Influencer Jeanine Amapola Ward Talks Finding Identity in Christ: ‘I Need God’
By Movieguide® Staff
Sadie Robertson Huff and influencer and podcaster Jeanine Amapola Ward talk about the importance of finding one’s identity in Christ during a recent episode of Huff’s “WHOA That’s Good” podcast.
Ward described how, when she was growing up, she struggled to understand why God made her the way she was. Her father was German while her mother was Guatemalan, and she didn’t know where she fit in with either of those cultures.
“It honestly caused me to get this massive disdain for myself where I was like, ‘God, why did you make me like this? Like, people don’t accept me. I’m always the outcast. I’m the girl that’s left out. I don’t look like my peers in my neighborhood, in my church, in my school.’ And so it really made me change myself to do whatever I needed to do to fit in,” Ward described.
These feelings “spiraled” when she got to college.
“I just remember being like looking in the mirror one day and saying, ‘God, why did you make me like this? Like why am I the way that I am?’ just so angry at God, and it made me run away from the Lord. It made me run away from everything about Him, even my own siblings,” she recalled.
To fit in, she joined a sorority and the cheer team, went drinking on the weekends and spent time with boys. Her social media platform also exploded during her junior and senior years, so she began putting her identity into the fame and wealth she found there.
After hitting rock bottom during her senior year and breaking off a “very toxic” relationship, “I ended up finally being like, I need God. Like, I need something because clearly what I’m doing is it’s not working. I need to change something,” Ward explained.
She moved to California, but her problems didn’t go away. It was only after hitting rock bottom again and reaching out to a mentor that her life turned around.
“She [Ward’s mentor] was like, ‘You are a hypocrite’…It was a bold statement, and it hurt. I remember being like, ‘Okay, like, you don’t the audacity to say that. Like, you don’t know me,’” she described.
However, her mentor’s direct approach changed her life.
“I mean it struck such a chord because it was true, and she spoke the truth in love, and it was exactly what I needed to hear that day, and that phrase that God gave her was the start of a fresh, new beginning with the Lord and myself, and it was a moment I will never forget,” Ward told Huff.
Ward dives deeper into her story and helps her fans also find freedom in Christ in her new book “Becoming Happy & Healthy: Real Life Advice on Friendship, Dating, Career, and Everything Else You Care About.”
“Jeanine shares stories she’s never shared before about her journey to find freedom from her secret struggles, poor choices, and toxic relationships. Tackling everything from dating and friendship to body image, faith, and career choices, Jeanine offers authentic, biblical advice to help you,” the synopsis reads.
“After spending much time working on myself, growing my relationship with Jesus, working on my daily habits, I feel I have finally overcome many of my past struggles that kept me back and in bondage for so long; you’ll hear all about my story in the book. But now that’s my goal for you too – to become free, happy, and healthy, and ALL that God has for you,” she said on Instagram.
Movieguide® previously reported on another conversation Huff had about identity:
Sadie Robertson Huff recently sat down with Luis Matos, a friend from an orphanage in the Dominican Republic who always found comfort in his relationship with God.
“I grew up in an orphanage, and your family has been a part of that place for a long time. You and your family have been the ones who have treated us like family,” Matos said while appearing on an episode of Huff’s “WHOA That’s Good” podcast.
Huff’s family would go to the Dominican Republic every year, always visiting Matos and keeping up with his life. As Matos got older, he decided to “pursue a career in college” but then “discovered I didn’t have a birth certificate.”
“In the Dominican Republic, that’s pretty hard because you can’t do anything — you can’t go to college, you can get a job, you can’t get a bank account,” he explained. “You’re just like a ghost walking around…”
While Matos is overjoyed to finally have a birth certificate and the ability to fulfill his dreams of living in America with his family, he shared a recent realization.
“I thought all along that having my ID was the goal, but now I feel that I was wrong,” Matos explained. “I didn’t have a birth certificate, [but] I had an identity already. I had the identity of the son of the creator of the universe. The fact that He knows me, He knew me before…I don’t care about a piece of paper because I know that the one, the boss, the one up there, He knows my name.”
