Finding Grace in Every Step and Every Ingredient: Demi-Leigh Tebow & Kendall Vanderslice
This episode mentions violence and may be triggering for some listeners.
Demi-Leigh Tebow: You know, we constantly need that reminder of whose we are, even though we know it. We read Scripture, we memorize verses, but that doesn’t always equate to fully understanding or even fully believing. Something that has been so important to me in my life is surrounding myself with people who can constantly point me back to the truth.
Finding Grace in Every Step and Every Ingredient: Demi-Leigh Tebow & Kendall Vanderslice – Episode #436
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week, we’re joined by Demi-Leigh Tebow, a South African native, former Miss Universe, and wife of NFL superstar Tim Tebow. Demi-Leigh is a passionate advocate for individuals with special needs and disabilities. She discusses how her faith helped her overcome personal challenges, including a life-altering carjacking, and how it now fuels her mission to empower women through her Unbreakable Women’s Workshop.
Later in the episode, we’ll hear from Kendall Vanderslice, a baker, writer, and teacher, who takes us on a profound dive into the practice of bread making. Kendall shares how she discovered baking as her calling, explores the rich symbolism of food in scripture, and reveals how the kitchen can become a sacred place for encountering God.
Let’s begin with Demi-Leigh’s story.
Demi-Leigh Tebow: Hi everyone, I am Demi-Leigh Tebow. I am so excited to be here. I’m a dog mom. I am married to a former football player and I know nothing about football, so that is always very exciting and interesting, especially on the weekends. I am officially a first time author, which I am so excited about. My book is titled A Crown That Lasts. I am originally from the country South Africa, and I am so grateful for the upbringing and the memories that I have been able to make. South Africa truly played such a big role in who I am today, and I’m forever thankful for the South African roots that I have.
Demi-Leigh and Her Sister Franje
My little sister Franje truly is and always will be one of the greatest motivators in my life. I grew up as an only child for the biggest part of my childhood. When I was about to turn ten years old, at my tenth birthday party, my stepmom and my dad gave me a call on the landline and asked if I could run into my mom’s office and receive a fax message. It said, “You are going to be a big sister.”
I just had all the big sister dreams and plans, you know, like teaching her how to play field hockey—which was the sport that I loved playing growing up in South Africa—how to do makeup and hair and go shopping together and having matching outfits.
Franje was born, and at four months old, Franje got diagnosed with a brain dysgenesis. That means that the gray matter in her brain was disrupted, and that was three fold. She was born without a cerebellum, essentially cerebellar agenesis. That really means that she grew up functioning without a small brain. Now, your small brain correlates and coordinates your whole nerve and muscular system, and it left Franje completely dependent on our family for survival. Franje grew up with severe special needs and a lot of disabilities. For a ten, eleven year old, that caused quite an amount of questions.
I think it’s something that we can all probably relate to, whether or not you’ve had a sibling with special needs or disabilities, or maybe you received that unwanted phone call with news that you just weren’t expecting, that just completely hit you out of left field. It can leave us spiraling into so much doubt, and there was a big part of me that really kind of became angry. I didn’t understand why this would be allowed to happen to my little sister. What is the plan and the purpose that our Creator has with her life? I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t find answers to my questions.
I eventually realized that I had a choice to make. I could choose to question God for the rest of my life, or I could choose to trust Him for the rest of my life. I knew choosing to trust Him also meant making peace with knowing that I was not going to have all of the answers, and that that was going to be okay. I was never going to have all of the answers until one day [when] I get to be face to face with my Maker. If He chooses to share that with me, that is when I will know the full picture.
“I eventually realized that I had a choice to make. I could choose to question God for the rest of my life, or I could choose to trust Him for the rest of my life. I knew choosing to trust Him also meant making peace with knowing that I was not going to have all of the answers, and that that was going to be okay.” – Demi-Leigh Tebow
A Night to Shine: Demi-Leigh Meets Tim Tebow
Franje’s life is such a beautiful example of how pain can be used for purpose, and how pain can be turned for something beautiful. Franje actually ended up being my and my husband’s little matchmaker.
My husband’s foundation, The Tim Tebow Foundation, has worked and served and loved on people with special needs and disabilities in various aspects, whether that’s through orphan care and prevention, whether that’s for children with profound medical needs, whether that’s specifically serving children with special needs. One of the initiatives is called Night to Shine, and it is a worldwide celebration for people with special needs and disabilities. And you guessed it, South Africa also has Night to Shine celebrations take place. So to make a long story short, between Night to Shine and my little sister, that is how I ended up meeting my husband.
I am so grateful to have found my life partner and somebody that I genuinely get to fight alongside for some of the most vulnerable people in the world—to bring faith, hope, and love to those in their deepest, darkest hour of need.
A Moment of Pride, A Moment of Terror
I grew up as a young girl watching the Miss South Africa pageants, and I used to be so excited to see the pretty ball gowns and the makeup and the hair. But as I matured and as I grew older, I realized what drew me was the type of woman that the Miss South Africas were, a type of woman that was a leader, that used the community that she had formed with that title to be able to create a deeper and a bigger impact in her city and essentially in her world. And although I didn’t always dream of necessarily becoming Miss South Africa or Miss Universe, I think I always knew that that was the type of woman I wanted to become.
Three months after I was crowned Miss South Africa, I lived through a pretty horrendous life experience. I was on my way to an event as the official Miss South Africa and it was broad daylight, peak traffic hour, about 5:30 in the afternoon. I stopped at this red traffic light just before I was about to turn into the parking lot. I ended up getting surrounded by multiple men. I had a gun pointing to my head, and the moment I tried to get out of that vehicle, the guy on my side of the vehicle grabbed me by the wrist and said, “Get in. You’re going with us.”
But the most horrific part of that experience was not necessarily the man grabbing me by the wrists, or even the gun pointing to my head. The most horrendous part of that story was running up that avenue, knocking on car door after car door, window after window. People had their windows open. They could actually hear what I was saying. They could see and hear the terror in my eyes and in my voice, and nobody would stop to help me. Nobody would stop.
After I’d been running up that avenue, [where] nobody stopped to help me, a young girl—she was nineteen years old at the time—pulled over her little, old, beat up car, and she leaned over, unlocked the little car knob, and led me to safety.
That incident truly served as a catalyst in my life, and I’m so thankful for her for multiple reasons. One, of course, for leading me to a safe space physically. But two, she showed me what it means to be there for somebody in need. She also showed me what it means to be willing to be interruptible, and I think that’s something that we don’t like doing. You know, I don’t like being interrupted. I don’t like being taken off the course of my day. I don’t like stopping to help somebody else in need. Right? That’s uncomfortable. Well, I think that there can be so much blessing in obedience in those moments where we are willing to be interrupted for the sake of somebody else. The ripple effect of goodness that has come from one simple act of obedience is just so encouraging to me.
“I don’t like being interrupted. I don’t like being taken off the course of my day. I don’t like stopping to help somebody else in need. Right? That’s uncomfortable. Well, I think that there can be so much blessing in obedience in those moments where we are willing to be interrupted for the sake of somebody else.” – Demi-Leigh Tebow
The Unbreakable Women’s Workshop
I have been able to start the Unbreakable Conference, where we partner with field experts to educate, equip, and empower women with practical tools and skills on how to handle, prevent, and work through unwanted situations similar to the one that I faced.
That has snowballed into me learning about the fight against human trafficking, learning about the fight against labor trafficking, learning about the fight against online child exploitation. It’s one of those things I feel like where once you know about it, it’s really hard not to do something about it. That is where I find myself today.
I’m just so grateful for the opportunities that have transpired from that really awful, hurtful situation. I think it’s just another testament how when we’re willing, those ripple effects of goodness can end up turning that trial in your life into a triumph in your life.
I feel like winning the Miss Universe title was a victory not just for myself, but it was a victory for my whole nation, my whole country. At the time that I had won Miss Universe, we hadn’t had a Miss Universe title holder in thirty-nine years from South Africa. So talk about a little bit of pressure on my shoulders there, but it truly was one of the greatest honors, I really mean it… to be able to carry the South African flag across my chest, across that stage, and really be a representative for my home nation is something I’ll be so grateful for forever.
I reached my dream, I got my dream job, and I had to go and physically give it to the next very rightful, very worthy winner. I walked off that stage that night after handing over my crown, and nobody could have prepared me for it. Nobody did prepare me for feeling that way. I remember rushing through the airport feeling like I forgot something. But I knew it was something bigger than just a piece of clothing or a shoe or a handbag that was left somewhere. I knew that something that I forgot was something very valuable, something that I really needed.
And it wasn’t until a good time later where I realized the thing that I forgot, that I left behind alongside my Miss Universe crown, was essentially my identity and the worth and the value that I had placed in something that was temporary, something that was never going to last.
In 1 Corinthians 9:25, Paul tells us not to chase perishable crowns. I had succumbed to just, really, a lot of self-pity in that moment. I had to learn that if I truly want to have real confidence in my identity, I am going to have to root my confidence in something other than myself. Something that is fixed. Something that is never changing. Something that is always trustworthy and something that is bigger than myself.
“I had to learn that if I truly wanted to have real confidence in my identity, I had to root my confidence in something other than myself. Something that is fixed. Something that is never changing. Something that is always trustworthy and something that is bigger than myself.” – Demi-Leigh Tebow
The only answer that I have been able to pinpoint as what that is, what is never changing, what is fixed, what is always trustworthy, and what is bigger than myself… the only person that I get to point to is my Maker. I don’t just get to have confidence in myself. I don’t just get to have self-confidence. I get to have God confidence. Why? Because of who He is, who He’s always been. Not just what He promises to do for me in my life, but what He has already done in and through my life.
My diamond and pearl crown did not last. But do you know what will last? The impact that I get to have with that crown, living out my God-given purpose, maybe using that crown as a vessel.
“My diamond and pearl crown did not last. But do you know what will last? The impact that I get to have with that crown, living out my God-given purpose, maybe using that crown as a vessel.” – Demi-Leigh Tebow
Thankful, Even When Our Plans Are Ruined
There are so many things that I just have the most immense amount of gratitude for. I think even the things that have not gone perfectly this year has somehow shown to have a beautiful result in a way—whether that’s a family member that got a diagnosis that we might not have seen coming or a lot of the nos that we get in our life that can lead to something more important, something that is more focused on the plan and the purpose that God has for our lives.
I am thankful for my plans that have been ruined. I am thankful for the wrenches that have been thrown in my plans. Because His plans have been better and bigger and more perfect for me every single time.
“I am thankful for my plans that have been ruined. I am thankful for the wrenches that have been thrown in my plans. Because His plans have been better and bigger and more perfect for me every single time.” – Demi-Leigh Tebow
Let’s read out of Jesus Listens, May 6th:
My loving Lord,
You continually invite me to draw near You, whispering in my heart: “Come to Me, beloved. I have loved you with an everlasting Love. I have drawn you with loving kindness.” I respond to Your beautiful invitation by being still in Your Presence— relaxing and fixing my thoughts on You. And I meditate on the glorious truth that You are continually with me. This rock-solid reality provides a firm foundation for my life.
The world I inhabit is constantly in flux—I can find no solid ground here. So I desperately need to stay aware of You as I go about my day. I know I won’t be able to do this perfectly, but I can return to You time after time, praying: “Jesus, keep me aware of Your loving Presence.” I like to let this prayer continually echo in my heart and mind—drawing me back to You when my thoughts start to wander away.
I’ve found that the more of You I have in my life through living close to You, the more joyful I am. This blesses not only me but others—as Your Joy flows through me to them.
In Your blessed Name, Jesus,
Amen
This passage from today’s devotion just inspires me so much. Especially this part where it says, “Jesus, keep me aware of Your loving Presence.” You know, so often we can be so focused on being perfect when we maybe miss His presence in our life because we are so focused on being perfect. So today, let’s go and focus on being present in His presence over being perfect.
Narrator: To learn more about Demi-Leigh Tebow, please visit www.demitebow.com, and be sure to check out her new book, A Crown That Lasts, you can find at your favorite retailer.
Stay tuned to Kendall Vanderslice’s story after a brief message.
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Our next guest is Kendall Vanderslice: a baker, writer, and teacher whose passion for breadmaking has deepened her understanding of God. In this conversation, she reflects on how baking, rest, and nourishment intertwine with faith, and how food—deeply rooted in Scripture—serves as a powerful means of communion with God and others.
Kendall Vanderslice: My name is Kendall Vanderslice, and I am a baker and a writer. I teach bread baking workshops around the country on how to bake bread as a form of prayer. In my work as a baker over the last decade plus, I have just continually seen new ways that God reveals Himself to us through this practice of baking bread, so it is such a joy to get to share what I have learned through the process of baking with others so that they can meet God in the kitchen with dough between their fingers as well.
“It is such a joy to get to share what I have learned through the process of baking with others so that they can meet God in the kitchen with dough between their fingers.” – Kendall Vanderslice
An Epiphany in the Kitchen
I was always enamored with baking and with the kitchen. From a very young age, I loved baking. When I was anxious, when I was excited, when I was nervous, I would work through any emotion that I had in the kitchen, especially with baking bread. I went on a couple of field trips in elementary school to different bakeries, and I was just enamored by the process, these massive mixing bowls that could transform a huge bag of flour into dough in just a matter of minutes, and then this dough could grow exponentially over the course of several hours. I just thought it was an amazing thing. And then by the end of high school, I hit this point where I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life, what my next steps were. And I was very stressed over, What is it that I am supposed to do?
I was raised in a community in the church that really emphasized doing big things for God with our life.There was this emphasis on making your life meaningful and serving God in big ways with the work that we do. And I didn’t know what that should look like for me. And so to process through those questions, I turned to the place that I always turned when I was stressed, and I began baking. And in this process of baking to try and process what I should do with my life, I realized, Oh, the baking itself is the thing that God has called me to. And so the last decade and a half has been this journey of realizing that the process of baking is, in and of itself, something really significant. That it is a gift to my immediate community. It is a gift to the church at large. And through this work of teaching people how to bake as prayer, it gets to be something even bigger than I could have imagined. But the simplicity of baking itself is, I think, a really holy calling. And I am really grateful to be able to do this work.
“The simplicity of baking itself is, I think, a really holy calling.” – Kendall Vanderslice
The Deeper Meanings of Food in Scripture
We see food present in Scripture from the very beginning, the story of the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 are these stories of God creating humans and placing them in this garden that is full of delicious fruits to eat, and God telling them that their job is to tend to this delicious creation and to enjoy it. They commune with God by enjoying the fruits of what God had made, which is literally fruits on trees. This act of eating is a part of delighting in God and delighting in God’s creation. But we also see in these very early chapters of Scripture that there was one restriction on what these humans could do, and it was a restriction on what they could eat. The story unfolds that this temptation just was so great. These first humans gave in, they consumed this forbidden fruit. And then the rest of Genesis 3 is the story of the ramifications of that fall.
And so all throughout Scripture, we see the simultaneous tension of food being a way to find communion with God and with one another, and yet also food being this reflection of the deep brokenness of creation.
Now this story is paralleled in the story of the Last Supper. That was a meal that brought death and destruction into the world, a meal of forbidden fruit. And yet it is a meal of Christ’s body and blood, this bread and this cup that God marks the restoration of creation and God’s restoration of relationship with us.
And so then that story is paralleled once again in Revelation. We see this imagery of a marriage supper of the lamb. We see this imagery of the tree of life once again. A tree that yields fruit all year round. And that contributes to the flourishing of community and the healing of nations.
And so we see this kind of story, this rhythm of food, marking the brokenness of creation, and yet also food being a means and a reminder of God’s promise to restore creation all the way ahead to this imagery of Revelation, where food once again is the source of pure joy and delight without that twinge of brokenness.
Symbolism in the Science of Baking Bread
Bread is at the same time incredibly simple and infinitely complex. So at its most basic, it is made of four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. And you can make bread with lots of other kinds of ingredients as well. Once you add eggs or butter or sugar or oil, you change the texture of the bread in some ways and you get a more tender loaf instead of a crusty loaf. So there’s this infinite complexity of bread as well, the strains of yeast that are used to leaven the dough, the temperature and humidity in which the dough is raised, the different additions that are included in that recipe can make a whole array of complex kinds of breads.
But at its most basic, it is just flour, water, salt, and yeast. And when you mix together flour and water, the flour immediately undergoes a series of transformations. So that flour has within it these two proteins called glutenin and gliadin. And as soon as water touches them, they begin to unravel and form bonds with one another and develop a protein called gluten. And once this transformation begins, it can never be undone. I like to think of this process, in a way, as similar to our baptism. There is this mysterious transformation that begins when we are baptized, and we get to spend the rest of our life, our faith journey, learning more. And then the grain—it releases the starches that are naturally present inside. So as the yeast wakes up, it begins to eat its way through those starches that are naturally present in the grain. And as that yeast eats, it releases carbon dioxide gas, which gets trapped into that protein network. And that’s what allows our dough to grow.
The entire process of baking bread is this series of transformations and these small deaths that lead to new life. So you start with this grain that has been harvested, that’s been dried and ground into flour, this grass that is now dead. But when you add the water and the yeast, it is brought back to life. And then as it grows over the course of the next several hours, it develops its texture and it develops its flavor, and then it sacrifices itself in the oven. This dough dies once again to become the food that is the core of the human diet throughout most of human history. So we have this picture of death and resurrection all woven into the process of baking bread. I think it is no small matter that Jesus then chose bread as the central element of the communion table. That bread is this picture of death and resurrection, the sacrifice of this dough to bring life to those who eat it the same way that Jesus sacrificed Himself to bring life to those of us who believe in Him.
“We have this picture of death and resurrection all woven into the process of baking bread. I think it is no small matter that Jesus then chose bread as the central element of the communion table.” – Kendall Vanderslice
Now, one of the humbling things about this is that the majority of the flavor and the texture in the bread are developed while both the dough and the baker are at rest. If we are actively involved in trying to manipulate this bread from beginning to end, we’re going to have a really terrible loaf of bread. Instead, we have to let this dough rest for a really long time, and we have to trust that the transformation that needs to take place is going to take place in that time of rest.
I encounter people all over the place who, like me, have a really hard time with rest. When we try to rest, we think about all that is not getting done when we are taking the time to slow down. Here in the west, we tend to equate rest with laziness sometimes. We think that rest is only a reward if we get everything done that we need to get done. But rest is actually something that God both commands us to do, and also invites us to do. From the very beginning of creation, God weaves rest into the rhythms of the created world. On the seventh day of creation, God rested and delighted and enjoyed the work, the fruits, of God’s labor. In the same way, we are invited to rest, not as a reward for what we’ve gotten done, but as a means of delighting in God’s creation and being reminded that we were created to take care of and delight in this delicious and beautiful world.
“We are invited to rest, not as a reward for what we’ve gotten done, but as a means of delighting in God’s creation and being reminded that we were created to take care of and delight in this delicious and beautiful world.” – Kendall Vanderslice
And so I have started to think in a different sort of way in relationship to rest. I have let the bread teach me not to think in terms of what is not getting done when I’m resting, but instead to think in terms of if I do not rest, what is not going to happen. If the dough does not rest, it’s never going to become delicious, and it’s never going to become easy to digest. And in the same way, if I do not rest, what am I not allowing God to do in me? What am I missing out on by refusing to take time to slow down and to rest?
Faith is Not Just in the Mind
I think it’s really easy to think about our faith being something that takes place in our minds and that being something separate from how we live out the rest of our day-to-day lives, and especially how we navigate the world in this human body that we live in and have to take care of and have to feed and have to bathe and have to navigate the world in this body. But God created us in these human bodies, and God created us in this beautiful, nutritious, and delicious world. And it is through these human bodies and these senses of taste and touch and smell and sight that we get to understand the rest of creation more fully. And through understanding creation, we get to know our Creator even better.
Narrator: To learn more about Kendall Vanderslice, visit www.kendallvanderslice.com, and be sure to check out her new book, Bake & Pray: Liturgies & Recipes for Baking Bread as a Spiritual Practice, at your favorite retailer.
If you’d like to hear more stories about nourishing our souls, check out our interview with Molly Stillman.
Next week: Alyssa Bethke
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from author Alyssa Bethke, who encourages us that when things fall apart, we can still find God in the mess.
Alyssa Bethke: Our undoing is not something to be afraid of, but it actually is an invitation from God that that’s when He can mend us back together and untangle us. And so it’s really a beautiful thing.
