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
297. Reimagining Time: Finding Peace and Purpose with Jen Pollock Michel
Imagine a life where each moment is a gift, not a task to check off. Discover the freedom of time through the inspiring insights of Jen Pollock Michel as we discuss her latest book, "In Good Time: Eight Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace." If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the relentless march of time, Jen's perspective will offer you a refreshing new outlook. She challenges the conventional obsession with busyness and control, urging us to see time as a divine gift to be embraced rather than a resource to be mastered. With the pandemic backdrop, we explore how disruption can lead to profound growth and transformation.
Visit Jen's website and order her book, In Good Time
Visit Jen's Substack, A Habit Called Faith
Learn more about Jen's Rule of Life Intensive
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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 heartliftcentral. 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:Hello Heartlifters, welcome to today's conversation with Jen Pollock, michelle, I am so excited to finally bring this conversation to you. This is what Publishers Weekly had to say about her newest book In Good Time Eight habits for reimagining productivity, resisting hurry and practicing peace. Time belongs not to us but to God, contends Jen. Belongs not to us but to God, contends Jen. Lambasting time management strategies that prioritize productivity. Jen argues that readers must instead accept that there is always enough time to do what God has planned. Jen succeeds in putting earthly concerns in cosmic perspective. These insightful musings are worth a look. High praise from Publishers Weekly.
Speaker 2:I recorded this conversation with Jen a while ago, but it is absolutely on time, in my humble opinion. Today in the United States is election day. We all hold our breath, we wait with bated breath and we pray. Jen's book brings to us some very, very good questions. She says what is a good use of time? What is fitting for this season in your life, for this season in your life? It's an invitation to embrace seasonality and what, here and now, faithfulness? Are you calling me to God? She encourages us to open our hands and receive every season that God brings into our lives. Is that easy? No, it is not Together.
Speaker 2:We talk about her eight habits and the rule of life that she is currently really embracing, that she is currently really embracing the very end. The eighth step is one that I am not letting go of easily. It's remember, and she brings forth a teaching from the incredible Benedictine monastery To remember you die. She says. This will help orient us to real time, to the here and now, and it is a sobering scope of life. Heartlifters. Welcome, jen to this riveting, remarkable conversation conversation. Welcome, welcome, jen. I am so grateful, as I just said before, we hit record of you saying yes to this conversation, because your voice is one that I respect and I know it's one that's going to honor. Just be such an honor to my community to hear. So thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. This is really a gift.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so nice. You have five books, so I have this plethora of choices before me of where I wanted to go, and I just want to pick a little bit from each of them. Actually, one of them is, how you say, to imagine your relationship with time. That just took my breath away, primarily because I'm right there. I'm living in that at this moment and my age, my season of life, and I know that there are so many in my community that are addressing it as well Time seems to be flying by. So what is it about? You know? How can you help us, I guess, how can you help us reimagine our relationship with time? Perhaps, mm-hmm?
Speaker 3:I think probably the biggest learning for me that I try to represent in the book is to push back on the idea that we can manage time. I think I know and and this is not to say that you know we can't be diligent in our days and intentional, but it is to say that a lot of the things that are given to us, kind of like a lot of the advice given to us by time management experts, time management books really assumes a great deal of control and I just don't think we have as much control as we want for sure or imagine that we'd have. And really the book I mean the backstory that's threaded throughout the book is the pandemic. Of course, yes, because I think that is when I started to realize I have so little control. Time was completely disrupted for all of us. So what?
Speaker 2:am I going to do now? Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:And we want to manage time. I think the other thing with the pandemic is that I would have said, going into the pandemic, my biggest time problem is busyness. And then suddenly we're in the pandemic. My biggest time problem is busyness. And then suddenly we're in the pandemic. And just where I was in my particular life stage and age. You know, my kids were fairly self-sufficient at the time, so they were at home and they were doing schooling online, but they were managing that pretty capably themselves, wow.
Speaker 2:How old were they at that time? I'm just curious.
Speaker 3:They were gosh. So we had one in college and then we had one who was a senior in high school, all the way down to the twins. I think might've been in sixth grade, oh, twins. So we yeah, we kind of had that. We stretched that gamut. So I was left with a lot more time in the pandemic. I wasn't driving them places, you know, we just our family calendar was cleared. I still had all this time anxiety, and that's when I started to think well, I guess busyness isn't my main problem, because I still feel pretty anxious about time even though I'm not busy. I think that was starting. That was where I started to think I've got to reimagine my relationship with time. I need a new story of time.
Speaker 3:I need some better categories, you know, for thinking about time.
Speaker 2:That's super good, and that book you're referring to is A Good Time.
Speaker 3:That's what it's called In Good.
Speaker 2:Time. Yep, in Good Time. Sorry about that. Yes, eight Habits for Reimagining. The subtitles are my favorite thing with authoring.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is a good one. Eight habits for re-imagining productivity resisting hurry the placement of these verbs and practicing peace. That seems formulaic even of itself you know, is really re-imagining productivity and that will help us resist hurry, which will help us practice peace. And this book came out in late 2022, december 2022. So you would have some pandemic time in your pocket, but, as we know, in author worlds, you were writing this book probably pre-pandemic, I don't know. You tell me.
Speaker 3:You know I wasn't writing it pre-pandemic, although in so many ways, so many of my books, I'm like.
Speaker 3:I feel like I've been writing these my whole life, um so every single book comes out of a lived experience, and this particular book is just, I mean probably three decades of trying to manage my time. A lot of that being temperament and personality, kind of type A get things done, but a lot of that just being life too five kids, a busy husband, busy career with his career and just kind of you know, orienting to that. You know how that affected our household. And then, yes, following the desire to write, and how was that going to fit in? And so I just was always in search of the strategies to multiply time Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how can I do this? How did you fit in writing these books by raising five kids while you continue to raise these five kids. Cause that never stops.
Speaker 3:That's true. That is true, I sent them to school, you know. I mean, that's really what happened.
Speaker 3:I sent them to school and just kind of wrote during the school day and treated it like any other job and I would say, you know, mostly got done in those hours. There have been occasional Saturdays or you know longer stretches of time that you know maybe I'll get away and do a writing retreat, but pretty much just like any other job, just kind of, yeah, getting it done when they're at school and and and there's been. One of the things I just really love about writing is how much flexibility it's given me to have a family life and to flex during the summer and school vacations and the like yeah, right from anywhere, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's one part of it that I love. I've tried to find those arenas in which I can work for a very long time, till I'm very old.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Isn't that a beautiful thing about writing? Yes.
Speaker 3:I remember I met Lucy Shaw. I don't know if you know Lucy Shaw.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, yes, you love Lucy Shaw. Yes, I met Lucy Shaw. I don't know if you know Lucy Shaw. Oh, my goodness, yes, you love Lucy Shaw.
Speaker 3:Yes, I love Lucy Shaw. I mean, it was years ago I think it was probably over 10 years ago that I met her and she was, I mean, kind of old then and she was still writing, and you know, it's the examples like that that just really encouraged me and motivate me. What did you?
Speaker 2:take away from her Any thoughts.
Speaker 3:Well, I think one of the things that I think is just incredibly wonderful is that there's just not a retirement age you know, who's to say that you have to retire when you're 65? As a writer, I think writers I mean you're not in your head, so I'm assuming that you agree with this. You know, we make sense of our lives just by putting words on page. And I don't know if that's, I don't know if I'm going to be done with that at 65. I don't think so, and I know I'm 64.
Speaker 2:You will not.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm going to keep going. No, you will not.
Speaker 2:I promise I think on some respects I'm figuring out a lot more.
Speaker 3:Yes, what a better writer you can. Be right the more lived experience and wisdom, I mean it's kind of embarrassing that I even wrote my first book at 40. What did I know at 40?
Speaker 2:I wrote a parenting book first and I was in my third. I'm like, what on God's green earth did I think I was doing, and how did that publisher trust me? God's green earth, and I think I was doing, and how did that publisher trust me? I mean, we went from rock solid as the name of the book to rock slide, you know it was just such a test.
Speaker 3:Oh that's, that's good.
Speaker 2:I mean good, not good to live through, but it was like you think you know all that right, but it was, I think, much like your writing and the work that you do with the Rule of Life. Now I would look back at that first writing venture as I was writing and trying to figure out the rules of life for a functional home, a first-generation, healthy, whatever that is, this being my husband, both from alcoholic homes it was like I've got to figure out what's important.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know, lived on the words of Elizabeth Elliot, amy Carmichael, just these, you know, beautiful women, lucy Shaw, one of them as well. Just what is the rule of life that I need? I would not have known to call it back then. I think of the monastic world. I was in charismatic Christianity, raised Catholic. So today, I mean in Belgium, just was able to go to Bruges and walk through the incredible Benedictine monastery, hallowed ground. I just was like, oh my gosh, and I just live in one of those little rooms.
Speaker 3:Can I also get you know electric? I don't know. I'm sure they've updated all of their amenities, but I'm going to need plumbing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and a kettle and electricity, yes. But I did say to my daughter, like we were standing there and I said this this would be my dream for the last days, like where I could just live in one of those beautiful spaces and walk across as a gorgeous church and a college and just teach in the college, live in that little room. It's just like wow, wouldn't you? Of course you would. I'm going to dream it, I'm going to believe it. Why can't I? Why can't I Right, why not? Okay, so this relationship with time, which is so, so critical. What were your eight life-giving habits? I mean, I can list them. I don't know if you can call them out from your mind. I have a book, I can look at it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I can, I think I can remember. The first one is to begin. You know, I think it's a habit of hope and really believing that God is always beginning and completing his work, that he begins in us. And the second habit is receive. A lot of people really resonate with this habit. This is really the transition from managing time to receiving time and just the idea that we're receiving our lives. We're receiving time as a gift.
Speaker 2:And we're receiving interruptions.
Speaker 3:You want to pause there? Oh, I do.
Speaker 2:Okay, wow, we call these lean in moments here Receiving time, not managing time. Yeah, so receiving time looks like what?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it looks like gratitude number one. I think our relationship to time tends to be we operate on a scarcity mindset. You know, there's never enough. It's always vanishing from our, you know, from our lives, sifting through our fingers. And I think it'd be. I think this receiving time is to live into a new story of time. It's to believe that God is the giver of time. God is the giver of plenty. You know, god is not a giver of scarcity. So whatever time I have is the time he's ordained and declared to be sufficient for this scope of my life. So I think it's gratitude, I think it's trust, I think it's patience. I think it's, and there's a lot of patience in this book.
Speaker 3:You've got to receive your interruptions, you've got to receive the detours of your life that you could never, you just would never have chosen, you wouldn't have planned. But what do we believe about God, you know? Do we believe that you know he, he got caught off guard, you know he was taken up with another customer at that season of our life? Or do we really believe he, wisely, has ordained, you know, all the days that are given to us? I think it just that alone starts to reshape your relationship to time you know just every day yeah, right now.
Speaker 2:You are right now Just.
Speaker 3:I hope I mean it's. I would say that that I mean they're all pretty fundamental, that one is a pretty big one Receiving time.
Speaker 2:All right, I probably uh, have to move on from there, but I don't want to. Yeah, just that mind shift, that's a shifting, that's receiving. The detour really spoke to me like receiving the caregiving of a mother, the receiving of a sudden loss of someone. Yes, the receiving, receiving, that would that just I might. My, I can feel feel my brain changing, rewiring and going. Okay, I can do that. It's like repelling bitterness and repelling a grudge, repelling malicious, I can just feel it.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 3:That's true for me too. The third one is belong. I think a lot of times when we go down the time management route, what we know is that if you want to manage your time, you got to shut your door. You know you got to keep out the interruptions. You can't let people like demand things of you. You know set these really firm boundaries and not that there's anything wrong with you. Know you got, you got to. You have certain activities of your life that you have to close the door.
Speaker 3:You know, so you can get the work done, so you can do the things God's called you to do. And and you know as a writer, and you know this too that is a big part of the writing. Life is closing the door, but I think that the vision that god has for us to is to belong to other people, to both, and I think I mean we have so much research that says that people feel their lives to be purposeful and significant and meaningful, um, in direct proportion to the kinds of relationships that they enjoy. For sure, um, this is God's vision for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, community, for sure.
Speaker 3:Community, you know, and that means taking up burdens for other people. I mean, I wish community were all just like bells and whistles, and rainbows. Cafe visits. It's a lot of burdens and interruptions and contingencies and responsibilities and service and interruptions and contingencies, and responsibilities and service, and it is, you know, great joy and enjoyment that community belonging like these represent goods in our lives too. But they're just not, you know, unassailed goods. They're often they come with there's a cost. There's a cost to belonging.
Speaker 2:There's a cost to belonging. Sounds like a really good article, like you probably are.
Speaker 3:Well, it's funny because someone just just last night I was teaching at church and we were talking about the, the builders. You know Jesus' parable of the builders at the end of the Sermon on the Mount One builds on a foundation of rock and the other one doesn't. And why is that? And you think, well, people don't build on the foundation because it's costly, it's just it's costly to excavate rock.
Speaker 3:Yes, much easier, much more time efficient, much more, you know, cost efficient if you can just build your house on sand and all of these habits that I'm really talking about do take time and they're not efficient.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no, I would totally agree, and that's why, to me, when you put rule of life in there, the rule is very important, because so many people don't want rules, you know, but it's like we don't have them. You know, we're just going to end up on sand and sinking.
Speaker 2:I live, you know, hour and a half away from the beautiful outer banks of North Carolina and you know, we were always seeing houses being washed out into the ocean, you know, because they're built on sand and they haven't done it properly. And, yeah, very, very, very wise All right. Belonging Okay, we've got belonging.
Speaker 3:Yes, so we're only through three.
Speaker 2:I know, but they're so good.
Speaker 3:The fourth one is offer. You know you receive your life and then you offer it back to God in worship, and it starts to remind us that what God really wants from us as his people, well, he does want us to belong to him. He's called us to be his treasured possession. Any ways that we would kind of quote unquote use our days are ultimately for the goal of worship, that we would kind of quote unquote use our days ultimately for the goal of worship. And so I think we have, we can get away. I think if we go down the time management route, it's often, like you know, I've got to use all these like use and usefulness is kind of the vocabulary that we reach for. And what about just worship? And what about and there's a lot of like there's getting caught up in a story that's just way bigger than the life that we're living now?
Speaker 3:you know it's like from from you know you're before the beginning and after the end. Like from you know you are. You are God from everlasting to everlasting, and. I think worship orients us to that story and it really and it gives us a lot of meaning and purpose to all that we do, Even the things that just don't seem that important in any worldly sense. Right, Like you talked about caregiving for a mom and I don't know if you're referring to me or to you, but caregiving in general is not very valued.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh, nine years. A nine year detour for me, yeah, of just managing, and yeah, she actually passed of COVID and the first August of 2020. Wow, which was 92. So strong, but you know, it was like we just thought there was no way COVID won't get her. You know, wow, but I just think those, I did not frame that nine year detour as, uh, receiving from God until the latter part of it, and it's so hard and so invisible and just you know, so, yeah, I think that, um, I, when I was in belgium, I was reading this book written by a pastor in south africa, called how to be unsuccessful and
Speaker 2:it's just what a great title oh, it just was mind-blowing for me, just kind of like your idea of not throwing away time management, obviously, but seeing it in the lens of eternity, seeing it in the lens of God and advancing the kingdom of God more than our own kingdoms. And one of the last questions he posed was what if your most successful, greatest work in life was never known by anybody? Wow, I was like I don't know. I like that.
Speaker 3:I know how about both, how about both hands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a both hand. I mean everything's both hand, absolutely, and he was absolutely bringing that in, obviously. But for me, I don't know if you know the Enneagram or whatever, but you know, I can be an Enneagram three, I'm an Enneagram two, but I can just be that. Ambition, ambition, ambition, because that was placed on me. Yes, on many levels, okay.
Speaker 3:So we're belonging, we're belonging, we're worshiping, we're receiving.
Speaker 2:We're beginning and God's beginning.
Speaker 3:Love that, yeah, and then we're waiting. I know, do we have to talk about waiting? I had a friend years and years ago who said God's way with us is waiting.
Speaker 2:And that has just always stuck with me.
Speaker 3:And I think if you look at the biblical story, you look at characters, I mean just everybody, abraham to Hannah, to Job. It seems like there's just a lot of waiting that God asks of his people. We don't like it. We do feel that they're waiting as kind of wasted time, and I think one of the things I'm saying in that chapter is that it can't be wasted time. You know there's and this is actually you know, I talk about it even in the language of dormancy when you think about, you know, a tree, a plant. Winter is a season of waiting. It's a season of dormancy. There's so much good that's going on underneath the soil and I think that's true for us in our lives of faith. Our wintering seasons might prove to really be the catalyst for our most fruitful seasons, I agree. And so we can't short circuit them. We need to receive them, we need to continue to believe that God's doing good in the midst of them.
Speaker 2:Yes, I couldn't agree more For sure Wintering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wintering. So the next one is practice, practice.
Speaker 1:Yes, one of my favorites.
Speaker 3:So there's a way in which I was growing up, when I was growing up, I, when I was growing up, you know, I kind of thought of that with contempt, that the things that you practice like that would just lead to rote repetition. But there's all this language in the Bible to practice, to just put in practice, just keep practicing all the time. It's like there's. I think it's a way to think about persevering. I think it's a way to. I think it's actually a much more hopeful way than we tend to be very goal oriented. I think it's just people and Americans, american evangelicals, you know, we set these really high aspirations and it's like the once and done kind of effort and practice is all about habitual motion.
Speaker 2:I think that practices I mean Paul said it so many times. I just think of him all the time putting in practice.
Speaker 2:I mean I was a dancer, so I know how important practice is you know, but I think I have been so grateful for the resurgence of voices like yourself and others who are bringing, you know, liturgical prayers and all kinds of written prayers back into our lives. And when I can't pray for myself, I always go go to theirs. You know, liturgical prayers and all kinds of written prayers back into our lives, and when I can't pray for myself, I always go to theirs. You know, and wasn't Christ liturgical and giving us just the our father, the only thing you need to pray? You know it's like they had.
Speaker 3:I mean, he was immersed in the practices, the habits and the traditions of ancient Judaism. So we see it in the life of Jesus, we see it in the nation of Israel and we see it in the commandments of, you know the writings of Paul. So I think there's just a lot of wisdom. I think Christians, very early on, knew that and then they had certain practices. And then of course, you know, once you get to the Reformation there is a lot of important teaching on how practices can go awry.
Speaker 3:You know they can become a kind of works, righteousness or a legalism, and I think those are important dangers to pay attention to. The distortion of something doesn't necessarily mean it's not a good you know, don't throw it away. Right. We have all kinds of goods that we can distort and corrupt, Always right. Go back to practice. I think so In so many different areas.
Speaker 2:So many. What do you, what practice do you really hold close right now, like we're always in different seasons, so I'm curious which practice in life is something that you're really finding life, getting life from?
Speaker 3:Well, I am practicing a rule of life, which you've kind of mentioned, and I've been teaching some workshops on that. That has been wonderful, you know. I think that there's a contemporary resurgence of interest in a rule of life because I think we're experiencing just, you know, we're overwhelmed by our choices, we're just distracted all the time. We kind of realize our attention is just always compromised, and so I think people want a practice or a set of practices that help them to be intentional, not distracted, help them like create a grid for like discernment around all of the overwhelming choices and decisions that we have and then just help us to just tune into God's voice. We are inundated with so many different voices.
Speaker 3:Oh my with so many different voices. So I so a rule of life practice. I've come to think of it as this, this creative way that we pattern our lives, you know. So it's a, it's a set of habits and practices we take up to live in faithful response to God's voice, and it's it's not selectively spiritual. I mean, parts of my rule are about the relationships I really feel called to invest in, the work that I feel called to do, the place that I'm in, the body that I inhabit. How am I taking care of these things? And it's actually just formalized. I've written some things out.
Speaker 3:I've gotten clear on some vision and some commitment in my life and I am finding that really to be very fruitful.
Speaker 2:I would say that I can hear in my ear my heart lifters going okay, five kids. Okay, jen, I have four kids, I have three kids, I have a lot of women in their 30s and 40s, you know, and I can just hear them Right.
Speaker 3:Any one word of advice wisdom from your own experience of life. Yeah, women's lives, I think, are more seasonal, I think, than men's lives. In many ways, you know, I think it's because we just you know the research shows where we tend to, you know care more for the children and care more for our homes. And and then I would also just say, I mean we experienced these hormonal things, that I mean your body.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've had like 18 wardrobes.
Speaker 3:You know my entire cause. It's like the pre-pregnancy and then the early pregnancy and then the postpartum.
Speaker 2:You look so young. Oh my gosh, that is not flattery, that is true. You're 30, some. It's incredible. I don't know how old you are, but wow, I am 49.
Speaker 3:I'm going to be 50 this year. Oh, this is a big year. This is a big year. So when I think about women's lives and I think about the seasonality of women's lives, one of the biggest learnings, even just from the book in good time, is about this concept of fitting time. And I found it in a commentary on Ecclesiastes and it was just this idea that what, how do we, you know what is a good use of time? And I'm going to put use in quotes. And he says and this particular person just drew my attention to this idea of what is fitting for the moment, what is fitting for the season.
Speaker 2:You know that everything is good.
Speaker 3:Everything is good in its time. You know there's a season for everything, ecclesiastes 3. And so this idea that are you living in a proper relationship to your season? You know, I, I, if you're in a season of raising young children, that that that will exact certain demands of you, um, and you have to attend those in that season, because they won't be there in 15 years.
Speaker 3:You will not get that back because they won't be there in 15 years. You will not get that back. You don't get it back. And you know, just similarly, if you're, if you're gestating a new human, you know that's a particular given of your life. You've got to like live into that season. You don't have another time to take care of your body that's growing another human being. So I just think that there's an invitation for us to embrace the seasonality of life and exercise the wisdom that is really required to say, okay, what now, lord? What here and now faithfulness, are you calling me to?
Speaker 2:Gosh, I love that so much. I love that it's just fitting for this time, this day, this minute, even sometimes Absolutely, you know. I love that. I think you're giving so many paradigm shifts as well in our thinking, which is what my goal is for this year to help shift my thinking away from the cultural-driven demand, even within the church, of what's shaped me, you know, or what's shaping us, you know it's like. But is this really a Jesus shaping Like? Yes, I've got so much dissonance in my brain about that as a woman of 64, you know, with just how I was trained, you know, as a woman in the faith world.
Speaker 2:So that's so, so good. I just hope everyone takes a pause and lets that just soak in to what is fitting for this particular time. And then we speak a lot in this community of Kairos and Kronos time, yeah, which is very, very important to know. All right, I think we're on seven.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're on seven. Yeah, we're on seven. Seven is in joy. Oh yes, I know you get to like delight in your yes, it's my word.
Speaker 2:I love it, is it? Well, I just got I have shared with my audience and I just got one of these beautiful identity bracelets made that says joy builder. Oh, wonderful, because in the work that I do with trauma, I do a lot of trauma, work with family systems and write about it mental health, all that stuff and what I have concluded after 13 years of it being in my own life as well as my clients, is that what's missing is joy building, and I found an article this past year that just changed my whole life and in respect of not spending, you know, as much time dwelling on the past or looking at the past, but really, truly, and I know that you know this principle within the monastic world, the ancient I love that you study the ancient spiritual wisdom and bring it to us in a contemporary way is we have to live in the here and now.
Speaker 1:You just said it we have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not easy.
Speaker 3:It's not easy. I know Everyone's like be mindful and you're like yeah, but how oh?
Speaker 2:sure, Right, I'll look at my raisin and I've. You know I took an eight week course in mindfulness-based stress reduction. And it was life, it was amazing. But how do I make this work? Oh my gosh, okay.
Speaker 3:That's so good, Thank you. It's funny that that I think you're so right to relate it to kind of this, this sense of like being attentive to the present moment, Cause some of the research that I was looking at was saying the way we experience time right now, because time is accelerating, technology is accelerating our experience of time that we are we don't actually look back as much as we should.
Speaker 3:We're constantly thinking ahead because we've got to like conserve the resources for whatever is going to be needed tomorrow. And so the the time that we're not living really is the now time, and, interestingly enough, the most joyful experiences for human beings give like it's almost like time kind of disappears. You're so fully immersed in the moment you just can't, you just you aren't even, you're not looking at your watch, we're not a bit doing something that is bringing you so much joy. One of the stories that I tell in the book was just this we did some mountain climbing, some rock climbing.
Speaker 2:I mean gosh.
Speaker 3:I don't want to say mountain climbing, but it was rock climbing. I just love that.
Speaker 3:You know, I love to be in nature, I love to be, doing, having a physical challenge like that, and when you've, like, reached a certain point, you know, and all you do is like you're just feeling the wind, you're looking at the expanse, you know, the vast expanse of the landscape. You're not going like you know what time is it? Guys, I really think you know, you're hoping just that time. You don't want to know what time it is, cause you don't want to know that the sun's going down and that on this day, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to be aware of it. Of course you want to not wait too long to go back down the rock, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2:So there is, you know, you want to be aware, and that's a good thing, right. But I do think that, especially a lot of my audience, a lot of the work that I do, are people that have experienced childhood trauma and in some little t middle t big t way, it's all trauma, it's all emotions that are too big for your body. You know, it's very difficult to be still, it's very difficult to not be in a hyper vigilant state. So one of the ways that you counter that, or one of the ways that you, you know, have have to train yourself, is to be out in nature. So I think that that is where, if, if that's what I was saying a moment ago of joy building, like I want to be out of my practice, I want to be out of work, I want people to not need counseling or therapy anymore, and I think one of the greatest ways of that is just starting to practice paying attention and experiencing joy in the minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, In the moment.
Speaker 2:Yes, slow down, and you write about that. You write about that. Right, that's the subtitle. Right Is is that resisting hurry in order to practice peace? Okay, I have to keep going and I don't want to because this is so good. Okay, I think we're on the last.
Speaker 3:We're on the last one. The last one doesn't feel like the most hopeful ending, but it is the monk, the monastic wisdom of remembering that you died. So it's remember Ooh. And I just find it fascinating that in the Benedictine monasteries this is just something that they rehearse and repeat to each other Remember that you die, remember that you die, and it right-sizes our lives, our ambitions, our aspirations, and I think it does just give us a scope, a sense of scope, a sobering sense of scope. A sense of scope, a sobering sense of scope. Most of the things that we're really caught up with are probably not all that important, and that's the proverbial once you get somebody on their deathbed, they never say, gosh, I wish I had worked more or wish I'd spent all that time wringing my hands about email. They get to the end of their lives and they have a proper sense of what really mattered. And I think the monastic wisdom is okay, don't wait until you're on your deathbed, just every day, remember that you die, because that is going to properly orient you to your time. And it's a beautiful story that I tell in the book and one that you know.
Speaker 3:A lot of readers, they don't know how it turns out.
Speaker 3:But I'm telling about my friend who has metastatic breast cancer and I'm able to visit her, and that's kind of how that chapter opens, and I just don't know, you know, how much time she will be given, and she was diagnosed in 2020. And I honestly didn't know if I would be able to see her because she lives in Scotland. I was living in Canada at the time. His borders are closed. I was able to go, though, and be with her while her husband traveled for a conference in November of 2021. And here we are, like February of 2024, and her therapy has been very successful and it's just. But talk about someone who knows about the gift of time oh yeah, you know who knows what it means to receive every day. And so I just even think, like walking alongside someone who is facing a very you know, a terminal diagnosis, stage four metastatic breast cancer, um, yeah, you're like well, okay, you know, I can see that she, in a very active way, has to remember that she is going to die, and but I could gain from that wisdom.
Speaker 2:No, I think we should gain from that wisdom.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You write something. Uh, jen, you, you write this. There's a whole lot of promise and a little bit of wondering. Do you remember writing that sentence?
Speaker 3:I do that surprised my paradox.
Speaker 2:I think, right, yeah, where were you? It brings me to tears. Oh, why did you write that? Why, why? There's a whole lot of promise and a little bit of wondering yeah, I think that has.
Speaker 3:I think wondering is a something I've been trying to cultivate my whole faith journey and I wouldn't say that I wondered early on, except for the fact that I had early stories of loss and grief. And if anything is going to get you wondering in the context of faith, it's going to be loss, it's going to be grief, it's going to be disappointment, it's going to be God. Where were you? Why didn't you show up? Why didn't you answer that prayer? How could you let this happen? That was not cultivated in me as a Christian believer, you know. I think that I would have said that all those questions are terrible and like faithless, except for the fact that all the good, all the amazing people in scripture ask those exact same questions. You know there's a ton of wondering in scripture, you know.
Speaker 3:Abraham wonders and psalmist wonders and Hannah wonders and Job spends like 40 chapters or something just wondering, you know, and his friends kind of wondering back. Or actually his friends didn't wonder. His friends were like no, we have all the answers. Yeah, yeah, what is the promise in wondering? I mean, I think we're brought to the mysteries of God, you know, we're brought to a sense of our own smallness. There's a necessary humility that happens in wondering Like you're, just, like at the end of the day you get to. You know my ways, god, saying my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, like my wisdom is higher than yours. So which means doesn't mean that it that satisfies me. You know, I keep, I keep wondering and I think those are fertile places.
Speaker 3:I actually think wondering is a really fertile place in faith?
Speaker 2:oh, do you write about fertile places.
Speaker 3:That's good, I don't know if I think. I think I've started to use that language in my rule of life workshop. I've started to talk about the fertile places. You know the places where, like, oh you know, the soil could kind of get turned up and something could be seeded here, I think. I think we probably don't recognize the fertile places, you know, like wondering and then akin to that grief, loss, doubt, disappointment, like how can those be the fertile places? Trauma Could trauma be a fertile place?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I would say yes, yes, yes to all of those, if we go back to your receiving Right, because that's the shift for me. Yes, am I receiving the message? Yeah, you know, I mean that's that's going to be an intention for me, for sure, help me receive the message, yeah, that you're trying to give me. Yes, today, yes, in this moment, in this season. Is it fitting for this season that's so life-giving?
Speaker 2:oh okay, you're all just gonna have to get in good time and surprise by paradox and all the others, but I didn't want to leave. I don't want to leave without asking you uh, from your book Teach Us to Want, which I remember seeing that came back out in 2014. It's all about desire. What do you want? I read it back then. That was a while ago in my brain.
Speaker 3:Mine too. Okay, good, thank you.
Speaker 2:But it's delving into the desires of our hearts. Why is it important to admit desire? I wanted to ask you, Jen, how do we respond faithfully when we feel that a desire of our heart has been denied? This is a little fresh and selfish of me, but I think I'm not alone. But I think I'm not alone. I really have not ever heard it worded that way and I definitely wanted to know why. You wrote on desire, of course, but this one particular and looking at the time, I want to honor your time. What if we feel the desire of our heart's been denied? We really believed it was from God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ooh, that's I mean. I think, whenever you're talking about desire, you are always talking about disappointment too or the possibility of it.
Speaker 3:So I think of these as like the two faces of the coin, and I think that's why we don't let ourselves desire. I mean, one of the reasons is that we're just better to expect nothing you know than to get what you don't want and then to have to face like, what does that mean about God? So I was just recently talking to somebody who is currently in the season of praying for the thing. She hasn't been disappointed yet, but I think she knows it's a real possibility that the thing may not come through. And one of the things that I was telling her is, I think that prayer is always it's less about the thing and more about the communion and the company, keeping with God the journey, and so what happens in prayer?
Speaker 3:And so what happens in prayer, even as we go with these desireful prayers, I think if prayer could deepen a trust in us of two things about God that can help us receive these disappointments. We have to deepen our trust in his goodness and his wisdom, because it's one thing to think God is good and so often then we're like well, if God is good and this is a good thing, then I will get it, but what about? And it's one thing to say that God is wise and then to think well, I don't even know what's good, and he'll just probably determine everything for me, you know but to kind of hold these to hold these intention with each other, that God is good, that I can, he's a good father.
Speaker 3:Jesus says to us we can ask him for good things. He doesn't turn his children away, doesn't give them snakes when they ask for bread or eggs. I don't remember, yeah, stones, you know, yeah, one of the things that's helped me, and I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but Tim Keller says it like this in his book on prayer. He says we will either have what we ask, have asked, of God, or we will have what we would have asked had we had his wisdom.
Speaker 3:Oh isn't that good, that is so good. I I've said that to so many people. I've gotten more yeah, that is like pretty consistently in any talk I give, because I think this is like such a raw place in our spiritual lives Like I prayed for this thing and it was a good thing and I thought for sure that God said and so just to think, okay, there's, there's something at work behind the scenes, If I don't have the thing I asked for, I'm going to have whatever I should have asked you know, and I won't even say, should just say, if I had, I had, I had I known the fuller picture, had I been able to have God's kind of like view of time, view of his eternal purposes, then then he's given me the good thing.
Speaker 3:I do love the book of Job. I have to say it's a good book. One of the person, just a writer, who's helped me make sense of it is Ellen Davis. She's an Old Testament scholar and she says that, you know, the story of Job isn't the theology of suffering as much as it's a theology of the sufferer, as it's a theology of the sufferer Like at the end of the day you don't get the essential questions answered that Joe's really asking like why, why?
Speaker 3:But you see the sufferer, you know you see, the sufferer. You see the journey, you see the finally, like you know, putting his hand over his mouth and just realizing okay, I've, I've spoken what I don't know um see correction like yeah, you know you do discipline like, and just kind of a like well jobe. Who are you?
Speaker 3:and where were you when I created the foundations of the earth and then also, you know, then Job gets their rightful correction too and repeat, and I have to say I like that because they had all the answers and the answers were all wrong yeah, I know it's so good exactly.
Speaker 2:Please endeavor, yeah, and on Ellen Davis's shoulders, and and write book on Job.
Speaker 3:Oh, I love Job. I don't think I have the chops for that, but I'm sure it'll show up in more books. You're still young, so young.
Speaker 2:I finally feel like I've grown into my age and the fact of wisdom, and I love, as author C Brooks calls it, our crystallized wisdom in this phase of life.
Speaker 3:Yes, that I don't have fluid, I it our crystallized wisdom in this phase of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah that I don't have fluid. I'm out of this fluid, what's it called Wisdom stage and in the crystallized wisdom stage, but I love that wisdom for sure.
Speaker 3:For all of us who love to learn. I hope that doesn't. I don't think that's going to end?
Speaker 2:I don't think it will. It's just a part of. I mean it's so biblical, so it's so part of God's nature, jen, thank you so so much. You're so welcome. Thank you Just let everyone know how to find you and encourage everyone to read your work and all your articles and in your books. So keep writing and thank you for this time. So much, Thank you.
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.
