INTERVIEWER: Ever wondered what other people of faith believe, what their faith means to them, how they live it? That’s what this podcast is about. It’s called “All Faith Counts” because, well, all faith does counts. The more each of us knows about other people’s faith the more we understand, accept and respect them for their belief. Hopefully this is a reminder of all the good faith brings to our world.

Today we’ll hear from Jenny Grant, a Millennial who is a member of the Episcopal church.

JENNY GRANT: My name is Jenny Grant, and I currently live in Alexandria, Virginia, with my husband and my dog. I grew up right outside Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia, which is very much a suburb of Atlanta.

I am a social worker by education. I have my Bachelor’s in Social Work and my Master’s in Social Work, so I’ve worked in the nonprofit world most of my working life.

INTERVIEWER:  The Episcopal church is a Christian denomination. We asked Jenny to explain some of her basic beliefs as a member of the Episcopalian Faith and why they are meaningful to her.

JENNY GRANT: I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I was baptized as an infant which is one of the sacraments of the Episcopal church.

The seven sacraments that we believe are Holy Baptism, the Eucharist, Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination, Penance and the Anointing of the sick.

We have the Eucharist, the communion every Sunday which is really important to me. I think that it connects us to Jesus. We have the bread and the wine every Sunday which is the body and blood to me of Jesus Christ, so it is our immediate connection to our faith and to our Savior.

It reminds me that I am a child of God. It reminds me that I am loved by God, because God sent His son to save the world and to save all of creation. And so that celebration of community and of breaking bread and sharing a meal together on a lot of different levels reminds me that I am connected to God through Jesus and connected to every other human and every other part of creation.

INTERVIEWER:  Jenny believes her connection to God creates a unique relationship with all mankind. Her connection is powered by her faith.

JENNY GRANT: The reason that I love people is because I know that I am a beloved child of God, and I believe that every human is a beloved child of God. And so, the way that I love comes from the way that I believe that God loves me.

I believe I have the ability to love because it was given to me by God. So if I can see God in someone before anything else, it helps me see one human family as all created by God.

INTERVIEWER:  Jenny’s “a-ha” moment of faith came out of her experience of seeing others deal with hardship, challenge, and tragedy. It’s changed the way she looks at herself and others.

JENNY GRANT: I think I’ve always tried to recognize good in people, and good in humanity and creation and I think that that comes from my parents and the way that I grew up.

As I said I grew up in Marietta in Georgia, and we had a bunch of students that came to our high school from New Orleans because their homes and things were devastated from Katrina and they didn’t have a place to go. I would imagine, they spread all over the United States. So just the fact that we even had like 20 or so come to my small high school in Marietta, Georgia, meant that there were a lot of people who did not have a home at that point.

I don’t know why that Katrina situation just was different. I had never lost anything. I’ve never lost my home. I never lost anything large in my life, but I saw so many people coming through who had and there was nothing they could do about it. And it didn’t make me any better than them, and I think that, that was kind of a shift in my understanding that I just didn’t wanna do that because—to be nice—but because I felt like God had given me something.

And I think that was my first recognition that sometimes our circumstances are outside of our control. And that I was born into a circumstance that was pretty freaking awesome and totally outside of my control and it was my realization moment where I realized I had a choice to make of what I do with that circumstance and for me that choice was clear, that it was to use it for what I believe to be good and make the world closer to what God wants the world to be.

INTERVIEWER:  Jenny’s choice to help make the world closer to what she believes God wants took courage. Her remarkable commitment took her way outside her comfort zone, showing the depth of her faith.

JENNY GRANT: The first time I went to Kenya, I went on a short-term mission trip and I did go into it with a mentality of “I’m gonna save the world.” And really what I learned was that there’s not a whole lot I could do other than develop relationships and be present and so the decision to spend more time living in a country outside of my own was really more about, “How do we build community that is beyond borders and beyond walls and beyond skin color or beyond differences.”

And so when I moved to Kenya for the year-long program I remember the woman I was going to work with, before I left, she asked me “What are my hopes and dreams for Kenya” and I was like, “Oh golly, that’s a really big question.” And I didn’t have an answer for it in that moment, but I realized that the reason why she asked me that wasn’t about my hopes and dreams for Kenya but it was really recognizing that what are Kenya’s hopes and dreams for Kenya, and how do I develop those relationships to help build the capacity and recognize the gifts and the skills and the resources that exist there, so that together we can build a better world.

I learned a lot and I hope we were able to grow together in community.

INTERVIEWER:  Jenny and Jared married each other three years ago. They believe it’s a gift to them from God.

JENNY GRANT: Marriage is awesome. I think for us, marriage is built on the foundation of our belief in God and our understanding of the covenant that we have with God to love us and be loved. And so when we got married we thought about just getting married in the court for the legal pieces of it because we needed insurance or something.

But, for us that was paperwork and that was, what was needed for our particular culture and our particular setting but the actual marriage was the blessing from the priest and the celebration of the joining of two lives becoming one and for us it’s having another person to walk with in sickness and in health, and all of the challenges and all of the joys of life, and God is at the center of that  I believe that marriage is a gift that you make a choice daily to live in and to walk in and to use for good in the world.

Jared and I believe that God has given us this opportunity to do life and that we are stronger together and that’s pretty cool.

INTERVIEWER:  Like in all marriages, Jenny and Jared face challenges. Jenny was willing to share how their united faith helps them navigate their journey as husband and wife.

JENNY GRANT: We believe that God loves us and so that gives us maybe the grace and the ability to approach challenges, and things differently than if I didn’t have that understanding, if I didn’t believe that I was created as a beloved child of God, or if I didn’t believe that Jared was a beloved child of God, it might be harder to walk through some of the challenges of life and to accept things as they come.

But, because we have that foundation, that gives us a strength that wouldn’t be there otherwise. I think we can approach things and get through things because we believe that God is with us in all of those things.

INTERVIEWER:  Living in a less than perfect world challenges the beliefs of even the most faithful. Looking for hope in an often-times broken world can be frustrating. Jenny is willing to share how her faith gives her strength to carry on..

JENNY GRANT: I don’t think if I believed that God created me and God loved me, that I would be able to love people and love a broken world. It’s what gives me hope and strength. It’s what allows me to find hope in the midst of a really broken world.

When I’m angry or frustrated, or when I see people who are hurt, I think I could respond in really angry ways. I think I could let emotions run what I do, but because I believe in God and I believe that people causing pain and the people in pain are both equally loved, I can see hope in that, and I can see reconciliation as a possibility. So, I think being a person of faith and believing in God allows me to see opportunities for reconciliation, opportunities for love and joy in the midst of where they may not seem possible.

INTERVIEWER:  Thank you, Jenny, for sharing with us how you find strength through your faith. The commitment to your beliefs is making the world a better place for all of us.

And thanks to you, our audience, for listening. We invite you to visit FaithCounts.com to learn and be inspired by different faith or join the conversation at #MyFaith, because our world is a better place when, “All Faith Counts.”