Fireproof Your Faith with Danielle Harris-Branch

We are welcoming Danielle Harris-Branch, an author, speaker, image promoter, and coach, in this episode. Danielle has been through the kinds of adversities that most people couldn’t even begin to imagine. She has survived cancer twice, has overcome Steven-Johnson syndrome, and has also gone through losing her husband of 22 years.

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On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast:

• Danielle’s personal definition of faith.
• How Danielle came to be a person of faith.
• What it means to fire-proof your faith.
• The one thing Danielle came to understand last year.
• The situations in which Danielle has come to see God’s reason later on.
• Why accidents are a part of our alignment.
• The rights that you have in God.
• How Danielle’s book can help others, especially in the time of a pandemic.
• What “The Other Side of the Bed” helps the reader do.
• How having fire-proof faith supports the entrepreneurial journey.
• How we can get control of ourselves.
• The positive and beneficial aspects of going through difficulty in life.
• What has increased Danielle’s faith over the years.
• How Danielle provides her services to others, and what brings her the most joy.
• Danielle’s message for anyone who is struggling right now.

Connect with Danielle:

Danielle’s Website: https://daniellehbranch.com/

Danielle’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniellehbranch/

TRANSCRIPT

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:13] I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the Love Method and author of the number one Amazon best seller, Live Love Engage – How to Stop Doubting Yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully, love deeply and engage authentically so you can create a life and business with more impact, influence and income. Welcome to Live, Love, Engage.

[00:00:48] Now, let’s stay and welcome to Live Love, and I am Gloria Grace Rand, and today I’ve got a lovely guest with me who is going to be talking about Fireproofing Your Faith. And she is a wonderful, multitalented woman. And I would love to welcome Danielle Harris Branch to Live Love Engage. Why, thank you so much for having me. Gloria is a privilege

[00:01:17] And an honor to be here and your presence and to

[00:01:20] Share just to share about God is wonderful. Absolutely. Well, let me share with our audience here and a little bit about you and why I thought your story would be one to share with our audience and we’ll see how it goes. So Danielle is a speaker, coach, image promoter and author of the upcoming book From the Other Side of the Bed, Allow Faith to transform your perspective through life’s hardest blows. And Danielle is no stranger to that because she has lived through events that would have destroyed others. She’s a double cancer survivor, simultaneously healed of uterine and ovarian cancer, and has also survived battle against Stephen Johnson syndrome. And that’s a really rare condition that I guess only affects about two and one million people, which is crazy. And I’m glad you were able to overcome that. She is also a founder of Global Girls Connect, which helps women discover, articulate and live their passion. And she serves as the executive director of Ritsch Community Services, which provides tools for families to overcome poverty, setbacks and social barriers to live productive and profitable lives. And she’s also an entrepreneur as well. In that at veterans since the age of 13 got an early start this summer, and she’s a licensed cosmetologist and owner of Image Promoters LLC. So you have a lot multi hyphenated background or something. A lot of stuff here. And but I know that one of the things that I guess you’re really passionate about is faith. And and that is part of part of our mission is how to live fully, love deeply and engage authentically. And faith is a big part of that. So I would love it if you could share with our listeners and viewers on YouTube. What is your personal definition of faith?

[00:03:39] Faith is the hope that reaches beyond any situation.

[00:03:49] Can you expand on that a little bit?

[00:03:51] Sure. No, I remember it it’s I remember going through my situation and I cannot imagine I went through it was a series of things. I went through the cancer and Stephen Johnson’s and I lost my husband in twenty nineteen and at about twenty three years of just medical mayhem with him. But he overcame each one of them in every situation. If I did not have something beyond myself, something that knew more than I do, and a power that was stronger than me and my weakest moments, then I would have never made it through just having that hope of a better day. And things can always turn around the possibility. So that’s where my faith actually carried me through my problems. Well, that’s good.

[00:04:47] But were you always a person of faith or was it something that you found as you were facing difficult trials that were like, OK, God, I need your help kind of thing? So how would you how would you describe that for you?

[00:05:07] I was not always

[00:05:11] Able

[00:05:12] Is crazy, even being upbeat, being raised in church. I always have faith it was really bad because whatever I couldn’t fix then my own ability, which is wake me up out of my sleep. It’s my sleep, it’s my joy. So anything that I could work out of my ability was just, oh, you telling me to believe God, but how can I do it even when even in my prayers I’m like, God help me to do it, not how you just have your way and do it, but God help me to do it. So I guess, is that a thing of control? I wanted to control my situation. So God is he’s like, I want control. I want to do it for you, Adam. I don’t need your help. So, you know,

[00:05:51] Like, I can definitely relate to that because letting one of the things I talk about in the book I’m getting ready to publish it is about letting go and letting God. And that was not easy for me to learn. But it’s oh, so powerful when you can learn to do that, because God does work miracles in our lives if we allow it.

[00:06:27] And sometimes we reach that extreme events and that’s when we have to have faith. Don’t choose faith all the time. But when you’re at the end of yourself, you’re at the end of your ability, you’re at the end of your strength, you’re at the end of your hope. And you just say, Lord, help me, you know? Yeah.

[00:06:48] Well, tell me a little bit about you talk about fireproofing your faith. What what are what are some of the keys to being able to do that?

[00:06:57] Oh, I mean, I thought about a Volt and, you know, how you have those things that you keep your very important things that you don’t want anything to happen to, whether it’s on it, whether it’s water, whether it’s by or anything happens to us. I like to think of my faith as being a fireproof. So a couple of things that I just wrote in my walk with Faith is, one, I had to have God’s word in my home because there is I think is the scriptures. Miles, is there, in your word, in my heart that I might spend myself bankrupt. And sometimes what we consider then is we don’t consider it as harsh, but any type of belief is something else is established against God. So just having his word in your heart sometimes, even when it’s hard to believe, had that word in your heart and then trust God’s motives. That’s another thing coming to the realization that God wants to do me good and his love. Everything he does is through love, even when it doesn’t look like love is still love. So if I can trust his motives, it makes me easier to makes it easier to cooperate with whatever he’s doing in my life. And then you have to resist. The devil, of course, is going to come and try to kill you and accuse God, accuse you of not be worthy of God’s love, accused God of not being fair and not being just because of whatever you’re going through.

[00:08:31] So you have to resist the devil you have where to get off at the. And no, you’re right. There are some rights that you haven’t got. And the one thing that I really. He really, really came to an understanding last year, and that was tell God exactly how you feel. You don’t have to dress it up. You don’t have to know how to say it, but just tell them exactly because he already knows your heart by telling him exactly how you feel. Just invites him in to everything because he has to be invited. And unless he’s trespassing in your life. So giving him that access to say, God, I trust you, I trust you, I want you to give me permission, and then we have to obey his word and just, you know, just God is here it is. It’s written. I can do it with your help and depend on grace and mercy. You know, we have those at our at our. In our reach at all times, God, I can’t do this guy want me to do it and God will help you do anything and get through any situation and trust his motives.

[00:09:48] Absolutely. And I know sometimes I think people get hung up, though, in that they expect things to turn out a certain way. But I think if we can let go of that expectation and just trust that maybe sometimes well, not sometimes I would say trust that always God actually has our best interests at heart. And things might not look right now, but it could turn out to be or will turn out to be, I should say, even better than we expected. Have you experienced anything like that in your life?

[00:10:24] Yeah, and I was actually just thinking about it the other day. I did a lesson on online and I started thinking about things that have happened to me even when I had cancer, how I ended up actually share my story and having so many other people experience healing without chemo, without radiation and without pills. And that my testimony. So even though I thought it was happening to me, it was happening for me and it was putting me in alignment with people that may not have somebody of faith in their lives that could help them through this situation or introduce them to God. So even the things that we look at as accidents are part of our life with this will help others.

[00:11:12] So you mentioned a little bit ago you said something about the something about rights and God. Can you expand on that a little bit? What what exactly did you mean by that? You said that we have, like, rights or something.

[00:11:25] Yeah. So in Christ, we have all types of rights. You know, we have the right to healing. We have the right to joy. We have the right to peace. We have the right of overcoming. We have the right to access. We have rights in God and is in God that you have those rights. But, you know, sometimes we don’t practice that. Sometimes we look at it as just a victim and the victim is pretty much you surrender your power. Is that to use your power? So those rights and God, I have a right to overcome. I have a right and I have a right. Oh, God, I just have a right to so many benefits in life that sometimes just life can beat you down, just change your definition of something when you go through a lot. But if you just hold on to those rights that are more than overcome. I see that is those reassuring words that overcome.

[00:12:27] Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And I agree. You’re right. We do we

[00:12:32] Absolutely do have those rights because because

[00:12:35] We were created. I mean, I believe that we’re creating God’s image. And so right there is where everything comes from. Right there.

[00:12:42] Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your

[00:12:46] Book and that you’ve got coming up and how does that how is that going to help people who are struggling even right now is where we’re recording this in January of twenty, twenty one

[00:12:57] And we’re

[00:12:58] Still going through the pandemic and then all sorts of other turmoil that we’ve had here in the United States. We’ve had political turmoil and all that fun stuff.

[00:13:08] So how how how

[00:13:10] Has your how do you see your book

[00:13:12] Is being able to help someone? Well, I see my book being able to help because. It’s in those times that you really find the value and you get down to, I think even during it, even though it’s been very harsh for a lot of people and the people losing people and the uncertainty and all of those things is it still boils down to what is important. And I think for so long we’ve been going, going, going, going, going, trying to accomplish this and sacrificing that which what which is important. So in my book, it talks about it’s me and my husband’s journey through all types of situations that were pretty overwhelming in my life. So when you read this book, it helps you to understand how to control uncontrollable circumstances and it also helps you to understand how to rise above it. You can be in it and you can rise above it. Medical, financial problems, emotional, spiritual, relational, all those things. Also, you can discover the benefits of the challenge. You know, you have to be a pretty strong person to be chosen to go through some things. So there are some benefits to the challenges that you face in life and how to live your best life, how to how to have tragedy and try and see the silver lining, of course, how to fight your faith, how to how to have a how to divorce proof your marriage going,

[00:14:56] You know,

[00:14:57] A part of the state or how to divorce your marriage and how to be intimate without being had to be had to have intimacy without being intimate. I mean, it just goes on how to view weakness as your new strength and how to build yourself up. So it answers a whole lot of just regular everyday things that people go through. But I think it relates to this time doing it because so much is going on. You’re the only person we can control is ourselves and we have to be the only way to control ourselves is grab control of that thinking. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a

[00:15:38] Little bit about your your entrepreneurial journey, because now you’re an entrepreneur. How how do you say how does how does your faith and being able to share your

[00:15:51] Faith, how does that help you as an

[00:15:52] Entrepreneur?

[00:15:54] Well, my first journey was a cosmetologist. So in that journey I started when I was between 12, 13, I do on my own doing hair. And I eventually let me actually own in my own salon for about. That’s 15 years to it, any time you embark upon your promotion, it’s a felony, just every every day is a day of faith because you don’t know who’s going to walk through that door if you’re going to have enough people to book you. Actually, in my faith, because every day I had to look to God because they got in those people through the door, God help me with these will soon be great employees. That helped me. And then as I went on into entrepreneurship, as far as image promoters and things, God just attracted to the right people got open for. Give me a favor, show me where to go, what to do. I don’t know what to do. You know, you’re always learning. But what is different when you have to apply these things and people are people there as well. So that’s where my faith in God what is going to happen today. But he always took care of my money, even even when he had to do it at one time. I feel it was a five thousand dollar credit card. And I was praying to God would just give me the money to pay it back on a computer forever. So it’s things like that. And he just keeps giving these medical bills more and more fee.

[00:17:39] So excellent. Some. Well, so you you are an author and a speaker. Do you work with people too? Because I think I that you’re your coach as well. So do you do you actually go and coach people and how does that work? What are you what are you doing in that respect?

[00:17:59] How do you help people? So one of the things that brings me the biggest joy is talking with people that they have nothing to offer and think that they are not talented enough. They don’t have enough in all of these different things that happen. And just to see them discover what’s already there, because we are still and what you need is already there. And in my even in my personal life, I’ve always tried to keep adding stuff to myself instead of just accepting, accepting God’s design for my life. And when I did, that thing started happening. So that’s my biggest joy to find, to help them to find that which is already there, heal from their pain and and turn that into profit. So that’s wonderful.

[00:18:56] Well, if someone wants to be able to find out more about you and and maybe even get your get your book when it is released, what’s the best way for people to contact you?

[00:19:09] You can visit me at DANIJEL. That’s D and E h bridge dot com.

[00:19:19] Awesome. Well, I’ll make sure that I have that in the show notes. So anyone is listening, but they don’t have a pen handy. If you’re doing something you’ll be able to access it there. Oh. Is there anything else that you think is important that you’d like to share with the show, with our listeners and viewers today regarding Fireproofing Shafe

[00:19:44] That you have mentioned already, what do you think we’re any lasting Feis? There’s always a turn to there’s always a turn on, if you can just hang in there and just go through and never lose your hope, you know, even if it gets a little tiny bit, you know, there’s a reason why God said Mustard’s faith is because it only requires a tiny, tiny bit. And if you could just hold on and hang in the air what you thought was going to kill you will build you up.

[00:20:23] Excellent. Oh, I love that advice. That’s awesome. Oh, thank you so much for joining us today on Live Love Engaged. Danielle, you have been an inspiration and and and a delight to talk with. And I really appreciate you being here.

[00:20:39] Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such an honor.

[00:20:44] Thank you and thank you out there, our subscribers and viewers and listeners, I really appreciate you as well and hope that you will continue tuning in for our next episodes. And until then, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically. Did you know that

[00:21:09] A majority of entrepreneurs tend to discount the importance of their work and a good number feel their success is simply due to luck? I know from personal experience that self-doubt can keep you from having the kind of life and business you desire. That’s why I’ve created a free guide called Uniquely You How to Move from Self-doubt to Self-love in four simple steps to claim your free guide. Go to live, love, engage that gift. That’s live love. Engage dot g i f t.