Ep. 376 Bill & Kristi Gaultiere - Receiving and Reflecting God's Great Empathy For You

In this episode, I sit down with Bill and Kristi Gaultiere for a thoughtful conversation about empathy - what it really is, why it’s so often misunderstood, and why it matters for the way of Jesus. We talk about God’s great empathy for us and how the incarnation reveals a God who enters our experience, not just intellectually but emotionally and bodily. Together, we explore the role of emotions in the spiritual life, the weight of shame and grief, the reality of compassion fatigue, and how empathy, truth, and responsibility belong together. This conversation is an invitation to receive God’s love more deeply and to learn how that love reshapes the way we live, love, and care for others.

Bill is a psychologist (PhD) and ordained pastor and Kristi is a licensed professional counselor (PsyD). Together they lead Soul Shepherding, which is a nonprofit ministry to help pastors, leaders, churches, and others to go deeper with Jesus in emotional health and loving leadership. They lead immersive retreats that integrate Jesus-centered psychology and spiritual formation. Participants have the option to earn a Certificate in Spiritual Direction to improve their relationship skills and earn side income as a spiritual director or coach. They are authors of a number of soul care books, including Journey of the Soul, which was #1 on Amazon in Christian Counseling, and Healthy Feelings, Thriving Faith. Their newest book is Deeply Loved: Receiving and Reflecting God’s Great Empathy for You.

Bill & Kristi's Book:

Deeply Loved

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Transcript

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 0:00

We love because God first loved us, and often, the way we receive God's love is not only through the Bible, it's also through our relationships in the body of Christ, which is why Jesus gave us the new commandment that we love one another. You

Joshua Johnson: 0:27

John, hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know, empathy is one of the most talked about and most misunderstood words in our culture. Right now, we have a debate, is empathy toxic? Is it a sin? Well, today on shifting culture, I'm joined by Bill and Christy Gautier for a thoughtful and grounded conversation about empathy, not as a trend or a tactic, but as something deeply rooted in the life of Jesus, we talk about God's empathy for us, how the incarnation is God entering our experience, and what it means to be deeply loved, not just intellectually, but in our bodies and souls. So we explore the role of emotions in the spiritual life, how shame and grief shape us why compassion fatigue is so common, and how to care for others without burning out or hardening our hearts. This conversation isn't about choosing between love and truth. It's about discovering how they belong together, and how receiving God's empathy can actually change the way we live in the world. So join us. Here is my conversation with Bill and Christy. Gaultier, Bill and Christy, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you guys

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 1:48

on Thank you, Joshua. We are blessed to be in conversation with you and all your friends tuning in.

Joshua Johnson: 1:53

So we're going to talk about empathy today, and God's great empathy for us, there's been a lot of discussion around different types of empathy, toxic empathy, the sin of empathy. It seems like there's a misunderstanding of what empathy is in there. So right off the top, I'd love for you to give us a definition. What is empathy and what have we kind of gotten wrong about what empathy is?

Unknown: 2:17

Well, in our book, deeply loved receiving and reflecting God's great empathy. For you, we define empathy as seeking to understand someone's thoughts, their emotions and their experience in order that for them to know they are deeply loved by God.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 2:35

Yeah, and when you're talking about Joshua, in the way of some of the conversations happening around toxic empathy, or the sin of empathy? It's really a misunderstanding of true empathy, biblical empathy, which is what we're writing about in deeply loved and so we actually talk about the grit and grace of empathy. Most people don't think of empathy as being gritty. They might think of it as being gracious, but we give a formula in our book. It's formula in quotes for growth. Empathy plus truth plus responsibility equals growth. And so what we're saying in that is that if empathy is not connected to truth, and if it doesn't activate personal responsibility, it's not true, healthy, Biblical empathy. And so we need to differentiate here between like our emotions and our perceptions. Because our emotions are something that's true about my personal experience, my perceptions are about other people, the world, all sorts of things in my environment, and they may or may not be true. And so we don't want to be validating or agreeing with people's perceptions, necessarily, or their opinions, for instance, because that that would not be accurate and helpful or loving. Paul teaches us to be speaking the truth in love. That integration of truth and love is what we are writing about in deeply loved. And so there is a conversation in our culture, because in the world, empathy gets misused around sort of just giving people whatever they want, self indulgence. Or I could define my own reality, my own gender, my own commandments, because there isn't any. And I kind of get to be my own person. And if you even believe differently than me, well that's judgmental. You shouldn't do that. I should be able to free, be free to have whatever I want, and so that that kind of a posture is it's an entitlement. It fosters maybe codependency or rescuing or enabling people to be irresponsible or immoral. That is not true empathy. True Empathy helps people to be moral, to be loving, to be responsible.

Unknown: 4:43

One of the things that I think is important for us to realize as along the lines what Bill's saying here, empathy is not agreement. It's not agreeing with somebody when we empathize with them, it's showing that we care, that we're really seeking to understand where they are coming from. Doesn't mean we're going to agree, and it. It doesn't make truth relative. It doesn't say that whatever they are feeling is truth. In fact, truth without empathy is harsh, but empathy without truth is inaccurate. So we want to always marry as Scripture does and as as God is grace and truth. And then in our formula, there of empathy plus truth plus responsibility. We also know that responsibility without any empathy in our life, it's drudgery, and it becomes duty if we don't receive any empathy from God, our religion can become all about just believing and doing and no intimacy with God, and God wants an intimate, ongoing, interactive relationship with us, of love. And then we also say empathy without any responsibility. Well, that's coddling, and that's that's certainly not what God has in mind for us, either.

Joshua Johnson: 5:53

So part of empathy is then understanding emotions, so starting to say, what are what are people feeling? What am I feeling? A lot of times, we don't understand what we're feeling. We don't understand what other people are feeling. Where do emotions take place and play out within our spiritual lives and our daily lives, what are emotions and what are they good for in our lives?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 6:18

Yeah, emotions are physiological, or we experience them in our body. When you're anxious, you feel in your stomach, you know when you're angry, you probably feel it in your muscles, in your fists, in your jaw, the tension of that and so emotions are thing. It's very deeply embedded into how God has created us as human beings and our embodied nature and emotions are written about all over in the in the scripture, and the Bible helps us to understand and express our emotions. Emotions are a source of knowledge, which is often not the way Christians think about it. We've tended to elevate thinking and reason above emotions, and we treat emotions like a whining child we sort of have to tolerate or or they're the caboose in the train, and so sometimes we actually equate faith with reason and renewing our mind biblical doctrine, strong thinking is very important. It's it's essential. But emotions are also very valuable, given to us by God and really thinking and feeling go together. Emotions and reasoning, they go together even in our brains and how God has made us, and they're really a two way street. So it isn't just change your thoughts and change your feelings. Yes, thoughts influence our feelings, but our emotions influence our thoughts as well, and as does our body and our relationships. And we're whole human beings, and what's most precious to God about us is our heart, which is not the same thing as our emotions. We might say that in our culture, equate heart and emotions, but in the Bible, our heart is our will, but the emotions, they do move our will move our body. And so emotions can assist us, or they can lead us in a unhealthy, unloving way, which is the same with our thoughts. Our thoughts can be helpful and true and loving or not.

Unknown: 8:08

Another thing I'd like to add there too is that emotions and awareness of our emotions and empathy are key for emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is something that we can grow in, and it's something that God uses in our life and in our leadership. This is something that, again, has been getting a lot of attention in our culture recently as there's been studies like the Google Aristotle study, where they were really looking to study what makes teams effective, and they found that what contributes to effective teams are teams where it is safe for someone to be able to share their experience, and they will feel listened to. They will have an empathetic response with somebody seeking really to understand them and their perspective and where they're coming from, rather than just reacting judging, and which can be very divisive.

Joshua Johnson: 9:00

I want to know how emotions and mind and spirit work together, how we can not just be controlled by our emotions or swim into our emotions and say this is all of who I am, but how can we have a healthy view of our emotional life?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 9:21

Well, the obvious way that we get controlled by emotions is when we react to them, when we're when we're impulsive, when we lose our temper, when we have a desire for something sinful, and we just do that. And so that's sort of the obvious thing that we guard against as Christians. But what most people don't realize is that when we when we guard against emotional reactivity by shutting down our emotions, denying them as in like negating them, repressing them, that that actually contributes to the emotional reactions and potentially sinful impulses. Or unloving ways of relating because repressed emotions, they don't they don't go away. It's like trying to hold a beach ball under water. It pops up. And so when we, when we repress our emotions, they go into our unconscious. The unconscious mind is not like some ethereal place, it's our body. So repressed emotions, repressed thoughts and attitudes and memories that that's gets stored in our in our bodies, and so we have this distress that's in us unconsciously. Here's an example as a psychologist that I've seen a lot in my career as a therapist currently leading our soul shepherding ministry. I don't work as a therapist anymore, but we bring what we call Jesus centered psychology into our ministry of soul shepherding. But an example is panic disorder, and many people struggle with anxiety. It's the most common mental health disorder in America, and one example of an anxiety disorder is a panic disorder where someone has had a panic attack, and then they're afraid of having another one, and so then they will will start avoiding places where they might have a panic attack. And anybody who's struggling with anxiety, and certainly anyone who's struggling with panic disorder, they have a lot of repressed fear, anger, shame, sadness, core emotions of distress, like these that are repressed. And that's what anxiety, essentially is repressed emotion, and then the panic disorder is just like the blowout that happens. So this is one of the things that we're writing about, is trying to help people grow in self awareness. And we understand the Bible to teach a lot about self awareness in the Psalms. Is the obvious example, all the anatomy of the human soul, all of our emotions. And how do you pray? How do you worship God in that emotional state? And clearly, emotions are not like some bothersome, you know, an endlessly whining child. Emotions are God given in the Psalms and even the life of Jesus in our book deeply love. We do a Bible study on JESUS and go back to the Greek words. We identify 39 Greek words describing different emotions that Jesus had. So it's not just like our interpretation of what Jesus was feeling. It's actually what the Greek New Testament is saying Jesus felt that's a lot of emotions. And so, you know, if I stand up and say, You know, Jesus a thinker, everybody's gonna be like, yeah, he's a solid thinker. If I say, Jesus a feeler, people be like, I don't know about that. Well, Jesus is a feeler, too.

Joshua Johnson: 12:36

Yes, he is. I think, you know, one of the things for us to actually receive God's empathy is we need to be aware of our emotions. We have to have self awareness. And, you know, for somebody like me, where I can recognize some of my surface level emotions, but I don't always recognize what's underneath those emotions, what, what is the root of something? Where, am I getting at? How do we start to uncover what the root is when it comes to the emotions that are surfacing up top?

Unknown: 14:12

Well, you're not alone, Joshua in not being able to be aware of maybe all the different emotions. In fact, a study that was done showed that 83% of people can only are only aware of three primary emotions. And so you're not alone in that, and this is something that we can grow in, and Empathy helps us to grow with that. One of the ways we get in touch with all of our emotions is by sitting with someone who is listening to us with that empathy, that curiosity, to understand us and are asking questions that help us go deeper and tune in to our body, our mind, our spirit and what's going on there, and to sit with someone who actually sometimes might even be feeling our feelings before we're aware of them and be able to recognize them. I know there have been many times where maybe Bill has been in a thinking space, very engaged, and maybe something he's working on or writing, and then, you know, something happens, and later I'm wanting to talk to him. I'm wanting to connect with him around that I'm concerned for what happened. I think it's, you know, something that it would be good for him to receive and care around and so I might draw him out and just say, you know, how are you feeling about this? And he might not be connected or tuned into that. And so sometimes I'll even say something like, well, if I was you, I think I might feel and I'll start naming some emotions. And then oftentimes that will awaken his awareness, and he'll be kind of, oh, yeah, I do feel that. And then, and what else do you feel? And he can start to get in the flow of that awareness. And that's one of the gifts of having a safe place where you could be listened to with empathy, where someone is using these four A's of empathy that we write about in our book to ask the first A, ask good curious. Questions, and keep asking more and more, and be patient to listen and to wait and curious, to seek a further understanding, to go deeper with that person onto well, okay, I hear you're feeling fear. What kind of fear are you fearing an outcome? Is it a fear of loss of control? Is it a fear that's a generalized anxiety? Where is it located in your body? These are the kinds of questions that can help us get more attuned, which is our second a attuning to emotions.

Joshua Johnson: 16:33

As I'm being attuned to my emotions, I know where I am, I know what I'm feeling. How does this receiving God's empathy work for me. How do I know that I am deeply loved, not just intellectually, but actually emotionally, deep in my soul. How do I know that I am loved so I can actually live in this world and connect with others and myself and with God,

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 17:00

we talk about agreeing with empathy or appreciating it. So that looks like I'm reading my Bible, I'm praying a psalm, I'm reading a gospel story of Jesus, and I'm seeing examples of his compassion, his tenderness, his empathy, and it's receiving that for myself by saying, Thank You, Lord, for your empathy for me, it's inviting Jesus into a current situation in my life where I have some some emotions going on, whether whether they're positive or negative. And it's sharing with a safe person in my life, a friend, where I can be emotionally honest and I share as unto the Lord. And when I'm listened to, I say thank you to that person, and I say thank you to the Lord. It's little things like Christie being my wife and the tender relationship we have. She might gently touch my skin affectionately, and I'll appreciate that. And she does that. I'll say, Thank You, Lord for your love for me. And I'll imagine Jesus in the gospels and and the way that he touched people with compassion. And let me

Unknown: 18:02

illustrate that from my life today, Joshua, yesterday, my brother in law, passed away from pancreatic cancer after a two year battle fighting it. I'm very close to my sister and her family at the same time. A week ago, my other sister, who I'm very close to, she had, she had an accident, and it has a resulting traumatic brain injury, and is having some very painful symptoms and very scary symptoms. So I'm in a state right now where I'm really grieving some big losses in my life, and it helps me to connect with Jesus's love and feel deeply loved when I realize Jesus has empathy for me. Jesus experienced grief. He experienced loss. He experienced the death of His earthly father, Joseph. He experienced the death of his cousin, John the Baptist. He experienced the death of Lazarus, his friend. Jesus felt empathy for others in grief. Look at him with the widow of name and the empathy he had when he saw her recognizing a woman in her culture having lost her husband and now her son, and what that would mean for her. And it was with out of that empathy that he moved to raise her son from the dead we see all over in Scripture, Jesus moved with empathy for people. So when I am suffering something, I am feeling an emotion, I am hurting, I always look Jesus, where's your empathy? Show me your empathy for me. Show me your withness. God is a manual. He's with us, and as he meets me in that pain, it's it helps me to receive and agree with his deep love for me, and it ignites my faith all the more we say the incarnation is perfect empathy. It's more than that. It's atonement, it's forgiven, it's so it's so much. But let's not miss the empathy in it that God, the Father, that that here God will become human and take on flesh and enter our experience. We empathy is very biblical. We list over 100 empathy scriptures in the book deeply loved. And one of my favorites is Hebrews 415 for we do not have a high priest who's unable to empathize with us, but one who has been tested and tried in every way we have. And so that word for empathize in Greek is fellow feeling. Jesus. Fellow feels with us and whatever we're feeling. So whatever trial I'm in, whatever temptation I'm in, whatever emotion I'm feeling, Jesus understands

Joshua Johnson: 20:37

that's so good. And I want to know, then you know, with that, withness, with Jesus, how I am feeling loved, deeply loved, that he's he knows me, he sees me, he feels with me. How does that help me move from the pit of despair in the darkness that I'm feeling? Yeah. Into a space where I actually may end up feeling some gratitude and some joy in my life, and moving to a space of of living again and not just being stuck and saying, Jesus, you're with me in this. Let's just stay here forever. Where does the movement towards something else happen when he empathizes with me?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 21:27

Well, we know that we've actually received God's grace and its many expressions of forgiveness, unconditional love, empathy, truth, etc. We know that we've really received God's grace when it sets us on fire to love other people and to care about justice in our world, and to be co workers, co laborers in prayer and with our hands and feet and hearts in this world, making the world a better place, and doing that in Jesus name. So Because grace always sets us on fire when we've really received it to be good people that are loving, people making a difference in our work and in our families and everywhere we can.

Unknown: 22:11

We also talk about three way empathy, Joshua, which is really important that we're receiving and agreeing with empathy from God, that agreeing with it is self empathy. The receiving and agreeing is a self empathy. If we're not receiving and agreeing with it, it's not going to change us. It's not going to go any deeper. I remember one time Bill, well, several times, actually, early as I was learning this, Bill would listen to me with empathy, but I was in a place of shame or self judgment. I was treating myself the way I had been treated in the past, where I had been judged for having emotions or needs, and so I was blocking his empathy. He was mediating God's love and grace and empathy to me, but I wasn't inside agreeing with it. It was like I had one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, and I couldn't receive and let that love of the Father flowing through his ambassador here to me, in to my heart. And I remember him stopping me and saying, Christy, it doesn't seem like you're able to receive my love and empathy and agree with that. It seems like you're feeling shame right now. I wasn't unconscious of the shame and how I was shutting shutting it down at the time, and that was so helpful for me to have him verbalize that and to realize, Oh, you're right. And you know, we have, the accuser is always trying to get us to do this. He's always trying to spoil God's love, his grace, his empathy with his accusations. And so we have the choice. What are we going to listen to and what are we going to agree with?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 24:24

So three way empathy, in this example, is from God, another person, and then even my own self. We need all three, and other people need all three. And so in soul shepherding, like we lead eight retreats a year, Christie and I do for communities of over 50 leaders that come together, of all, all types, pastors, missionaries, spiritual directors, small group leaders, shepherds, business leaders, come away with us, and what we teach them is, you'll, you'll get better. You'll grow you'll, you'll become more like Jesus when you and I join God in caring for you. That's what helps us to become cheerful givers that are now in the overflow because we love because God first loved us. And often, the way we receive God's love is not only through the Bible, it's also through our relationships in the body of Christ, which is why Jesus gave us the new commandment that we love one another. So like Christie, even in your example earlier of the grief that you're you've been experiencing, and you're talking about connecting with Jesus in times where he felt grief. But then yet, even yesterday, you were feeling like we had gotten some bad news that for your sister with a traumatic brain injury. And you're feeling like, you know, God hasn't answered my prayer, and there was some, some darkness there, yeah, and you just needed to be in a place where you weren't like feeling that faith, you didn't have that sense of confidence. I was lamenting, you were lamenting. And so you turned to me, and you gave me the honor and the gift of listening to you, of asking you questions, of tuning to your emotions and going back and forth and praying for you, and then over time, like now today, you're a much better place with that able to go to Jesus. But sometimes that's what we need. Sometimes we need, you know, a fellow pilgrim friend who is like an ambassador for Jesus with us and how they listen and care, because,

Unknown: 26:21

see, it is energizing for me when I'm able to express my emotions and I'm able to be emotionally honest with God, and then in the presence of another safe person who can pray for me, who can mediate God's presence to me. Instead, it takes energy if I'm repressing all of that and denying all of those and. Negative emotions, and instead, after being able to limit and pray, being honest about my discouragement, my fears, then I get free of of all that emotion I was trying to repress and stuff and often, too often, as Christians, we we try to repress those negative emotions and only think happy, positive, faith filled thoughts, but it actually is more genuine and restorative when I can pray those emotionally honest prayers like the psalmist, and then I get energized and restored with a new faith and trust.

Joshua Johnson: 27:11

How do we walk through the seasons of life then? And if it's not always happy, clappy mountaintop experiences with God that we have valleys, we have grief and lament. And it's not going to be, you know, 24 hours that this is happening for you. It's going to be a longer season of there's some some grief that is happening and you're sticking with it. So how do we embrace the season that we're in, but not be stuck in that season forever. But how do we know, like there are different seasons, there are different things that we go through in life, and it's okay not to just be on the mountaintop all the time?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 27:53

Yeah, I think we get we get stuck in a negative emotion or a conflict or a lethargy, we get stuck. One of the reasons we've been talking about is when we when we repress our emotions or deny our emotions. Another is if we isolate and we're not connecting relationally, authentically with God, with other people, or if we're trying to just do it, you know me and God, that's not likely to work. I mean, God's got everything we need, but I don't have enough faith all the time, and so I need to work it out relational. So we need each other. We need to work it through that way. So that's what helps us to get unstuck. And then there should be some movement with those emotions, with the conflicts, the tensions that we're dealing with, there should be some growing insight. So when Christie was sharing, she was illustrating the importance of integrating thinking and feeling, and that's that's a big part of getting unstuck, is that if I'm only in my in my emotions and swirling in that that can turn into a self pity, which is actually opposite of self empathy. Self empathy is not a it's not a self reliant self help job. It's is agreeing with God's empathy, somebody else's empathy. It's having faith. It's having appreciation. These are all signs. All the gratitude I'm talking about is a great sign that, you know, I'm moving forward, and as we've also said, we're going to see the movement forward when I increasingly get to a place where I'm able to to be loving, helpful, responsible to other people. You know, the world doesn't revolve around me. The world revolves around God,

Unknown: 29:35

I think too. I'd like to say Joshua, that Bill and I have been so blessed to be mentored by Dallas and Jane Willard, and one of the things that Dallas teaches is in discipleship, we want to lean into our trials. And too often it's so easy for us to just kind of throw them away, deny them, ignore them, grit and bear it. This too shall pass. But actually it's in our trials that Jesus meets us and teaches us and uses us and heals us and restores us and makes us wounded healers. And I have journeyed long enough with God through so many deep valleys, dark valleys, long valleys, trials, crises, hit walls in my faith and I have seen the beauty that God brings out of ashes, and I have seen his faithfulness, and so I've come to be able to trust him in the storm, because I have learned to cooperate with him in receiving care for my soul and in my inner and to grow in intimacy with God that brings me through those storms.

Joshua Johnson: 30:42

You know, I've worked with a lot of people all over the world that are in some sort of a compassion type of ministry and work. You know, I lived and worked with refugees in the Middle East for a long time. Like it is a when you're working with people in trauma and difficult things, and you're giving yourself out all the time, and you are practicing giving empathy. So I've received some empathy from God. I am now practicing empathy, and I'm giving empathy to to others a lot of times. What happens is compassion fatigue, like you get overworked and there's too much to bear. How do we balance giving empathy and receiving empathy when we're in a work with you know, especially people that have experienced a lot of trauma and you are carrying some of those burdens, which are not. Yours to carry.

Unknown: 31:42

Well, I experienced a big compassion fatigue crisis my late 30s. I was a therapist in private practice, singing and journeying with clients who experienced a lot of trauma and abuse. I was very active in ministry in my church with godly people who were suffering so unjustly, just so terribly, and then raising three children, and, you know, pouring out, pouring out, 24 hours, seven days a week, carrying great concerns for my kids as well. And I did hit a burnout and a compassion fatigue. And what I needed was to be able to take a season where I realized that I didn't have healthy boundaries. My inflow had very much been neglected, and my outflow exceeded my inflow. And that is not sustainable. We can't live on exhales alone, as I needed to set boundaries in my life and on my ministry, and I needed to take a season away to get some restoration of Christie's soul, and I needed to start meeting with my spiritual director regularly, where I have a place to be listened to with empathy and to be prayed for. And I needed to develop my soul friendships, where people also could be listening to me with empathy, supporting me, praying for me. I needed to find those safe places, and I needed to be able to spend more time alone with the Lord, because one of the things I found myself doing was orbiting around everybody else's needs and ignoring my own needs. And I needed to get alone with God where I could get in tune with my needs and my emotions, in touch with them and bring them into God's presence and get back in the easy yoke attachment with God. So these are the things that we train people in and our soul shepherding Institute retreats. We also have a certificate in spiritual direction, where we train people in this, and we write about this in another book, journey of the soul, about all of our stages of emotional spiritual development. And one of those stages is we will hit a wall in our in our faith. And one of those walls could be a compassion fatigue, and that is a great opportunity for God to do some great soul work in us, if we will let him. So we have a whole chapter dedicated in in the deeply love book on caring for others without draining our soul, because one of the things I learned was I need to steward my empathy. I cannot be empathetic all the time to everybody all around the world. That means I can't turn on the news and watch it all the time, because I feel empathy for the people that they're reporting about that have been sinned against and harmed and everything they're feeling, but my empathy for the people I'm hearing about on the news does no good. I'm not called to journey with them and to minister to them, and I can't read every single missions letter that comes in the mail. I have to choose God, which ones have you called me to enter into and respond to? But I my first call is to steward my empathy so I am able to be empathetic with those God has called me to directly be in relationship with and journey with and pray for. So we need to acknowledge our limits, and we need to keep in balance the giving and the receiving from God through others, the agreement with that, and then overflowing from that well, spring, he gives

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 35:02

us, just to clarify, Christy, one example is you received certain emails that alert you to needs or other places of the world. And it's not someone you're actually going to meet and give physical empathy to, but you'll give like a prayerful empathy for those people you're stewarding your limit. You can't do it for then I have to let go

Unknown: 35:21

and release it to the Lord. I

Joshua Johnson: 35:23

think one of the places there, I mean, that's really helpful when it comes to compassion fatigue and setting limits and making sure that we are actually receiving from God. But sometimes that doesn't always then alleviate our worries you talk about in your book, you're talking about alleviating worries that that receiving God's empathy for us can actually release our worries in the world. How does that work? I'm worried about a lot of things in life. I'm worried about a lot of things in this world, like there's a lot to worry about. How does receiving God's empathy actually help us release some of those worries and stand firm in who he is and his witness with us.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 36:07

Yeah, worry is one of the most common needs or struggles that we need God's empathy for. Interestingly, worry is not actually an emotion. It's a thought. It's a ruminating thoughts, perseverating thoughts, and a mind that's spinning and flitting about. But worry is connected to anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion, and as I said earlier, anxiety is repressed emotion. And so when we're worrying, we need to look for the anxiousness, and we need to realize, Okay, I've probably got. Some repressed emotions going on here, and so it's like my mind is going in overdrive because I'm not attending to or haven't had enough time. Maybe I'm overloaded with stress, and I just haven't had enough time to process those emotions. So slowing things down, having some boundaries, making some space to to make maybe pray some Psalms, talk to somebody who is safe, ask for empathy. Maybe, maybe journal a prayer. We have a journaling experience we call empathy, prayer that we've put in deeply love, that guides you through specific prompts and guidance with what you're what you're thinking about in your head, and what your what your facial expression is, and what's going on in your body, and what emotions are happening and well, what's your self talk? And you you write these things down in the form of a prayer, trying to trying to get words for God's empathy for you, and then looking into the Scriptures with that. So this is the kind of thing that we can do with worry, is that we can begin to get underneath that to verbalize some of the emotions that are there and share that in prayer to the Lord or with a safe person. And then what you see is, is the temperature comes comes down, and the worrying will calm down, not, not always right away, because sometimes, in this realm of the soul and emotions, things will kind of feel worse before they feel better, because what we're doing is we're learning to instead of responding with cope coping mechanisms that aren't healthy, like overworking or overeating, things like that, or instead of repressing emotions, now we're going to feel it so as we become more aware of things that are troubling us, we might actually feel worse at first, but through the process of receiving empathy and agreeing with it. So I'm not, I don't want to be in that position that Christie mentioned, where I've got one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, the gas is okay. I'm I'm talking about what's going on in my life. The break is what's the matter with me? I shouldn't have all these emotions. I'm too needy. I'm just being a burden to this person. I should be stronger. And so when I'm putting my foot on a break like that, we call that resistance. It's unconscious resistance. It's actually spoiling the grace or the truth that God is providing for me. And so that's where we talk about self empathy, that we need to learn to agree with God's expressions of grace in our life.

Unknown: 39:02

You know, in our chapter on releasing worries and deeply love, one of the things we talk about is the importance of mindful prayer, praying scripture meditatively. There was a brain scan done on nuns who meditate on scripture, and it found that as they meditated on Scriptures, the joy centers and the peace centers of the brain are what are lighting up for them. So what a gift that God gives us, Scripture to meditate on, and how effective it is to, instead of ruminate on these these worries turn our mind and ruminate, meditate on God's word. It's very helpful for releasing worries, as well as some of the other empathy practices we give for that.

Joshua Johnson: 39:44

Okay, Bill, I have a question for you. So we're talking about self awareness, self empathy. I can really easily, intellectually, know what sort of emotions are there, like I could just be aware of emotions. I know a lot of the right answers, and I could speak it really well. I could tell others, this is what I'm feeling, this what I'm doing, but I'm not really feeling it. How do I move from being aware of the emotions into a space of feeling my emotions, of actually taking care of them and not just be like knowing about them.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 40:26

That's a great question, Joshua, and I'm so good you. So glad you asked me, because it's my story. I'm a thinker and a doer, and even when it comes to empathy, we talk about the pace of empathy and prayerful empathy, affective empathy, cognitive empathy, effective empathy. I'm best at cognitive empathy because I'm a thinker primarily, but I've learned to be a feeler. Going back to college is when I first learned that, and I learned it through receiving empathy from one of my professors that I was meeting with, and she felt my feelings before I did, and I that's how I learned empathy, and that's how I learned self awareness. And so I began a journey. And so how do I know that I'm not just thinking my emotions and I'm actually feeling them? Is your question, and it's going to be in my body. It's going to be in my facial expression. It's going to be in my guts. It's going to be in if I'm anxious, I'm probably in a hurry, and so it's paying attention to those things and noticing what I'm experiencing in my body and in the rhythms of my life. And it's slowing things down enough in order to notice and then to talk and to process. And so it's really helped me to be with. People like, I'm blessed be married to Christy, who she's a deep feeler, very empathetic, and so she helps me feel my emotions. And I have friends who do the same thing. I'm spiritual director I meet with in the past, I've had counselors I met with, but getting with someone who is able to feel maybe more readily than I am, then that helps open up my emotional centers so that I can feel too. And so I've been on a journey of learning to integrate thinking and feeling. I'm still best at sort of the thinking side of things. I love to do Bible studies. That's why our book deeply loved is filled with Bible studies, but then it's filled with stories too, because Christie is a feeler, and I've learned that language as well. And so, you know, learning to integrate these things is super important for our discipleship to Jesus and our love for people in need in the world.

Unknown: 42:27

And you know, as Bill has done that it's so increased our intimacy, and it's increased my respect for him, because it takes a lot of courage to take that time, to be intentional, to get in touch with what you feel and be honest about it and share that. And so I so much respect him for that, and I've seen the growth in him as he's done.

Joshua Johnson: 42:47

What are some embodied practices to help us get in touch with our body and know where our emotions are sitting within our body?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 42:54

Yeah, you know simple things like taking a walk, or I take a jog every morning, and in the mornings, I usually have two hours, even three hours, of solitude, where I'm by myself and it's quiet, and I find that when I'm in these kinds of situations, I'm able to feel more versus when I'm working, when I'm thinking about things, when I'm helping other people, I might not be as be as much aware of what I'm feeling, but when I when I slow down and I'm doing something with my body, like take like taking a walk or or the contrast is like sitting still. I don't naturally like to sit still. I like to move around and be active, but sometimes I'm on purpose. I'll lay down on the couch, or I'll take a nap, or I'll sit in the chair, or maybe I'll just walk real slow. And I've actually developed a habit, which I'm naturally a fast walker. I've actually developed a habit where sometimes I catch myself walking slow when I hadn't even planned to, because I've done that as a spiritual discipline before, helped me to feel be present to God, who's present to me. So, you know, all these kinds of things help. I mean, even just what I've illustrated with conversation with a counselor, with a friend, that's an embodied practice, or journaling, sitting down and journaling a prayer like like we do in deeply love with the empathy prayer, exercise, or the mindful prayer, even meditation on scripture, which is more mindful. I'm thinking, I'm reflecting, but I'm trying to, I'm slowing down those thoughts. That's embodied, because I'm doing something with my body as I do that,

Unknown: 44:37

yeah, and I think a body scan too, just attuning to yourself physically. Where is there tension? When did that tension start? What does it feel like? What might have triggered it? You're really paying attention and tuning in to your body, and where that emotion is in your body, and what it is and what it's telling you, or how it got there,

Joshua Johnson: 45:01

I'm going to give myself as an example to you. So last time recently, I was in spiritual direction, and I felt like Jesus was inviting me to let go of the masks that I'm wearing in certain situations. And he highlighted a time in my life where I was vulnerable and I shared, and I was trying to receive empathy from these, this group of men that I was accountable to, and I was in a place where I thought I was loved, and instead of receiving empathy, I was shunned, and they didn't want anything to do with me. And so it was a very difficult thing. So I'm going to go on a healing process, and hopefully things will be good later. But for somebody that have has tried to receive empathy from others and have not actually received it, and now I'm have some trepidation to wanting to open myself up to other people I'm okay with, like receiving it from God. I'm okay with receiving it from myself, but I'm scared to try and open myself up to others. What's a journey for somebody like that to start to open themselves up to safe people to be vulnerable with, to receive some good empathy.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 46:26

Yeah, that's very hurtful experience, and we thank you for your vulnerability and your courage to share that. What to to be emotionally honest, to ask for support, and then to be met with a response of to. Dismissal, a rejection. It's extremely hurtful, and in fact, what the natural response to that this has been researched with brain scans is that the shame center of our brain lights up when we are emotionally vulnerable. We have a need, and we're not met with empathy. And it's probably surprising to most of you who are listening, because we know that we know if someone's abused or, you know, mistreated in a harsh way, maybe I'd feel shame. But even just the lack of empathy, the lack of a reception of compassion and care, can foster shame. So I think that it's there's a reason why a turtle has a shell and wants to pull his head under the shell, and so the tricky thing is that, as it relates to maybe those people, or those kind of people who dismissed you, we need that shell. We need we need the ability to pull back and choose to not be vulnerable. But what we will tend to do when we're in the situation that you described most of us is we're prone to like, generalize that and then isolate, like I was talking about earlier, and so learning to discern and differentiate so that I can find people who are safe, people safe meaning they're they're gracious, they're empathetic, they're they're on their own journey in life, and they have some growing self awareness about that. They they've learned to give and receive forgiveness and to be to be process oriented, to not just come to quick conclusions and quick judgments, but they, they bias towards compassion. So So finding that safe person you can be vulnerable with, and sometimes you know the step that can be for some of us, finding a safe friend, a soul friend, it can feel rather daunting. I mean, our podcast is called Soul talks with Bill and Christy Gaultier, because we think everybody needs soul talk. Everybody longs for this, but it's hard for us to find soul friends. So our in soul shepherding, we want to be a soul friend. We want to have those conversations model that, so that people can get the feeling of it and the experience of it, and then find a friend to listen to our podcast with, or find a friend read deeply loved with. And so that could be a simple step, because if a friend that resonates with the book that God is using to help you to feel and to receive compassion and empathy, that's a good chance that person has some things to share and wants to be listened to, and we want to listen to you. So we're looking for people that have more of a tenderness that we can go on a journey with. But at the same time, we want to have friends that have enough strength that they're not just, you know, collapsing in a puddle all the time, and it's always about their needs. We were looking for mutuality.

Unknown: 49:22

Yeah, thank you for sharing that, Joshua, and I'm very sad that your friends weren't responsive and didn't make that choice to tune into and they lost out, because it's as we really are open to respond to someone with empathy that we enjoy the deepest intimacy that God created us for, that the healthy attachment relationships, that's what we're created for. So secure attachment relationships, and so they missed out too. But I would say the other thing I've learned through that happening, because it's happened to me many, many times, and as a child, that happened to me regularly, so I developed incredible defense mechanisms of God so that I didn't trust that anybody would care about my needs and my emotions, and what I what I had to learn to do was to actually be intentional and to ask for empathy first. So, you know, there are times when if I just go to Bill and expect him to respond to me with empathy, and he's in the middle of some project or some stress, he's not going to be able to even though he values it, and he knows how to do it, and he knows I need it. So I've learned to ask him, you know, I'm I'm have, I'm struggling with something, or it would help me to process my thoughts and emotions about something. Would you have time to listen to me with empathy? And that gives him permission and respect to say, you know, I can't right now. I'm in the middle of this. I need to finish this, but I care about you, and I will make time for you. Or, you know, I can't right now, but I want that for you. Can you find somebody else to do that for you? And then it's like, okay, yeah, I I can't. I will go to another source and ask for it. So I think there is that sense of of our taking responsibility to ask for it and not always expect that somebody would be in a place where they could give it. But also it does help somebody else when we are explicit with asking for what we need as well, because there have been times that I've missed on empathy. Somebody shared something, and instead of responding with empathy, I unfortunately went to sympathy, and I told them about my experience of that, and I shut down their emotions with the process. Or maybe I was quick to rush to encouragement, because I didn't have the bandwidth to enter into their pain, and I wanted to make put a pretty bow on it. And so I gave them some Bible verses and some encouragement and left them so, you know, it. It is something that even with, even we know better, sometimes we can miss on empathy.

Joshua Johnson: 51:45

Well, that's good. Now I know why I struggle with shame more than anything else. So thank you for that. If you had a hope for the readers of deeply loved, what do you hope this book will do? And what do you hope for this book?

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 51:59

My biggest prayer would be that you who are listening, that you would see the smile of Jesus in your heart. Jesus is on every page of this book, and his heart bleeds for you, literally, and you probably know that theologically or at a doctrine level, but experiencing that in your guts, in how you're operating in your life, that's where the rubber meets the road, and at times, we all need help with that. So we really unpack stories of the life of Jesus and the care of Jesus from the Gospels relating to all the different situations that we have in life, including these struggles with self judgment, self criticism and shame, and that's how we write about self empathy, as agreeing with God's grace and worry and hurts and emotional triggers and conflict in relationships and the drain, like we talked about a few minutes ago, of compassion fatigue, these are just some of the areas where we really need that empathy of the Lord. And then all the better when you can go on this journey with a friend who maybe reads the book with you. You process and pray together, because when we have those love one another relationships, it's it makes God's loving presence more palpable.

Joshua Johnson: 53:10

A couple questions for both of you here at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 53:19

Mary Christie? You uh, more specifically learned to get in touch with your feelings. It was just after that that I did start to actually, and God graced me with, as I mentioned earlier, but one of my teachers that took me under her wing and really listened to me and helped me. I was moving so fast, trying so hard, and I didn't realize how much I was just trying to be the hero, playing out my family role from childhood, oldest of five kids, and overworking, over stressed, and I had more lessons to learn on that later, I had a I write about this, but I had a burnout in my mid 30s as a pastor and a counselor from I'm A workaholic in recovery. I'm an adrenaline addict in recovery, truly. And so I have to stay honest before the Lord and in relationships that are life giving for me, so that I stay, stay in balance. And so, yeah, I would like Bill to have learned these lessons a little earlier. Maybe, if possible, I

Unknown: 54:17

would say, Christy, you're a wounded healer. Don't be ashamed that you've had wounds. God will redeem and use those very wounds for his purposes and for great fruit bearing for His glory. Because I knew I was wounded, but I didn't I didn't think that God could be glorified in and through them.

Joshua Johnson: 54:36

Anything you guys have been reading or watching lately you could recommend, well,

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 54:40

you know, I read the classics of devotion to Jesus, and I'm reading the memoirs of Harriet Newman. She was the first in the group of the first American missionaries to go overseas around the year 1800 and went to India, and she she died, sadly, tragically at sea when she was only 19 years old, but she kept a journal from the time she was 13, a prayer journal, and also wrote letters to friends and to her mom. So there's a tremendous amount of content she had written. It was collected after her death and her devotion to Jesus, and her emotional honesty, and these, these letters and journals, is just extraordinary. And so sometimes I, you know, it's might seem odd to think, you know, here I am, 62 years old. I'm a psychologist, I'm ordained minister, I'm leading a nonprofit ministry, and I'm reading a book by a teenager to learn about, you know, emotional health and intimacy with God, with the things I teach on and I'm learning so much from God through her, because it's just the incredible life that she lived, an incredible wisdom that she had.

Unknown: 55:55

I'll answer the watch question. We've really appreciated the redeemed TV app, they have some incredible biographical movies on some of the saints that have gone before us, like Bill is reading here, and we have so appreciated and been encouraged just looking at those stories in drama portrayed of other Christians who have been faithful to Jesus throughout their entire life, and it does spur us on to love and devotion

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 56:26

to Jesus. We draw on the classic writers of devotion to Jesus and all of our books, because it's somewhat of a lost literature to most Christians, the books that have survived hundreds of years and the lessons that can be learned from these people. Those lives and their writings and their prayers, we

Unknown: 56:42

share some of them in our soul shepherding retreats too, our soul food readings in the morning, second half of breakfast, we share one of our takeaways from one of these books. And it's always a great, rich time together, community, excellent.

Joshua Johnson: 56:57

Well, deeply loved. Is available anywhere books are sold. You go out and get that. It's a fantastic book. I really highly recommend it. It is good. Is there anywhere you would like to point people to? How could they connect with you? How could they connect with your soul? Shepherding weekends and other things that you're doing.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 57:15

Yeah, go to soul, shepherding.org and there you can learn about come on retreat. That's our invitation to you. Chris and I lead a retreat with a community that you need to be in. There's a friend that you didn't know you had in that room. Come, come join us. And person after person describes it as life changing and then soul sharpening.org/deeply. Loved book that's where you can learn more about deeply loved, or wherever you buy books, you can find deeply loved. It's on Amazon. It's getting a lot of attention there, which we're thankful for. To share the message with as many people as we can. Great.

Joshua Johnson: 57:53

Well, Bill and Christy, thank you for this conversation, for walking us through what empathy is, what empathy is not, what three way empathy can do for us, that we could receive God's empathy to know that we are deeply loved. We could have some self empathy and walk with that, and then we could receive empathy from others your community. And when we could do that, we could actually start to live well and live in this world. And we could love others. We could be on fire because we've received the love of God in our lives, and we could pour out ourselves, and we could have a balance, and not just get into compassion fatigue and burnout, but we could have a balance of receiving and giving. It was fantastic conversation. Really loved it. So thank you so much.

Bill & Kristi Gaultiere: 58:36

Thank you, Joshua and all of you with the shifting culture. You you.