Welcome to the Jesus Calling podcast. Today we visit with two guests who give us their

perspectives on living honestly and fearlessly as women of God. Kelly Bilari is the

author of Fear Fighting, awakening courage to overcome your fear, and is a passionate

national speaker who has spent nearly 10 years leading groups of women in spiritual growth,

marriage building, and general Bible studies across the nation.

Kelly talks with us today about some of the difficult and fearful circumstances she's been

through that ultimately revealed the beauty of God's plan for her life.

My name is Kelly Balari.

I grew up in Maryland and we were in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

I'm the oldest of six kids, so I'm kind of like second mama to everyone and that's how I grew up. I mean I was making sure that everybody was taken care of. I was like we need to get school supplies and kind of running the house and so I was always like trying to be the glue to hold everything together and

It was a lot of stress for me. I think I felt like disaster was always going to happen or I was always worried that

somebody was going to get hurt or that things were very scary and so I didn't know what to do. I was kind of in panic mode. I knew about God. I had gone to church, but I don't think that I was welcoming him in my heart in a way where he was really ruling my life and where I was submitting to him.

I was more just trying to run through the motions of religion. And so I felt like I was more just trying to run through the motions of religion and so I felt like I had to in a sense be a God to the family and

it really just ran me deep into a whole like eventually I got an eating disorder because while I was

trying to control I just felt so out of control I felt like I was losing everything even though I was trying to put my

hands and my fingerprints over everything.

What led to my eating disorder was that feeling again that I needed to be in control.

You know, I think I took that whole family mindset with me to college and that mindset was

Disasters ready to strike at any moment. I'm not really safe. I don't know what my future holds

Anything could happen to me at any moment. People want to hurt me. I can't trust people. So I just tried to do what I could do. And what I could do in college was to focus on getting the perfect job after school and so I was paranoid about it.

Like I would go and sit at the computer and I would look up companies and research them and figure out exactly who they wanted me to be.

And I became an expert at giving everybody else who they wanted me to be.

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