Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
295. Your Body Tells a Story
What happens when we truly listen to the signals our bodies send us? Dr. Chuck DeGroat joins us for a transformative conversation on healing, self-awareness, and spiritual connection, inspired by his latest book, "Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering." Together, we explore the powerful metaphor of an inner dashboard and how it can guide us toward the self-care we often neglect.
We discuss everyday practices for finding peace and fostering a sense of home within ourselves, even in the face of life's pressures. Through personal stories and practical techniques, we encourage you to engage in ongoing self-care and to create a grounded state of being, making this dialogue a resonant call to nurture inner peace and heal hidden wounds.
Order Chuck's New Book: Healing What's Within
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Today's episode is brought to you in full by Heartlift International, a 501c3 dedicated to making home and family the safest, most secure place on earth. Learn how you can donate and support the podcast at heartliftcentralcom. Now settle in for today's remarkable conversation with Janelle. Wherever you find yourself today, may these words help you become stronger in every way.
Speaker 2:Today's heartlifting reading from Healing what's Within by Dr Chuck DeGroat in his new book Healing what's Within Coming Home to Yourself and to God when You're Wounded, weary and Wandering. I'm reading from chapter three the Body Tells a Story, learning to Listen. Erin is a busy mom in her mid-30s not given to slowing down. After all, she has three children to raise and a husband whose business travel leaves her parenting solo. Quite often, during one of our first sessions together, I ask her how she is doing. She blushes and blurts out I'm running on empty and I didn't even see the warning light.
Speaker 2:Erin has learned to ignore her gut feelings, unaware of the storm brewing within. She has become more and more impatient with her youngest, sometimes ignoring his cries altogether. She has lost weight at a pace that has worried her closest friends. They notice her increasing distance, not answering texts, not showing up for coffee at their weekly gathering. She can't sleep at night. She sometimes skips her scheduled therapy sessions and she doesn't really feel like eating. After accidentally falling asleep and missing her children's afternoon school pickup, she called me in a panic, apologizing profusely for missing some sessions and asking for my earliest appointment.
Speaker 2:During our session. Erin expects a guilt-laden chastisement, perhaps some condemnation for being a bad client and a bad parent. But I sense her quiet suffering and meet her with a tender gaze, thanking her for asking for what she needed. She sits on my couch and exhales tears immediately welling. That feels strange and good, she says with a delighted smile. Her body seems to unfurl, her hands releasing their grasp on the arms of my office chair. I think your body is happy you're here. I tell her yeah, I've been kind of pushing everything down, kind of ignoring it all. She says there's no rush, but maybe you can begin to pay attention a bit more to what's happening within you. I note she closes her eyes and places her hand on her chest, rubbing it gently, tears again emerging. It's time, time, she says.
Speaker 2:Chuck writes about our inner dashboard. Sometimes we drive inattentive to the dashboard, warning lights flashing before our eyes. Our lives are busy. There are emails to return, groceries to buy meetings, meetings to attend, bills to pay leaky faucets to fix diapers, to change bosses to please and snow-covered driveways to shovel, at least in West Michigan. Our bodies adjust to the adrenaline-fueled survival game of life. We keep our heads above water most of the time, our ailing and weary bodies drifting below, tossed in the currents, we ignore what's happening within. Hello, heartlifters, I'm still smiling because today is just a great day. We have with us our favorite, our favorite pastor, spiritual director, professor Dr Chuck DeGroat. Chuck, you're honoring us again with a revisit, thank you, thank you back to my heartlifting community, who needs your words.
Speaker 3:Well, it seriously feels like an honor to be with you. The conversations that we have feel so easy, right, and I don't know what it is. I think you and I just connected the first time and I love that, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, Chuck, in your new book you tell us we can't always control what happens to us, but we can discover how to heal the hidden hurt it leaves behind. So, wow, Drum roll please. This new book is amazing Healing what's Within, Coming Home to Yourself when You're Wounded, Weary, Wandering. Now, how long does it take you? I will only ask one writer question to come up with that subtitle. It's just amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's all the publisher when it comes to these things, right, and I have a great publisher, a great editor named Jillian Schlossberg, and she and I went back and forth because I originally wanted to call it the Body Tell. The body tells the story. You know, it was like um, but it was what I heard from a number of publishers when I pitched. It was oh, this is too derivative. It sounds like the body keeps the score, but I. But then to work with a, a great publisher who really understands your heart, you know, and um, the, the title that you got, they change it a little bit. I wanted to add coming home to yourself and to God when you're wounded, weary and wandering, and it's very. Someone caught this and I was really grateful and you probably see the picture. Oh, so on that side, the return of the prodigal son. It's very Henry Nowen-ish you know, I mean.
Speaker 3:I've lived in that frame for 25 plus years more than that probably, you know and so I think sometimes the best work we do is we're just sort of leaning on those, you know, those really wise sages that we've learned from, like Henry now, and coming to home to yourself and to God when you're wounded, weary and wandering, just felt like, oh, I feel at home with that title.
Speaker 2:It's so good. Wandering just felt like, oh, I feel at home with that title, it's so good. Well, just one of the main themes that I pulled out that I wasn't really going to start here, but I feel like I will is when you write about the practice of coming home to yourself, because I feel like that's what's needed. It is a practice I might call it heart work in my work as a therapist or inner work, but I feel, and I feel that's why this book is resonating in every nerve fiber of my being. So you write in it very honestly. You've written honestly about your journey before, but I think this is even deeper.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the most honest. For sure, it's so honest, chuck.
Speaker 2:It's so honest. And where are you? Because you do ask that question. Where do you find yourself today? But, Chuck, where do you find yourself in coming home to yourself? How did this book? Because I know this book had to be a deep inner process for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question and that's, you know, that's one that we could almost just spend the whole time on, right, because I think that that's just sort of the life's journey and I turned 50 almost four years ago now journey, and I turned 50 almost four years ago now and I think there was a lot of reflection as I was approaching 50, because I really did hope that when I turned 40, I would have sort of arrived. You know that.
Speaker 3:I would have been at a place of greater maturity, and I've been steeped in Henry Nouwen and Thomas Merton and all the good wisdom you know, and then I think my 40s were tumultuous, they were challenging. I was a pastor in San Francisco. I was pushing myself hard, I was running away from some deep wounds of spiritual abuse that I experienced 10 years earlier. And I was a therapist. In therapy, I was a spiritual director offering spiritual direction and I was running from myself Right and so yes, I consciously, but not consciously, right.
Speaker 2:So this is where the trauma comes in and speaks a lot to trauma. We're going to get there.
Speaker 3:So hold on heart lifters.
Speaker 2:but you talk about that San Francisco time as well as the fog of San Francisco. Okay, but this isn't something that, yeah, beautiful metaphor. By the way, Gossamer fog is one of my favorite phrases in writing, but it's like I don't think you were conscious. This is what I want everyone to because I am in now, one of those coming out of the fogs. Where how could I not know this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, I think it's embarrassing to talk about. In some ways, right Right, given my own, like my work and my story, I wanted to think that I was maybe a little further along or that I would have gotten to a place where I would have arrived little further along, or that I would have gotten to a place where I would have arrived. And I think that's why I was sort of despairing when I was closing in on 50, because I think even in some of my writing I tried to put together some of the pieces. I had written a book called Wholeheartedness and that was really which is oh, it's my go-to.
Speaker 2:I promise you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for that, Come on.
Speaker 2:Artlifters, you probably already have it because Chuck and I talked about it before.
Speaker 3:Talked about it. Yeah, I mean, I think that that was really a reckoning with where I was during those days, in many ways right. And so I think, you know, I think the whole process of turning 50, some of the reflection around, that I realized I am still so alienated from myself at times, so disconnected from myself, from others, and I think it's a product of a lot of things right that we could get into. Some of it has to do with some of the pain I experienced in ministry, some of the spiritual abuse. Some of it has to do with my own story and upbringing my own story and upbringing.
Speaker 2:Some of it just has to do with the expectations that are on those of us who are pastors and therapists.
Speaker 3:And then I think, as someone who has wrestled with a lot of shame over the years, I keep shame at bay by working harder, being busy performing, avoiding, really avoiding a lot of the painful inner conversation. And so you know, this book was hard to write from that perspective, because I think it well. It was accompanied by a lot of work, my own work, of going back within to reckon with some of the wounds that I think maybe I thought it healed more than they had healed- so yeah, you write phrases like this.
Speaker 2:Well, it starts with I was fired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a great first sentence, by the way. There are so many good sentences in here. You write what happened. This wasn't about all the messy details. We want the gossip, we want the juice. Why were you fired? All that blah, blah, blah. But you go. This is about what happened within me, which I love from the very get-go of the book. And then you write these phrases that I have actually heard from clients in this office right here. I'm stewed and stormed inside, but on the outside I look pretty perfect. Okay.
Speaker 2:Then you say something that I recently dealt with this constant churn. I couldn't believe you use the word churn. How do you describe? I'm just so curious because I want to see if it relates to living with that constant churn. And then you write I was nursing a constant nagging anxiety and I was postured for the possibility of more pain. Oh my gosh, that's like I can't get any further from that. Like postured for the possibility of more pain. Oh my gosh, that's like I can't get any further from that. Like postured for the possibility of more pain. What is that constant churn, was it?
Speaker 3:I was. You know, I was trained as a therapist back in the mid nineties and I was trained to do talk therapy. In other words, I was trained to invite people to reflect on their lives and their stories all really important parts of the therapeutic process. But what I discovered I think much later was because there were some significant changes in the world of therapy and practice that I was very disconnected from my own body and my own nervous system and that churn is now what I call a sympathetic nervous system storm that I didn't realize that I was bouncing perhaps between fight I have four Fs for the sympathetic nervous system fight and flight, and fawn and find, and I was sort of bouncing between these in an effort to survive.
Speaker 3:And the reality is is I think this is what's scary, and I, you know I wrote this book on narcissism in the church and I use this word vulnerability F-A-U-X, and I was talking autobiographically, like I think that there are some of us who can be vulnerable, seem vulnerable, but we're really operating out of that storm, that churn and uh and, and so I've had to pay attention to my body in in ways that you know, over the these last uh, let's see, probably 14 years or so of of work.
Speaker 3:Uh, after, as I describe in the book, a real serious medical incident, I've had to really start paying attention to my body in ways that I wasn't paying attention before, and that's been a journey. I can live functionally very disconnected from my body, very in my head. I could stay very busy, and the reality is is I'm kind of scared of my anxiety. I have a lot more anxiety than I want to, kind of scared of my anxiety. I have a lot more anxiety than I want to let on, and depression for that matter. And when I'm attuned to that I don't feel quite like I'm competent to be a professor. By the way, that's why I have so many books I accumulated to sort of tell people that I knew what I was doing and I had it all together while remaining afraid of what people really thought.
Speaker 3:You know that they'd eventually find out that I really don't have what it takes, that I'm an imposter, and so it's about that coming home and really is about attuning to to your own heart, to returning to yourself, as I talk about in the book, the practice of returning to yourself, which is scary because we don't like ourselves a lot of the time. I don't like myself a lot of the time, so I think now that it'll probably take another 50 years and I'll still be looking to arrive at some point, and I don't think I'll ever arrive right to arrive at some point, and I don't think I'll ever arrive, Right, I don't think we will, but I do think it is very disorienting and disconcerting.
Speaker 2:Uh, I have been sharing with my heart lifters my recent, you know. Oh, there can't be more. Are you kidding me? You know, uh, I just sat in a neurologist bathroom after I had a diagnosis and I was just like she looked at me.
Speaker 2:She said you got to stop. And I'm like I just went in the bathroom, I was like I don't know how I thought I had, yeah, it's so subconscious, it's so stored, you know, deep down in that sympathetic nervous system. I mean, I'm all about trying to understand my nervous system. That's where the work happens. I mean you, you posture this question after you give us all of those somatic like those are just somatic affects. Okay, if we're going to be all therapeutic here, the the constant stewing, storming, constant churn. I just wrote wow, that is the body telling its story. I love that title. By the way, I do think people. I say the body keeps a score 85 times a day, but now it's like the body keeps a story and the body tells a story and the Holy Spirit is trying so desperately in so many of us to have us pay attention. Yeah, and we better pay attention, because I know my body. I have just been told. If you don't pay attention, you've been given many, many chances.
Speaker 2:But you do say why do we cope rather than confront this ache of disconnection? And many of us don't know how lost we are why don't we Chuck? Why? Why? I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted to situate the book, you know this, in a larger story, right, In a sort of a meta story. And so I go back to a really familiar one, maybe the most familiar one Genesis 3, where we first experienced that ache, that disconnection, that alienation, you know, and then those nine questions of God. Where are you? Who told you, God showing up in a way, attending to us and inviting us to attend to ourselves? And so I think, on the one hand it's a very old story, right, it's a primal story.
Speaker 3:I think that there's a kind of primal trauma and inheritance, you know, within us that is an inheritance of disconnection to some degree, you know. I think what's more fundamental is God's image within us of worth and belonging and purpose. But I do think that there's this inheritance of trauma, of alienation, of disconnection. So good, Chuck. But then there are our own stories, you know, and the things that happened to us and the things that we were supposed to experience that never did happen, and we've got to reckon with those realities in our lives. And I think, you know, I don't, I don't think that I, I, I I'd started to look at my own life and my own story. Uh, again, I was a therapist, I was a pastor, I was doing this work with people. Yes, it took. It sometimes takes pain, disappointment, loss, failure, failure and health issues. In my case, probably all of the above right for us to awaken to the reality that we are radically disconnected from ourselves, Right.
Speaker 2:That's just you right. An echo, an echo from Genesis 3. I've already echoed it myself. Where do you find yourself today? Is a beautiful way to maybe amplify the question of God saying where are you? And then you write. Genesis 3 is an invitation to be curious, to awaken the ancient whisper of love. Oh my God, yeah, amidst the ache of alienation, awaken the ancient whisper of love.
Speaker 3:May.
Speaker 2:I use that as a title for a book. Yeah, I've been writing a lot about love and when I read that I was like, yeah, awaken, awaken to the ancient.
Speaker 3:It's there, it's already there.
Speaker 2:It's already there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what does that mean? What is the ancient whisper of love? The ancient whisper of love.
Speaker 3:So I grew up in a tradition In fact, I teach in a seminary that is a part of a tradition. Our seminary has shifted, maybe, in a more generous direction but a tradition that says what's deepest about you is what's wrong with you, and that's the Reformed tradition. To some degree, in some certain, some spaces within reformed tradition, you are, you're, totally depraved, which is to say for many, uh, you are bad to the core, you're rotten to the core, and that's what's deepest about you. What's interesting about that, though, is, in the psychological world, we can often, uh, believe that about ourselves too, like we get a diagnosis. I remember the first time I went to a therapist and I got a code and a diagnosis, and I thought well, it was a disorder. So it's interesting. Both the theological tradition and the psychological tradition use the language of disorder, and me being who I am and wrestling with a lot of shame, thought well, now I have theologians and psychologists telling me I'm disordered to the core, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is great, and this is just great.
Speaker 3:That's just painful. That's a painful reality. I think what I think I've been wrestling with over the years, not just from contemporary practices of embodiment, of returning to ourselves our bodies befriended, all the things that you and I could probably talk about for an hour but ancient practices of returning to our breath and our bodies that were there in the early centuries of the church, among the desert, mothers and fathers, the contemplatives, these practices of returning to ourself. This isn't contemporary psychobabble, this is really ancient.
Speaker 2:Oh, chuck, please clarify it, because so many people say it's woo-woo, I like ancient babble I love that.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 2:She's just off the chart. She's a bit woo-woo A bit woo-woo.
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting because I talk to people who are from the Reformed tradition and I'll share back with them. Even John Calvin said look to the image of God within you. That is deeper still than all the pain of your life. Let's say all the things that you've done wrong. And I think that that's that ancient whisper of love, that I see the image of God as three fundamental things worth, belonging and purpose. And don't we all ache for worth and belonging and purpose? And I think we've got to learn to listen for that whisper. But for those of us who know trauma and I think trauma is fairly ubiquitous If the story of Genesis 3 is echoing into our lives, then all of us at some level are wrestling with a primal wound. Well, if that's true, then the imprint of trauma can seem louder to us than the imprint of the image of God.
Speaker 2:Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 3:Right. So all we hear is I'm terrible, I'm not loved, I'm not worth it, I'm not enough. Mountain. I'm never enough right. So that's what we hear within us and that's what we believe about ourselves.
Speaker 2:We do. This is what you write. I have to read this. I just have to. Okay, I'm going to start here. Give me a minute to read it all.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We normalize, distracting ourselves from the everyday ache that haunts us. Now I want heartlifters put normalized somewhere, because that is what we do well.
Speaker 2:We normalize, distracting ourselves from the everyday ache that haunts us, content to scroll through our phones with buzzing envy looking for some dopamine hit of pseudo connection. Eventually we lose touch with ourselves. We succumb your verb placement is amazing we succumb to a sense of dulled desire. We stop noticing that we feel out of sorts a lot of the time. This makes me want to weep. Even our faith feels dry, relegated to simply going through the motions. And then you write this question. I made a question out of the sentence.
Speaker 2:There are a hundred reasons why we choose to cope instead of confront this ache, this deep ache of disconnection to self. You give a lot of reasons and I've heard them all. Far worse things have happened to others. It's not as bad as I think. I don't have time for arduous introspection. I can deal with this on my own. Said it as I recently drove back to a therapist Janelle, just turn the car around, you've got this. My God girl, you know all this is ridiculous. This is what are you doing? Paying all this money, okay, left unchecked.
Speaker 2:This inner sense of alienation eats away at the core of who we are, wrecking havoc on all our relationships with others and with God.
Speaker 2:At worst, it's traumatic to our hearts, bodies and souls, leaving behind a hidden wound that can't heal without intentional care. Let me just read this one more thing yes, it can be traumatic. Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering, writes Peter A Levine, and if you're in the world of therapy you know his name. Don't poke the bear, don't wake the tiger. And while the word traumatic is undoubtedly misused by those who call their team Super Bowl loss or a phone dropped in the toilet traumatic, many of us who do the work of caring for souls believe that we don't name the ill effects of trauma in our lives quite enough, because at the heart of trauma lies profound disconnection, and disconnection is a story as old as itself. Yeah, yeah, that's it. You're, you're, you're right there. And I had a, a very wise person who is in charge of a really big movement in, uh, counseling and say they feel like trauma is the new mission field.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yeah, I did love that.
Speaker 2:But yet myself I'm having to move out of trauma counseling just because my body has kept a very deep score and just have to make a lateral shift somehow. So how then do we listen for the ancient whisper of love and awaken and attune to these deep areas that perhaps we just don't want to wake up?
Speaker 3:We don't want to wake the tiger. We don't want to poke the bear.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How are you?
Speaker 2:doing this Like how are you moving through that practice of coming home to yourself?
Speaker 3:and all of this.
Speaker 2:Oh, we have just 10 minutes to answer that question.
Speaker 3:No, it starts right. Yeah, it's interesting because if you do the work like you do, like I do, there, uh, there isn't one surefire practice, right? So, uh, you know we'll, oftentimes it's. It's like throwing a dart at a dartboard, blindfolded, you know, and you hope you get close and you invite people. So I've got practices within this, but every chapter has practice.
Speaker 2:Give us a couple, just give us a couple, that would be great.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I mean I think in early practice here's a really sophisticated one for you. I'll just put it. I use language a little bit different than I use in the book, but it's in there. It's just say ouch, say it hurts.
Speaker 3:It does you know, sometimes we just need to say I needed to say ouch. You know, like we needed mom, dad, when we were young, when we fell off our bike, to say ouch, it hurts, and some of us didn't have that, you know, and some of us don't have that today. But you know, I, I work with plenty of people who just bypass, you know, and and it's like I'm the one saying, well, that's a big, big deal, oh, yes, all the time they're like why?
Speaker 2:You know that's nothing I'm like it is something it's so big, but it's the human spirit of overcoming, or something that we just high function through it.
Speaker 3:High function yeah.
Speaker 2:Go back to that because was that your childhood? We're not shaming parenting, good Lord, my adult children have plenty to say. This is just about I wasn't allowed to say ouch, you just hit a nerve in my body because my needs don't matter, I'm not being seen, heard, known, loved, belonging because I can't say ouch. It's like fuck up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and still inside there is a voice that pops up that says you're just being needy, You're too much.
Speaker 3:You're just extra Too much yeah extra, and so I don't want to be that, I don't want to be the person that is too much, who complains. Even today, I work for an institution and every institution. I work for a really good institution, but every institution has its faults and foibles, and every time I dare to share something of what I'm feeling, there's that sense of, oh, you're going to be the guy who's complaining, and so that's really core and that's one of the more basic practices, and they're foundational within the book, within the book, and so the book is not a substitute for therapy, but there are certainly practices that build early, practices like getting attuned to your breath and your body. You know, through ancient prayers, through biblical prayers, be still breathing in and know breathing out.
Speaker 2:That I am God, yeah, and so those you know very ancient prayers.
Speaker 3:The breastplate prayer, st it was, you know very ancient prayers, the breastplate prayer of St Patrick, christ above me, christ below me, Christ to my left, christ to my right, breathing in and breathing out as we engage that practice of recognizing the presence of God around us and within us.
Speaker 3:And that, by the way, that can be really challenging. I mean, I have clients who, when I invite them into these somatic practices, find themselves very resistant, because to be attuned to their bodies is to be attuned to the pain, the shame, the abuse, the trauma at the core right, and so these are not easy. It's not like, well, if I just start breathing every day, I'll be better. You know, you might notice, actually, quite a bit of resistance along the way, because we have, we've learned over the years to, as you I forget the exact phrase but sort of like functionally high function, high function, our way out of it, right. So so, yeah, it's an invitation to, as I often say, the work, the deep work, the inner work that we tend to avoid. For those of us who've been harmed or experienced pain, we're trying to control everything around us. We often can't control everything around us, but the invitation is to attend to what's within us, and that's really the point of the book.
Speaker 2:I'd love to say ouch, I love. I mean I have a bandaid on because I cut myself yesterday. So it's like put just. You know, I wrote in my book Stronger Every Day. We can't, you can't put a bandaid. They weren't my words, I can't remember who said them now. But you can't bandaid, you know, mental illness or emotional pain.
Speaker 2:You can't say put a sling on your heart so someone can visibly see that you're moving through things, but you know, getting back to the simplicity and the complexity of what you just said, with the breath, well, I don't. I can't get a deep breath easy. It is just not easy for me, and so, like even in a practice, a meditation practice, it's like it takes me a good, while I just can't get one because my nervous system is like this usually all the time.
Speaker 3:You've got to go slow. Be really gentle with ourselves.
Speaker 2:You've got to go gentle with yourself. Yeah, I think we call that self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're right. This is so beautiful. You quote GK Chesterton, who's one of my faves. Every man has forgotten who he is, wrote the great English writer and philosopher GK Chesterton. We are all under the same mental calamity we have forgotten our names.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this isn't therapeutic mumbo-jumbo, this isn't psychobabble, right? This is an ancient story. We've lost connection to fundamental, vital connection to ourselves and to God. And the invitation to come home to ourselves again and the invitation to come home to ourselves again is not some therapist's imagination, right? This is the ancient call when God says where are you? God is inviting us to come home to God and to ourselves, right? We've been lost, alienated, and so this is like the work of a lifetime. I often say to my clients well, we're not done. We may be ending therapy, but this is the work of the rest of your life, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, I wish it wasn't true, I just wish it. I think we would have called that sanctification right. In the reform world and in any world, it's sanctification world and in any world it's sanctification. It's uh, every day paul says you know that we are, we're working on our souls. Where you know we're, we're putting forth that effort. Paul was so wise, he had so much wisdom. Um, you write, I just have to once again. The world is not served by those who are alienated. From far too long we lose track of how long because we're so busy, distracted, preoccupied, far from God and far from ourselves. We need to be reminded and you write about this, the better story. You have to get the book to read through that that home is nearer than we imagine, that God is whispering from within. Yeah, where are you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, where are you?
Speaker 2:My question to you, then, is in your work, you know want to get through this. What does that feel like? Like that's where I am right now. Like when you haven't known who you are, when you haven't been allowed to say ouch. When you have. You've been a good worker in the field of following Christ. When you've been in the church, you've been a leader, you've been present, everybody would think that you're all that. You have it all together, all those things that people think. But what does it really feel like? Have you gotten closer somatically?
Speaker 2:to what it feels like to be at home in yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a good question and I think you know here's where it pivots from Henry Nouwen and maybe, dare I even say maybe, deepens or provides maybe a somatic layer to Henry Nouwen's understanding of coming home to yourself and to God. Right, Because we get stuck in what I call sympathetic storms and a dorsal fog. These are, we're talking about our nervous system now.
Speaker 2:Tell me more, just in case people don't know. We have just a few minutes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your sympathetic nervous system is where you find yourself in fight or flight, those Fs. You know that we find ourselves in where we're just trying to survive and so we're busy and we're, you know, we're storming through life and it feels like we're on this hamster wheel that we can't get off of. A dorsal fog is. You know, when we live too long there, our bodies shut down. Our bodies can't take it anymore, and so we adapt by by essentially shutting down or pulling away, or, you know, feeling overwhelmed. I found myself at times in bed thinking I just can't get out of bed.
Speaker 2:Like I don't want to face the world. Right, I'm right there, I swear I. I'm sorry I have to say it, but it's. I just don't want to get out of bed.
Speaker 3:So I think there are so many of us who find ourselves there and, and more often, uh, then we, then we, then we want, and the reality is, is when you live, when you've lived in these spaces for as long as you and I have, um, uh, there are, as I often say, like neural super highways developed within you. It's the only road you know, it's the road.
Speaker 2:you know? Yes, it's all I know. I've been saying that. It's all I know.
Speaker 3:Yeah and so. But the reality is, this idea of coming home is not just a spiritual reality, it's a physiological reality. When God invites us to find him in the still waters, in the green pastures, there's a physiological home that we can come home to. That's your ventral vagal system of your autonomic nervous system, and your ventral vagal system is your rest and digest system. It's your physiological home for play, for creativity, for imagination, for delight for peace, for shalom.
Speaker 3:And the reality is there are ways for us to get off that superhighway of sympathetic storm and find our way to the spiritual and physiological still waters and anchor ourselves there to be rooted and grounded in love, as Paul says in Ephesians 3, right, my word for the year that does take practice. Right, because if we've been living in a particular kind of way, driving on this particular neural superhighway, for a long, long time, well, that's the only game in town, that's the only road that we know, and so we need to begin to retune our bodies, retrain our brains toward another way. And that takes time and I think, oftentimes, well, for me and for people I work with, it's like we begin to get a sense of what it's like. It's like, oh, I think I dipped my feet in the waters, like, oh, I think I dipped my feet in the waters, the still waters for the weekend.
Speaker 2:I know for a minute, for 10 minutes, right, yeah, I'm like not a weekend, it's like, oh, half hour I did it. I just got chills because it's like, that's where. I'm at, I'm like oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And all of these questions, by the way, these three questions that are the guiding questions of the book, are Paul, the Genesis examine. You know, in the Christian tradition we have examines. You know they're invitations to self-examination, but they're, you know, as I'm driving over from where I live in Grand Rapids to Holland this morning, I'm asking myself the question where are you, chuck? Because there's a lot going on. We're planning a wedding for my daughter. We've got new MA in counseling, starting here at the seminary. I've got a new colleague starting today. I'm in a new office that I just finished.
Speaker 2:And you're here on this podcast, you high-functioning person.
Speaker 3:So that's the thing is, I can be in a variety of different spaces, pulled in a lot of different directions, and the invitation of God, with the through, the question where are you? Is is to come home to myself because, guess what, I'm going to be having a conversation with my friend Janelle in just a little bit and I want to be here. You know, I don't want to be on that sympathetic. What's next, what's next, what's next, what's next, what's next? Even coming in, I was like, okay, I think I'm present, calm and in the still waters. I guarantee you I'll probably, as this book, you know, comes closer to the release date, yes.
Speaker 3:As things begin to ramp up and our semester ramps up, I'm going to find my way back onto that old.
Speaker 2:It's happening at the same time, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Chuck, yeah, there's a release and the beginning, yeah, well. So we got a wedding, we got a semester, we got a book release and all the different things, and so I need to pay attention to when the waters begin to churn right, the storm clouds begin to come in. It's on me to begin to notice what's happening within. How is that coming out in my body, in my relationships, in the way I'm showing up to my colleagues? And so it takes some integrity for us to pay attention, to notice, to ask good questions, to ask my colleagues how are you experiencing? One For others to reflect back to us what they're seeing, and so they've been doing that.
Speaker 2:I don't like it. I don't like it anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:So those three questions from the Genesis. I love the idea of the Genesis examine. I love it, love it, love it. What are the three questions so I can make sure that my heart lifters have them.
Speaker 3:The first three questions that God asks are where are you, which everyone gets when I ask and then I ask, and about half the people, or a quarter, get the second one who told you, and then they scratch their heads for the third one God asks. Well, often they jump to another question. God asks essentially what have you done? But before that God asks, have you eaten from the tree? And that was the one that I really wrestled with for a while and it came to me that I think what God was really asking is where have you taken your hunger and thirst?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what you that. This is your peace, daily resistance. This is your. Your sage like wisdom.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm just borrowing at this point, you know, I'm I'm well borrowing from Jesus, who asked the question what are you for Right, Borrowing a lot from folks like CS Lewis and GK Chesterton and others who've spent times or marinating. Gerald May is one of my old favorites. You know addiction and grace, and so we have to sit with that third question when have I taken my hunger and thirst and what do I really deeply long for? And these are, you know, I'd say, in my counseling practice and my pastoral work and my spiritual direction over 25 years now. Where are you? Who told you? Where have you taken your hunger and thirst? What do you long for? These are questions that are the core questions of the work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are, Because the third part of the book is how you eat from the tree. And then you have these rich, rich invitations seeking the source of our hunger, navigating the mystery and learning to long for so much more. Oh my gosh. Chapter 7, addiction and grace where we take our hunger. Chapter 8, the dark night, healing what's hidden in the shadows, oh, oh. And then you leave us with holy hunger, longing to be found and learning to flourish, which I think, Chuck, for those of us who were not given secure attachment, who were not given those basic fundamental say ouch, I have needs, I'm not extra.
Speaker 2:Learning to flourish, for me, has been the challenge yeah like I always say, my next book I would ever want to write would be happy as hard. Yeah, and because happy has just been very hard for me, yeah. And I think that you're telling us in this sympathetic storm I really am, as I'm going to use it forever and our neural pathways that are on the what's that thing in Germany, that you can go 180 go.
Speaker 3:Oh the.
Speaker 2:Autobahn. Yeah, we're on the Autobahn right, we're on the neural Autobahn. That when I asked you how you are feeling that in your body today, I really want to know how you are Like. You ask yourself those questions and then this is how you should feel. This is what ease feels like, this is what peace feels like. How does that feel in your body? Because I know I have my feelings.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I feel a certain sense of groundedness, I feel like I'm in my chair and I can feel the chair underneath me. You know, I feel a certain sense of groundedness, I feel like I'm in my chair and I can feel the chair underneath me. You know, I feel like I'm in, um, I'm, I'm with you, I'm in my body, there's there, there. There are times when, either if I'm teaching a class or maybe sitting in a counseling session, where I can feel out of body, where I'm like a conversation with my wife.
Speaker 3:That was hard earlier in the day. Um, or, I'm in the anxiety of my. My daughter and her fiance were just in Japan for two and a half weeks and I'm, you know, worried about where they are and what's going on, you know, and I'm just not there, you know, uh and that's what anxiety feels like Shoulders feels like my back pain feels like yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, a leg that's going up and down.
Speaker 3:And, frankly, to be in my body is to again, as we hinted at, is to be in territory that doesn't feel very good all the time, because I'm connected to reality. I'm connected to you. Know. Last night I laid in bed and I was waiting. My youngest daughter, who's 21, was going to pick up my oldest and her fiance from the airport at O'Hare, two and a half three hours away, at midnight, and I laid in bed and I had been listening to a book called Trauma Stewardship by a woman named.
Speaker 2:She's been on the show.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, she's really wonderful.
Speaker 2:She's amazing.
Speaker 3:I read it years ago and now you know, and it was like and and um, she's great. We had a great conversation about she had a, she had a. Uh, I guess it was like a case study in there where someone was talking about how out of control she felt and learning to sort of embrace that sense of feeling out of control, and I was like I feel so out of control right now.
Speaker 3:I I you're such a good dad you know, and, and I can't keep testing it texting, I'm not going to nag and I'm not going to know where you now, but I did have this sense and you can relate to this of why I'm about to turn 54 and why am I still so anxious, why am I in bed? And I and I, you know to be honest with you, um, I've self-medicated with alcohol over the years in ways that um have allowed me to not feel that in the evenings, right, and so, um, you know, in an evening like last night, where there's no alcohol in my system, there's just tea, and you know, and, and, and I'm laying there.
Speaker 2:It's still going to be there, right, just wish I could numb to this, oh, and oh, where's that Xanax I have?
Speaker 3:numbed to this over the years, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's why people take Xanax for 25 years because, honest to God, I, the minutes before I have surgery. I can't wait because they'll go. Are you ready? Count back and I'm like, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, I've never known, and we'll close with this because I think the end all game of that, like you were saying, it's all I know, all I know from the womb and maybe in my grandmother's womb because I was in her womb and an egg in my grandmother's womb because I was in her womb and an egg in my mother. We know that from epigenetics. Now I've never known calm or ease. I just haven't known it. It's not my fault. Yeah, I don't want to blame you know, but I was born to an alcohol calm. So therefore I think what you're saying is that is the work, that is the practice. You just showed us the practice last night. I'm not going to get up and get a glass of wine or beer or alcohol of choice, which is now totally permissible in the body of Christ, because back in the day when I got saved, you were teetotal or you were going to hell.
Speaker 1:So I mean, you know now, wine's okay, beer's okay we have beer in the middle of our Kroger.
Speaker 2:You know beer gardens. It's crazy. So you're saying, you're telling us, you're imaging for us. That's what it looks like. The practice of coming home to yourself is being in bed worrying about your daughters, all three of my kids, now my grandkids, because then it just gets even worse. Chuck, you know, live far away and I'm in a constant state of concern. Not going to say worry, it's going okay, chuck, you're talking to yourself. Is that where it starts? Say ouch, say you're worried.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm breathing. First of all, I'm getting to my breath, you know and I'm and, and you know, last night it was naming the reality of what I was experiencing and I went to, honestly, I went to sort of an imaginative contemplative space that I go to, where I it's uh I've talked about this in other places it's uh, it's like a castle that I go to, where Jesus greets me with a smile and uh, okay, I'm going to be really honest right now. The first.
Speaker 2:Why would you not be honest here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the first image that I got as I went up there was I walked in the door and Jesus took me and throw me, threw me out the window into the water, and I realized, oh no, that is a very anxious part of me that just jumped in. It's like you're not worth being at rest, you're not worth being cared for. And so I breathed. I got present again, I went through my practice. I found myself before Jesus, jesus smiling at me, inviting me to a place of rest. This is sort of some of us who do this work invite people to spaces within, you know, imaginative spaces. People have all sorts of different ways of sort of finding their way to these ventral still waters.
Speaker 2:Right, and yeah, I love that. It's internal family systems. That's befriending.
Speaker 3:I love it's all that you talk all about that oh yeah, combo of all these different ancient temporary practices and I'm laying there in bed and I'm I sort of rubbing my chest as a mom might do, you know, and I'm and, and hoping that I'll drift off, you know, at some point.
Speaker 3:But but, um, of course I'm wearing my watch and I get a little buzz and I think, oh, that's the text telling me they just got into an accident. Instead, it's the text saying, hey, we're on the road and everything's good. And so I say all that to say that I think that I would invite people, if they're going to read this, not to read a book by someone who's finished or arrived, Like. These are practices that I'm just living every day. I appreciate your honesty, and you are too, and that's why I like talking to you, because, frankly, I feel more at home with myself, Primitive, and it's uh and uh. You can tell that people aren't as invested as you are, and so I think we're you and I are both invested.
Speaker 2:We gotta be right, we gotta be whole, but we got to. We have to do this. So thank you. I know you have meetings and things and weddings. When is the wedding? That's exciting.
Speaker 3:August 10. Yeah, I was just getting married and we're thrilled for her. She's her fiance is great, and he and I have gotten to know one another really well, and he's a man of lots of depth and integrity. Yeah, welcome to the DeGroote family.
Speaker 2:I hope it is the most spectacular experience for you. I do. It's the father of the bride. It's just the best.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you so much, Chuck.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was great.
Speaker 2:Everybody's going to get this book and you are going to have peace and ease through all of it. In Jesus name.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Janelle.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening today. Please meet Janelle over at Heart Lift Central on Substack at Heart Lift Central, where we can keep this remarkable conversation going. Please share today's episode with a friend and invite them to become stronger every day. Heartlifter, always remember this you have value, worth and dignity.
