Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 16, 2019 | Women's Summer Thrive Series - Invisible Injury / Silent Suffering

Transcript

July 16, 2019 | Women's Summer Thrive Series - Invisible Injury / Silent Suffering · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, good evening.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to see everybody here.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you to think about you remember your very favorite first childhood game.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, conjure it up in your mind real quick.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And probably nobody actually remembers their first game because it probably happened before the age of six months old, right?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was something like this.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Peekaboo! Like, does anybody remember that?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't remember that.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've done it with a kid, if you've had a kid or you've been around a baby.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what it is, but there's something about the exhilaration in a baby when you say peek-aboo, that they laugh and they smile.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so tonight we're talking about being seen, invisible injuries, silent suffering, and how to grow through that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to start out by talking about what it means to be seen.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So when, first of all, someone is engaging with the infant to say peekaboo, there's someone attuning.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And normally what's happening on the other end of the adult responding or the other child responding is a face that says, I delighted you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: There you are, right?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something very powerful about being seen.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's something very powerful about connecting to another human being.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever heard about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, kind of like basic human needs, the very base level that we need is about safety.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's about we need food, we need shelter, we need protection.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: But right above that, ahead of everything else, is we need security.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: We need to know that we matter to somebody because human beings don't fare very well out in the wild on their own.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it is in a baby's best interest.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's in their biology that to survive, I need to get you to see me and I need you to get to get you to take care of me.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Their eyes are disproportionately big because that makes them really cute, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We want to care for them.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think the chubby legs are there for that purpose too.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But so anyway, there's something very powerful about being seen.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we get older, we know that being seen can bring about a certain amount of vulnerability, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But people don't always delight in us.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the 1970s, a little baby named Robert Hogue was born to a family.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was the youngest of five boys, and he was born to a mother who did not delight in what she saw.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Robert had been born grossly disfigured.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: He had a tumor-sized tumor in the middle of his eyes, tumor size, this size tumor in the middle of his face, which pushed his eyes out to the side of his head like a fish, he said.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: His legs were grossly deformed.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And when Robert's mother saw him, I don't I can't remember exactly if she saw him then, but a week later when she left the hospital, she refused to take him home with her.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And she has shared in her diary, Robert has shared, she wrote, I just wished he would go away or die or something.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was just so ugly.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: But her heart changed and she continued to visit Robert in the hospital.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And after about a month, they sat down at their kitchen table with their four other siblings, and they had a discussion about whether or not they were gonna bring Robert home into their family.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the children voted unanimously that they would do this.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so they brought Robert into their family and began to love him, and she began to continue to diary and journal about these feelings that she was having, these internal struggles with how do I attach to my child.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: He needed a great deal of medical care.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think he said he had dozens and dozens of surgeries, and around four, a massive surgery, which helped to they had to amputate a leg and they used a toe to give him a nose and they changed his skull to move his eyes a little bit inward, and it's very risky surgery.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But she journaled about her struggles, and she shared these struggles with Robert, and you would think that that would be devastating.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But in fact, he developed this magnanimous personality, and um, you know, he had to have both legs amputated, he had a disfigured face, multiple, multiple surgeries, and at the age of 14 they said, you know, we can, because you know, kids are cruel.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they called him to's and other you know mean, cruel things.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And around the age of 14, they said, you know, we can maybe make you look a little bit more normal.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a risk.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was a 25% chance that he would go blind during this surgery.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So again, they sat around the table and the family discussed the benefits of this surgery.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one brother, Robert, says, um, stayed quiet.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the discussion, he said, What's the use of being pretty if you can't see yourself?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Robert says that that was a changing moment in his life.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: At 14, he was given the choice whether or not to have this surgery, and he decided not to.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, From that moment on, I decided to own my face.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he has gone on to write a memoir, and he's a motivational speaker, and he talks about moving through disabilities, and he encourages other people, and he says, I was never gonna look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney anyway, so I think I'll just, you know, accept my own distinctive face and go on from there.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so Robert's story is one where there was no hiding.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was no hiding his disability.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: He had to face it, you know, straight on.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how he chose to respond to it is amazing and encouraging and motivating, and his mother's trouble is as well.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And after he wrote his memoir, they were interviewing, and an interviewer suggested that maybe they leave that out.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe it's not politically correct to say that you wanted your child to die or that they were ugly, and she said, No, leave it in.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because other women will feel it and they need to know.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we all have things like that that we feel inside, that we experience inside, that are hard for other people to really get.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what she did was wrestle with the stuff that was inside while he was wrestling with the stuff that he was on the outside, and she was fearless in exposing that struggle that so often can become shame-based.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we when we're vulnerable and things are exposed on the outside, we face a bunch of things.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: We face ridicule, judgment, cruelty, you know, outward consequences.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But when we go unseen, there's a whole other realm of things that we can struggle with.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's fertile ground for a really shame-based identity.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: We can struggle with isolation, we can feel different, and our thinking can go unchallenged because we're so alone.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the things we're talking about here tonight, the invisible injuries, and I just apologize ahead of time because it's not going to be all-encompassing, because I know that there's a bunch of things out there that people are experiencing that I'm gonna forget to touch on or that I don't even know exist.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to get the general idea because when we're talking about unseen, we're talking about vulnerability, and the risk of vulnerability is high when we expose ourselves, although in reality we're all being judged all the time, anyway, whether we expose things or not.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the good side of moving through vulnerability is that we get connection.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when we get connection, first of all, it's what it's what Christ did, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: He walked in community, and through his suffering, he took his disciples with him.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't want us to be alone in our sufferings.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: He is with us, of course, always, and above all, he knows everything we experience, but he also wants us to connect in community, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when we move into empathy, what we get is empathy is you know, somebody else saying, Oh, that must be hard.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody relating to our experience, someone connecting to us.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Empathy promotes our healing, it also sets us up to get help from other people.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because what can happen is, you know, is anybody ever, you know, something hard happens.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, say a death, that's but you know, a big deal.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Most people have lost someone, and so they can relate.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they say, Let me bring you a meal, you know, you're caring for someone sick, let me come relieve you for a little bit, let me do what I can do to help because I can relate to what you might be experiencing, and I want to help.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel connected and we feel cared for.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes when people are suffering in silent, not only are their minds are becoming distorted and they're feeling overwhelmed, but they're also not really connecting with others in a way that gets them help.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So empathy is huge.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, C.S.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis has a famous quote, I know many of you have probably heard before.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Friendship is born at the moment where one person says to another, What?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You too?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was the only one.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's something very powerful in having somebody else know what we're experiencing.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's that nobody else has experienced that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're going through something, and like nobody in our circle has ever experienced that.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Robert's mom felt like that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure no one she knew on a personal level had ever had that particular challenge.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes it's uncommon, or it's uncommon for our age to have that health issue that someone you know has someone who has early onset dementia at 30s going through something different than someone who has it when they're you know much older, or it's shame-based.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something happens and lots of people have experienced, but it's embarrassing.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't want to be judged, we don't want to share about our, you know, our addiction.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to share about a husband's addiction, we don't want to share about infidelity, we don't want to share because it's shameful and it's embarrassing to us.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is no shame in those things in and of themselves, but we feel that risk is too high, and so we become isolated in that way.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So tonight, what I want is for at least somebody to leave feeling like they've been a little bit more seen.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about some of these invisible injuries, and then I want to give you some strategies for how we move through suffering because we will, and if you're not now, that's great.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, you know, it's not the only time, but we will all go through that as part of our journey in one way or the other.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, invisible injuries.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I shared the story of my daughter having a head injury last time, and that's been an invisible injury.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't look sick.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you that one of the things that's really been helpful for us is finding exactly what I pointed to earlier is that you know, symptoms tell a story.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your symptoms are not your identity.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Your depression, your anxiety, your sickness, your upbringing, the trauma that you've experienced, none of that is your identity.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And your symptoms are not the story, they are simply symptoms.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Saying I'm depressed says nothing about your story.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why you are depressed gives you an opportunity to figure out how you can become less depressed.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But so oftentimes our symptoms are just it's like that's the diagnosis in and of itself.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when my daughter wasn't healing from her head injury months in, and you know, she can't tolerate light, she can't tolerate sound, she can barely get her head off the pillow, she she hardly speaks, she doesn't come out of her room, she's in constant pain.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the diagnosis is you have post-concussion syndrome, which means you didn't heal from a concussion and it's prolonged.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then they come up with something else brilliant, which I'm not, you know, I mean, there's just not a lot known out there.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so they say, and she has chronic daily migraines.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we go in saying she had just concussion and she's not healing, and now she has chronic daily migraines.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, okay, she has post-concussion syndrome and chronic daily migraines.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Keep doing what you're doing.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember getting sitting in the um the parking lot of the hospital waiting to get the MRI, and they call me and I'm picking it up to take to another specialist, and they call and they say, good news, her MRI is unremarkable.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that is good news, right?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want there to be a brain tumor, you don't want there to be a brain bleed, but it doesn't really fix the problem.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep doing what you're doing.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, I said, Well, the thing is she can't.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: She did half of an evaluation and she hasn't gotten up for five days, so we can't keep doing that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thanks.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Have a nice day, you know.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So um go to another specialist, and we travel out of statements, a lot of research to find people who really are specialists in this area.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so he does two hours of testing, and then he tells me, you know, she's got you know postural orthopedic tachycardia syndrome, POTS, secondary to her concussion, her brainstem's underperforming, she can't regulate her heart rate, she can't regulate her temperature, she doesn't have a gag reflex, she doesn't know her brain doesn't know where her head is in space.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: She can't focus on a target, so she's having spasms in her brain.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: She's that's why she's in taste.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the most impactful thing he said, so there's the symptoms, and here's the story.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is why.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is why, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the most impactful thing he said that day was he looked straight at her, and he had these very kind eyes, and he said, Did some of her testing.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember which particular test that was, but he did test you know, computer test, but then some things that he would do to see how her eyes were moving, and that tells you how the brain's firing.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: He looked at her and very softly he said, ouch.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder you have a headache every day.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that all the 16 months, that's what she remembers.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ouch.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder you have a headache.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because it meant she wasn't crazy.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't faking it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was a reason why, there was an explanation for her pain, there was compassion on the other end of that, and she felt connected to and she felt safe.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: She felt safe that somebody else validated her experience and was giving her some hope.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as he said that, I thought, wow, he's not a counselor, but he could be.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what I want to do when patients come in and say, okay, let me understand, and then, like, ouch, that's gotta hurt.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Having empathy is huge, okay?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to give, I want to talk about some of these things so that you get a little bit of that, so that maybe you feel like you're not crazy, maybe you feel like some of the things you're experiencing actually make sense in some context.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna touch on a few of them.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nobody looks any different the moment after they find out that they've just been betrayed by their spouse physically, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yet everything in the world has changed.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: That security we talked about, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you grow up, attachment's not with mom and dad, but that same pattern transfers to your spouse.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: When your attachment system is violated and injured, what happens is your brain goes into a state of disequilibrium.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that looks like life or death trauma on a brain scan is betrayal.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: So 86% of people who've experienced this thing will have post-traumatic stress disorder.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But they might be perceived by the outside world as, you know, you're just not getting it over, am I just not being forgiving enough?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I'm having flashbacks, I don't know why I can't quit crying, I don't know why this is going on and on.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because your brain knows again that we have to be able to survive into the world, and so when our attachment is broken, everything else, all higher level of functioning is compromised to try to get to resume a level of safety again.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is one of those things that when there's a great violation, you know, maybe maybe they're protecting, you know, just their spouse or themselves or their children, but it's often kept in secret.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So your symptoms tell the story.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your symptoms on some level always make sense.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that, I'm sure there's exceptions to that, but in the most part, if you just assume that my symptoms make sense, okay?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: My symptoms make sense somewhere in time, right?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe the symptom is that we don't trust anybody, or that we have addiction, or that we don't feel safe.
• 17:11
  unknown: Okay?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Unseen injuries are things that happen in childhood, sometimes even unseen by us.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we know about the brain in neurobiology is in our personal neurobiology is that zero to two is very critical.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes people don't know the story.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know what happened before the age of five.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they say I had the best parents ever.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything was fine.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I don't trust anybody.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was adopted too, and I have this great family, and they don't understand.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But those first two years, even if you don't remember them, your nervous system still bears the scar.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of a hard concept to get your mind around.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: But just like a physical scar on your body would show if you had a laceration when you were young.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't remember it, but later you've been told the story of how you got that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your body shows the scar, whether or not you have the explicit memory or not, and our nervous system and our brain remembers everything that's happened to us.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so it's stored in our nervous system.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we know that if kids have really hard things happen, and by the way, it doesn't have to be a hard thing that would be a hard thing for an adult, but it's a hard thing for a kid, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're developing that sense of identity, safety.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I in the world?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I in relationship to other people?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe it's oh yeah, when I was two, I don't remember because I didn't know her, but there was this horrific accident, and my mom lost both her parents at one time, and she went into this terrible depression, and she had to be hospitalized, and at the same time, my dad was, you know, deployed, and so I I mean things like this happen, and people walk around feeling like, why do I feel so unlovable?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I feel so flawed?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if we take the approach and we say your symptoms make sense, we know that somewhere there's an explanation, and it might not be true now, it might be true that you're perfectly safe now, and there's ways to bridge that gap.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: But when we get shame-based about our symptoms and say, you know, I'm just weak, I just can't handle things like most people, I just that's probably not the case.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've never, in 20 years of counseling, I've never looked at someone and at the end of knowing them just thought, you are just fundamentally flawed.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've never thought that, right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't, I mean, God doesn't do that.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: God creates us in his image.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have weaknesses?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have flaws?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have made mistakes?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as being fundamentally flawed, we are not fundamentally flawed.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we take the appropriate, so mental illness is another one of those things.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like people don't want to expose that sometimes because they feel labeled by it, they feel put in a category, they they fear that they're going to be judged or that it's a character weakness.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be, you know, one of the things that um over the last year I've learned that I did not know, and you know, I wish I had had these trials that have brought me to this place of knowing, but that our genetics plays a huge role in that.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now we all have genetics, everybody's genetics is different, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing perfect, but let's say that we have the gene for lung cancer.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean we're gonna have lung cancer?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if we smoke, we have a high probability, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you have certain genetics and your system doesn't clear adrenaline, what happens when you have stress?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you might think, I don't handle stress.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else can handle this, but this event was a little for everybody else.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it's like this, right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: It can be something in our genetics.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That we can, again, if we know that, we can take the enzyme that we're missing or what have you.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if we understand that I have some beliefs that came from childhood events, we can we can attack those beliefs, right?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can say, I feel unsafe and yet I am now.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I need to learn to calm my nervous system, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need to learn, I mean, I have disordered breathing because I was really anxious, I was on alert all the time as a child.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we understand that, then we can do something about it.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can get to the other side and we can connect to others.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, chronic illness is another one of those things where I think if it can be real shaming for people.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: If they have something and they they don't know an answer and they don't have a diagnosis, or it they can't relate that they, you know, people are going to think that they are lesbian or they're, you know, a mitochondria, or they don't have a treatment plan that looks like somebody else's, or they don't recover like somebody else's.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, these things are things that you know you're not wearing on the outside.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes they're things we're struggling with.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be part of the shame in it, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: They look fine, look fine to me.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or they were fine.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: When I saw them yesterday, I saw them out shopping, and now, you know, they're not.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people experience that kind of isolation when they're going through something really hard.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: My son is quite active, and he's like a secret shopper for emergency rooms from Kansas City all the way to Manhattan.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've been to six before emergency rooms.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's more than six bones, he's had stitches three times, but every time he comes out with a cast or the stitches or something on the outside that validates his experience, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he has a predictable rate of return to activity, and everybody empathizes like, oh yeah, I broke my collarbone too, or you know, and maybe they can relate to us.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're stuck in this, you know, period of or the season of something that's not known by everybody, what do we need to do to connect with others?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Support groups are really, really helpful.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can't always find that.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can't always find a support group that targets exactly what we've been through, but we can take risks and we can share with people.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: We can share with other people.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: We can share our experience so that it can help others.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no choice in whether or not we go through trials.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some things like if our trial is a result of an addiction or some you know bad habit that we've been caught up in, certainly we can take action and we can say, I want to shift this thing in my life, so I'm gonna do this, this, and that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even that is very hard to do without accountability or without connection to other people.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But when we move into stepping out, then we also bless other people through our experiences.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: We might not know that somebody in our midst has been encountering something that we are experiencing too, but when we take risks and we share that with other people, it opens up conversation and dialogue.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we have no choice, like Robert didn't have a choice as to whether or not he was gonna go through it.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we have a choice whether or not we grow through it, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: We should expect that we're gonna have a lot of hard things in our life, and we have the responsibility for moving ahead.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have the responsibility for deciding how are we going to respond?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna take action?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna how are we gonna make this into something that doesn't define us, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's something that we battle against.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: We might not get the answers that we want, but as we move through the process, we're developing in character and we're going, we're growing strength.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, go through it or grow through it, okay?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Helen Keller says the world has much suffering in it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's also much overcoming of it, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's much overcoming of suffering.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's much of getting stronger, there's much of learning from our experiences and showing them to somebody else.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, one of the things that I think toxic shame is that I explained it a little bit earlier, but there's a great book by John Bradshaw written in 1988, and um he defines shame, toxic shame, as shame keeps us in line.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Shame says don't run around and make it outside, you know, if you make a mistake, apologize for it, you know, get your work in on time, like you feel embarrassed if you let something drop.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: But healthy shame says, you know, you're not perfect, you don't have it all together.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Healthy shame.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, toxic shame he defines as the fundamentally flawed part.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that that develops from this harsh reality we face in life that we're not actually God.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Has anybody come to that conclusion?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're not actually God, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's that's his premise, and I think if we think a lot about that, um it's not just that we don't want to be judged by other people for the things that we're experiencing, but we don't even like to acknowledge them ourselves.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even like to acknowledge the feelings of um that we've made a terrible mess of things, or that we've done something we thought we never would do, or that we're weak, or that we're weary, or that we can hardly you know get out of bed in the morning.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: We don't like facing those things about ourselves.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to be kind of fearless in this process.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna grow through our challenges, we need to actually be in them.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between avoiding and really, you know, moving to the other side of something.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many ways for us to avoid our feelings.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways for us to avoid our challenges and stay isolated.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna grow through these challenges, I'm just gonna I just kind of acronyms make things easy.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about just some general ways that we can kind of start thinking about this.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the first is humility.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if I talk about humility, um, you might be thinking, well, gosh, I already feel bad and I'm already struggling.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't stand feeling any lower about myself than I already do.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a quote on there, Rick Warren says, you know, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I would describe humility as kind of that happy place between toxic shame and pride.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this concept of we're not God is one in which we say, I really, this struggle slaps me in the face and confronts me with the reality that I don't have control over a situation, that I'm not strong all the time, that I have feelings and thoughts that I wrestle with, that I'm weak, that I feel alone sometimes.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're in humility, we can accept that suffering is part of that role because pride would have pride would tempt us into saying, it should be much better than this.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your life should look so much different, or you shouldn't have to face this challenge, or you didn't deserve that thing, right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes things happen, we're violated against and things that shouldn't happen to us.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yet part of our humanity is that we suffer things that other people do to us.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have things visited upon us.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: It might be poverty, it might be, you know, uh a very difficult upbringing, it might be disease, it might be job loss, it might be, you know, I did my best to raise this kid and now they're sitting in prison.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have things that are hard, and pride would tell us that we shouldn't have any of those things.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We should be able to follow the steps and do, you know, with our due diligence, have everything together.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So pride is our enemy in situations like this.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Embracing humility says, I am human and I have limits.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have limits to what I can take.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have limits to how strong I am sometimes, I have limits to how much self-control I am.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have we have areas where we're weak, where we need to be bolstered up by God, by community.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: So stepping into that humility allows us the vulnerability to connect to others, which helps us with the healing that we need.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that Jesus was you know the ultimate in humility.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was the ultimate.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I have four legions of angels, I think it was, at my disposal, and I could stop at any time.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't get down off the cross.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: How many of us have that strength?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know I don't.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: How many of us choose our suffering?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't choose our suffering.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have the strength to choose our suffering.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we could choose our suffering because it would be better for us later down the road, I think we would suffer in small amounts.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: We do that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's called delay gratification.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: But to suffer for somebody else's benefit, or to have our child suffer for their own benefit or for their benefit later.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're not God.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're not perfect.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have limits.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I just wonder you know, did he not give us the choice because we wouldn't be able to make the choice?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did he take the choice from us that we can't choose our own suffering because we wouldn't be able to make the thing that we need because we know perseverance comes from our suffering?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes humility to say, I'm only human in it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not God.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can't say it doesn't touch us, we can't say it doesn't hurt us.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can't say, and I love positive thinking.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a huge fan of positive thinking.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I talked last time about you know using your mind.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And your mind is always part of the story, right?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: How we think about things always affects our mood.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: It always affects, but it is not the whole story.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is not the whole story.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because no amount of positive, okay, sunspots, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tells a story.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Too much iodine, too much aluminum foil.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right now.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: No amount of positive thinking, again, is going to take that away.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: So positive thinking is great, but sometimes you'll hear people talk about positive thinking and the power of their mind, and it's as if we can avoid, if we can sidestep suffering.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if we believe that, then that smacks in the face of what God's word says.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because God's word says we will have trouble, and we should not be surprised by it, like something strange is happening to us.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we should think positively and we should safeguard our mind, and we should choose to have positive expectations because he is a God of hope.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are to expect that our hope prevents us and shelters us from the suffering of the world that he absolutely guarantees us, then we're not on the same page, right, with what he says.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so humility says, I know that I'm gonna have suffering, and I know I'm not big enough to handle it all on my own, and I know that it's gonna hurt.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, not pride, not shame, not saying I'm weak, I'm terrible, and flawed because I have it, but just I'm human.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not God.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's the H.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: The E is emotion.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we can't be human without experiencing a wide range of emotions.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of situations where emotions are so painful that we can't handle having the emotion.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: We think the emotion is gonna take us over, we think the anxiety, we think the despair, we think the grief is just gonna open our chest and it's just gonna kill us.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Emotion will not kill us.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a lot of things that we do to avoid moving into feeling emotion.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of ways we can numb out.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: We can numb out by doing things like having addictive behaviors, like shopping or zoning out.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, terribleness, you know, that some people they'll hurt themselves because it hurts so much inside.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: But they they hurt themselves to numb out, or they check out, you know, they check out, but the the it's a terrible kind of numbness that comes when we check out because we just can't turn off one set of emotions.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when we block ourselves off, and we don't allow ourselves to feel sadness, we don't allow ourselves to feel grief, you know, we don't allow ourselves to feel anxious.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: We also have to block off from feeling excitement and joy and enthusiasm and gratitude.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So to be mentally well, you have to have all avenues open.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to be able to experience a wide range of emotions, and we need to know that those emotions are going to come in.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to be so firmly planted, not that we don't get knocked over, but that we don't get washed out to sea.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, like we're something planted in the ocean, the tide comes in and it takes us over and we pull it down, but then when the waves go back and the tide recedes, we're still there because the emotion itself won't kill us.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: The avoiding of it nearly can.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that I would say about this topic, though, emotion, is that if emotions, I just want to put this caveat because I do work with a lot of trauma.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it was so unsafe to feel emotion back when we were young, right?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: That any emotion comes up, it is terrifying.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if that happens, that makes sense.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Tell yourself, this makes sense.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder why.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: This makes sense.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: But there's help for that, right?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because if the emotion is so scary to feel, then somewhere in your mind, in those stored neuroplastic pathways that we have in our brain, it made sense.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we don't allow ourselves to feel.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, you know, it can hit us out of the blue when we're off guard, like watching a movie, and all of a sudden it goes in the back door, and oh my goodness, you know, there's all the emotion.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if that happens to you, I don't want you to hear what I'm saying and now think, oh now I'm weak because I can't handle all my emotions.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: There might be a good reason.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: There might be a very good reason why that's compartmentalized.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But knowing that it makes sense would encourage you, I hope, to say this doesn't have to have to be this way.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we should ever stop learning or growing or finding new ways.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, not to be not to be more than we are human, but to be, you know, the strongest that we can be in this world.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: So emotions are very important.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, emotions create memory.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um that ouch that that provider said to my daughter, that ouch was the emotional part.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not only do I see what you're going through, but I get I get it.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if we if we don't have emotions for ourselves, it's hard to really connect with other people and their emotions.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So then we get cut off from intimacy, right?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to be able to feel our emotions and to know they're not bad.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I often ask people, and I would ask you to think about when I am sad, what do I instantly say in my mind?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do I say something like, it's okay, this is really hard, anybody would be sad about this?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have that voice?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I have a voice he says, stop being such a baby, just get over it.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do this.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't, you know?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I get irritated with myself when I have emotion?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Does our voice to ourself reflect God's voice?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because it says God is close to the brokenhearted.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that we're gonna be brokenhearted.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: He knows we're gonna be crushed in spirit.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say that to us.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: So our voice, our internal comforter, should be there.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Our voice in God should be the first we hear when we have an emotion before anybody else has a chance to respond to it.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because as adults, nobody else is responsible for comforting us.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's really nice if we have somebody who does.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Kids can't self-regulate.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: With kids, they need the parents saying, I'm so sorry, it's okay, it's gonna be alright.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: They need that, right?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: That they haven't built that in yet, they haven't developed that, it's not age-appropriate.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: But as an adult, you need to be the first line of defense with your emotions.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are unkind to yourself, if you say something inside that you would not say to your best friend, if you have an uncompassing compassionate response towards your own pain, you will not fare well with strong emotions.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we do then?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: We want to blunt them.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: We want to blunt them because we don't want to feel the self-induced shame that we have sometimes.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, watch what you say.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Notice is what I'm saying, could I write it down and say it to a friend?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have different rules for me than I do for someone else?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can I speak with compassion?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then are those thoughts, do those, um, do those mirror what God says?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are those truth?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's very compassionate.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was moved to do miracles because he felt compassion for people.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: He feels great compassion when we're suffering.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: He suffered greatly.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: He knows what we're feeling.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: The A in the heart, so we have humility, emotion, and now we have A.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrestle with this because this is acceptance.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a great gap sometimes between the plan that we had and the reality that we're actually living in.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we can't help it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can help ourselves, but plan, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: We think this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen, and we're about to think this age, this is gonna happen.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of have it all lined out sometimes.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes things just take us by surprise.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Things happen that we had never planned.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we might be grieving.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: We might be finding that we are grieving a part of our plan that's not happening, or it hasn't happened.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or we might be living in a state of regret.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if anything happens in this moment, or 30 seconds ago, or two minutes ago, or five minutes ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago, I'm just gonna tell you there is no hope that it will ever change.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was that way, and it might not have, should have been that way.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: There might be some very hard things to let go of.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: We might be grieving the fact that we didn't have safety.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: We might be grieving the fact that we didn't get a childhood where we feel loved.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: We may be grieving the loss of somebody that we dearly loved.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: And grief is important.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's that part of emotion, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's rumination, if it's, I can't believe I did that, I wish I would have never, everything would have been different if I'd only done this thing.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's no hope of getting that moment back.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when we accept that our plan didn't go the way that we wanted it to, or that it's not going the way we want it to now, or we're fearful about something because we had thought that, you know, we had thought that we were going to be able to retire and now we can't because we lost everything.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or something catastrophic happens to one of our kids, or, you know, now we're getting a divorce, and we never thought we would go through a divorce, but something has happened and we've been put in a position where we don't have a choice.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Letting go of the plan that we had is very difficult sometimes.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if we can't let go of the plan that we have, we don't release it enough to be in the moment that we're in.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And along with the suffering, there's some good things.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: It sometimes we have to look really hard, but if we're going through something difficult, I can guarantee you there's something, there's something.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's something along the way.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's somebody we met we wouldn't have met, there's something we learned about ourselves that we wouldn't have learned, there's some other provision.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes that the image of what we thought it would be is very hard.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've struggled with that this year, as I thought my daughter would be doing certain things, and I like that's and I just try to tell myself, my plan.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's my plan, that was my plan.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't guaranteed.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't guaranteed.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God's plan, the other thing is if we can accept that, can we assume that he has something better?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard because we don't always see the something better right now, but we know that there is a something better.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I if I were one of Jesus' disciples, if I were Jesus, I mean, uh that would have seemed like a terrible plan.
• 42:48
  unknown: Right?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: That would have seemed like a terrible plan to walk into Jerusalem knowing that you were going to be crucified in that way.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he trusted that God had a plan.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I still don't know.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know people wiser than me would know probably, but why that plan had to include suffering.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we know that it did.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was suffering on his part for our redemption, but it was suffering.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And his, you know, we're in a fallen plan because of sin, but he says we will have trouble.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we're looking at our suffering, thinking, this can't be it, this can't be it, this can't be it, this shouldn't be happening, this shouldn't be happening, some of it should be happening, right?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it is just part of that we are sharing in his sufferings, just like we share in his righteousness undeservedly.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: When we come to him and we're clothing in his righteousness, we don't deserve that.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: We might not deserve the bad things that are happening or feel like we deserve them, but we share in them.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And accepting that that is the plan.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is the plan.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Allows us to live in the moment and say, okay.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where am I?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, right now.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know what?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time we can handle a moment.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time we can get through the hour, we can get through the day.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh, we're in a hard season.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you get through today?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I and it's just like um prayer or something like this.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, right?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, like, one day at a time.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you think I can never, I can't do this for the rest of my life, I'm not gonna have that strength.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have that strength yet.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: That day hasn't come.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: You'll have that strength in that day.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: But today, you just need what you need for today.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: So releasing that plan allows us to accept where we are in that moment, and what do I need to get through this moment, this hour, this day?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think acceptance is huge.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And R is response.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we are not to be passive passengers in our life.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are supposed to respond.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to take action.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to move.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to do something different.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And not only is it something that we're supposed to do, but this is so good for us.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our brain loves new things.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: It loves new ideas, new thoughts, right?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: New perspectives, new situations.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Learning is very good for our brain.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Experiencing new things, being exposed to other people, right?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Getting in community, enjoying things.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Response is very important.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is sometimes we need to take action.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're stuck in a situation that we shouldn't be stuck in.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we do need to move.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the pain is telling us you need to get out of this situation, you need to do something different.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe part of the you know story that that pain is telling us is that you know you've been here too long.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's not okay to be in that abusive relationship.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's okay to let go of somebody who's you know really, really damaging us, or maybe the response is that we need to move through our suffering with a way that grows us or grows someone else.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the parable of the Ten Talents is that Jesus is telling the parable that the master says to the three servants, basically he gives them something, he says, Go out, make a return on your.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he tells them to make a return on the investment, but they come back, and two of the three have said, you know, I earned more than you gave, here's your return on your investment, right?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third says, I only had the one.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just had just the one, so I kept it safe, and um, here it is.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this response really shakes me because I'm kind of a play it safe girl.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the response was, you wicked and lazy servant, you made no return on my investment.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we accept that God not only gives us the good, but he allows through his permission the suffering, it's part of what we do with it, then he expects a return on our investment for that.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're not just supposed to make a return on our investment when he gives us talents, actual talents, or when he gives us money, or when he gives us, you know, something that he blesses us with and wants us to share with someone else.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he expects a return on his investment when we walk through a trial and we do it near to him and we glorify him through it and we share with somebody else.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thankful for the people who've shared with me.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's some people that have reached out and said, have you done this?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you tried about this?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about this?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I love learning things new and I love hearing about other people's stories.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so we should respond.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy sometimes to think, and I've I've done this, like felt paralyzed, like, well, I can't do anything until this is over.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, once this is over, then I'm gonna get on to the next thing, then I'll really be productive.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: But when that thing goes on for a while, we realize that's just part of our life, right?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: The suffering is woven into our life.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like we're doing our life and then we have to step out and just be in the suffering.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: We still have to do our life amidst our circumstances.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what we find when we respond, when we act, is that you know, part of the powerlessness we feel because we had to accept a plan, part of the plan that we weren't anticipating, is that we get power back.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can make choices and we can think and we can act and we can connect and we can grow.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we get power from knowing that I have a choice.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: When Robert wrote his memoir, he titled it Ugly.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm ugly.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, There's no doubt about it.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, We're all uglier than we think we are, and we're also more beautiful than we all think we are, right?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when we respond to our suffering, we get some power back because we realize I do have a choice.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: I might not have the choice that I wanted.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever played that game?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would you rather?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my daughter loves the game.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, would you rather eat a mouse?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or eat, you know, two handfuls of live spiders.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't want to pick.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to pick, mom.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't want that choice.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want that choice.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want a different, kind of a different card.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes we don't get a different card.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: We might have two choices we don't like, but we get to choose.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: We get to choose what we do with it, we get to choose how we move on.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when we respond, I think we take some of that power back and we make it our story, just like Robert said, I made it my face.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's my face.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: I chose not to have the last surgery.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Own my story.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he owned his life.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: We can do that too when we respond.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last thing is triumph.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think there's nothing that we love more.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't you love like watching the Olympics?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's always some story, you know, about some Olympian who was injured and then they made this huge comeback, and now they're on, you know, they're on the podium, and we just feel encouraged and we feel motivated, and we love to hear stories like that.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, because we love a good story of triumph.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: We love a good story of overcoming, and we want to overcome in our life.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you to just say that if we grow through rather than just go through, then we do triumph.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we might not get the cure that we want, right?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: We might not get the life that we had exactly planned.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: We might not have all the things that we had tailored into what we thought would make life good.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when we walk through something and we realize we have attained what he promised, where he says, in this world, yeah, I tell you these things, in this world you will have trials, but in me you will have peace.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm messing that up a little.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you will have peace in me.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's the promise, not the promise that we won't have trials, the promise that we'll have peace.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it says you may have peace, right?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably, and I haven't studied the scripture by reading concordance, I just need to know.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what he's saying is like we have to choose that.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have to choose to walk near him, we have to choose to trust him, we have to choose to respond.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the triumph doesn't mean that we always outdo the circumstance.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love stories that overcome.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean one in our church who was really, really sick and really, really healed, and that's awesome.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't always happen like that, but we can still triumph just by how we walk through your challenge.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: So humility, emotion, acceptance, response, and triumph.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: And to know that we're not alone.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've given you some handouts there, and I just want you to maybe, I mean you don't have to look at them, but if you want to take them home, I've kind of given you a few questions to ask yourself.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think going through a process like this is a one-time, like one and done.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: I read it, I answered the questions, I did it.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's continual that we continue to work and we continue to strive, and we continue to accept new things, and we continue to grow, and we continue to find richness in even, you know, even the challenges.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we find somebody who is really kind towards us, and their their grace and their love and their mercy really speaks to us, and we feel a strong sense of you know being worthy and love because somebody shows compassion.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd encourage you to look through those.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I also wanted to give, and this is if nobody has any, but if there's a time where you have you know questions about anything you want to answer, ask a question about anything that I've talked here tonight about, I would love to answer or encourage you or point you to a resource.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so thank you for listening tonight, and I hope that you feel a little bit encouraged, or that there might be something in your life that you feel a little less shame about, and I hope you move forward in making some connections with other people.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.