Kasha Jankowski's Second Chance Voice: From Knowing About God to Knowing Him

At eighteen, in Poland, a doctor found a polyp on Kasha Jankowski's vocal cords. She was smoking heavily. "You're like a steam engine," he told her. "Every breath you take, you smoke." Removing the polyp was dangerous, he warned, and no one could guarantee she'd keep her voice at all.

He signed her travel waiver anyway.

She boarded a plane to America two weeks later, rebellious and unconvinced, still smoking, still losing her voice one strained whisper at a time.

Knowing Of God Is Not the Same as Knowing Him

Jankowski grew up, by her own description, in a country that was "God-fearing, but not God-knowing." She knew the crucifix. She knew the story. What she didn't know was the connection between the two.

"I knew of Jesus," she says, "but I never connected the two, that his reason for being on that cross is me."

Looking at the statue as a girl, she would feel a wave of pity and want to look away. "I'm so sorry, but can somebody get him off? Because that looks miserable."

That changed at nineteen, four months into her new life in America, still smoking, still losing her voice. Someone finally said the sentence nobody had said to her before: the only way to turn your life around is to hand it over to Him and start from there.

"I'm in," she remembers thinking. "I've tried everything in life, and I haven't tried that."

The Song With No Sound

The moment that sealed it for Jankowski wasn't a sermon.

She was singing a worship song to her brother through an old pair of Walkman headphones, eyes closed, pouring her heart into it. When she opened her eyes, he was in tears.

"That was the weirdest thing," he told her. "There was not a sound. Not even a hoarse one. Not even nothing. There was no voice out of your mouth."

She dropped to her knees.

"God, if you give me my voice back, I'm yours. I give you my life, my physical being. Please do whatever you wish."

The following Sunday, her pastor asked how her smoking was going. She admitted she couldn't quit no matter how hard she tried. He prayed for her. By the next morning, the craving was simply gone. She waited for the hunger for a cigarette to show up. It didn't.

Her voice took longer.

Over the next six to eight months, it gradually returned.

"I know this is my second chance voice. And I'm going to use it."

Relationship Is the Anchor

Ask Jankowski what she most wants people to remember about her, and she doesn't reach for accomplishments. She reaches for a single conviction, one she describes through the images of maple syrup being boiled down and oil coming through crushing and heat.

Her faith, she says, is "a product of the journey, the process."

"Everything comes and goes as seasons, as assignments change, but who you are with Him, who and how you are with Him in a relationship, that is an anchor in your soul."

She's careful to draw the line between having faith and living transformed by it.

"A lot of people have faith. They believe in God. They know of Jesus. They even know what he did on the cross and what the cross technically accomplished for them, but they really don't live by it."

The cross, she says, shouldn't just be a necklace. It has to come with you.

She reaches for another image when she talks about trust. She once heard a shepherd explain that sheep struggle to lie down when they don't feel safe. Jankowski is quick to acknowledge that she isn't a shepherd herself and can't personally vouch for it.

"So to lay down, the sheep really has to trust the shepherd," she says. "She really, really does, or she will not rest."

And when one wanders, she says, the shepherd doesn't simply call it back. He goes after it, picks it up and carries it.

"It's so good to be carried," she says. "Carried by Him."

Building Rooms Where Others Can Meet Him

That relational conviction is now the engine behind Jankowski's work. She runs a company called EBED, which she describes as a Hebrew word for bond servant. EBED also stands for Encouraging Believers towards Eternal Destiny, a phrase that captures the heart of her work as a prayer strategist and spiritual coach.

Part of her calling is helping people explore identity, authority, calling and what they believe God made them for. She also trains people and teams in prayer and intercession, including bringing that work into business settings.

But the assignment she says God is asking her to focus on right now is more experiential.

Twice a month, she leads a virtual gathering called Prayer Lab. Her purpose isn't simply to talk to people about prayer. She wants them to experience relationship with God for themselves.

"It's more than just a talk. It is more than just a petition. It's a conversation."

In one recent session on communion, she walked participants, in the Spirit over Zoom, into a room at a table with Jesus. She set the scene, gave the teaching and then stopped talking.

"I zipped my lips and handed you over to Jesus across the table, taking you by the hand."

For ten minutes, she prayed and held the space while participants had their own encounters. When she brought the group back, she asked what happened.

"People are like, 'I loved it.' I'm like, don't you love Him? Now you really, really love Him. Now that you shared a table with Him."

One session ended without any debrief at all. Rather than pulling people out of what they were experiencing so they could talk about it, she let the gathering end there.

"It's holy ground," she told them. "Go and be with Him. You don't need me."

She's writing a curriculum from these sessions now, one lesson at a time, at what she describes as God's insistence rather than her own plan.

"I don't put a lid on it," she says, "and neither does God have one."

What to Do With a Voice You Almost Lost

Jankowski's story isn't a tidy rescue narrative, and she's quick to say so. The consequences and aftermath of her choices, she says, lingered for a long time.

But the arc is unmistakable.

A girl who knew about a suffering man on a cross became a woman who knows the God she says paid for her on it. The eighteen-year-old who was warned she might lose her voice now spends her working life using it to build rooms where other people can experience that relationship for themselves.

You don't need me.

Go and be with Him.