When Janna Meyen-Weatherby checked in at the Asian Open in Japan last winter, she was told she was prequalified through to the contest finals. That meant she had four days to kill. But the foggy, rainy weather kept Janna and her longtime friend holed up in the hotel until they could take it no longer.

After three days, they went snowboarding and checked out the contest venue, where another rider asked, “Janna, aren’t you competing?” Janna told the other rider what she’d been told at registration.

“Uh-uh,” the girl said. “They’re calling your name at the top of the course right now, and you’ve already missed your first qualifying run. If you don’t get up there in two minutes, you’re out.”

Janna laughed and hopped a chairliê straight to her turn. No helmet. No practice. No idea what speeds she’d need for the jumps. She asked a friend for a quick course description. Then she characteristically charged it, earning a good enough score to advance to the next day’s finals.

Through it all, Janna remained calm and peaceful. Afterward her friend said, “If this would’ve happened a few years ago, you would have been freaking out and cussing at people and throwing punches. You’d be at the bar already tanked. But you weren’t even stressing. You were all calm. I don’t even feel like I’m with Janna right now.”

“Stuff ’s changed, man,” Janna said and explained that she knew it was in God’s hands.

“It was one of those moments that stoked me out because sometimes I have bad days like everybody else where I’m like, Man, have I even grown and changed?” Janna says. “But your friends say something like that and it reminds me, Man, he’s right. I totally would have lost my marbles five years ago in that situation. Pretty cool.”

Janna Meyen-Weatherby is a whole new person. She’s still one of the best female snowboarders in the world. She’s the only woman to claim a Winter X Games fourpeat, and she was named the No. 1 Most Influential Female Rider in snowboarding history by Snowboarder magazine. But she used to look to snowboarding to try to find her identity. Now she’s experiencing peace and joy that she didn’t know was possible.

Shredder
Janna grew up with snowboarding. She started riding as a sixth-grader at California’s Big Bear in the late ’80s. Snowboard boots didn’t even exist then. Instead, she wore Sorrel snow boots and duct taped them to the board.

Snowboarding clicked instantly with Janna, who had always been a tomboy. At age 6, she began BMX racing against boys. She skateboarded, played soccer and hockey, also on guy’s teams, and was never intimidated. She brawled in hockey and punched out a couple of male snowboarders who dared to pick on her.

It’s no surprise then that determination and aggression have marked Janna’s riding style. Back then, there were fewer girls snowboarding, and Janna preferred to ride with guys who could push her snowboarding progression.

Her dominating career began in 1991 with wins at Nationals and the U.S. Open when she was 13. She developed a reputation for riding like a dude—powerful, higher, more technical—and helped push women’s riding into new, bigger territory. And she racked up contest victories along the way—early on in halfpipe and boardercross before transitioning mostly to slopestyle.

All the while, Janna avoided the cameras as much as possible—despite the sport’s emphasis on media coverage. It was a reflection of the internal struggles and depression she was already beginning to face.

Descent
“Janna is probably one of the most passionate people on the planet,” pro snowboarder and friend Kelly Clarks says. “She just 110-percent loves snowboarding—probably more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

That same all-out mentality applied off the mountain as much as on it. Snowboarding has always had its rebellious streak, and Janna partied as hard as she rode. Part of it was playing pranks and causing mischief, as she calls it. Part of it was to try to fill or forget the emptiness.

“It didn’t matter who I hung out with, it didn’t matter how much I won that day or what people would tell me, nothing mattered. I was in a super-dark spot,” Janna says. “That’s pretty much how I remember life forever. I remember being depressed starting at like 15. It was like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.”

As much as she loved snowboarding, Janna was also controlled by it as she searched for fulfillment. “Back then when I went snowboarding, whether it was at home with friends for the day or at the biggest contest of the season, my value of myself was totally placed on how well I rode,” Janna says.

“If I rode super-super-well that day, then I could kind of tolerate myself. If I rode super-bad, I’d be depressed about it for weeks on end, suicidal, super-mean to people. My whole identity was wrapped up in how well I rode my snowboard.”

Getting drunk or high served as an escape for short periods but left its own painful problems. Janna became bitter and desperate even while her snowboarding success continued.

Where’d My Bro Go?
Conrad is Janna’s brother, as well as her best friend and sidekick—“the grumpy, bitter guy who’d always make fun of people with me and pretty much hated the world with me, like misery loves company,” Janna says.

Each winter Janna travels the world for contests and prime snow. After one month—long trip, she came home to find a different Conrad—he was smiling and happy. It irritated Janna. His explanation was, “I got some new friends, and they took me to church and it’s pretty cool.”

Janna wrote it off as a phase but a few months later went with him to church—the first time in her life. She expected to hate it and find judgmental people. Instead she found warm people who seemed to have genuine peace and happiness.

She wouldn’t admit that she liked it, but Janna kept going back.

“I knew without a doubt I was missing something 110-percent,” Janna says. “I just had no idea what until I started going to church with my brother and hearing the truth.”

After several months, her doubts were gone and she knew she wanted—needed—Jesus. “I had nothing to lose. I was like, If I don’t make this life-changing decision right now, I don’t even know if I’ll be here in a year,” Janna says. “I just went for it. Obviously it was the best decision I ever made.”

Changes
That was a little more than five years ago, and the changes in Janna have been impossible to miss. No longer searching for her identity in snowboarding, she’s found who she is in her relationship with Jesus. Now peace, joy and positivity mark her life. “She actually physically looks different,” Kelly Clark says. “Just seeing the life and joy that she has is contagious. It’s pretty incredible.”

Pro rider Andy Finch laughs about how photographers kid her now about wearing more than black on the mountain. “She’s always got a smile on her face now,” Andy says. “To go from this Darth Vader to, like, happy chick is pretty cool.

She’s walking proof of what God can do in your life. Talk about a 180-degree turn.”

The snowboard industry has noticed, too. Transworld Snowboarding magazine ran an interview with her in October 2008 about the changes God has made in her life.

“It’s rad to see my friends I used to get into mischief with not heckling me but actually admitting that they notice the night and day difference and that they’re stoked for me,” Janna says.

Another big change in Janna’s life is her marriage to Kirk in September 2008. She hopes to have kids eventually but figures she has a few more years of her snowboarding career. For now she’s enjoying her passions: snowboarding and Jesus—and shredding with emotional and spiritual freedom.

“I’ve definitely handed snowboarding over to God and let Him make it what He wants to make it,” Janna says. “That was definitely noticeable just this last trip. There were all these people stressing out around me, and I was like, Really? It’s just a snowboarding contest. It’s definitely not who I am; it’s what I do. That’s a whole different thing.”

Stuff has definitely changed, man.

Jeremy Jones is a freelance writer who lives and snowboards in Colorado. He wishes he could ride half as well as Janna Meyen-Weatherby.