Latest / CEO Kingdom Seekers / Ep 39: When Suffering Exposes Self-Reliance with Dr. Carron Silva (Romans 5:3–4)

Transcript

Ep 39: When Suffering Exposes Self-Reliance with Dr. Carron Silva (Romans 5:3–4) · CEO Kingdom Seekers

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hey y'all, welcome to this week's episode.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, in Tuesday's episode, episode 38, we talked about force competence, those things that we become really good at because at some point our life, our responsibility, our profession, or even our survival required us to.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In today's conversation with Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Karen Silva, we're gonna go into a deeper layer of that conversation.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna look at what happens when being highly capable makes it really easy to rely on yourself.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Karen is a forgiveness coach, speaker, and host of the Forgiveness is for you podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in this conversation with me, she shares really vulnerably about a season where she was carrying her business and the demands of a farm she and her husband felt called to start, and multiple experiences of grief.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And through all of that, how she realized how often her response had become, I need to figure this out.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the differences between suffering that comes along with being human and following God faithfully, and the suffering that we can sometimes compound when we run ahead of him.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: We also touch on grief, forgiveness, discernment, and what it looks like to recognize self-reliance without turning that recognition into shame.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a story in here involving a bear and some beehives and an electric fence that gave me one of my favorite questions from this entire conversation.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I asked her, did you pray about the fence first?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you listen, I want you to consider where your competence might be making it easier to solve the problem and to fix the fence before you've asked God what he wants you to do with it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my conversation with Dr.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Karen.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, friend.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be back.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you came on our previous podcast, our Becoming Trauma-Informed Podcast.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we met too through our institute.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: You I came in course.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you took our trips course, our trauma-informed psychologically safe program.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my gosh.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Am I allowed to say, I know you're not supposed to have favorites.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: You are one of my favorites.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And anytime that you showed up on my schedule or I got to interact with you, I was like, oh yay, it's Karen.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good to see you again.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what led us to doing this again was you and I, I think I sent an email and you replied, and you were like, Whew, that landed.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I had the same reaction I always do to your name.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, it's Karen.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to hear from her again.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Do you want to reconnect?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we ended up having a pretty long conversation.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we talked for almost 90 minutes.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just catching up, but also just realizing that God is doing something.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're not sure what, but he's doing something.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But dang, it's the season, it's been a season of suffering.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's been the season of suffering.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were talking about, yeah, we should do an episode on this.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being like, I wonder who the person's gonna be who's gonna see the episode that's like season of suffering, and be like, yeah, let's go.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought about, no, that would be me because it would have been me a couple of months ago while I was in that season of suffering.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to have this conversation too, because one of the things that I've realized that I have been doing that God very much convicted me around is he was like, Lee, you connect with me through your Catholic faith.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you are so afraid to make anybody else feel ostracized or rejected or not welcomed that you don't share parts of your faith that are what brought you closest to me.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was excited to have you on as well because you're also Catholic.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And because suffering is a huge part of the Catholic faith.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I know a lot of people hear that and they're like, Yeah, y'all like really I'm like, but no, it suffering is a central part of what Jesus experienced.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for those of us who are like willing to suffer for other people and willing to do the hard thing and willing to take on all this stuff, our relationship with suffering can get distorted.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm excited to just explore that today.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, for us, the year started January 7th.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a dear friend of ours passed away, and we had not known him for very long, but he's one of those people who just he connected with and just developed a very deep relationship with, and he was a fellow acts brother.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So Axe is an apostolate in the Catholic Church, it stands for Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy just embodied all of those.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so our year started with going to a funeral, and I don't think we ever really got out of that season of grief, and just traveling this year through a lot of change and transition, and just knowing that we are on this mission that the Lord put in front of us.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: My husband and I moved to a small farm in New Mexico with the hope of this farm turning into a place of healing.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been hard, hard work.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're I'm turning 60 soon, next month.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: He'll turn 60 in the spring.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so entering this season of life, we were like little teenage, we're like young adult, newly married, almost like, we're going off on this adventure.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the reality here.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The reality of the work, the reality of the mission, where we are just in our body.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Your body isn't 20 years old anymore.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do the pink that you thought you could do.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: In your head, you can like, yeah, you're like, you're still used to how it was.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably some of the last instances of you doing some of the things that you had to do in getting and prepping the land.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like the last time you did those were probably in your 20s.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, actually, it was we had a small one-acre farm in Colorado while we were both full-time professionals.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is scaling up.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: We did our jobs during the day, and in the evenings we would go out and work on the farm.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I had chickens, we had honeybees, we had an orchard, huge gardens, and a following on Facebook, all of the things, a farm stand in our front yard.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting my PhD, and so I decided I was gonna pay for college with by selling my eggs and fruits and vegetables and honey right in my front yard.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we set up a farm stand during, we did it for three summers.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And into the fall.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also had a little refrigerator on my porch and I would sell Etsy stuff out of there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I had my full-time job as a student, a PhD student, and working on the farm, and then he was a full-time engineer and working on the farm.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we left Colorado in 2021, moved to Austin, Texas, so we could save money.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: We sold our farm so that we could save money and scale up.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord just put this on our hearts that this has to be a place of healing.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he's shaping us through our suffering right now to be ready for that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm hearing is okay, you're getting the education in order to do the work that you're doing now.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna talk about forgiveness because that's the central part of your work.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're studying full-time, you've got this, it sounds like this just well-sized, flourishing way of bringing in this extra income.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Then you move, and God goes, Okay, this is gonna be bigger.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so while we're in Austin, that's when I got the calling to start forgiveness ministry.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had decided that continuing in the public education sphere was just not for me.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I got the degree, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I got the PhD.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at what was out there and where I would have to be, and I was like, I am a faithful Catholic, I'm not gonna survive this.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: In the episode, the solo episode that we released just before this one, I talked about the same experience of being in academia and going, oh my, this just keeps pulling me out of the gifting that God has graced me with.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we use the term close but no cigar.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's creating that moral misalignment just over and over.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you talk about suffering, that's really tough when you're like, man, I'm in this place and I'm doing everything I can, as much as I can.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And also, I know this isn't yeah, this is off.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: In your soul.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two options, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can like full on face the suffering and go, man, I'm gonna have to make some really tough choices here.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no matter what I choose, it's gonna be tough.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can do what a lot of people do, and what I admittedly did at times, which is bury your head in the sand and go, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just tell myself that this is fine.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna find a way for these two things to be okay together.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the way I'm gonna do that is by not looking at them.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like you full-on looked at it and God went, yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I spoke it out loud, and so I did experience the backlash of speaking it out loud, not saying you're wrong, but saying, This is who I am.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am a woman of faith, I am a devout Catholic, and this is what I believe, and leaving it at that, and then receiving that backlash of oh, the Bible is just a bunch of made-up stories, how can you believe that?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: At the PhD level.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got your PhD, you know, in those circles, the level of conversation that you expect to have, and then you get there, and then this is what happens.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very disappointing to me that the level of discourse, even at that level, I had deeper conversations as a student in a high school in a partit year in South Africa.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Deeper intellectual, political, religious, because everyone had such respect for each other's opinion.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I like to be very clear.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have my practice doctorate because a lot of because you did, you've got your research doctorate, I've got my practice doctorate, my DNP.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: What I found interesting in academia, and then also working at an academic healthcare institution, like literally across the street as a nurse practitioner.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was all fine and good if I believed in the Bible, but bringing my faith actually into my work, that was a no-no.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I ever prayed with a patient looking back at it.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I spoke up a lot about a lot of the ethical or moral things that I saw that I believe were rooted in the perspective of my faith, but it wasn't typically from this actual faith-based conversation.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't as bold.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And looking back, I'm like, man, if I went back now, I would probably be a lot more like you have like, hey, this is where I'm at.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting how those two responses, I think, are both really tough.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: The one is, yeah, yeah, have your beliefs, but don't bring them in.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the other is, how can you even believe that?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So God gives you this calling for this forgiveness ministry.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: How does that tie into this farm you're on now?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I became a coach.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I got certified with Metanoia Catholic.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: They are a phenomenal Catholic coaching organization.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: They prepare coaches to be able to go into the mission field in their own parishes and to work with priests and religious and lay people on mindset and understanding their responsibility to take ownership for their lives and to challenge their thoughts and look at the fruits of their thoughts all view lens of a Catholic anthropology.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my training that I received in 2022.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the forgiveness ministry took off, and I was asked to speak.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that this could be if we marry what I'm doing now as a coach with the idea of having people come and work the land with us, then we could have this beautiful blend of coaching and farming together.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do we have it all figured out?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not quite yet.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've only been here for 18 months.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: The place has been neglected for more than two decades.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are probably 20 years worth of trees that need taking out and chipped off and whatever we need to do with them.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the work is here and it's hard work.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there isn't a week that both of us look at each other and go, What did we sign up for?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is hard.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: We are physically suffering because it's hard physical labor, and we are mentally suffering because we are in a state where it's really difficult to find people to hire to work with you.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Very difficult to find labor here.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned at the beginning of this that in January you had that dear friend pass away.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also hearing you say that you've been doing this for 18 months.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to do the math in my head.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's about nine months and nine months, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what was the difference between those first nine months and then like what kicked off in January?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you know how you have the honeymoon period where you're just like all your energy goes into the honeymoon period.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: You said nearly went to the fighting.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what we did.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we moved twice in the four years, right?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: We moved from Colorado to Austin, Texas.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then we were there for three and a half years, and then we move here.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is gonna be my husband says, You're gonna find my body in the field someday.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I want to go, right?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the those first few months, you're just super excited.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: My coaching business was starting to take off.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting more clients.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a course on forgiveness, I did a beta test on the course, everything was going great business-wise.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord was sending me all these women I was coaching.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I even coached a couple of guys, and then the reality of the farm really sat in.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, the coaching business is going great, but it's taking up so much of my time.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: My husband is out there doing most of the work on the farm, and it takes more than one person to do some of these jobs.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, for me, it became this really push and pull.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you called me to do this coaching, this forgiveness coaching, this speaking, this these engagements with large groups of people.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you also said, I want you to go and build this farm so that people can come and heal.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is it that you want?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just was like, I'm just not gonna do anything.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually ended up contracting myself because I felt like I couldn't.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You hear what I'm doing here?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You started looking at it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this word, I know a lot of people have emotions attached to this, but it's that self-absorption.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Where you start looking at how everything on the outside is impacting you internally.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than going, okay, what's the internal state I want to embody and then send that out?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think my season of suffering started with now we have a death.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: This grief that I don't have time to grieve because I've got things to do.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this man, he just really, I'm getting teary right now.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was one of those people God sends into your life just at the right time.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was a mentor to my husband, he was a really good friend, and he was a handyman, too, and just an awesome guy.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so then that grief, and then I had a couple of family members pass away just three weeks ago.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: I lost another dear friend.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this has really been a year of grieving, but not giving myself that opportunity to sit with it because the demand is so great for the quote unquote doing part of me, right?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then Lee, I keep getting your email.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I'm so annoying like that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: People are like, will you stop reading me for filth, please?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just hey, everything I'm writing is a mirror that I held up to myself before I turned it around for you.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're so good.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I finally had to just stop.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I did was I thought, okay, I need to get out on social media and I need to learn how to do.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I learned what B-roll was.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what B-roll was.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I learned all these things about Instagram, and then it was like, wait a second here.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: God wants me to be with him, to do his work, to use this suffering for good.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I signing up for suffering?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That means playing the algorithm.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what am I doing here?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because that caused me to actually contract, yeah, not expand.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's expansive, he's not someone that contracts, and so I wasn't cooperating with him, I was becoming really self-reliant.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it took a while to see what I was doing, and so I believe that it's my disobedience, my turning away, my focusing on the I have to do it that caused my season of suffering.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, thank you for your vulnerability around that, because that's a hard thing to look at.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is without condemnation or shame.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: What I see most people do when they realize what you've realized is they either, again, bury their head in the sand or they then try to fix it, change it, go harder, they go harder.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And both of those are you said it, and I know it's a strong word, and it's a true word.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're disobedient, and not from the sense of God's trying to get us to follow these rules so that we're in line.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it I don't say that from a place of scrupulosity, which is by the way, one of my new favorite words that has just been popping up everywhere.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it from the perspective of we have to follow these rules or God's not gonna love us.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's because God loves us, He's inviting us to do things in a way that when we say yes to it, even though it's painful, even though it causes suffering, it is better than anything else that we're gonna choose on our own without him.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's just there's a lot wrapped up in that, especially if you're somebody who is so used to being self-reliant.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: But self-reliance is in a lot of its forms, like at the basic level, it is self-absorption.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's going either I think I matter too little to ask for help, or I think I matter too much to ask for help.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've either got this inflated sense, or you've got this deflated sense, and God's like, Yeah, you're not either of those.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: How tense did you feel over those nine months?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And like, what happened with that tension once you were like, Oh, I am uh I am the source of my suffering?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm working through Father James Waxon's 40 weeks, and it's 40 weeks of Saint Ignatian spirituality.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I'm on week 12 right now.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I started this sort of in the middle of that period of just not being myself, not being in my body.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a lot of physical pain, and I'm also learning now about nervous system, deep nervous system dysregulation and chronic pain.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia 28 years ago when my son.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Was born, and so I've lived with it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 26, I should say he was two when I was diagnosed, but I started having symptoms when he was born, and I always knew that the diagnosis is just they don't know the heck what they're talking about.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm learning about that.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So in the middle of this, just really feeling like there's something off.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is not me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can't handle this, it's too overwhelming.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Goddess is really even just the path you want us on.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have to understand that both of us are going through this at the same time.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: My husband is struggling, I'm struggling.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: The honeymoon is over, we're both in mourning.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this started after our friend died.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then just realizing, oh my gosh, I can't do this alone.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I need help.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what came to me was go through the 40 weeks again.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing the 40 weeks when I was called into the forgiveness ministry.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I have my entire journal from 2022.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I went back to that journal and I could see how he was calling me into the forgiveness ministry.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, I want you to do this again.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what it does is you read about Saint Ignatius's life and how he came to create his prayers, he examine prayer, these rules for discernment.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go through your own life based on his journey.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you go through the Ten Commandments, and you look at the movements of your life based on scripture and the Ten Commandments.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go through the capital sins.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you evaluate your actions, your behavior, your thought patterns against the capital sins, and you rate them.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is it strong?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it moderate?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it weak?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Does it happen often?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is it constant?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is it not so often?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is it hardly ever?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you're doing is you're working up to this whole life contraction.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see where the enemy was attaching to my vices and making my suffering seem worthless.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you just said so much of them.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I'm hearing, and for our non-Catholic listeners, because there's some words you used in there that I know I remember when I wasn't Catholic, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, what are we talking about here?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just talk about that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, this examination of conscience that you're speaking to that we use to go to our priest in confession, which there is another word for confession that a lot of churches have started using, which I love.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're synonymous, which is reconciliation, because I love that.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Of you're doing this to yes, to share the things, the places that you've turned away from God and his love.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you're doing it so that you can be reconnected to him, you can be reconciled with him.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I see that you're just doing this very, very deep dive through everything.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the other things I wanted to say as you were talking, because I remember not understanding, okay, why would I go to reconciliation?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the dominant things that people say about Catholics.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, I could just go to Jesus myself.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: I could just go to God myself.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I go to a priest?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the example of, okay, if you are in a car, you just got a new car.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And over time you're like, I'm not going to eat in this car.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to drink in this car.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to keep it pristine.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And over time, you accidentally drop a straw wrapper or a French fry falls underneath the seat.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that accumulates to the point that you look around and you're like, oh, this is so dirty that I have to clean out my car.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: When most of us clean out our cars, we just grab the big stuff and maybe some of the small stuff, but a lot of stuff gets left behind and things that are hidden, but things that we don't even realize are there.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so even if you decide, okay, you know what?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to detail my car.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Even if we go in and do that, there are things that we will miss because we are not experts at detailing cars.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: The priests that we go to reconciliation with, they are expert detailers.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I've shared an experience recently where it was the wildest confession experience I'd ever had.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: I went in there and I was being very scrupulous.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, here's all the things I've done.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been three months since I've been in here.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was being hard on myself.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the priest stopped and he said, which one of these is hurting your heart the most right now, Lee?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Which one of these feels heaviest for you?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: I burst into tears.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he's, can we just focus then on the fact that you are being as hard on yourself as you are right now?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that's what God wants?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And normally at the end, they give you like a penance, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a way and an atonement.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a way for you to show, hey, I'm turning back and I want to, it's a way for you to practice being in that intimacy.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I had never received something like this.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I want you to go outside because his office was like tucked in the back of the sanctuary.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I want you to go and I want you to kneel in a pew in front of the tabernacle, in front of Jesus for like 15 minutes.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want you to thank him for loving you.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's beautiful.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm hearing as you're talking about this whole examination, the whole point of this is that after you offer that up, after you take all of that, because there's so much suffering, like you said, wrapped up in that, that you take it and you're handing it to Jesus, and you're like, hey, I know you know what to do with this.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because you suffered beyond anything I'm ever going to be able to imagine.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, I know you're gonna know what to do with this.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you don't want me to drag it around and condemn myself with it because you already paid for it.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying you've done this once, and now you're about you said 12 weeks through?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 12 weeks in, it's 40 weeks, and I go back to my old journal with each week and in 2022, and now I'm doing it again, and I'm seeing my growth, yeah, my spiritual growth, my maturity in in my faith.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also seeing where there's repeated patterns of sin.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm seeing where I need to interrupt patterns of behavior.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: The other day, somebody was like, Oh, you're so slender, and I'm like, No, really not.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because my perception of my body is so off, right?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I tend to use food as medicine, food to comfort.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I noticed is a pattern in my life that this is something that I'm using as an idol.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Food is an idol, yeah, but food is also the way a vehicle for me to have relationship.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love cooking, and so food is a way to have relationship.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love cooking for and baking sourdough.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But when you observe yourself that way, you start to see the hand of God in your life too.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to see how he has been carrying us, and he physically sent us someone.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So a buddy of our friend who passed away, a fellow brother in Christ from Austin.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's been here for the last two weeks.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be with us for three weeks.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and he's been working with us, and so we're sort of experimenting with this model of having somebody come and work with us, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to forget this because there was something else you said that I think is really important, and I want to hear you expound on it.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm hearing you say that you see the growth going back and looking at each week, but you also said that you can see where the enemy, where Satan is like causing you to think that your suffering is worthless.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Can you say more on that?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when we are in that deep darkness and we can't see the light, all you want to do is give up or change course away from what you know in your heart is your mission.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is the enemy.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because the enemy doesn't want what we want to do for us to make that happen, right?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Case in point, we had four beehives earlier this summer.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: We there's a big problem with bears because of the drought that we had until two weeks ago, we got tons of rain.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of our beehives got destroyed by a bear.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: How do you protect the rest of them?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go get an electric fence.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So my husband put this really powerful little electric fence around the bees, and he checks them periodically.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were looking forward to this great honey harvest, and so a few days ago he goes in there, he checks, and all the bees are gone.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they all flew away.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: But last week we had massive footing.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the river right here, we are on the river.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: That river came up so fast, it's like a freight train when you're standing next to it.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can heal the power.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're wondering: did they feel the threat of the water, or was it the electric fence?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: So did we make the mist?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: The EMP maybe not like that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't know.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what can happen is you start taking that and you start having thoughts.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this isn't what we're supposed to be doing.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe we're on the wrong path.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe, and that is the enemy planting those seeds to discourage you.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you something?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: When the bear came and you decided on the electric fence, did you guys pray about that first?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, we did not, but we followed the advice of the wildlife people because yeah, they're the experts, right?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I am asking you that again, and I love that I feel safe asking you that because I know you're not going to condemn yourself around it.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that is actually a place that I have found that the enemy gets me, is he will get in my head when something like that bear, which is a literal thread, when it's funny because in in trauma work we talk about is it you feel like a bear is chasing you, but it's not really you're like, no, it was an actual bear chasing the bees.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: That was a thing.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I will get in these situations where it either feels like there's a bear or there's an actual bear, and I won't pray first about what I should do next.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll go, okay, what do the experts say?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: What does the internet say?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: What does this say?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: What does that say?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll do it.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think that it's a trap in either direction.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: If it works, I'm like, oh great, I don't think about needing to pray next time because the way I did it worked.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't, I will either be mean to myself about like, oh my gosh, I should have prayed because if I had just asked God first, instead of being like, hey God, my bad.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help me remember next time to pray first?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or I will start trying to solve it myself even more.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what we did because we followed the protocol from the parks and wildlife.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they were like, come and get some rubber shots.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you can shoot them with these rubber bullets, put rags soaked in ammonia around the area.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: They can't stand the smell of ammonia.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I was out there like for a couple of weeks in the evening, going out there with a spray bottle with them.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: We put a camera on the apiary, it would go off in the middle of the night, and we'd both jump the hypervigilance.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's a huge investment, right?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: To invest in these heights, and you have to make a profit somehow on your crops, or you lose your farm insurance.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's so much like worldly safety security tied up in all of this.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, so the reality of it sets in, right?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think when you go online and you see all these people homesteadying and they're making it look these women who are like dressed to the nines with makeup on and they're out there with their chickens, and I'm like, Where's that work?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe that's real for you, but like, honey, that is not how most of the rest of us are doing the thing.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how much time did you like repair this shot?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how much time did you take?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was with all of this Instagram stuff, I was trying to do that, and then I realized I'm gonna kill myself.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't be messing with a camera when I'm messing with a chainsaw.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fame fine.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: There is such an interesting theme kind of running through both of this, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm seeing it in your ministry, and I'm gonna use this word.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that they're separate or that one of these is more professional than the other, but like you're coaching your business in terms of forgiveness and mindset for others, and also with the land.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that wild how he does that and how those themes can run through a season of okay, the the literal place where I lay my head and I sleep, and we make our living my home, these things are happening.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then also in my business or my work, these things are also happening.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're connecting so many dots for me as you're talking about my own summer and just the places that I was like, I can see, oh, I was overwhelmed here in the same way that I was overwhelmed there.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And both of those were because I wasn't slowing down, I wasn't pausing, I wasn't feeling the grief.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was running ahead of God and being like, Come on, let's go! And he's like, Hey, not can't slow down.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, he's he stopped us.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: You stopped me in particular, dead in my track.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many stories in the Bible of him doing that too.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many times that he's like, Look, I can't get you to stop running ahead of me.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have free will and you keep choosing this.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna let you run yourself into the ground, and then you're gonna come to me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna I'm think of Olaisha.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tuck you under the tree and give you a snack and a nap, and then we're gonna start over.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think it's so hard for us to in those times where we have that tension and we feel that threat, why is it so hard for us to slow down and allow ourselves to really feel the suffering of it?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of it is conditioning.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, coming from that trauma background, and I learned this from you, Lee, in the trips course, is when you are an internalizer, you absorb all the the chaos, and you get blind to what's possible.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so you just keep going.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: So as a child growing up, I internalized everything, and this was the way I survived is to just keep going.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep going, just keep going and push harder, push harder and protect yourself that way because the more you can achieve, there's something in the achievement for you.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fulfillment, yeah, but there's something for you there, right?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so with everything you get done, you feel a little bit better.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't last, it's very shallow, but it's something to look for to.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's this little bit of dopamine that hits and then drops off.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it doesn't accumulate, it doesn't provide that fulfillment that we are looking for because it's empty.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: It there's no grace there.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see forgiveness tying into all of this?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had to sit down and I just did this in my reflection.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also I'm doing two things actually at the same time because you know I never can just do one.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I love the fact that you're like, you know what?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm gonna do two things at once, they're gonna be things that God leads me toward.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, like, but notice you're easily able to do two things at once when God's like, hey, these are the two things I want you doing, and the way I want you doing them.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Funny.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm working my way through Father Cromley, Father Nathan Promley's book, coached by Saint Paul.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to check that out.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love I love me some Paul.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and so it's basically taking Paul's light, but looking at it through a coaching perspective.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like being coaching, yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started reading his book and I am journaling through how is what is St.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul teaching us about our relationship with Christ, the different seasons of our life.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks about the fog of paralysis, and I feel like this summer I was in that fog of paralysis, not knowing, not wanting to go back, but not knowing how to move forward.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then he talks about that long suffering, that fog of long suffering, and how do we invite God into that fog of long suffering?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one of these chapters is titled In Pain a New Name.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: So Saul through pain, the pain of blindness, the pain of being struck down, yeah, like falling off a horse.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not hurt.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: That hurt the pain of being in darkness for three days.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what he saw in that darkness?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: All of his deeds, everything that he had done in his life, right?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: So think about those three days of darkness for Saul.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: In in that pain, he receives that redemption and new name.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so Father Crowley talks about what is a new name that God wants to give you that you're not receiving, that you're not accepting.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because all you're seeing is the darkness, you're not seeing the light, you're not like being with God here in your suffering, and that's what Catholicism teaches.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't try to avoid suffering at any cost.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we invite Jesus Christ into the suffering with us.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've said this time and time again.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: God does this thing with me where He helps me know I'm on the right track because there's themes.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, no, I know I'm there because I'm seeing this, and it's coming from a lot of different people.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: So yesterday, my twins are going through the OCIA, the confirmation process.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's beautiful.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it has been so amazing because they're actually going through the adult class, not the child class, and they're 14.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of this is it's intense for an adult.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're like, and it's by the way, it's at 6 30 p.m.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: after they've gotten up at 5 45 and had a whole school day, had baseball practice, then they're doing this.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're tired.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: They ask such interesting questions.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody at our table yesterday was asking our deacon to explain what this idea of redemptive suffering meant.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's what you just talked about here is that we tie our suffering to Christ's.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: And in doing so, we participate in the redemption that he has created, that he offers for everybody.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm reading The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest, Richard Rohr takes a mystical and a more, oh, what's the term I want to use?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say progressive because it's not that, but he has a very different outlook than how I see things.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I'm more Pharisee than Sadducee.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes when he's talking, I have to remind myself, like, it's okay, Lee.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're allowed to look at these ideas.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Pope has said how beautiful his work is.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to explore this.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: But he was just talking about this idea that we do this thing where we forget that we are tied to everybody else.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we get so wrapped up in our own personal relationship with Jesus that we forget about the universal relationship that we get to have with Christ.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm seeing how a lot of the suffering that you experienced was from being in relationship.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: With other people.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what we do.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: We get in relationship with each other and then we give each other a lot of love and we also cause each other a lot of suffering.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just so fascinating to zoom out and think about the fact that you doing this work in the way that you are, you're looking at a story from 2,000 years ago and connecting with it in a way that it is changing how you connect with your suffering in this moment, which then you're offering it up to Jesus and it's connecting back to that.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to get like too quantum physics, time, space, any of that, but I just think it's so cool how all of it ties together and how when we are willing to examine that suffering through the eyes of Jesus and understand its true purpose, how much joy can be found in it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to bring it back because I don't think I really actually answered your question about how does it all how does forgiveness fit into all of this.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it begins with not judging this part of me that ran off and went rogue, trying to fix everything for myself and on my own.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: To have real compassion for the fact that this is her pattern, these are her patterns.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't think she's done this because she's been conditioned to do it from a very young age to survive very difficult situations.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to just have that compassion and to see the the truth of the experience, the truth of who I am, who I was then and who I am now, and seeing myself through his eyes, and then extending that same perspective to the people around me who may have done things to me or said things that that I found offensive.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just that understanding of we're all human, we're all gonna screw up at some point, and we have the grace to let it go.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have the grace to say, okay, this happened, these are the boundaries, we're not gonna let this happen again.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I would like to be treated, or if it's myself interiorly, go to confession, go to confession and be honest in the confession.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Look for the need underneath this in that there's always something underneath, and it's typically us putting something in between us and God, yeah.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or somebody else put something between us and God, and we didn't know at the time enough to do anything about it, and that's continued.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite stories, and maybe you'll remember which saint this was, but I remember hearing this in OCIA.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: They were telling the story of a woman who was seeing like Christ's apparitions, and she was going back to her priest and saying, Hey, I I'm seeing apparitions of Jesus, and this is what's going on.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't believe her.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: The same thought.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe I wasn't.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Here, next time he appears to you, I want you to ask him what I confessed to him or what I shared in confession.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so she leaves and she comes back and he says, What did Jesus say that I confessed?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Jesus said, I don't remember because he forgets.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, as soon as we say, Hey, this is the heavy burden, these are the things that I'm carrying here.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Thank you.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want you to be holding that in front of you and keeping it between us in the first place.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: And even so, people will say, I'm not gonna go to confession.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that priest is gonna remember.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: The priests don't remember a thing, they do solely confession, darling.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: You come in and you're like, Oh, and you try to confess something that you confessed maybe two weeks ago, and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God gives them that holy forgetfulness.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our priest told us that a couple of weeks ago he came in and did the QA, and somebody asked that, and they said, Yeah.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I don't know.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is a special gift of grace.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just leaves.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't remember it if I tried.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he also said to us last week, he said, here's the thing about coming to confession too is and participating in this, is he said, it gives you insight.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like you just said, it gives you insight into your patterns.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I have somebody who's coming and confessing that they're struggling with lust and that they participate in a lustful act four times this week, and then the next week it's three times, and the week after that, it's once, and the week after, he's like, I'm gonna jump for joy that this transformation is happening over time.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if somebody's confessing the same thing week after week, that is an invitation to them to notice, okay, the whole idea of this is that I go and sin no more.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if it's not changing, then like you just said, maybe there's a need underneath of this that we're not looking at.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've got to ask yourself the question that my priest asked me of Lee, what is actually grieving your heart here?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all the things you did wrong.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's the fact that you're like holding yourself up to this measuring stick, and every time you fall short, you're being really unkind to yourself.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: What is one last thing that you would want?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who's listened to this and has been like, ooh, okay, yeah.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've also been in a season of suffering.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've also run ahead.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've also done these things.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's one last thing that you'd want to say to them about suffering or forgiveness or any of it?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's temporary.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's temporary.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: We when we're in it, it feels like it's gonna be forever.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: I earlier this summer, I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna make it with when we look at everything long term.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is my body gonna hold out?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which with me doing some nervous system research on the system dysregulation and chronic pain, I'm already better just by putting into practice what I'm learning about regulating your nervous system to address symptoms that create pain and puts your nervous system into hypervigilance, which creates more pain.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm breaking that cycle.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: So already he's showing me I have answers for you.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to be open yourself up to rebuild, right?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's from a Christian woman who has done all of these things herself, discovered how to heal.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's temporary, it's not forever.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Be willing to be broken and rebuilt.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about the kinsubi practice in Japanese culture where they take a broken cup, oh yeah, and they use gold and they fill it in.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually envisioned myself.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Adoration two weeks ago.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: We go once a week, and I just sat there and I imagined myself as this broken cup, and the Lord was like using gold to put me back together.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I even imagined the colors that I wanted this cup to be, and the kind of tea that would be poured into that cup.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: With St.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ignatius, you can just let your imagination take over and invite the Lord there into that story, right?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: So thinking about how much more beautiful we are when we make it through that season of suffering.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if we slow down enough to do what you're doing and really examine what's going on and look at the cycles, right?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like when have I been in this season before, and what's changed versus what is still the same.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when you do that, what comes out of that?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just finished reading The Wounded Healer by Henry Henry Nguyen.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, say it again.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Henry Nowen?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Nowen, thank you.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Henry Nowen, yeah, it's old.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was written in the 70s, but I'm reading this just going, oh my gosh.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: I he's using both the example of someone in ministry and someone who is a physician or a healthcare provider.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like tracking with both.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: But he actually used a term that I was like, God, you're so good, because I'd had several people remind me that I used to say it all the time.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, Lee, you used to say I'm not for everyone all the time.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: He talks about that.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Christian leaders, we are not for everyone.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: We are here to reach specific people in specific ways, based on how God's designed us.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he says that when we do the work of really going inward and looking at all those dark places and allowing the light to come in, when we then go out and minister to others, that's how you reach people.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't looked at any of that, examined any of that yourself, and then you're going out and trying to serve and help people, the way out is the way in.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know, if you haven't gone through that experience of the way out is the way in yourself, then it's gonna be really hard to lead people in and then back out.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we go first.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: We have to go first we go first, we go first.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, I can talk to you for hours.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate your wisdom.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I notice when I talk to you, my whole pace just like comes down, which I love people that slow me down.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like a lot of times I'm the one that's working to slow others down.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's such a joy to be in the presence of someone who slows me down more because I'm like, oh yeah, I need this too.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um people would like to connect with you further and learn about your forgiveness work and also about the farm.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you got some people who are like, I want to come work, the farm, where I'll make sure this is down in the show notes too, but how would you like people to connect with you?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have a website, it's not in the best shape right now.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm busy working on that.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's www.drin.com.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's D-R-C-A-R-R-O.com, and they pretty much connect with me.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Instagram.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, don't try to find her on Instagram, y'all.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Facebook, maybe, but no, yeah, no, just go to our website.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I love that you own that too.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: The right people are gonna find you, and your the state of your website isn't gonna make one speck of difference because they want to connect with you, right?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I do have a I have a podcast.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, forgiveness is for you, and the tagline is overcome trauma through forgiveness.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: And y'all, if you search Dr.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Karen, if if you just type in, because I did this earlier today, if you just type in D R and then C A R R O N, her podcast is the first thing that pops up.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to find it that way, make it easy.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, well, thank you so much for joining me, friend.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love you very much and I'm so appreciative.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me and likewise back at you.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right, y'all.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: We will see you next week.