74. Justin Whitmel Earley on The Body Teaches the Soul: Rhythms That Heal, Restore, and Shape Us

In this engaging conversation, Nikki Smith interviews Justin Whitmel Earley, exploring the profound connection between our physical habits and spiritual lives. Justin shares his personal journey from a crisis in mental health to discovering the importance of habits in shaping our souls. They discuss the impact of technology in parenting, the significance of instilling healthy habits in children, and the grace that allows for growth and change. The conversation emphasizes the importance of community and shared practices in navigating the challenges of modern life, particularly in relation to technology and mental health.

Takeaways:

• The Christian life is about what we practice, not just what we know.
• Physical habits significantly impact mental health and spiritual well-being.
• Grace allows us to approach our habits without fear of failure.
• Instilling healthy habits in children creates a positive legacy.
• Technology can be both a blessing and a challenge for families.
• Small changes in habits can lead to significant improvements over time.
• Community support is crucial in maintaining healthy practices.
• Understanding the connection between biology and theology is essential.
• Parents should model healthy technology use for their children.
• Every small habit contributes to a larger narrative of growth and redemption.

Books by Justin Whitmel Earley:

Habits of the Household: https://amzn.to/48UjVum

The Common Rule: https://amzn.to/47Ef6mS

Made for People: https://amzn.to/4oezeTx

The Body Teaches the Soul: https://amzn.to/4qzCRVu

The Big Mess (Childrens Book): https://amzn.to/4343LLi

Connect With Justin:

Justin’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justinwhitmelearleyauthor/

Justin’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhitmelearley/

Justin’s X: https://x.com/Justin_W_Earley

Justin’s YouTube: www.youtube.com/@justinwhitmelearley1630

Justin’s Website: https://www.justinwhitmelearley.com/

Hang 10 Movement:

https://www.hangtenmovement.com/

Resources Mentioned in Show: 

The Anxious Generation: 

https://amzn.to/3LbS92F

JOIN ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Follow Along @ - https://www.instagram.com/nikkicronksmith/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart That Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection. Just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another week here at the podcast. I know without a doubt that today's episode is going to deeply impact you and leave you thinking way beyond when you're done listening. My guest today is Justin Whitmall Early, husband of almost 20 years to his beautiful bride Lauren, a dad to four sweet boys. He's a writer, a speaker, a podcaster, and a lawyer. You may know him from his best-selling books, like The Common Rule, The Habits of the Household, or Made for People. And his brand new book, The Body Teaches the Soul, releasing tomorrow at recording time, is going to be one of your favorites for sure. Through his writing and speaking, Justin helps us see that the Christian life isn't just about what we know, it's about what we practice. He believes that the way that we move through our days, our rhythms, our rest, our work, and even the way we use our smartphones is shaping our souls. In The Body Teaches the Soul, Justin explores how our physical and spiritual lives are deeply connected. He reminds us that everything biological is also theological, and that the way we treat our bodies can teach our souls about the love and presence of God. Today we're going to talk about what that looks like in real life, in our homes, in our marriages, in our parenting, and in our everyday habits. We'll dive into how small things are really big things, how grace meets us at our limits, and what it means to live an embodied faith in a world that often feels disembodied. Justin's wisdom is both deeply theological and beautifully practical. And I know for sure that this conversation is going to hit every single one of us right where we are. So, Justin, thank you so much on the eve of a book release to be giving myself and our listeners some of your time.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

You're so welcome. That was a delightful intro. Thank you. Lots of great info there.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Well, you have a lot there, so many different ways that people can find and follow you, and we'll give all of that information at the end. But I know that listeners are going to want to soak up and selfishly as a mom and having just read this new book, I'm going to ask questions that are pertaining to what I want to know about. And I'm trusting I can't wait.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

I can't wait to hear.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I'm trusting that the 40 questions in front of me, reality says we'll probably walk through four or five of them because that's how this always goes. But just trusting that the exact conversation that the Lord has for our listeners is the one that's about to be had. And so, Justin, to jump right into the waters, I think one of the things that I so greatly appreciate about you as a writer, as a content creator on Instagram, where you're sharing all the time, is that you bring such an amount of vulnerability and honesty to your work. And everything here on the podcast for us is about authentically doing life, not pretend not the Instagram-filtered way of life. And you write books about habits and rhythms, not because you've always had that ordered, not because you went and got a degree in that, but because you are at a point of being totally broken. And I would love for you kind of just to start to tell our listeners how this passion about habits and rhythms came to be because

Crisis, Habits, And Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 3:58

of really a dark place that you ran into in your life.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yeah. So if you've read Habits of the Household, you might not actually be familiar with this story because I've written about it elsewhere, but the body teaches the soul really does come out of that transition period in my life a little, a little bit over 10 years ago, when I was moving from being a missionary in China, which is what I did right after college, to being a corporate lawyer, which is what I still do as I write. And I fell into a really difficult and dark mental health period during that time. It was, you know, panic attacks, insomnia, even some suicidal thoughts at the darkest points. And it was very not only difficult, but deeply disorienting to me because I was a former missionary who had a really good worldview. But I was going one way in my head, and I see now going the opposite way in my habits. And in retrospect, I found that when your head goes one way and your habits go the other, your heart tends to follow the habits. And so I think, more than I think, I'm convinced that by living according to technological habits of busyness, physical habits of nonstop work, not resting, not sleeping enough, not eating, not exercising, particularly those two things, technological habits and physical habits, really impacted my soul and my heart in a way that I didn't realize they had the power to do. I thought if I had the right thoughts, you know, I was big on thinking. I thought that if I had the right thoughts, then everything would fall down into the rest of my body. And two things in the wake of that really surprised me, Nikki. The first was how much the spiritual disciplines mattered to my mental health. I was drastically changed by starting to practice things like I talk about in my other books, particularly in Habits of the Household, like scripture before phone, prayer rhythms throughout the day. But that I was not I was not ready for how much physical habits would change my mental health. When I started to pay attention to sleep and exercise and eating in new ways, I was honestly a little self-conscious at first because I felt this stuff isn't that spiritual, so it shouldn't be mattering that much. And I was worried I might be idolizing it, honestly. And it was not until really diving into research and writing for The Body Teaches the Soul that I realized how very spiritual our bodies are and why these things matter so much to our walk with Jesus. And that's entirely what The Body Teaches the Soul is about.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I loved reading just your honesty and transparency there because I don't know, there's something about this stage in life. I've talked to so many moms who are in that 30-year-old stage and husbands are running after careers, and you've got all these littles, and you're trying to balance friendship and maintaining a home and doing volunteer work and kid stuff. And I think that it's more common than not. But I think people are so afraid to talk about it because we live in this specifically, I think, as Christians. I think we do a worse job at admitting it often because it does feel like theologically, I love that you said you can't take biology and theology and separate them when we believe that God created every part of our being. And so it's, I think, just so refreshing to hear you just be honest and vulnerable and give so many of us permission to really take a deeper look at this. As I was reading the book, so for listeners, there's 10 different essential habits that Justin walks through in the book. And I hate to say it, but go get the book. You're gonna be encouraged and discouraged all along the way. But I thought, man, Nikki, I I have not one of these 10 mastered. And to just be processing through that. And one thing that you said, and I just keep saying it even in the last couple of days, is our habits won't change God's love for us. But our love for God should change our habits. And I think that is so powerful. How has that specifically your love for God when you start to see all of this as a whole picture started to help you implement habits?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Well, because this all came out of crisis for me, I think from day one, I've been comfortable with fumbling for a solution, like fumbling for help. And that puts me in a really different category than the person who thinks they want to get all their life together and fine-tune it for the purpose of posting about it on Instagram or feeling like they're doing everything perfectly. So I do think it's so important to separate the idea of rules from habits or legalism from healthy spiritual physical disciplines. So you'll know, Nikki, on every chapter in the book, I end every chapter by reminding readers that habits will not change God's love for them, but God's love for them should change their habits. And by that, I just want over and over to remind you that while these things are important, while how you breathe, how you give mental space to reading and writing over technology, how you sleep, your Sabbath rhythms, how you eat. And this one, this one gets personal for all of us. All those things really do impact who you are and how you feel. But you're never gonna change how God feels about you through them. You're never gonna earn an ounce more of his approval, an ounce more of his love. It's just that because he loves you so much, these things are worth paying attention to. Like a good parent, I don't love my kids any better when they eat their veggies on the plate like I tell them to, but because I love them, I try to shepherd them into a place of health. And so I really want readers to see that. And I also want them to see that rules are different than rhythms because not only do you not have to do them perfectly, but also even doing them badly is still super beneficial. So when I write

Spiritual Disciplines Meet Physical Practices

SPEAKER_00 10:12

a book like Happens of the Household or a book like this, I'm very aware, and I try to be really honest on every page that I don't do any of this particularly well or certainly not perfectly. But one of the things that is stuck with me my whole life is a quote by G.K. Chesterton that I once read, and that is a thing worth doing is worth doing badly. Anything worth doing is worth fumbling around and trying. So I just want to invite readers to try to approximate any one of these habits and find that it will help you where you are. And the messiness is not a sign that you're failing. It's a sign that you're doing something in the first place. That means you're trying. That's a great place to start.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

I love that you bring that up because that was something that stuck with me from the book, Habits of the Household was just because parts of your life are messy doesn't mean they're bad. Specifically in your chapter on marriage, you were talking about that. And we get in, we get in this cycle of thinking, well, if I was doing it right, if I was applying all the right principles, I wouldn't be hitting this resistance. There wouldn't be the miscommunication or the arguments. And so to bring that in, that same grace into the things like how I'm eating, how I'm drinking, how I'm using technology, how I'm sleeping, it does come at it, especially for somebody with a personality that is a win or lose. Either you're winning at it or you're losing at it. There's no in between and just the power of, you know, compound interest. And so let's let's take that and go specifically, maybe to in the household, a mom or a dad. I'm reading this book and I know that you have a full life. I know that you have a wife that's at home and has a lot of her own things and four active little boys. Sometimes when one spouse says, Okay, I'm gonna start, you know, all these new things, the other spouse can almost feel like, oh shoot, because sometimes that means there's gonna be a lot more, or we assume there's gonna be a lot more responsibility on me. As listeners are reading this book and they're walking through, my my hope and prayer would be that you do it with your spouse, that this would be a marriage practice or a best friend practice. But maybe for the mom or the dad that's listening that's gonna embark on this journey alone because their spouse just isn't there. How do you walk through this with grace?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Well, the the first thing I would say to that is the wonderful power of reading or listening together is like unprecedented. So if if you can say to your spouse, hey, I think this book is changing the way that I think, would you be willing to listen to this chapter and then talk about it with me? Because I just want to let you in on something that's like, you know, going on in my life. That is different than saying, oh my gosh, I read this book and we're not doing the things we should be doing, and we need to do these 10 things, and I need your help to do them. You've skipped the process of inviting them into your process. And look, Lauren and I do this all the time, right? So you're not abnormal if you're struggling with this. But if there's if you're a wife listening and you can get me into your husband's ear by asking him to listen to this audiobook or get me into his briefcase or desk or whatever by saying, giving him a copy of the book, I just think we actually vastly underestimate the power of common readings. And that is the first place that I would start, honestly, if there's any way you can get. And by the way, wives do this so well. Like Lauren does this so well. She reads so much more than I do. She listens to so much more than I do. And the top 10%, she'll be like, I really think you should read this. And the top five to one percent, she's like, You basically must read this. And you know I love Lauren. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, those certain amount of things, I'm gonna be like, I will, I will. So I think you have more power of suggestion than you might think. And that's the best way to start. Now that's it. There's a lot of things in life where we are out there and our spouse is just not on board yet. So let's say they're like, I don't have time to read that. I don't have time to listen to that, or I don't want to, or something. You're you're in the realm that many of us find ourselves in, occasionally and sometimes often, which is quiet faithfulness alone. And I also want to remind you the power of that. This is actually in Paul's letters, the power of a spouse saying, I'm gonna quietly follow Jesus in this area of my life in trust that it will help my family, it will serve my family. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. If you read the chapter on exercise or eating, you are not gonna find pressure on you need to start doing this this way, you need to get your body and your health in shape this way. You're gonna find a continual paradigm of reframing habits of the body from how we might look to how we might love. We're trying to reframe the entire conversation around your body to away from how you can look and towards how you can love. And so the whole question of exercise or eating or sleeping is not how you can do this perfectly. You can go to Instagram if you want that. You'll have a ton of people pressuring you to do this, that, and the other, and you'll come away feeling either vain if you're doing it well, or a lot of shame if it's not going well. My great hope in this book is that we'll give you small suggestions to say, here's one way to pay more attention to the spirituality of your exercise so that you might take that body and love your kids well, your husband well, your family well, do your job a little bit better. Because the point of our bodies is not to idolize them, but neither is it to ignore them. It's to image God through them. God is love. The great call of the Christian life is to love God and love neighbor.

Grace, Not Legalism, In Habits

SPEAKER_00 15:54

So I think when you start from that, like, oh, these are not for what they can do for me, they're for how they can help me to move outward into the world and love. I think the burden becomes a lot lighter and thus a lot easier if you have to do it alone. And guess what? When you do that kind of thing alone, quietly and faithfully, your spouse eventually starts to notice. And that's a great blessing.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Absolutely. And I do feel like there is a very different tone through this entire book of it's not a checklist of this is you have to exercise 45 minutes a day. And it's get out and take a walk, walk around the block, or the chapter on breathing. And we were actually in the car driving to an event as a family, and I was reading the PDF of the book, and I was out loud in the car doing the breathing, the box breathing that you were talking about. And I think my family's my family's like, oh great, here we go. I'm like, oh no, guys, this is gonna be epic. Right? Mom's gonna be cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Look, I thought this one was, I thought the breathing thing was so like psycho babble, this can't matter until I read and and studied about this. And breath prayers have they like changed my life in the past two years.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Just even things that don't feel again, listeners, you have to just get it and read it on little instances where you start to feel like the tension in the kitchen when everybody's a little bit grouchy or complaining or somebody's saying something that doesn't sit well. Literally just that little breath prayer or the box breathing for one minute. But in regards to what you were just saying, too, about the spouses, one thing that I wrote down, you said the call of, and you could fill in the blank. You could say mom, dad, husband, business owner, lawyer are really hard when we habitually dishonor our bodies. And I thought, man, even that, I'm so grateful that I am in a position that I have a spouse that my poor husband, just like you, gets spammed by me with the amount of podcasts and books and things. But this one, when we are driving, I looked at him and I'm like, babe, this one, we're in on this together, and we might need to find another couple to do it to do it with us so that the guys can have accountability, the women can have accountability.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

But when you look at it, that's the most brilliant way to do it, by the way, Nikki. That is that's the brilliant way to do it. Keep going.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, get a couple. So that call of fill in the blank, those things become more difficult when we dishonor our body. And so when we think about those practices, when we think about you were in a place of spiraling and depression, adding things in, which often feels like I can't do it. I'm at my max. How did adding things into that rhythm? And I've also heard people say that when you add in a couple of new habits, like drinking water and exercising, that everything else in your day, because of how your brain's now working, starts to just work more towards goals. Did you immediately start to feel like, okay, these are the things that Lauren and I agreed on to help try to get me out of this rut? And I'm I am seeing pretty quick return on these efforts.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yes, it was very quick return on efforts, but true lasting deep change was very slow. And that is exactly how your body always acts, right? So maybe I'll take exercise here as an example. You know, as you as you'll remember from Habits of the Household, if anybody's read it, one of my constant themes is realizing how much more we are like our children than not. And I think one of the things that I notice physically is how much we make it hard to do our job because of how we dishonor God in our body, as you just mentioned, Nikki. And I think often about watching my kids try to do something. I'm either teaching them or try to, it might be their homework, it might be catching a ball. And I'm like, oh, you're making this so hard because you're you're doing it this way or you're not paying attention to your task. And my my goal as a parent is to come and help them do what they want to do better. And I think, I think you can think of your father, your heavenly father, like that, coming to look at your embodied practices and not saying, why are you eating like this, or how dare you, or like, why aren't you exercising, but rather saying, I think you're making this really hard for yourself. Like I created you for life and life to the full. And exercise as an example is one of those places where beginning it, okay, first it feels like a lot of shame because you feel like you ought to be exercising and you're not. And that's like one thing to get over. But remember, he's a heavenly father saying, I actually want to give you a good gift. Second, you're wondering in your schedule, how could I possibly fit in something like this? And for me, that was a really hard question. It was about my, I think, fifth year into lawyering when I finally started making time to work out. And I decided that I would quote unquote steal from work rather than steal from home, and that I would go to the gym in the middle of the workday, which was very challenging. Anybody who's going to move from no exercise to even a little bit is gonna have to figure out, you know, what are they gonna steal from? And I think that's where I would rather people think of the habit of exercise, for example, but this goes for any of them, as a swap rather than adding something in, because you are almost certainly, like me, saying, I don't have any more margin. Like I can't add anything else in. And you may actually be right. However, you're wrong as to whether that means you shouldn't do something that is good for you spiritually and physically. So you're going to have to sacrifice something else. And every keystone habit that changes everything else about your life, and exercise is one, sleep is one. Most of the spiritual disciplines, like reading your Bible or praying regularly, are keystone habits. One small thing changes everything. And any keystone habit, you're gonna have to swap in for another habit. So what I was swapping in for with exercise was the habit of working through lunch. Like I would just stay at my desk and I would work through lunch. That means I wasn't eating, so I was ignoring my body more. I was continuing the frenetic anxiety of working a little bit more. And this made me stop. I had to stop. I had to drive up seven minutes to the gym. I picked the gym that was really close to me, work out for an hour, get showered, come back, and and realize that that you know, 70 to you know, 90 minute period was worth the work lost. And very quickly, Nikki, my mental health from that started drastically improving. That was the quick return. I started to see, oh my gosh, I'm not getting quite as much work done during the workday. Or actually, wait, no, I am. I'm getting the

Starting Alone And Inviting Your Spouse

SPEAKER_00 22:30

same work done just in less amount of time because my mind is so much better. Now, the the actual change of like my body and like long-term mental health was very slow, as it always will be. I mean, we overestimate what we can do in a day or a week, but we vastly underestimate what we can do in a couple months and a year. And when you keep a small keystone habit in place, like exercise, uh so much of your life will start to change, even with just a small like add-in in the week. So I could give you a story like that for every single one of the habits that I recommend in the book, but the common theme will be you're gonna swap one thing for another. It's gonna feel really challenging at first. You're gonna get a quick, immediate return, but it that it's gonna pale in comparison to the long-term, what I call gardening of the body, which will be that it takes a long time to till, plant, and watch the garden of your body grow. But that is where it gets really worth it.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

And that gardening concept is is tough because we live in a society where I mean, I recently saw a kid that's scrolling on their phone and something's not refreshing quick enough. And it's like just keep tapping it or tap it harder or tap it faster.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Because we're just so Which I also do.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I know this is proof that the body teaches the soul. You know, like we just we can get so crazy on that. And you brought up the gym. And so I want to talk there for a second about something in the book where, again, I'm not gonna give too much away because I want people to go and get this right away. But you talk about being in a gym to start. And again, people will look at you right now and you'll see stuff on Instagram of not only now do you go to the gym, you're a part owner of a gym, it's become a huge part of your life. And we we sometimes don't see that beginning stage. It's so easy for us to see the end and just assume, well, I can't do that. And there's a story where you were talking about not being at what you thought was your best, or you in turn thought you had given your best. And one of the trainers kind of getting on you and and really pushing you to go beyond the death that you thought you were already living. And what I found so just amazing about that story is it was talking about how, in regards to weightlifting, you do have another, you know, snatch in you when you think, no, I don't. You do. And in that case, maybe you had four or five or six. And it shows you that our minds have told us so much about our limits and wanting to live in comfort. But what impacted me even more from that story was that you transitioned it to a parenting example of when I tell myself or when I even sometimes say audibly to my kids, I'm out of patience. Like that's one, you know, that I'm out. Like I'm I'm declaring, I'm out, it's over. Crazy witching hours are here. You said grace means that at the end of my patience, there's actually more patience. And there's actually the ability to re-correct the child one more time or to patiently serve again in a way that I feel like I'm at my limits. Has pushing your body physically strengthened your mind beyond any way that you thought it could have.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

100%. I mean, it started with that story that I tell in the book that you're referencing. It was the a day in the gym where the trainer actually stood in front of me and didn't let me stop. And it was actually very awkward, but it was very satisfying because I realized my body had more to give when I literally thought it had no more to give. And it was the next day picking a sippy cup off of the floor, putting it back on my toddler's high chair. He knocks it down again. I bend down to pick it up. My, you know, my legs are sore from the day before. He knocks it off again. And that's when I'm like, I'm out of patience, I'm done. And I my mind went back to the gym the day before. I actually sort of heard in my head what I think was a Holy Spirit moment of this, you know, just pick it up, just like the trainer had told me before. And it was this moment where I realized, oh my gosh, my patience is like my body. There is more when I thought there was none left. And this, Nikki, that was I think six, seven years ago that that this happened. And I honestly literally thought about it this weekend. We were, I was getting done with a hectic day of work on Friday, and we were, I was needing to rush home, pack up the car for a church retreat. You know, I knew I was gonna be managing boys on a three-hour road trip and like, you know, sort of enjoying our church retreat, but doing a lot of parenting and we're gonna be outside and all the things to pack. And I I remember on the way home just thinking, like, I'm I'm frazzled, I'm sort of annoyed. And I remember thinking, I do things so much harder than this. You know what? We're gonna be fine. And I, and you know what? I don't have to, I don't have to fulfill this prophecy I'm hearing in my head that this is gonna be dreadful and I'm not gonna make it, and I'm gonna be exhausted. In fact, I'm daily exhausted in the gym. I'm daily thinking, I'm not gonna make it. This is gonna be so painful. And every time I'm happy that I did that. I literally remember thinking of this on Friday. It was such a great weekend. It honestly, that

Reframing Exercise, Eating, And Sleep

SPEAKER_00 27:52

even that little reminder, and I'll be honest, a breath prayer in the car as I thought through that changed the way I showed up on my front porch, like midday on Friday. And we we had a wonderful ride down. I wasn't the grouchy, frustrated, grab all the bags and it's not even fitting in the car, like snapping at everybody that I've been so often, you know. And so it it does. It it can these those two embodied habits of being regularly in the gym and using breath prayers for moments of frustrating transitions, are ways that the Lord has, again, this is why I called the book The Body Teaches the Soul. The ways that the Lord has started to train my body in a way that is instantly and constantly translating to my spiritual, emotional, parenting life. And it's been so helpful. It's been so it was so much harder when I wasn't practicing these things. And these things have all been gifts. I look at my life now and I think I do a lot more habits than I used to do. And yet the burden of what I do every day is so much lighter than what it used to be because I've swapped out these bad ones for these light ones, which is the beautiful theme of Matthew's telling of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, My yoke is easy, my burden is light. These things give the grace of God into your day.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah. And I, you know, what impacts me so much in that story is just sharing that about most of our triggers for you coming home, you already just start to get this spirit of like angst. And as a parent, I know you're in a younger stage of parenting, my kids are a little bit older, but I have young adult kids and high schoolers that are living here. And just when you you can look out and you can say, okay, if I would have followed this path and this would have been my kids' experience. And yet, because God's growing me and I'm learning how my body and soul, how we get to show up so differently for our children. And that makes me emotionally even just to think about because we you can sometimes watch the the The digital things where it's showing these choices were made, and this is what it looks like when mom unraveled, or this is what it looks like when mom did the quick breath prayer, or just the re thinking of the process in her mind and the different experience that is for our kids. And so, in that, you've you've gotten a hold of this when your kids are still pretty young. We talked in the beginning that the 30s seems to be like where a lot of adults have like this crash and burn. How do you feel that as a parent, getting a hold of these things? And I know that you and Lauren are extremely intentional. This isn't just something that you and her are doing, and it is a full, full family, whether it's in the bedtime routines, the nighttime liturgies, and the prayers, how do you hope, or how are you even already seeing that living this out now, when your kids are little, do you anticipate? And I know we can never predict my kids are gonna escape this or that. Like, no, but these are such tools. It's just such intentionality that once you have this wisdom, once you understand biology and theology and how they go together, and we parent in that way with these things, what is your hope for your boys growing up from such a young age, having some of these practices that maybe will set them on a totally different trajectory than other young men that didn't have that opportunity?

SPEAKER_00 31:26

I I have a lived hope. I would, I would even call it an an active prayer that Lauren and I would sort of dig a rut of habit that would be easier than not for them to continue to coast in. There's a lot of mixed metaphors there, and I should know better as an English major, but what I what I mean is first, it's a it's a lived hope. I'm very aware my children have their own futures, their own capacity to make decisions, and God has his own plan for them. And that is honestly comforting to me. If I thought this was up to me, I would be up with anxiety through the night every night. But it's not. They're held in the hand of a good father just like I was. And so when I left the house as a child, um, well, yeah, an 18-year-old child, and made tons of terrible decisions in my early years of college. I'm sure my parents could have thought, oh, we did it all wrong. You know, we failed. But the Lord is more gracious than we are, hardworking. He's more faithful than we are. And the the Lord used so much of my upbringing, not just to call me forward to him, but to call me back to him. It was literally my upbringing that I started to remember in my prodigal son moments. And I thought, man, my parents gave me a much wiser possibility of life that I'm allowing myself. And it was literally their example, it was their rhythms, it was their habits that have that called me back to Jesus in my like sort of original testimony. And that is my lived hope for my children. It's not that this will save them from all problems, it's not that this will make life instantly easy for them. It's not that it'll make life instantly easy for me. It's just that this is worth doing, it's worth doing badly, and it's a lived prayer that it would help them. And I mentioned the rut in that sentence because ruts are

Keystone Habits And Habit Swaps

SPEAKER_00 33:30

actually beautiful if they're headed to the right direction. Like if you if you want to go on this path, it's very convenient to have a rut to get there. Ruts, like habits, are the things that's just far easier to stay in than move out of. And when you're out of them, it's actually easier to fall back in if it's a well-dug rut. And so I think about you know, prayers with our kids, Bible study, readings with our kids, little things that I say to them in their nighttime blessings as ruts that make it easier for us to fall back in. I'll give you one little example actually from last night. You know, we do this blessing all the time with our children where we talk about how God loves you no matter what good things you do, no matter what bad things you do. It's a it's a language rut that we do. It's a bedtime liturgy, which means when I have a discipline moment with one of my children, like I did last night, where you know, he was sad, I was very frustrated. We had to work through that moment and get to some talking. And I could tell you all about that. But the point was when we finally got to the talking, it was normal and even habitual for me to say, hey, remember, even now, I love you no matter what bad things you do. And we can't do this, and you need to change, and there's discipline involved, but it doesn't change my love for you. You know, we're hearkening back to what we said a minute ago, Nikki, that habits won't change God's love for you, but God's love for you should change your habits. And my son's behavior doesn't change my love for him. But I hope that my love for him in that moment will move him. You know, the Lord disciplines those he loves. And so I think about habits like that of giving them the opportunity I want them to have as a lived prayer. And and that's all. The Lord will handle the rest. And I'm very, very comforted by that.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

I think that listeners, I mean, you can make your own decisions, but I might print out dig a rut of habits that your kids fall into. That is such a powerful word picture. And we've all been walking down the path where there's the muddy four-wheeler rut that's dried in the path, and you'll so much just sprain an ankle because it just it so badly wants you in it. And I think of all the beautiful ruts that my parents laid down that I'm so grateful for today. But when we think about that, there's ruts that we're laying down that are going to really serve our children well and lead them in the ways of the Lord. And then there's ruts that we're gonna plow out that are gonna cause our children a lot of heartache. And I think that is the perfect transition to where I want to camp out here for the time that we have left. Because it is, it is the habit, Justin, that I just want to like beat myself over the head with a fry pan and say, why is this so difficult for you? And also so aware of grace and and God's mercy because we're gonna talk about technology. And I have to constantly remind myself that Nikki, you are I had children in 2002, 2005, and 2010. I am the first, really honestly, the first group of parents that have had to parent children with technology like a smartphone for their childhood. You know, this is the first generation my children are. And I get frustrated because I know that what we want for our children, we need to first model. And this is just one with technology that it absolutely kills me because the world is using these things. And as believers, we can recognize that that there's an agenda, and yet there's also so much beauty in these digital habits that we can create and the things that they've brought into our lives. But when I look at, and there was something that you wrote in the book that in 2010, I think it was, that that's when social media and smartphones really entered the picture. And there is a direct correlation between a drastic decline in adolescent mental health. And so we we know like nobody can be fooled that there's not drastic connections between this mental health. Right. There's no denying it. And when I look at all the different areas of my life that are in this book, the the eating, the exercise, the sleep, the thinking, the mental, I know that the biggest roadblock for me always ties back to phone. I don't get enough sleep because I don't discipline restraint in my phone. I don't get to the gym because I scrolled too much. I don't take box prayers because I'm multitasking. Like every single thing I feel like I can trace back to this darn smartphone. And you and Lauren are very intentional about this, so much so that you have something called the Hang 10 movement. I would love just to take a couple minutes before we have to end, just to talk to parents about this Hang 10 movement, what it is, how it can bless their families, and why technology limits and boundaries is crucial, so that the rut of technology that we're digging for our children is not one that's going to lead to destruction, to the best that we can prevent it.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Amen. Amen. So well said. Gosh, how much time do we have? Because I know, right? I could go for I gave a six-hour day of seminars on the Hang 10 movement this summer because it's so important. There's so much to unpack. But we can give some great, we can give some great seeds here that will blossom for people. The first two I would like to lay down are are grace and gravity, Nikki, because gravity, you are right. We can no longer deny what smartphones are doing to our brains, our mental health, and particularly to the brains and mental health, spiritual health of children. And the gravity here is not just that you can't deny the data. The gravity for a believer is much more serious. Jesus had, I think, his harshest words for those who mislead children. Those who, you know, would mislead these little ones, he said, it is better that you tie a millstone around your neck and throw yourself into the water. These were harsh words from Jesus when it comes to the care and protection of children. Christians talk a lot about living for the vulnerable, the the widow, the poor, the immigrant,

Strength, Patience, And Breath Prayers

SPEAKER_00 40:00

the orphan. These are this is absolutely the ethic of Christianity. In our modern moment, some of the most vulnerable amongst us are children when it comes to technology. It's not just poor children anymore, it's all children. So we have a call, right? And that's the gravity. Probably the most important part of their discipleship to Jesus is how they use technology. So part of the Hang 10 movement is trying to wake us up to the gravity of that call. But, but, but grace, okay? When you know better, you do better. This was a very comforting phrase I think Maya Angelo gave the world. There are many of us that did not know this a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago. Some of us didn't know this a day ago. But now you're listening to this and you're like, wait, what are they talking about? And you're gonna go look at the stats or read the anxious generation or listen to you're gonna, you're gonna go to the Hang 10 movement, look some of this stuff up. And you, the beautiful news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you are not stuck with the habits that you have. You are not stuck with the mental health you have, you are not stuck with the addictions you have, you are not stuck with the ruts that you have. Grace means tomorrow does not have to be like today. You can change. This is a fundamental theological truth of the Bible, which is such good news. You don't have to keep using your phones the way you are now. You your children don't either. This is true for them and for you. This is also a biological truth that is really in play here. God has built neuroplasticity into your brain. This is grace in the system. Again, you are not stuck. So realize the gravity of what you're dealing with, but also realize that this is the great call of the Christian to say, oh, now that conviction has entered my life, I must respond to God and change. And you can change. The Hang 10 movement offers you 10 practices to make this change of such gravity in your house. It gives you four communal practices, three household practices, and three personal practices. And these are built really intentionally. Nikki, we cannot disciple our family into anything that we are not actually being discipled into ourselves. So you're right, you can't introduce your children to a Jesus that you don't follow. You can't teach them something that you don't really understand. So the three personal practices are practices like learning to turn your phone off an hour a day regularly, learning to wake up before it, go to bed after it, learn to fine-tune the settings so that in your personal life, you're actually surprised, leading by example. And for many of us, the greatest roadblock block to our children's healthy use of technology is our use of technology. So we must start here. But there are then three household practices because while your healthy practices of technology are necessary, they are actually not sufficient to change your house. So we need to think about, and this is actually where I cover a lot of this in chapter eight in Body Teaches the Soul. We actually need to think about, I call them the geographic or the sort of the place-oriented notions of technology. Like literally, where are the screens in your house? Where is it on your body? Are there zones in the house? We call them no zones where phones or screens aren't allowed. Ours are kids' bedrooms, dinner tables. Those are like absolute no's because we want to preserve community and integrity. We also want to preserve healthy meals and healthy sleep. You'll notice some embodied nudges there. But there's household practices to think about. But then here's the most important part, okay? That is also necessary, but not sufficient. Because you can do some amazing things in your household, but your kids, when they start to hit sixth and then seventh, and then eighth and then ninth and then tenth grade, they start to rightfully mesh with the with the world. They're being slowly apprenticed into a way of life, sent out of the house. And if your community is not synced up on what you're doing with technology, it is the prisoner's dilemma. Like one person acting differently, you know, can can just explode the efforts of a whole community. And that's a bit of an exaggeration. You can have like a couple people doing their own thing. But when you get a critical mass of parents at your school, maybe at your youth group, this is particularly well suited for churches or private schools where you have people thinking in the same worldview, but not knowing what the technological practices they should be doing are. The Hang 10 movement is trying to give you a code of ethics for the use of technology, particularly the embodied use of technology. So that's where it gets its name from. Hang 10. Wait until 10th grade to give your children access to their first smartphone or social media. There are lots of other things you can do before that. The dumb phones, texting devices. There's lots of other things you can do before that, but smartphones and social media are just complete portals to the adult world. They are almost impossible to regulate as a parent. They're almost impossible to put good software on. It's almost impossible to know what your kids are doing when they you have those. So those are the things you want to delay until like driving time, when it's time to start, I think, apprenticing your children into how that you use them. And I get some parents who say, even then, should we do it? Maybe, maybe until they're 18, we shouldn't let them in. I disagree. I really think we need to teach our children how to use these so that their colleges don't, or so that their friends outside of the home don't. So this is an apprentice model. And all of that and more can be found at the hang10movement.com. And you can read up on that, soak in the practices, but just don't do nothing. Something is more than nothing. Just do something. Maybe go check that out or read chapter eight in the body teaches the soul because technology changes everything about our bodies and souls.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Absolutely. And I think it's the one that is just it's so intertwined into all the other habits that it's just when you can get that one under control, how much easier the others. Listeners, if you are a parent that's been having the conversation around, is it time to get my child a phone? I would just encourage

Parenting With Rhythms And Blessings

SPEAKER_01 46:10

you, I'll make sure to tag in the show notes, go and do some research and read some of the information because you it's very, very hard to take back something once it's been given. But when you can prolong, if that is a conversation that you're having in your house, this might be the entire reason you're listening today, is because you need to go think and really sit on that information. Okay. Well, Justin, I think that we need to do another, maybe next season, an entire episode on just the hang 10 because we are out of time. Tomorrow is a big launch day for you. I want to just leave with something from chapter two that you wrote that I think is just a really encouraging perspective on closing this up. And it's on the chapter on thinking. And it says for Christians, understanding the power of story means recognizing that our personal histories are part of a greater narrative, the grand story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. We must learn to see ourselves between the chapters of redemption and consummation. Broken but being healed, sinful, but being sanctified, fallen but ultimately restored. The now and not yet nature of the kingdom of God reminds us that while full healing awaits Christ's return, real transformation is possible now. And I think that is such an encouragement that as we wait for perfection and the Lord's coming, that we do have the ability. We do have the one more rep on us. We do have that little bit more bit of patience and grace in our parenting, and that every small habit we choose to get a hold of is not just changing my life. It's changing my marriage, it's changing my children's life. And ultimately, like Justin said, it's digging one more trail in the rut of the habit that we pray that we can establish for our children so that they can walk in the ways of the Lord and have an easier path than maybe we did. Even when you've had an amazing upbringing, when when the when the leader, the mom, the dad gets better and falls more in love with Jesus and gets more in habits, it just is good for our legacy. And so, Justin, I do not have enough words to thank you for being here on the big day before your launch. Where can people go to find all of your resources? Women, there is an amazing podcast called Intentional Fatherhood. You you need to send that one to your husbands. There's not many resources for our men. So get that to your husband. But Justin, where can people find and follow you?

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Well, first, thank you so much for that wonderful closing wrap-up, Nikki. I couldn't have, I couldn't have put it better. Very kind of you. Your questions are wonderful, also. Three ways that would be great for you to follow along or get in touch Justinwitmore.com and sign up for my email list. Just a place where I'm constantly sending out sort of long-form thoughts to people. Listening along to the Intentional Fatherhood Podcast. This is particularly for your husbands. And remember, any of you wives listening, you have an incredible curating power for your husband. When you say, hey, really, I want you to read this, they'll do it. Really, I want you to listen to this. They'll do it. And then third, social media. You can follow me on Instagram where I post a lot of short videos about that. That's the shortest form, like the kind of quickest hits. But if you're there, I would love to talk to you there too. And I'd be honored to hear from you. So message me or email me back on any of my email lists. I would love to be in touch with you.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Amazing. Well, listeners, this has been such a treat for us. And I'm just grateful that we got to sit and listen from the years of work that Justin has put into researching this and for his vulnerability, just to be real and give us all permission to, in our weakness, find that maybe God is cultivating our very calling for the world. And so as you go about your day, I pray that you might just share this, that you would pass it on to a friend, maybe to another father, another mother, another couple that maybe you want to dig in and do this. Body teaches the soul. I'm going to call it challenge, couples challenge, and just really make a commitment to strengthen the habits in our houses so that we can just have a place of health and goodness. And so, Justin, thank you again so much for your time, friends. Until next week, take care.