In this introductory episode of her new podcast "Conversations with God," Tami Grgas shares her personal faith journey, the motivation behind the podcast, and a vivid testimony of divine guidance. She explains that many Christians lack a clear understanding of prayer, which she reframes as an ongoing conversation with the Trinity, drawing from her own experience of being raised Catholic, moving frequently as a military spouse, homeschooling her son, and caring for an elderly mother with dementia. Tami critiques judgmental attitudes in many churches, especially toward LGBTQ people, and emphasizes Jesus' inclusive ministry. The centerpiece of the episode is a dramatic driving incident in England: while lost on a dual carriageway, she prayed for direction, noticed a spill of jelly beans (a cue for her low blood sugar), and received a series of internal prompts that led her safely home, confirming her belief that God was actively guiding her. She describes how she now practices conversational prayer—thanksgiving for everyday details, listening for internal signs, and speaking openly with God. The episode ends with a promise of more content, both as a podcast and YouTube video.
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Hi, my name is Tami. I have been a follower of Jesus Christ since 1999, late 1999, and I feel led by God to start this podcast, and I am naming it Conversations with God. And the reason behind this podcast is that I have noticed, um, online and in my church life, I feel like a lot of people don't know how to pray. And I do this because when I was younger, I went to Catholic Church. And I got lost within the Catholic Church. My husband was surrounded by Catholicism both in school and church, and he's much better off than I am. I wasn't led to understand that praying and being with God being with Jesus, being with the Holy Spirit, the Trinity. I was not taught that it is all about having a relationship with our Lord and Savior. It's not just about praying in the moment and then dropping it. It's not what it's about, guys. I want a lot of you to understand this, especially those who have been hurt by the church. I have been. It's been a long journey to find the right church. We found a few in our travels. I married a military man and we had our baby in 2005 and we up and moved to England for 3 years, then Nebraska, then DC, then upstate New York, then back to Nebraska. And prior to those moves, I was— I'm from Canada, and I moved down to Tucson, Arizona to be with him and then marry him in Vegas. And then we moved to California, and from there we moved to England. So, you know, there's been a lot of moves, a lot of searching for churches. And we have found a few churches that we absolutely loved. And some of them, we didn't leave because we didn't love them. We left because of a lot of changes happening sometimes. And that happens in churches. And I think that churches need to understand that. Mm-hmm. But our most recent church search is more along the lines of, I see quite a few churches out there. I mean, I haven't been to that many, guys. I mean, I say quite a few, quite a few to me, all right? There are like thousands and thousands of churches out there to check out. And I've learned to go online and watch them online for a while and that kind of stuff to to kind of vet them out, to figure it out. And for me, I've noticed in my church searching, quite a few churches are extremely judgmental. They, um, they don't want the LGBTQ community. Um, they want them to come to church, but they want church to change them, is the perception I get about it. And that's not— no, no, that's not how it's supposed to be. We are supposed to love— like, okay, when Jesus came, all right, when he was walking his ministry, what kind of people did he talk to? People. Did he go hang out with all the religious people? No. No. That's what he was trying to stop, was the hierarchy and the worshiping of religious leaders. That was part of what he wanted to stop. He wanted us to understand that when he was taken to the cross, when he took on all of that sin and all of that debt that we held, he died for me. If I was the only person on this planet, he would have died for me. And that's the same for you. Yes. He would have died just for you. And when he said on the cross, he said something about God, "Why have you forsaken me?" or something like that. My understanding of that is that he— Jesus and God They had a very close-knit relationship from the time of his birth until that time on the cross. They were like this all the time. Jesus went and spent hours, sometimes days in the desert praying, talking to God, okay? And when he said that when he was on the cross, that was when God had to disconnect from him and let him take on all that sin so that we could be wiped clean. Okay? That is my understanding. I'm not a theolog— theologian. I can't even say the word. I am not a minister. I'm just a person who follows Jesus Christ and tries to live my life the way Jesus wants me to, the way God wants me to, the way my Father in Heaven, his dreams for me is what I'm trying to figure out. And it's hard. I have to say, I— I'm sorry. Personally, I've had some, apparently they're prophetic moments where God will ask me to do things and to say things. And I've been resistant to it a few times, but then after the resistance, I would do it. And then I usually challenge God later on. 'Cause that's part of who I am. Oh, and by the way, sorry about my hair. I don't know if you noticed the chaos behind me. I have a little hair salon over that side, and I'm kinda cleaning up and stuff, and this is day 1 of having wavy curly hair when you wanna keep it wavy and curly, okay? So, just lettin' you know, this isn't gonna be me all the time. Okay. But I just want to be me out here, okay? I just— I don't care. I don't care. If you don't like how I look, if you think, "Oh, this lady's crazy," and you don't want to listen to me, then don't. I don't care. Well, no, I do care. Because I want you to understand about Jesus. But if I'm not your person, go find a different person for you. Who resonates with you. I am a— okay, so I was a homeschooling military mom for several years. Excuse me. Our son is 20 now, and his high school years were through the COVID crap. And so he kind of backed off. We, we finished homeschooling, but we didn't. I've never done. It's just the reality of it. Once you, once you homeschool, he, he and his father built a computer. He just kind of spent some time decompressing, getting to know who he was a little more. My elderly mother moved in with us, so we were caring for her. Still am. Uh, actually have someone coming today to assess her to go into a nursing home, which she needs. She has, um, dementia and it's transforming into Alzheimer's right now. So it's, it's very touch and go. But he— Mm-hmm. He wants to make people laugh. He wants to be a voice actor, actor, film producer, not a producer, but he wouldn't mind getting behind the camera. So he is now in college. He's going to Wayne State and he's studying film. And he's in the drama club. He's loving it, and I'm loving that he's there. However, that means he's not here. That means he's not here to help me with my mom, which was really hard on him. Um, yeah, it's just been difficult. And within the next year, I'm hoping to have Mom somewhere so that I can truly figure out my life all over again. And right now, I want to talk to you about having a conversation with God. This is how I pray. I— I pray. I don't like to call it prayer because of how the Catholic Church approached prayer. I like to call it conversation. So there are several different ways I do this. My number one way though is when I'm in the car. A long time ago when we lived in England, I had a moment with God. Mm-hmm. That I— he's done some magical things in my life. He really has. I came from kind of a— life could have been really bad for me if I had stayed in the situation I was. But I met my husband in an internet chat room. Mm-hmm. Moved to America from Canada. We had this baby creature in 2005, awesome little boy. I'm also a type 1 diabetic, so that was kind of a hard walk for me, get through the pregnancy, having a healthy baby. Had a healthy baby boy, yay, I win, woo-hoo! But I'll tell you those stories later. Okay. The story I wanna get to right now is when we were living in England. And this is the second time my husband deployed while we were there. We had just, when we first moved there, we moved into like this tiny dollhouse, like seriously, only dolls should live in there. It was really small, no closets, like it was just insane. We had a garage, which we were excited about. But Paul could park in the garage, but then he couldn't get out of the car. So yeah. So we had friends who lived on a pig farm, and their— it was like an attached house, you know, like one house on this side, one house on this side. And their neighbors moved out. So they told us about it, and we got to move in there. It was great. So we had just moved in there. It was further from base than the other house was and a bit of a— like you had to make this— you had to go around the giant 5-way traffic circle the wrong way. Anyways, everything's backwards there when it comes to driving. But so you get onto the dual carriageway, which is a highway. And you immediately had to turn left. And I was driving, James was cranky, he was like a year and a half at that time. Um, and you know, he was getting a little cranky. I missed the turn and Like, we had only been there for a few months and I had no idea what I was doing next because I didn't know how to get to, like, you had to go, like, cross country and it was a big thing. So I just kept driving 'cause I didn't know what to do until I found an exit and I started talking to God. God help me. I don't know what I'm doing. God, I need to get home. I don't know how to get there. Paul's not here. It was getting later in the day. It wasn't quite dark yet, but it was, you know, dusky. And so I'm driving along praying, and in my head I'm like super confused and super like, It was just, I didn't feel right. And I honestly don't know where these came from, but all of a sudden something fell over on the car seat beside me. And I looked over and it was a bunch of jelly beans. And I was like, "Oh, my blood sugar's going low." So I started eating jelly beans. Mm-hmm. And I'm driving and there was an exit and I was like, "Should I get off here?" And I heard, "No." Okay. And it was probably, I can't even remember how many, like 2 or 3 exits down the dual carriageway until I was told to get off, get off here, turn this way, turn that way. And I swear on the, 'cause I had to like, go cross-country somewhere else. And then he got me onto, I think it was just one other dual carriageway going the opposite direction. And I swear Jesus was sitting beside me. During that time, God also helped James to calm down. Mm-hmm. And God help me focus on getting home. And they did. God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, they were all with me, guiding me home, telling me when to get off the highway. And like as soon as I got off the highway, it was kind of— you had to kind of go backwards way to get to I don't know how. It was God, okay? 'Cause I couldn't have done that myself. So God gets me home. I park the car. James is sleeping. And I just started crying. And God says, "Check your blood sugar." So I'd been eating jelly beans this entire drive. It was probably like a 20-minute drive. Mm-hmm. And I checked my blood sugar and it was 54. Supposed to be 100. Uh, I start feeling low usually around 60. And the fact that it was 54 and I'd been eating all those jelly beans, I was just like, whoa. Mm-hmm. That could have been like really scary. Really, really scary. So that was one of the huge moments in time for me with God. And I've had a few of these that I will talk about— well, more than a few now. But that moment in time— Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, but that was one of them that I was just like, I can never deny God. Never. Even when— because I still have those moments that I'm like, where are you, God? Why are you being so quiet right now? But I have to tell you, God wants you to talk to him. God wants to create a close relationship with you. Okay? I don't want you to feel like it's always, "Our Father who art in heaven." All right? You can if that's what you want to do. That's fine. But don't just drop it there. Keep it going. I— I just thank God for things every day. Driving, I'll notice the clouds are beautiful and blue and what— the sky's blue and the clouds are fluffy white. Now, thank God. Thank you, God. Those are beautiful clouds. Oh, thank you, God. Look at those trees. Those are beautiful. Just thank him. That's how you can start it, okay? That's how I started it years ago, is I just started being thankful, thanking him for everything I saw. And I now have full-on conversations with him. I don't always hear him talking back, and when I do, it's usually in my head, and sometimes it's really loud. But that's how he talks to me. He can talk to you in a different way. He can show you pictures. He can give you visions. Mm-hmm. He can just— you can be talking to him and asking him questions and then he'll show you a sign that just resonates with you and makes you go, "Oh, okay, you're talking to me." Mm-hmm. So a big part of it is being more aware of when he's talking to you. So this is the first video. There's going to be more. Um, I believe my mother's up now, so I got to go get her breakfast. So I hope you come back. Uh, this will be in a podcast and it will be on YouTube. Thank you. Thank you.
