Olympic Gold Medalist Says Motherhood Strengthened Faith
Movieguide® Contributor
Olympian Shawn Johnson East recently answered fans’ burning questions about her family and faith on her YouTube Channel.
“How has motherhood impacted our faith journey?” East read a question from a fan.
“It’s made it so much stronger,” she said. “I feel like before kids you feel like you get to a point in life where you feel like you can control everything. You can control most variables that affect your life, which isn’t leaning into your faith, and then you have children and realize you can’t control anything or rarely anything.”
“And like it’s all a miracle, and it’s all just like in God’s hands, and you have to either go crazy trying to control everything that you cannot control or lean into faith and let it all go to Him and use Him for strength,” she explained. “So it just caused me to be stronger in my faith that way.”
An avid reader, East has a few faith-based books she shared that strengthen her walk with God and marriage.
“I have a whole entire stack next to my bedside of books right now, which is fun. They’re all biblically based, and they’re all about marriage and life and parenting,” she said. “I’m actually reading the book called, ‘The Power of the Praying Wife,’ and it is great. So I recommend that.”
She added that she’s always reading devotionals and the Bible.
“We go to church every single Sunday. We’ve made it a rule in our household that we don’t miss church,” she said. “We have to be like on a deathbed to miss church or like, you know what I mean, respectively. We aren’t like going there ill, but we don’t miss church.”
“We also are part of women’s Bible study and men’s Bible study…You can find them through your church. We’ve also started women’s and men’s Bible studies in small groups through like our closest friends, through school, through neighborhoods, but it takes effort. It’s not just going to like fall into your lap. You have to actually like make it happen,” she said.
On the “Jesus Calling” podcast, East mentioned that she struggled with identity after she won gold at the Olympics. The struggle stopped when she placed her identity in Christ instead of gymnastics.
“After gymnastics, I went on this journey of trying to strengthen my faith and strengthen where my purpose in life was laid. I found my purpose of serving a greater purpose, and now I feel like my purpose is probably being a mom,” she said.
As a former NFL player, East’s husband, Andrew, also went through the same struggles before he placed his identity in Christ.
“It’s taken me two years to fully realize that my worth is not in football,” he said on I Am Second.
Movieguide® recently reported on East and her family:
Earlier this summer, Shawn reminded her daughter, Drew, that God made her on purpose.
“Okay, so Drew and I were talking about value…how she has infinite value no matter what; she doesn’t have to do anything. She doesn’t have to, like, earn it,” Shawn shared in a YouTube video. “It can’t be taken away because God made her on purpose, and she was like, ‘What does that mean, ‘on purpose?’”
“‘God, when he makes all of us, hides these treasures inside of us and we get to spend all of our life finding them,’” she told her daughter, “and she’s like, well, ‘What are the treasures?’ I was like, ‘That’s the cool part.’”
