Nadine Dyer (00:01)
Welcome ladies, we are back for our next topic and we are here today with Zanna Foley. By the way, this is your hostess, Nadine Dyer, and we are going to talk about fruit today. And Zanna, I am so excited that you're here. Zanna is the owner of SWEATHOUZ in Carmel and Broad Ripple. If don't know what that is, that'll be included in the link. Go check it out. It's pretty awesome. Zanna, welcome and let's dive into our topic.

Zanna Foley (00:29)
Thank you for having me.

Nadine Dyer (00:30)
Yeah, thanks for being here. It's gonna be fun. Our topic, this sprouted because this was Zanna's Word of the Year, is fruitful, or just fruit, and what that means. And so as, for those of you who are starting to follow our podcast, this episode is really gonna be focused on Zanna's story around the fruit in her life, or the lack of fruit, and why that is her word, and what she's doing about it. Really her story.

And then the next episode on this topic will be more practical applications. So let's dive into your story, Zanna, and you tell me fruit. Like, why is that your word? What brought that to mind? Just kick us off with that.

Zanna Foley (01:14)
Yeah, sure. So this year we opened SWEATHOUZ or we are opening SWEATHOUZ two locations and that's a new project for us on top of other existing businesses and you know being a busy mom of four and you know we're really excited about it but it's adding one more thing and so what I realized is you know opening a new business on top of what we already had I'm gonna really need to have my priorities straight and so just

Praying into that and realizing that, you know, I want to be fruitful in everything that I do. And if something is not fruitful, it needs to come off of our schedule, off of our agenda. It's weird because I realized I needed to streamline and simplify my life in the busiest time of my life, right? Doing more actually means that I need to do less and...

Nadine Dyer (02:05)
Hmm.

Zanna Foley (02:11)
That really didn't make a lot of sense to me. So I really needed to lean in and pray about that. And I just realized that, you know, we're called by God to, I mean, the command is to be fruitful and multiply. To me, fruitful means productive. We're supposed to produce. But we only want to produce the right things. We don't want to just be productive and busy and chaotic.

I wanna be, I wanna be fruitful. So that's where the word fruitful came to me.

Nadine Dyer (02:47)
I love it. That really speaks to me because there's a couple things that you said that really spoke to me is like doing more means actually doing less. And that is so true. Sometimes it's not about being busy. It's not about busy work. It's about fruitful work. So I love that. What I want to hear about is kind of your story. I want to hear about maybe seasons of your life where it was chaos, where maybe it wasn't fruitful, but it was really busy.

Maybe talk to me about some of those challenges that you've had or some of those seasons that you've had.

Zanna Foley (03:23)
Sure, so I have four children. We are a blended family. So I have one from a previous marriage, my husband has two from a previous marriage, and then we have one together. And I would say that my life has always been fruitful because God has always been with me. So there was never a time when there was no fruit. But early on in my journey as a mother, becoming a single mom,

went through a very difficult divorce and my husband did as well. And then we met probably not in an ideal time in that we both hadn't healed and worked through some of those traumas. And we just were probably had no business really getting together, but we did. so, you know, life was harder and there was fruit, but there was a lot of other stuff too that was

what I would call more chaos. And, you know, we had to work through a lot of things in order to get to where we are now, which the chaos still has the potential of being there. The circumstances are still there. We're still a blended family. We still have lots of things always in motion, but there, you know, there's been so much healing that's taken place over these years. I mean, we've known each other and been in relationship for four...

Nadine Dyer (04:24)
Yeah.

Zanna Foley (04:50)
14 and a half years. So there's been a lot of healing, a lot of, it's been a journey. And so we are now to a point where I can say, I see those times in our relationship, in our life, in our family that were less fruitful, even though God always provided fruit. There was definitely some things that needed to be healed in order to get to a more fruitful place.

Nadine Dyer (05:14)
You know, it's interesting, as you were sharing, I envisioned a garden. And I envisioned like, you know, these fruitful trees, like they were always fruit there, but I envisioned lots of weeds and lots of chaos. And there was even pretty flowers in there, but they just didn't fit, right? And it was like, just, it's like, where do you walk? There's no path. There's no green parts. It was just like this like chaotic.

And I just kept seeing so many weeds. was almost like overgrown by weeds.

Zanna Foley (05:45)
Yeah, well, and we all know, you know, in order for a plant to grow fruit, it has to be pruned back. You know, if we let a plant, bush, you know, just picture a rose bush. A rose bush is not going to produce roses if it's overgrown. We have to prune things back. So really that was a season and it was a long season of pruning and it doesn't stop. You have to prune every season.

Nadine Dyer (05:52)
Wow.

Yeah.

Zanna Foley (06:13)
So absolutely, the rose bush always has its potential, right? As long as it's getting pruned and cared for and nurtured.

Nadine Dyer (06:17)
Yep.

Yeah, so I'm envisioning this beautiful garden, right? And I'm envisioning like we always have to tend to the garden. If we don't tend to the garden, it's going to be chaos. It's going to be crazy. It might have some fruit, but it won't be as fruitful as it could be. Right. And then I'm envisioning like the weeds, which is probably the things that need to be healed. Like those are the things that just don't belong in the garden.

Zanna Foley (06:37)
Yes.

Yes.

Nadine Dyer (06:46)
So I want, I would love to hear part of your story of like, what are some of the weeds? What are some of the healing that you've had to do to be able to really step into a season where it's like, I'm ready to produce fruit now.

Zanna Foley (07:00)
Well, I I think at first starts with my divorce. You know when I divorced my son's dad, he was only one and a half. I was not walking with the Lord at that time. I had a faith, but I went to church because it was free childcare and I could sit in the back and cry and nobody had to know me. I didn't have to, you know, it was just, it was a very lonely place. I wasn't walking with God, but I wasn't faithless. just,

Nadine Dyer (07:29)
Sure.

Zanna Foley (07:30)
I just didn't know what I didn't know. And at first I think I had to just really, really understand God's love for me in that space. My ex-husband, my son's dad was struggling with addiction at the time and anybody who's been in a relationship with an addict understands how difficult that is, but also

there was this problem of within me of why I chose that, why I was okay with that during certain times and seasons. So there was a lot of healing that had to happen within me, a lot of, you know, accountability, right? Because it's easy to blame an addict, but it's like, you had a part in that. And I had to walk through that healing within myself.

I wouldn't say healing between God and I because I didn't have any spiritual trauma or anything. I just didn't know him. And I hadn't had anybody really walk me through that. And I finally had a friend who offered to sit with me and read the Bible. She just called me up one day and said, I'd love to meet with you once a week. And would you be interested in doing this? And I thought, good, a friend. You know, like I really didn't know where that would lead, but that would

maybe step two, you know, was meeting with her. At first I met with a therapist actually, and I felt like that was, that was the step within healing myself in the situation of addiction and understanding my accountability, my part in that. And then step two was really meeting with this friend and not healing my relationship with God, but starting.

my relationship with God. That was probably step two. And then step three really came when I met my husband and we tried to merge families. I had started to walk with God, but I really wasn't following his ways. So we were living together. We were merging our families probably way sooner than we really should have been. And both of us just had some really difficult

circumstances and so to try and merge two families that are walking through trauma and just challenges, challenging circumstances, challenging relationships and to try to do that while also learning to love each other, you know? And it was just like, I look back and I'm like, I don't know how we did all this.

And was just only by the grace of God are we still here and in a much better place. But I would say that, you know, was probably step three. And that one took the longest.

Nadine Dyer (10:33)
It's interesting,

because as you share, it's like this picture of the garden continues to like become more, like more is revealed from it. And what I'm hearing, at least the way that I'm like receiving this, and it's so helpful to me, is at first you had to realize you were even in a garden and there's like fruit and there's weeds.

I heard you say I was just lonely and lost. I didn't even understand God's love. It's like, I didn't even know I was in a garden. And then here I was, because I was so busy blaming my ex-husband for his addiction and so busy with the problem that I wasn't even looking at myself, going, what does my garden even look like? Right? And I think the first step is going, I need to take responsibility for me, for my healing, because if I'm going to produce fruit,

That's up to me. And goodness, I gotta look around and get real honest with what's going on inside of me and what fruit am I producing? And you can't really produce fruit if you're overgrown with a bunch of weeds, right? So you gotta start healing and start pulling the weeds. And I heard you say therapy and I heard you say church and I heard you say a friend and honest friendship, godly friendship. I heard you say seeking God. I heard you say taking responsibility and that's all healing.

Right? That's all like pulling out the weeds and going, this doesn't fit. This doesn't fit. This isn't going to produce fruit. Get rid of this. Get rid of that. And then earlier on, I heard you say pruning and the way that I saw pruning was it was like, okay, I got rid of a lot of the junk. Now there's going to be some weeds here and there and I still got to pull those. There's always continuous healing we have to do, but there's a season of like serious healing and I can relate to that so much.

Zanna Foley (12:00)
Yes.

Nadine Dyer (12:20)
where I had to look at me and go, I need to take responsibility for my junk and get this healed because it's gonna continue to trip me up. And then the pruning season is like, okay, I've gotten that chaos out of the way. Now, okay, my tree needs tending to, it needs to be pruned. And I see that as kind of a growing season and the, there's some pain. There's a lot of pain that happens.

Zanna Foley (12:28)
Yes.

Nadine Dyer (12:47)
in pruning season, right? It's like, I don't want to do this. I've already done so much work. God, why do I have to deal with this now? Is there anything that you can speak into the growing or the pruning season as part of your story?

Zanna Foley (13:02)
Yeah, you know, I think before we jumped on the podcast, you asked me maybe what fruit, what those less fruitful times looked like in my life. And I don't want to say fruitless because again, God was always with me. So there was always some fruit, but those more, those less fruitful times or more fruitless, I could say what that felt like is it felt like a couple of different things that felt like control.

Nadine Dyer (13:16)
Yeah.

Mm.

Zanna Foley (13:29)
I was just gripping my life with everything that I had, which is also fear.

There's some pride in there because you, if you're gripping your life with everything that you have, then you think that you're in charge of it. That's pride. You think that you're God. Like you have control over all of this. It felt like busyness, but you know, when we talk about weeds, if you've ever worked in a restaurant industry, they say, oh, I'm in the weeds. It's when, you know, the,

wait list is, you know, two hours long and the servers got, you know, triple sat and three parties with 12 people in it. And they say, I'm in the weeds. I'm in the weeds. need help. That's like the restaurant term for like, send me back up. Right. It's busyness in chaos. You know, it's just chaos. So it felt like control. felt like busyness, chaotic busyness, and it felt like fear. And it felt

looking back, it didn't feel prideful at the time. It felt responsible at the time because I grew up thinking that if it's meant to be, it's up to me. And I've heard that phrase in like, quote unquote, successful environments. And I had to really divorce myself from that phrase because that puts all the responsibility on you. I felt like this control that I had was responsible.

Right? I've got to be responsible. But at the end of the day, it's not up to us. It's up to us to surrender our will and be obedient to what the next steps are. But if we're doing that, the rest is not up to us. And that pride really had to be released. So the control, the chaotic busyness, the fear, the pride, I would say those were the things.

that really had to be pruned. And those things take time because they're so embedded in our habits, in our brain, in our genes. These are things that go way back to the way that you were loved and parented and what you saw in your family. And so those things create just really

deep pathways, you know? And yeah, you're right. We do have to first realize that the weeds are there. I had to first realize I had an issue with control and pride and chaotic busyness and fear. During those fruitless times or less fruitful times, I didn't even know those things were there. So I couldn't have gone in and pruned them. Only God can do that, because only God can shine.

light on those things that are so deeply embedded in us that we don't even know they're there because they're just there. Some of them at birth, you know. yeah, it's a... I would say those are the things. Those are the things that I had to prune, but I didn't have to prune them. I had to let God prune them because I could not have even tried to do that myself.

Nadine Dyer (16:58)
Yeah, yeah, that's this is so rich. This is so rich. I'm like taking notes on so many different things. And it's like, OK, I am responsible for me and the things that are in my power. And part of that is taking responsibility for that. But I am not in control of other people. I'm not in control of circumstances and how they turn out. I am not God. So it's like this balance, right? It's like

And part of becoming fruitful is cleaning all that up. And so what I am realizing, Zanna, is not everybody can be in a season of fruitfulness, right? Some women, some of you ladies that are listening to this episode right now, maybe you're in a season of like, my goodness, I'm in a garden and I have weeds everywhere and I got some cleaning up to do and I got to take some responsibility and I got to look at me and I got to do some healing. And maybe some ladies are in this,

season of pruning and it going, okay, what do I need to surrender? What do I need to learn? What do I need to grow? What do I need to trust God for? What do I need to?

let go of, you know, like you said something about busyness. And I wrote down busyness isn't fruitfulness. It actually could be a distraction from fruitfulness. I've no I've used that as a distraction in my own life. So some the seasons that I'm noticing is like awareness. I'm in a garden. I got to clean some you know, I got to figure this out. Okay, healing, pruning, growing, pruning.

and then the fruit is produced. And I love Zana that for you right now, you are in a season where you are poised and ready for the fruitful season. And so that's what we'll talk about on the next episode. We'll really dive into that fruit and we'll talk about the fruitfulness. So for this episode, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up. Zana, is there anything else that you wanna kind of wrap up this episode with from just any of your takeaways or standouts?

Zanna Foley (19:05)
Maybe just a quick encouragement to the woman who is in this season of The Weeds because my heart is just so sensitive to that. Like literally tears come to my eyes thinking of that feeling. It's like you're sitting in your house and you're realizing that a bomb went off on Christmas Day and you've got toys everywhere and it's just complete chaos and you're like, my gosh, how am I going to get all this cleaned up? Like my heart just really goes out to that woman because that is where I think we are so,

tempted and the reason that I use the word tempted is because I think that's where the enemy attacks us and the temptation is to feel overwhelmed and that's where God meets us and I don't know if this ever happened to you Nadine but like you your house is a mess and you're like I'm just gonna go unload the dishwasher and you do one task and then all of a sudden you're like I got this like I can really clean up this mess today like as fast you know faster than I thought.

Nadine Dyer (19:57)
Yeah.

Zanna Foley (20:06)
So it's like that feeling of overwhelm, of suffocation, of like the weeds are literally strangling me right now. There's so much healing. There's so much that has to happen to make this right. That's really a lie. I know that it's taken 14 years to get to the season of fruit and it sounds like a long time, but in all reality, all the way we were making progress, all the way God was meeting us and giving us just that one more task to do. So if you're in that place of suffocation and overwhelm,

It's not going to be as hard as the enemy may tempt you to believe right now.

Nadine Dyer (20:42)
That's such a good point. I'm so glad you spoke into that. And by the way, your chaos might've looked like, you know, Christmas morning and presents everywhere. My chaos looked like a bomb literally tore my house away. Like that was how it felt when I was in my chaos, right? And it was so busy blaming the bomb, right? That I wasn't willing to look at, wait, wait, wait, what's my part in this and how do I heal? And you're so right. It's like, we focus on what we can control.

Zanna Foley (20:55)
Yes.

Nadine Dyer (21:11)
and we just do the next right thing. It doesn't have to be, it does feel overwhelming and it is, but digging ourselves out of it is just doing the next right thing, not ignoring it with busyness, but really starting to clean house. I'm so excited to dig into the fruit, because I think that'll be the fun for the next episode. So ladies, join us for the next episode. We are so glad you're here. We love you. Whatever season you're in, whether you're

Zanna Foley (21:12)
Yeah.

Yes.

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Nadine Dyer (21:39)
Just realizing you're in a garden and you gotta start taking some responsibility or you're pulling out some weeds and it just feels overwhelming or you're being pruned and it hurts so bad or you're in a fruitful season. Where you are is perfectly where you're supposed to be. It's part of your journey and we're so happy to have you part of this podcast journey. We'll catch you next time.