My Story – Calista Chana

My story

I didn't become a different woman.

I found her.

Beautiful,

Before you begin this journey, I want you to know something: this isn’t just a journal I wrote. I lived it.

There was a time when I loved God and had faith, but struggled to believe in myself. I questioned whether I was enough. I compared myself to other women. I carried hurt behind a smile. I had dreams I was afraid I would never live.

I had faith, but I had no fire. And even when I began healing, I realized I was healing… but I wasn't free.

I fell. I got back up. I experienced rejection. I learned to forgive. I made mistakes. I learned from them. And somewhere along the journey, I found myself, not a new version of me created by success, titles or money, but the woman God had placed inside of me from the beginning.

That’s why I created this journal. And maybe… I created it for you.

Calista Chana

CHAPTER ONE · IDENTITY

I Had to Learn Who I Was

One rainy day, I drove to a women’s gathering with a broken windshield wiper we couldn’t afford to fix — reaching my hand out the window to move it back and forth. I arrived late, one side of me soaking wet, and slipped into a seat in the back, unable to make eye contact. That day exposed something deeper: I had connected my identity to my circumstances. But God reminded me, ” “You are My daughter before anything else.

The stage didn’t make me worthy. I was already worthy before I ever got there.

CHAPTER TWO · HEALING

The Woman Behind My Smile

When I first met my husband, I didn’t even know he was a pastor. When people in the church learned we were building a relationship, I experienced rejection I never expected — untrue words from people who didn’t know me.

I smiled. I moved forward. I built a life. But underneath that smile was still a hurting young woman. When I finally found the courage to tell my story, it stopped being only a source of pain and became part of my healing.

Purpose is not proven by what you dream about. It is revealed by what you are willing to discipline yourself to build.

CHAPTER THREE · PURPOSE

The Day I Stopped Playing Small

There was a season I was simply tired — tired of being broke, of complaining, of waiting for something or someone to change my life. I had faith, but my fire had gone out. One day I cried out, “God, help me! Something has got to give.”

Then I stopped looking at everybody else and looked at myself. The fire came alive again. I stopped merely dreaming and started building — and the greatest evidence of success became the freedom and peace to live what God called us to do.

Purpose is not proven by what you dream about. It is revealed by what you are willing to discipline yourself to build.

CHAPTER FOUR · LEADERSHIP

I Had to Learn to Lead Me

I’ve never been good at quitting. In the early days of our business I worked three jobs to fund our vision. As the businesses grew and ministry demanded more, I carried more, worked longer and slept less — and called it leadership.

But I had to remember I was also a wife, a mother, a woman and a child of God. I had to learn boundaries, priorities and how to rest without guilt.

The first person God entrusted me to lead was me.

CHAPTER FOUR · LEADERSHIP

I either win or I learn. I never lose.

My breakthrough wasn’t that I stopped experiencing difficult things. It was that difficult things stopped having the power to stop me.

Now, beautiful, let’s go find you.