand different Baptist churches, all kinds of different like standards and experiences, we ended up to Ukraine during those two years. Now I've I've probably painted a picture of what Jacksonville like. Actually, the two years of being on the road were actually harder for me. Um, my parents were under pressure to raise support and, and, and make happy these potential sponsors, if you will. So we had to look, act and be on one hundred percent of the time. So I got in trouble quite a bit. But I also have good memories of getting to go to the Statue of Liberty. Getting to go to San Diego, getting to see so much of the US that I had never been into. But it was again. It's a hybrid culture. A lot of cool experiences that most kids don't get to talk about, but I am also subject to a lot of control, a lot of performance, a lot of physical pain, and you really never know when it's going to be. I had my parents had no problem with me wearing walking shorts above my knees, but then a pastor complains and now we can't.

00:18:51 Jeromy Johnson: So it's always about perception. How was our family being perceived? How are you being perceived? And and it changes and you have to chase that and you have no idea where it's going to go next.

00:19:00 Nadyia Horning: And as a kid, you don't understand and they don't explain it to you because they don't have communication skills, or maybe they don't think a child will understand or that they have the authority to make these decisions and you don't get a vote. But they were under a lot of pressure to sell. And so if anything rocked that, then there would be a price to pay. So after two years of that, we finally get to Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine in nineteen ninety four. I was fourteen years old. I was entering ninth grade, and ironically, the next three years would probably be in one aspect, the most stable part of my childhood. My dad stopped spanking me. He wasn't going to do it anymore. And I think because we were in one house and they were both home or we were being homeschooled, my dad was in in the house working on the ministry, and a lot of the things we were doing were all together. Whereas in Florida he was gone working. He was going to college and we were at home with mom. Um, this would be the first time in my childhood that we were all together in the same household a lot. We got very thrown into evangelicalism. So going out on the street, passing out tracks, um, doing hospital ministries, inviting people into our home to have church services. We hosted quite a few different mission groups from churches in the US, and the experience that I had during that time was a very much more focused, not necessarily on fundamentalism, but evangelicalism. So missions is everything. It's the highest calling. And this is a sacrifice. And there's no greater. There's no greater duty that someone could do. My dad really influenced all three of us to really think about being missionaries for our life's passion and, and career. And so there really wasn't the aspect that changed in these three years. There was there was no really investment into what am I good at? What do I love? What else do I want to consider for my life? What college am I going to go to? It's just really missions, missions, missions. I had some multicultural experience that really shaped a lot of who I am today. I loved getting to be in a foreign country and learning another language. I am fluent in Russian. I loved the food. I loved the people. I had great friendships while I was there. Um, I got to be involved in some extracurricular activities that I hadn't previously had time or money for, so there was some good changes. We were poor in Florida and rich in Ukraine, but as a teenager I was changing my like. My body was changing my emotions, my mind was changing, and I can look back and see now that the abuse never stopped. It just changed faces. My parents did not, um, you know, crack the whip with a leather belt as much, but I, I still had a lot of judgment. So my dad was threw himself into the ministry and we got pieces of him and throughout our childhood, day to day, so we could have family devotions. We could go play basketball with a bunch of church friends. You know, we would have fun having and hosting groups where we got to hang out and have friendships and and do certain things. But it it always again always had this was this is the baseline and this is the roof. And there's nothing in between or above or beyond. Um, so when I left Ukraine. At seventeen, we actually came back to the States. And please slow me down if I'm moving through too fast.

00:22:13 Jeromy Johnson: I wanted to point out that I love how you say it's like a dichotomy, because I think a lot of people experience that. It's like their their evangelical upbringing or their fundamental upbringing had a lot of negative things to it, but there was a lot of good things to it as well. So it's like you you did have those friends, you did have that community. But it was there was always this underlining thing below it. Yes. And so when you look back, you're you're torn a little bit. But then as an adult, here you are.

00:22:43 Nadyia Horning: It's definitely a dichotomy. So you have on one parallel, you have the religious influence of this is what God expects of you. This is who you are to him. This is what you need to do to get to heaven. This is what you need to do to be a successful Christian. But then you also have generational pass downs. You know, both my parents grew up in horribly toxic environments. My mom's mother was very sweet, but her She married an alcoholic, and he raised Cain for her whole life. And then my dad was adopted, um, by two alcoholics. And the mother was severely abusive to him his whole childhood, so. They had very little to work with, with raising us children. And then you add in the spiritual components, but they also were military and love to travel. So part of it was built into our DNA. And I love to travel, and I loved going to another country and experiencing and learning. I love research, I love history, um, so a lot of that stuff got to be expressed, but, um, it was sabotaged with the right set of experiences and growth to help me be successful as an adult. So I told my parents that when I, I wanted to be able to go back and travel one more time before I left for college. So they decided that they would be in Ukraine for three years and then we'd do a furlough. Furlough is an expression where missionaries come back from the field for a brief or long period of time before they then go back to their mission field. Um, they took a year and we went and visited all of our supporting churches. We looked at colleges for me. Again, those colleges were Bible colleges with the understanding that I would come back to Ukraine and help them with their mission work. That was my, my, my intention. I was going to go get my education in music and science and then come back to Ukraine and help teach homeschooled kids.

00:24:29 Jeromy Johnson: You're gonna join the family? Join the family business?

00:24:33 Nadyia Horning: Yeah, but specifically science. Because I did not have anyone to help me with chemistry in high school until we found a fellow local missionary who had a degree in chemistry, and she helped me a little bit. But I realized, man, there's a need here. The kids are here homeschooled, and they their parents don't know algebra, their parents don't know chemistry or physics. So I'm going to go get my degree, a minor in science so that I can come back and help these children. So that was my intention when I when I left home and went to school, I was that was my plan. But basically, you know, that spiritual journey was definitely very, very sheltered, very performance driven, very much like punishment and reward, right and wrong. It's black and white. There is no other way, even within the denominational differences, even within Independent Baptist, if we went to a church in the South versus a church in New England, the standards of living were so often very different. We could have one person saying, throw your TV out the window, and women shouldn't wear earrings and makeup to, you know, you know, people are arguing about what versions of the Bible you should read and whether or not a church is a church because of the way it's structured, if it has, you know, governing body and stuff like that. So I learned quickly that questioning is not a welcomed, um, characteristic. And the religious environment I grew up in. So definitely a lot of hierarchy and patriarchy. And my mom couldn't handle it. She she often would get very upset with me arguing with her, and I think it's because she herself also couldn't argue. And I was she.

00:26:09 Jeromy Johnson: Had a lot of pressure on.

00:26:10 Nadyia Horning: Herself. She was under a lot of pressure. And my dad, um, would often get so focused, super focused on the ministry and his work that she'd have to pull him up for air to say, we have family stuff here. And I always remember feeling like she drove as much of inclusion as he could give our family. It was driven by her versus his own natural love and attention to our family. I couldn't hear my dad with whatever spiritual message he tried to portray, because I felt so disconnected from him and I felt like it was performance, even though I couldn't label it that way as a grown as a grown child. And now, in hindsight, remember why I felt such opposition within myself towards him.

00:26:51 Jeromy Johnson: Well, thank you for sharing all that I. I can imagine that a lot of the story really resonates, um, with people I, I connect to to a good portion of this story. Um, I can imagine that all this also shaped your view and experience with God.

00:27:08 Nadyia Horning: One hundred percent. I could not connect with him as a loving entity because of the way he was presented to me and church, and in devotions and through curriculum and reading. But also my dad was was very emotionally unavailable. I, I don't have a lot of memories of him, like hugging and and showing affection verbally or emotionally or physically. My mother was mixed. She could spank you and also hug you. So I it was just that that blocked me even while I was still a Christian. It blocked me for so long. And and acknowledging that the creator was a loving person. Um, it would be in my, my twenties before that would break.

00:27:47 Jeromy Johnson: So in your twenties. So when did that shift towards a more accepting grace begin, and how did that start to to shift? Because that's in my opinion, that's a horrendous view of God.

00:27:57 Nadyia Horning: Right.

00:27:58 Jeromy Johnson: And then, so you said it sounds like you were saying, like in your twenties, the shift began to take place towards a more. Yeah, inclusive grace or loving God.

00:28:07 Nadyia Horning: Yeah, I think it's I'd have to think about who and when and who was first. But I do remember, um, part of what was sad about our family's spiritual characteristics was my parents were musicians prior to becoming Christians, and so much good music that they would listen to or sing or perform with that went out the tube when they became Christians. It's now not. It's demonic. It's not. It's not godly. So they spent many, many years losing access to so much of the quality of music that, um, that they had participated in. And I remember there was this moment, probably in my early twenties, where my dad had a revelation of how wrong that was, and he started shifting back to a less conservative view of music. I can't pinpoint when that was and how old I was. But then that was also matched with an experience with my mom. Read, um, the book. What's so amazing about Philip Yancey?

00:29:07 Jeromy Johnson: Philip Yancey, my mother.

00:29:08 Nadyia Horning: My mother read that book. And, um, I think it changed her life. I think my dad heard a song that changed his life. And so even though they have stayed fundamental Christians, they did let go. They started to let go of some of those strongholds that had kept them captive with the standards, if you will. So they started exploring new music and different things. And I remember that probably coincided with me meeting my husband. And I started wearing pants. I started going to the theater.

00:29:40 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. So radical, so radical. So, like.

00:29:44 Nadyia Horning: Really these this is a thing. But yes, my, um, I actually went to I know by nineteen that having been away from them and I was in a school in Tennessee that I hated, I was miserable. I spent the summer in South Carolina with my grandmother and extended family and some friends that I'd made, and I could see where some things started to to shelve off of me, because I had that freedom away from their influence to start figuring out stuff for myself. So I actually went to the theater for the first time in nineteen ninety nine and saw Lion King. And I'll never forget, I was with my mom at her, their church in Georgia, and the pastor's wife and her were sitting there talking about how terrible it was to go to the theater. And I'm like, mom. And the reasons were, well, they're people are in there hugging and kissing and doing sexual stuff. And I'm like, hey, guess what? I've been to the theater and nobody's doing that. They're just watching the freaking movie. Seriously. So as early as nineteen, some of the stuff started shedding and I realized it wasn't that serious.

00:30:47 Jeromy Johnson: So if that is true, what else is true? Right. And then it starts opening up.

00:30:51 Nadyia Horning: And I was still very, very strong Christian, very involved, but I think it was just very pieced in element. Elemental growth of, um, different like, okay, yeah, I can go to the theater. Yes, I can wear pants. Yes, I can read a different version of the Bible. Yes, I can go to a Southern Baptist church. They're actually not that bad. Um, Independent Baptists are back in my day, were very judgmental of Southern Baptists, thinking they were liberal and very conservative and couldn't be trusted. But what was funny is there was a certain experience in my childhood, my teens, where I experienced, um, a Southern Baptist teen, uh, like group outing. And I remember it made a mark on my life where I thought, these people are happy and they love Jesus still. But my people, the Independent Baptist, they're mean and grumpy. Small little events throughout my late teens and early twenties started shaping this new idea that everything I'd been taught and and grown to believe it was actually false and not actually that important or not that serious. And I met my husband when I was twenty one. He had also been raised independent, fundamental, but he being a guy, he didn't have some of the same elements that that I had to experience. And he he was in the States. So he didn't he didn't have that foreign experience like I did with the pressure to perform and stuff. So he actually bought me my first pair of pants and, um, I was the first one. And then my sister followed suit and then my mom. And so over the probably the first five years of being out of my parents home, my thing started breaking down and going away. I would say definitely pieces of it. It would be a few more years before I could re-identify who God was and what he actually was like, and that was through my own personal circumstances. Some things that I went through that kind of shook my reality a little bit. So I, um, I think between the ages of twenty two and twenty seven, I went through a really tough situation and journey that that made me wake up and realize that, yeah, this is not the life you you wanted. How did you get here? And it forced me to reckon with my past, reckon with the spiritual influences. It helped helped me start the foundation of identifying who is safe and what was not really like, and re identifying who he was in my religion. Um, and then it automatically impacted my own self-worth and what motivated me to take a stand for myself and to say, I'm saying yes to this and no to that. Um, I would say those years two thousand and two to two thousand and nine really helped graft a whole new Christian identity that I had never been raised with. Um, one that said Jesus was was near to the brokenhearted, one that he was loving and kind and non condemning. That if he if he was condemning it was to the religious and it wasn't to the poor and needy.

00:33:55 Jeromy Johnson: Um, right.

00:33:55 Nadyia Horning: Yeah. Those years right there were really fundamental in, in breaking me free from a very controlling, negative, punishing Christian environment that I've been raised with.

00:34:08 Jeromy Johnson: Can you contrast your. So share with us your share with me, your view of of grace and God now. And so we can kind of contrast that with, with what you've been sharing about your, the God of your, your childhood. How do you view grace and God now?

00:34:25 Nadyia Horning: I view grace as, um, a a need to let go of perfection. I view grace as supporting a person's journey wherever they are and however it may look. It's it's refusing to march to the beat of performance and imperfection. And and if you don't get it right, you're punished. I refuse to live in that space or associate with spaces that represent that mentality, and I refuse to raise my children with that mentality. I believe that we're all on a journey, and we have a set of experiences that that have, whether we want to admit it or not, have it influenced how we think, how we feel, what we do, what we're, what we're interested in, and what we go after. And so, um, I cannot judge someone else, I cannot critique. Well, you should already be here right now. I think grace is letting people be where they are while also having enough self-worth and value. I believe that grace begins with ourselves that we then extend to others. So if I'm uncomfortable, I deserve to love myself to to respond to my uncomfortableness. I. I have value for myself. So I think grace for me now means that I can be honest with myself and my journey where I'm at, and if I know my goals and where I want to move to, it's okay for it to look a certain way versus comparing it to others. My view of God, um, has shifted in tremendously. So part of what I love to share with people is I'm twofold. So I have an emotional and mental experience with Christianity and God and spiritual things. But I'm also a lover of history and a researcher and facts. So my problem or my evolution with God and Christianity is has two two lanes to them. Um, emotionally and mentally. I recognize the dysfunction of what I've, what I've been raised with and who God is portrayed as. What doesn't reconcile is a loving God who wants to rescue and heal people, but will also punish for failure. So, um, I definitely adopted away from that. And Jesus to me was the model of what I feel is the best. Image of a loving and accepting and kind and gentle nurturing presence within Christianity. Um, and I definitely lived many years in that space. Um, I didn't subscribe to the harsh, controlling, you know, any kind of like, activity or expressions that felt like, you know, if people are like at an abortion clinic and they're yelling and screaming, like, even as a Christian, I, I'm against that. I'm against about I think it's Westboro showing up in New York Times and, and having, you know, anti LGBTQ um, sign like against all of that because they, they've put themselves in the place of God. So I think for for certain for many years as a Christian, um, my view of God is one of compassion and embracing and working through and working with on all the things that we need in life to be successful. And there's no rush to it. But now I, I would say my view of God is, has, has forked into a space where it doesn't look and sound like anything Christian. It's more of, um, like, I don't really know who created us, and I it probably was a multiple committee of gods that that created this crazy universe that we're in. At the end of the day, though, love is what works. Love for self and love for others, and grace for self and grace for others. So whether I understand my religious point of view now, or or don't know the answers anymore to what how we got here and how the world was created and what the end game is. I know at least the energy source that makes this world thrive is love and grace. And so that is what I focus on on my day to day living. Now that's one spot. The other spot for me is matter of factly the Bible and Christianity has some major gaps historically, scientifically, and archaeologically, so I no longer subscribe to the Christian narrative. I don't actually believe the Bible, and I actually came to this point throughout my Christian years that the Bible is infallible word of God. I dismiss that very quickly. I boycotted hell, I boycotted tithing. Um, I have maybe some what the right would call it very left thinkings when it came to Christian ideologies. Um, but I got rid of them a lot of strongholds within my religion that even Christians were espousing. There are plenty of Christian authors and influencers and pastors and leaders that are saying hell is not real, it's made up, blah, blah, blah. And here's the facts. So this this whole fact based investigation of what is actually true has also led me to the point where Christianity is not what they think it is. Jesus is not who they think he is. And there's a lot of unknowns that we we cannot we take a long time to investigate to Christian people just want to have answers now. I'm comfortable not knowing the answers, but I'm still interested in having the answer.

00:39:53 Jeromy Johnson: So you're you're okay with the mystery.

00:39:55 Nadyia Horning: I'm okay with the mystery.

00:39:57 Jeromy Johnson: Faith and religion and God and the Bible can still be mysterious. Yeah, the Bible was never intended to be a textbook. Whether a religious textbook, a history textbook, a science textbook. It never really was intended to be that. And that's. And then our modern age, that's how we've approached it.

00:40:14 Nadyia Horning: And the grace piece of that is that it's okay for me not to have the answers. I don't have to force myself into a belief system because I have the threat of hell, or I have the threat of failure. I've had my parents, even as an adult, say, you know, God takes his word very seriously, and there are bad circumstances and and reactions if you don't take it seriously. So I do not operate under that modality at all. That is not grace at all. Um, so I think those those have been the big pieces for me that Grace has shown, shown up in my life where you can let go, take a breath. You're not under, you're not under the gun. You're not under duress to perform or give. Give the, uh, the terrorist what he wants. You are valuable. You are human. It's okay.

00:41:01 Jeromy Johnson: And given your upbringing, it makes sense that that's where you're at and what you're feeling is this freedom of of getting away from the rules and the the list of things, for sure. How has your parenting been different? How has this, this love and grace centered approach to life? Um, just talk to me about that, of being a mom and and your kids.

00:41:25 Nadyia Horning: So my husband and I were fortunate to be married for fourteen years before we conceived, and I think that had given us a lot of good time to, um, unravel from some really strongholds in our life emotionally, mentally. Um, generationally and spiritually, of course. So by the time we got pregnant with our first kid, a lot of work had been done. And we knew going into Parenthood that there were certain things we would or wouldn't do. Um, I my kids have taught me so much. Um, I have a six year old and an eight year old, and their whole life that they've been here with me has been such a beautiful experience on teaching myself grace for myself, but also giving grace to them. So they, um, I feel like I've done a pretty good job, but I've certainly failed. And for that, I apologize to my children. And I'm always trying to, like, improve, not necessarily perform, but to improve and be consistent in our life that they they have never been subject to physical punishment. Not one time have me or my husband laid a hand on them. Now have we crossed lines and we messed up one hundred percent. We're still detoxing from our own childhood, and and babies and toddlers and eight year olds will make us realize, oh man, I still need to work on that, because that's what my mom and dad did. And I'm doing it here again. And I don't want that. So for certain, um, my children have been really great accountability partners. My kids, um, have, uh, really shown me how beautiful children are. It's interesting to me that the church celebrates pre-born life so heavily, but then as soon as the kid is born, they are an evil sinner that needs, you know, justification and sanctification. And and many kids don't get not even a year into their life before their parents are cracking the whip and controlling and demanding and and judging and punishing for failure, with no science and no relationship factor under consideration at all. So for me, what has motivated me for Grace with my kids is that connection is non-negotiable. I cannot influence my children if there's a disconnection. So my motivation every day with my children is that I am and I be and I do, and for their for their own wellbeing and for mine to stay connected. And by doing so, they stay safe. They stay, they trust, they feel secure and, um, they are allowed to be human. And I'm here to guide and model the most effective way to live life. And it's so, so different, so, so different from what I was raised with. Like, again, we don't hit our kids, but we also don't punish. I don't do timeout or, you know, you're on, you're grounded or you've lost your, your, um, Nintendo Switch for a day. And how dare you talk to me like that? They they really are getting. And not perfectly because I still that authoritarian, you know, modeling is still inside of my body and so and extremely so for my husband and still comes out occasionally with okay, $#!%, I actually shouldn't have done that. Sorry, kids. Okay.

00:44:47 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And there's grace in that.

00:44:49 Nadyia Horning: As ourselves to not be perfect at this and also grace for them to let them be who they are and not try to control the narrative and not try to let fear impose on them when we think they should be a certain point. And and they're not, you know, and so, um, I think, I think that for the most part, considering what we've had to work with, um, we have done a really damn good job with, with being consistent with trying to model this new environment that we literally have zero experience with, but we've given it to ourselves Selves and doses to be able to give it to them. And what we're all learning together. So it's not like I've got it all figured out. And here I'm going to help my children live in this way. I'm learning as I'm going to, and we're working through this together. And, um, I have a lot of hope that, um, that we will be successful and, and, and we'll figure out our problems together because we're just we're already in the habit right now, in their primitive years. Um, that's the right word. Their early years, their early growing years, they have have lived in this space. And, um, I'm not stopping now.

00:46:04 Jeromy Johnson: I want to highlight that point that you said, because it really stood out to me when you said, we may not have experience with this growing up of what kind of parent this should be or what kind of parent I should be. But then you said, but we've learned to do it in ourselves. So it's like you may have not had that experience growing up as a kid of what a good parent is and what it means to love, and what it means to be gracious and what it means to be accepting. But because you've given it to yourself, you now have that in you to give that to your kids. Because we really do put a lot of value on the experience that we've had from our parents. And I love what you said, because to me, that gives us hope that even with a horrible, $#!%ty background of of being raised, there's still hope that we can give to our kids if we start allowing us to feel that grace and that love and that acceptance. That was really cool that you said that.

00:47:05 Nadyia Horning: We thankfully, I think two of investing in mental health therapy and learning new vocabulary words, learning new psychological and scientific settings of our bodies and our minds and our souls has definitely enabled that education to to recognize what what we're dealing with within ourselves and what our children are saying and doing and why. And having education has definitely helped guide that grace. Because we realize, hey there too. I mean, why are you expecting so much from a two year old whose brain has been alive for two years? Like so, I think education coupled with with an acceptance of our own journey and our own limitations, has allowed us to repeat that. But certainly, to be honest, like there's still many times where we both have to realize, oh, $#!%, like, we gotta apologize because I just did that whole, um, thing my mom did or my dad did, and now I'm feel terrible as a parent. I'm I'm self-loathing. And it's like, uh, we have to constantly remind ourselves perfection is the enemy. If your heart is intended for good, messing up is not the end of the world. And so I think the danger for a non grace filled life is this idea that we're not approachable and that we have to arrive quickly to a certain standard of expectation. And it's not. It's messy and it's it weaves and woven throughout our our experiences and our the cities and the jobs we live in, the neighborhoods and the friends we have and the family experiences and we we cannot control it. Controlling idea is is fear and control leads to no grace. So if we can just let go.

00:48:48 Jeromy Johnson: Every.

00:48:49 Nadyia Horning: Time and nurture ourselves, nurture our our, the people who matter the most and it it naturally evolves into that type of grace filled life that, um, we don't have to overthink or over perform for. And I think for me, the biggest two things that I always try to hold on to is be always be teachable and always be approachable. And my kids call me out.

00:49:15 Jeromy Johnson: So that's.

00:49:16 Nadyia Horning: Cool. That grace filled parent would be like, how dare you? Like I'm over you and you are. I'm influencing you. You're not influencing me. And I think that is where grace does not exist. Um, when we recognize that we all learn and feed and influence each other, it takes away the barriers.

00:49:36 Jeromy Johnson: And as you give yourself grace as a parent, your kids see that. And they they know that they have permission to give themselves grace as a child, as a human. Because, mom, she really messed up here, and I know it and she knows it, but she gave herself grace and she's not wallowing and she's not beating herself up. Lady, thank you so much for for coming on and sharing your story. I have been touched by just your story. I've resonated with it. And I love your focus on trying to break these generational cycles. Yeah, and I love how God is pulling you into a space of grace. I hope that others have been touched as much as I have by hearing your story. And thank you for the courage to share.

00:50:21 Nadyia Horning: Absolutely.

00:50:22 Jeromy Johnson: As Nadia showed us, what we inherit isn't always what we keep. Some of us were handed fear and called it faith. We were taught obedience without curiosity, control without connection and punishment without love. But Nadia's story reminds us that the story can be rewritten. Grace can start over in us, through the way we listen, the way we repair, and the way we choose not to repeat what hurt us. Maybe holiness isn't about perfection at all. Maybe it's about presence. Showing up for our kids and for the child still inside of us with softness and honesty. Because when grace enters the bloodstream, the curse ends. It becomes an inheritance of peace. I really hope Nadia's story resonated with you. Remember to walk in grace. And if you can, share that grace.