Jenny Marrs and Struggle Jennings: When Life Breaks You, God Rebuilds You
This episode contains content that may be triggering for some listeners.
Jenny Marrs: I had never been in a place where I had to be on my face in front of God, begging Him for help and for guidance and for showing me where to step each day, each moment—complete reliance, complete dependence. He used that season to get me there, so that later when I was back in that same place, I could remember, Okay, I’ve been here before. Okay, I can trust You because I trusted You then, and here we are, and I’m gonna trust You again. I mean, that’s just life.
Jenny Marrs and Struggle Jennings: When Life Breaks You, God Rebuilds You – Episode #481
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week, we’ll hear from Jenny Marrs, an author, designer, and passionate advocate for community transformation, family preservation, and orphan care worldwide, who hosts the HGTV show Fixer to Fabulous with her husband, Dave. Jenny shares the path that led her to the business she is in today, and the challenges of leaving all that you know to embrace the unknown.
Later in the episode, we’ll hear from Struggle Jennings, an independent music artist, father of seven, and prison ministry leader. Struggle shares how growing up in a famous musical family didn’t shield him from tragedy and poor choices, but how God used even the hardest seasons, including prison, to rebuild his life.
Let’s begin with Jenny’s story.
Jenny Marrs: I am Jenny Mars, and I live in Bentonville, Arkansas. I am married to my husband Dave, and he is a builder. I’m a designer. We work together. We have five kids ranging in age from six to fifteen. We also have a show on HGTV called Fixer to Fabulous, and we are filming season seven right now. We actually just filmed our 100th episode, which was pretty cool.
Discovering a New Life in Bentonville
I went to college at UCF, the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. I ended up getting a job at Rubbermaid. Dave had just graduated from college in Colorado, and he got a job with Rubbermaid also. His position was in Bentonville, which is where we are now.
We met at our new hire training and just built this friendship that eventually developed into more. I knew he was the man I wanted to marry. Dave was moved to Chicago, and I was moved to Nashville. Then he was moved to Austin, and I was still in Nashville. We both just wanted to be in the same city.
Dave actually was realizing that corporate America was not for him. His dad had been a home builder growing up, so Dave had always just grown up around that world. He thought he’d go into corporate America and not do anything that his dad did, but he realized he actually wanted to do what his dad did. He missed the creative aspect as well, like building and doing something with his hands and being outside.
His mom and dad, his brother and sister-in-law, his grandma, and then his other sister had all moved to Bentonville. He was like, “I think we should move to Bentonville. You should just quit. I’m going to quit. I’m gonna go start this building business with my dad and my brother, and you can find a job there because in Bentonville we have a lot of big businesses that are based here.”
At the time, we had nothing else tying us down, and we just knew we wanted to be together. I had not visited Bentonville. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was like, “Sure, why not?” I just knew I wanted to be with him, and we decided we would come here for two years and then we would move to Florida.
So I just thought, Okay, I’ll go for two years. So I quit my job, he quit his job, and we came to Bentonville. That was twenty-one years ago now.
Building Homes, Friendships, and a Life-Giving Community
As Dave and his dad and brother built this business—and eventually they each kind of did their own, but they started together—to watch them, it was just so exciting. Because of this very large retailer that is here, there are a lot of businesses here, and people are constantly coming and going. A lot of people say, “I’m going to move here for two years.” That is very common. They come here, they do a stint in Bentonville, and then they’re planning to go somewhere else, and they end up staying. That transient kind of lifestyle is just very common here, and even back then it was.
We ended up making such incredible friends. It is a very generous community. Dave and I had both been very much like Type A people. If we want to do something, we just do it. We were like, “Okay let’s start a family now.” We’ve been married, we’ve traveled, we’ve done all the stuff, we have our business, we’re ready.
And then all of a sudden we realized, No, we can’t figure this one out. This is not working, something’s wrong. We can’t do this. We literally cannot do this. We went to fertility specialists, and did all the tests, and nobody could tell us what was wrong. There was never anything specifically wrong. It was always like, “Oh, everything looks great.” That was several years of walking through that. At the beginning, for a long time, we didn’t tell anyone because we were like, “We can do this. If we want to have a baby, we’re going to have a baby, and we’re gonna figure it out.”
We started slowly telling friends and family, especially when our friends were starting to get pregnant, and it was a very hard season. I would describe it as separating my pain from their joy, which was very hard to do. I didn’t want them to feel like I wasn’t happy for them just because I was hurting. But we had to start revealing because it was starting to get to the point where I’m like, I have to tell people why I have to leave a baby shower mid-shower because I’m crumbling to pieces.
We started to share that and realized even more so how important community is. I mean, we’re not meant to do life alone. In that season, we thought we could lean on each other and on God and get through it, and we realized we actually need to let people in. I didn’t want to be seen as a charity case or have people feel sorry for you or have people feeling awkward. It was a dark season for a long time. We couldn’t have done it without our family and friends and without our faith and without their faith carrying us at times as well, honestly.
“We’re not meant to do life alone. In that season, we thought we could lean on each other and on God and get through it, and we realized we actually need to let people in.” – Jenny Marrs
When Dreams Are Delayed: Trusting God in the Waiting
I finally feel like I got to a point where I was like, Okay, what are You trying to teach me, Lord? Because I have to believe that You put desires in our heart. I wasn’t always the little girl who wanted to just grow up and be a mom—that wasn’t me at all. I wanted to move to New York City and be an advertising executive and travel the world. All of a sudden, I had that desire to be a mom, and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to be a mom now.” But I know and I trust that that desire was from God because He puts those desires on our hearts.
There was a point where I understood, You put this desire on my heart and You’re walking me through this season of complete uncertainty, of complete desperation and reliance on You, and so what do I need to learn from this? I said, “Lord, even if. I don’t know what this looks like—maybe I won’t ever have children of my own—but I have to just trust that You are walking me through this for a purpose. You know that I’m gonna come out of it with a deeper faith, a deeper understanding, a deeper knowledge of Your mercy and Your grace and Your love for me.”
“I said, ‘Lord, even if. I don’t know what this looks like—maybe I won’t ever have children of my own—but I have to just trust that You are walking me through this for a purpose. You know that I’m gonna come out of it with a deeper faith, a deeper understanding, a deeper knowledge of Your mercy and Your grace and Your love for me.’” – Jenny Marrs
I do believe that in that season, now looking back, I can see how He was just breaking down so many things that I had built over the years.This was the first time that I ever had to learn that, and He had to teach it to me in the way that He did or else I really truly don’t think I would have learned if I would’ve just gotten pregnant right away.
“I do believe that in that season, now looking back, I can see how He was just breaking down so many things that I had built over the years.” – Jenny Marrs
In that moment, it doesn’t matter if I had only been waiting two months or if I’d been waiting five years or ten years for a baby, I was so desperate to become a mom it was just one of those things that I just had to say, “Lord, even if I don’t become a mom—even though I really want to—I have to trust that You’re working through this.” I could look back later and say, “He did,” because here we are twenty years later. And we still have those same friends that we moved here with. We’ve all watched each other and been there for each other’s weddings, and babies, and the kids are all growing up together.
Trusting God’s Promises
Narrator: Jenny shares about her personal copy of Jesus Calling, and how she’s noted significant times of her life within its pages.
Jenny Marrs: I mean, it is like falling apart and it is written and starred and underlined. I put little notes everywhere because I love to look back and remember these things. It’s fun to look back and see God’s hand.
TRUST ME AND DON’T BE AFRAID—
this was on March 21st [Jesus Calling].
—for I am your Strength and Song.
And it goes on to say,
However, fear can block the flow of My Strength into you—instead of trying to fight your fears, concentrate on trusting Me.
I have that underlined and starred.
It was in 2014 [and I had] just got off a call with the embassy [with] not good news—we were in the process of trying to get our daughter home. She was legally our daughter, but they had shut down exit permits for kids leaving the country, so she was stuck essentially. This was in March. She came home finally in July, but it took two years and she was very sick, and honestly, day to day, it was a very real fear that we didn’t know if she was going to live, much less come home to us.
That was a season of feeling a lot of fear. It was a very big spiritual battle season trying to get Sylvie home. I would often open my Bible and just feel like, I don’t even know where to start, Lord. I don’t know how to pray right now. I’m so overwhelmed. I’m just terrified for my daughter. And having this every day and having it in the way it’s written where you really feel like you’re hearing from God, and then having the verses to guide when you’re in a parched season, is very helpful because sometimes you don’t know where to go and where to start, and it has been a really amazing thing for me. I got it as a gift, and I give it as gifts, and I think it’s a really beautiful tool for wonderful, bountiful seasons but especially for those parched, journeying through the wilderness seasons.
Narrator: To learn more about Jenny Marrs, you may visit www.jennymarrs.com, and be on the lookout for her new book, Trust God, Love People: Stories of My Openhanded Faith, at your favorite retailer.
Stay tuned to Struggle Jennings’ story after a brief message.
Jesus Listens for Every Season!
Jesus Listens: Prayers for Every Season is a 365-day devotional prayer book by Sarah Young which offers topical prayers for issues like anxiety, grief, and gratitude and aims to help believers grow their prayer life through consistent, scripture-focused prayer.
Our next guest is Struggle Jennings, independent music artist, father of seven, and leader in prison ministry. Though he grew up in a well-known musical family, Struggle’s life was marked by tragedy and missteps that eventually led him to prison. Yet even in those darkest seasons, God was at work, reshaping his story.
Struggle Jennings: Hey, I’m Struggle Jennings, and I’m an artist on an independent record label. I am also the director of Send Musicians to Prison. We take artists into prisons to minister and shed light and hope. We also work with a bunch of great foundations that feed victims of tragedies, and right now, [we are] working on the Texas floods with Smiles for Recovery, which is another great organization. So I’ve got my hands on a lot of things, trying to give back and help.
Growing Up Jennings: A Musical Legacy and Straddling Two Worlds
Coming from such an incredible family musically—my grandfather being Waylon Jennings and my grandmother being Jessi Colter… My mom was sixteen when she had me, so she was just a baby raising a baby, and working on her music herself and trying to figure out life and get through high school and then college. Anybody that knows the story of Waylon—he didn’t have the easy route. He was an outlaw in the music business, and he did things his way. My grandmother, Jessi, just had his back. She pretty much put her career on the back burner to take care of Waylon and to make sure that he was supported the way he needed to be to be who he was.
The first few years of my life were pretty simple. My dad was an old West Nashville boy raised in the streets in poverty, and then my mother fell in love and had me. They only lasted until I was about four, and then they split up. They just came from different worlds. My mom sang back up for Waylon. The first ten years of my life were pretty normal. I would go to West Nashville and see my dad and my dad’s side of the family on the weekends. So I was introduced at an early age to both sides of the tracks—seeing Waylon with the maid and the nanny and the security guards and the Cadillac and the Jaguar and the big house and [being a] successful country music icon. And then going back to my dad’s side of the family that lived in West Nashville who worked nine to fives and lived right at that poverty line. So I always kind of straddled the tracks.
“I was introduced at an early age to both sides of the tracks—seeing Waylon with the security guards and the Cadillac and the Jaguar and the big house and [being a] successful country music icon. And then going back to my dad’s side of the family that lived in West Nashville who worked nine to fives and lived right at that poverty line.” – Struggle Jennings
As I got older, my father was murdered when I was ten, and my mother really took it hard. She had been in some abusive relationships. She was married to a guy that was super abusive to her, and I witnessed a lot of that. But she was so spiritually grounded, and woke me up every morning on the piano playing hymns and singing and starting the day off with Jesus. And my grandmother, she’s been in ministry for so long and done some incredible albums in that lane. They really planted a lot of seeds when I was young, but then as I started to get older, my mom and Waylon kind of had a fallout where she just wanted to prove that she could do it on her own without his money or without the family name, so we moved to lower class neighborhoods, low income apartments.
It was kind of a culture shock for me. I got involved in gangs at a young age, selling drugs, breaking the rules and breaking the laws, and in and out of juvenile [detention] until I was finally taken out of my mom’s custody. My father, who had been killed, his brother, Tadpole, got custody of me. I moved to West Nashville and lived with him, and he taught me hard work and how to take care of your family—he really taught me a lot of things about being a man.
I was also caught up in that world—gangs and drugs and a lot of the beliefs like, Feed your family by any means necessary. It’s okay to do wrong if you’re doing it for the right reason—those types of things that I had to eventually strip myself of.
“I was caught up in that world—gangs and drugs and a lot of the beliefs like, Feed your family by any means necessary. It’s okay to do wrong if you’re doing it for the right reason—those types of things that I had to eventually strip myself of.” – Struggle Jennings
With my father, they told me it was suicide when it happened. He had called me that day while I was out playing football, and I had told my mom to tell him I’d call him back. So that night when I came in and found out he had been killed and they told me it was suicide, I lived with that regret for a long time of, What if I would have answered the phone, would he still be here? That caused a lot of trauma in my life and a lot of anger and resentment to myself. I was suicidal a lot, and I battled with a lot those kind of issues.
It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I found out that he was killed. At that point, when I asked why they had told me, it was like, “Well, we would rather you live with regret than revenge.” And I kind of understood that. A few years ago, I found out who killed him, and it was another family member, but I found that out as she was passing. And so I finally got some closure throughout the years, but there were a lot of things that I battled with that that led me astray.
Struggle Ends Up in Prison and Reconciles with the Damage to His Family
I ended up doing a prison bit in my early twenties after having two kids. My second son was actually born while I was in prison. Then I got out, and started going in the right direction and got custody of my two kids and started having more kids, and life hit me and I fell weak to the devil’s plan and went back to what I was comfortable doing. I ended up doing another five years in prison, and that’s really when it was the moment that I was like, Okay, this is time for me to figure this out, like find out why I keep coming back.
Prison was the best thing that happened to me and definitely what I needed. I had been through a lot in the streets—being shot, bullets barely missing me. They looked like they went through me in the seat that I was sitting in. Many times God showed His face and showed His favor, even though I didn’t know why, because I didn’t understand what my purpose was. But it was when I landed in prison and I was watching what was happening to my children—there was a moment when I called home and my five-year-old daughter was crying because they hadn’t eaten all day, and their mom was passed out on drugs. I had to teach her how to make macaroni and cheese from a jail phone so she could feed her siblings.
“Many times God showed His face and showed His favor, even though I didn’t know why, because I didn’t understand what my purpose was.” – Struggle Jennings
Knowing that my kids were being abandoned and going through this—my daughters were molested, passed around to trap houses until they finally landed in with some friends and then ended up in foster care when they couldn’t take care of them anymore. I knew that I finally had to strip down and take full responsibility and accountability and say, “This is my fault. I can’t blame the judge. I can’t blame the person that snitched on me. I can’t blame my circumstances or the cards I was dealt. I have the opportunity to turn this around.” I made a lot of bad decisions and mistakes, and for some reason, God still brought me through it.
“I knew that I finally had to strip down and take full responsibility and accountability and say, ‘This is my fault. I can’t blame the judge. I can’t blame the person that snitched on me. I can’t blame my circumstances or the cards I was dealt. I have the opportunity to turn this around.’” – Struggle Jennings
Looking at all the friends that had life sentences, looking at the friends that we buried through gang violence and drugs and alcohol and all the different things that we were losing people from—and to sit here like, “Why am I still here? I’ve made more mistakes than most of these people.” I just really felt that God had a plan for me, and I wasn’t going to take it for granted.
“I just really felt that God had a plan for me, and I wasn’t going to take it for granted.” – Struggle Jennings
So I went in there and I stripped down physically, I stripped down mentally, emotionally, and I built up spiritually. I started my foundation there. I read every book, I prayed hard, I trained hard. I learned, took every class I could take, and my goal was to come out the best person that I could be so that I can be successful in giving them a better environment, giving them another opportunity, not letting them fall victim to the foster care system or to be abandoned and left anymore.
And I was watching God work with them. They were in so many bad situations—car wrecks where their mother’s boyfriend was intoxicated and flipped the car. My son was run over in a driveway at two years old completely by a car, because the person was high and his mom was passed out on the porch. And so there were all these things that were going on, and I’m looking like, “God, you got me. I’m not gonna let You down.”
I came out, and I got custody of my kids—all seven of them—and moved them in the house. I started my career, started my ministry, started telling my story, my testimony. Even the times that I was slipping or had doubts, it was the responsibility to God and to my fans and to my children [that kept me going]. Then hearing all these amazing testimonies from fans of how my music and my story was pulling them through what they were going through—whether it was jail or drug abuse or a divorce or getting back with their wife or rekindling with their kids, rekindling with their parents, and the bridges they had burned or finding their relationship with God through my music—it started to really give me purpose. And when you’re purpose-driven and you have a reason for getting up every day and you know you’re living in God’s glory and God’s mercy, you have that strength and that confidence that I’ve made it through a lot of things and I don’t know what’s ahead of me, but I know that if I keep moving in the right direction with love in my heart and God in my heart, it’s going to work out okay. God gives His greatest warriors the toughest battles. It has not been easy by any means. I mean, I’m still going through it today. Sometimes I look at Him, and I’m like, “I’m not even gonna ask You when I’m gonna get a break. I just know I’m getting a little tired.”
“Even the times that I was slipping or had doubts, it was the responsibility to God and to my fans and to my children [that kept me going]. When you’re purpose-driven and you have a reason for getting up every day and you know you’re living in God’s glory and God’s mercy, you have that strength and that confidence that I’ve made it through a lot of things and I don’t know what’s ahead of me, but I know that if I keep moving in the right direction with love in my heart and God in my heart, it’s going to work out okay. God gives His greatest warriors the toughest battles.” – Struggle Jennings
I don’t break, because I know I got God in me, because I know He’s got my back, and I got that strength so I don’t break. I don’t fold. I don’t divert back to the old ways and go back to the streets. And that’s showing so many people that regardless of what they’re going through, all things are possible through Jesus Christ, hard work, and having faith and believing and believing in yourself.
So through all of that—through prison, coming home from prison, fighting to get custody of my kids back and then getting my kids back and building a life—none of it could have been done without daily talks with God, daily prayer, daily thanking Him. Like, Thank you. I don’t know how I’m gonna make it today, but thank you, because I know you got me. Prayer is the foundation of faith. Speaking and believing and knowing that it’s gonna happen is the most powerful force on the face of the planet—and beyond. Once you have faith and once you believe it, there’s nothing that can stop you, because you believe, you know it’s going to happen.
If you’re not building that foundation on God and prayer and faith, it’s going to crumble. The world crumbles, the dirt breaks, rocks erode. I had to build that foundation on faith, and it started in prison. Staying heavy in prayer is probably the biggest asset that we all have—prayer and that connection. You just have to pray it and you have to mean it and you have to believe it. You know, that’s what faith is about. Saying, “God, hey, this is what I really want. I know You got me. I love You.” And saying, “Thank you. Amen. In Jesus’ name.” If you honestly have faith, when you’re done praying, you feel a thousand pounds lighter because you’re like, Oh, I know I’m good now. I just told Him what I needed. He’s got me. I think everything is based in prayer and faith and it’s the root—prayer is the root of all of it.
Jesus Listens, March 3rd:
Precious Lord Jesus,
I love to hear You saying to me, “I have called you by name; you are Mine!” It’s so comforting to know that I belong to You—no matter how isolated I sometimes feel. Thank You for redeeming me by paying the full penalty for my sins. I’m grateful that You called me to Yourself in the most personal way—reaching down into the circumstances of my life, speaking into the intricacies of my heart and mind.
Scripture tells me I’m so precious to You that You have inscribed me on the palms of Your hands. Nothing can separate me from Your loving Presence!
Although this world is full of trouble, You are with me and You are in control. You’re training me to change the subject from my problems to Your Presence by whispering, “But Jesus is with me” and then turning to You.
In Your victorious Name,
Amen
Narrator: To learn more about Struggle Jennings, you may visit www.strugglejennings.com, and be sure to find his music on your favorite streaming platform.
If you’d like to hear more stories about finding hope in hard seasons, check out our interview with Patricia Heaton.
Next week: Dan and Sam Mathews
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from content creators Dan and Sam Mathews, who share how they encourage people to take a leap of faith and choose the more adventurous route in life.
Dan Mathews: Adventure isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Adventure is going to look way different for someone who maybe lives in a big city, is very confined—there’s not a river to go float down or a mountain to climb. Adventure can just be getting outside of your comfort zone and trying something new.
