TABLE READ: Prologue & Introduction From My Book on Surrender

You are invited to join my book development team. Listen in and comment on excerpts and focuses from each part of my book on surrender and spiritual disciplines. Who knows? You may even get a shoutout when the book gets published.

Also, we're changing the pacing of the pod through the end of the summer: From May until September, we'll be dropping episodes every OTHER week. 

Pull up a chair 🪑 by letting me know if you read Prologues and Introductions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I know, I know. I told you ages ago that I'm writing a book about surrender. And then I started this podcast, and I'm still working on that exact same book about surrender years after I began. So it's time to kick it into gear. I've got a really fun idea that I think you're all gonna love that we're going to focus on for the rest of the season. And as a little bit of a teaser, let's just say as the season progresses, you may have an opportunity to get a shout-out in my book. Welcome back to the mentors table, a place where you can pull up a chair for deeper discussions about spiritual and emotional health with an uncomfortable focus on surrender. My name is Joy, and I'm the host here at this table. But as always, I encourage you to make this a round table discussion, meaning I would love to hear from you. You can always go to joyabod.com, comment under each of the podcast episodes, and maybe even sign up for my newsletter. It gets you a freebie. Um, it also allows you to hear from me in your inbox once a month, kind of recapping what we've covered for the month here on the pod. And I always appreciate a chance to jump in your inbox just for another second of your day to be able to say hi and let you know what we're doing here at the mentor's table. I know it's a busy season for everybody, and so I totally get if you have gotten behind on listening to the podcast and maybe even behind on life, that's a little bit of how I'm feeling right now. This is a great way to be able to check in on a regular basis in a manageable amount of time. Okay, before we get going, I want to take our moment to center ourselves, to still our minds, to still our hearts, and to invite God to speak to us. So if you could put your feet flat on the floor, open your hands in a posture of surrender to God, take a deep breath in, release it slowly, take another deep breath in and release it slowly. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. We invite you to this time of learning about the importance of surrender and living our life from a posture of surrender. Open our hearts, open our minds, open the eyes of our understanding to hear what you want for us today. Take another deep breath in, and as you release it, I want you to imagine all your to-do lists and cares and frustrations and worries just blowing out with that breath. Go ahead and release it slowly. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. You guys, I am really excited about this new series that I'm beginning, and I want to introduce it now, and we're gonna count it as a summer series because we're gonna kind of change the pace of the mentors table a little bit, and I believe that this is gonna be the best pace for the summer as well. So we're just gonna start summer in May. Is everybody okay with that? Awesome. So as you know, I have talked about it often and frequently. I am getting ready to graduate our eldest daughter, and it has been kind of a crazy season, and it is about to get even crazier. So while I still want to show up for you on a regular basis and continue this podcast, I do need to slow the pace down a little bit so that I can make space for what's important, which is my daughter, my family, and the upcoming celebrations of ending seasons and beginning new seasons. So we're gonna switch to an every other week format that I think is gonna be more sustainable. But what I'm really excited about is I want to call this series Table Read. Table Read is going to be our summer focus as we're all going to come to the table. And what I would am proposing for you is that we'll use this time to read through some excerpts of the book that I'm working on. Just to give you a little backstory, when I began this podcast, the idea was to start teasing out some of the ideas that I'm writing about in my book to make sure that I get the full depth of them and have more things to talk about and kind of get some responses from you as to which things are resonating, which things are helpful, and maybe even which things I need to cut from the book. So for the first season, we talked about how to develop spiritual muscle memory to let go, and we focused on the fact that spiritual disciplines are the practices that God has given us to help us get stronger, build endurance, and build strength for letting go, which means fully living a life from a posture of surrender. So in season one, we talked mostly about those spiritual disciplines and talked about practical ways to apply them and why they're important and how they apply to surrender. And I got a lot of great feedback from you guys as listeners because I was able to see that a couple of the spiritual disciplines that you specifically really wanted to learn more about were Sabbathing and Remembering. But now for season two for this summer season, table read, I want us to pull up a chair at this table and invite you to join my book development team. How does that sound? My idea is to read you some excerpts from the book and give you a chance to respond and give me your feedback. I really, really want to hear from you, especially if you recognize maybe there's some holes in the things that I'm talking about. Maybe there's an angle about that specific topic that I missed, or if you have questions for clarification, those questions for clarification would be so valuable to me as I am finishing up writing and editing and putting the finishing touches on the book. If you have questions for clarification, it helps me recognize before we get to the whole publishing process that there are places that need to be explained better so that I can cover that ahead of time. This is really an invitation for you to collaborate with me and be a part of my book development team. And who knows if you are able to engage in a meaningful way, maybe I can give you a shout-out in the book. So would you join me for this series called Table Read, where we're going to work on developing the book together? I'll be real honest, there is a level of accountability that is layered in here that I need to finish this thing. It has been way too long. I've had other book ideas that I haven't even begun to touch because I've been so focused on this one. And so this is a time to kind of kick it into gear and really rock this book out. So that's what we're gonna be focusing on this summer. So to begin, I have a very, very, very important question that I really need your feedback on. Do you read prologues andor introductions? I gotta be real honest with you. I generally don't. And then I found myself writing a prologue and an introduction for my book. And I just wondered, is this a waste of time? I really don't want to put stuff in the book that people are gonna skip or skim over. And as I was rereading what I wrote, I thought, man, this is so important for the book itself. Then I'm trying to decide do I keep it as a prologue and introduction and know that the majority of my readers are going to read that part, or do I skip prologues and introductions and put it into the first chapter because it's just that important. So as I'm talking about the prologue and introduction and giving you some ideas of what they are doing, I would love your feedback. Do you read these? And if not, please, please, please tell me. Actually, if you do read them, please, please, please tell me. I'd really like to get a good sampling of whether or not this is important because, like I said, the information in these parts is important to me. And if it is not going to get read by putting it in the prologue and the introduction, then I'm gonna go ahead and just start right in at chapter one. As far as my prologue goal, my guy, my idea was to first put out a disclaimer that I am a hypocrite. I love this part of um my other podcast, As We Grow, with my friend Gretchen. We say in the intro, come along with us as we grow in our walks with God. And we disclaim, hey, listen, we're gonna talk about the things that we're learning, but we reserve the right to change our mind at any time. We could hit stop when we're recording, and we could immediately decide, you know what, I don't believe that anymore. It doesn't generally work happen like that. But I do think that it's important to recognize and say at the outset, I'm gonna put this book out here. And I realize that some of you are gonna look at my lived out life and you're gonna have some questions, or you're gonna have some doubts, or you're going to decide that I'm not actually practicing what I preach. And then you could potentially throw the whole book out or throw the baby out with the bathwater. And that's what I think is really important to acknowledge in the prologue to say, hey, listen, I recognize that you are always going to find evidence in any author's life of how they are failing in the lessons that they write about. That's okay, that does not discredit the message of the book. The important thing to look for in the book is the fruit that is bringing about in your own life. So that means that if you do not see any good fruit coming out of this book, you have my full permission to throw the book away, throw it across the room, throw it in the garbage, whatever you need to do. But if you stick around long enough to understand the principles and put them into practice, because they're not my words, they're God's words. And if you put them into practice and you begin to see good fruit in your life, then please, please, please, that is what you are to judge my book by. I am always gonna show up as a human. I'm gonna fail. I hope as a recovering perfectionist that my failures are few and far in between, but I don't know. But I do know that my heart in writing this book was being obedient to God, using the gift that God has given me, the gifts of teaching and of writing, as well as being obedient to put out a message that I believe God wants me to be a voice for others to hear. It's based on the Bible, it's fully founded on God's word, it is not my words, but his words. And so it's not fair that my failings as a human be used to judge what whether or not God's word is infallible. The truth is that God's word is infallible, nobody can touch it, it is not going to prove false, it will prove true every time. Also, in the prologue, I have a part where I am speaking to recovering perfectionists like myself and inviting them to be kind to themselves. I know that reading a book like this for me would be really difficult because my inner critic would jump in hardcore and prove to me that I'm a failure, prove to me that I'm not capable of doing these things, or use it as a constant guilt and shame track of how I am failing and how I need to do better and do better and do better and do better. That is a running, a running theme in my inner voice. So I thought it was important to acknowledge at the outset hey, listen, if that is how your inner critic sounds, well, your inner critic is there to help. That is not helpful. And it's okay to give yourself permission to be kind to yourself, to read it with all sorts of grace, and to begin to implement it just a little bit at a time as opposed to an entire life overhaul, which just isn't realistic. I also wanted to read for you a quote from the prologue that I thought was really helpful in recognizing that if you're feeling conviction that that is different than feeling condemnation. In general, again, tied to the inner critic, if the voice inside your head is constantly leading you towards anxiety to shame, condemnation to guilt, then that those are not fruits of the spirit, and that is not the Holy Spirit leading and guiding you. But it's also important that we do not take those messages of guilt and anxiety and shame and shut down. And I am speaking from my own experience. I recognize that it's much easier to just shut down, numb out, and not deal with those convicting thoughts. I don't want my readers to miss if those thoughts are truly are actually convicting and not shaming to stay engaged. Here's from my book. We live in a society that pushes from every angle that numb is better than uncomfortable. Our society has brainwashed us into believing that feeling uncomfortable is something easily avoided, so it should be. At the first sign of something uncomfortable, we are taught to stop numb and move back into a pseudo-happy state. But that's not living your best life. That's living a lie. That's not true happiness, it's false happiness that fades quickly. And when it's gone, it leaves you feeling more anxious than before. The time has come for us as followers of Jesus to say no to the numbing and escapes society offers. It's time to wake up our bodies, souls, and spirits to feel again, no matter how uncomfortable those feelings are. Again, the goal of the prologue is to recognize and name that just because you're feeling uncomfortable does not mean that you're supposed to throw the book away or that you're supposed to assassinate the character of the author. If you're feeling uncomfortable, it's time to bring those things to God. Don't numb out. That's my plea at the beginning of the book. And that is a big part of the prologue. Then I end with a prayer that um invites the Holy Spirit to come and help us recognize and discern between those two things: uncomfortability slash conviction from the Holy Spirit versus shame and condemnation and guilt and anxiety that causes us to spiral rather than brings us good fruit. Okay, let's jump into my introduction. So the introduction is a little bit shorter than the prologue, and the idea is to lay some groundwork for the lesson of the word Shema, which is a Hebrew word S-H-E-M-A, which simply means to listen and obey. Now, if you were listening to the first season of the mentors table, you heard this word used often. And the illustration that I always give, I completely stole from the Bible project. But the idea of Shma, of listening and obeying, is that they are two sides to the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Shma on one side of the coin means listen, listening to what God is telling you to do. Shmah on the other side of the coin means obeying, putting it into action right away. The introduction of my book is spent explaining what Shema means and inviting the readers to incorporate that as different spiritual disciplines are presented to them, as they are building their own spiritual muscle memory to live a life of surrender. A lot of this is predicated on verses from 1 John 2, and I'm just gonna read a couple of them to you. It says, and this is John speaking, I'm writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true. It's not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ. And now, dear children, remain in fellowship with Christ so that when he returns, you will be full of courage and not shrink back from him in shame. As we talk about Shma, the idea is to be led by the Spirit, listening to his voice, and once you hear his direction, obeying it immediately. I really think that this is an important lesson and it is reiterated throughout the book. So I do think it's important to kind of lay some groundwork for it. But as I said before, if you think that in general introductions and prologues don't get read, then I definitely want to push this to chapter one. So I would love to hear what you have to say about that. That is all that we're gonna cover for today. I will in the next episode get into chapter one and some of the things that we cover there. But as I said before, this is an invitation to join my table read. Let's read this book together, read excerpts or themes from the book together at the table, and let's talk about it. If there are things that you think are really important from what we talked about today that I may have missed, angles that need to be covered, um, maybe different audience members have different views in the sense of like, yeah, but if you look at it through this lens, it's important to say this. So, for example, if you look at it through the lens of a single woman, it's gonna be a lot different than looking at it through the lens of a married with children woman. Another lens could possibly be somebody who is looking at it through the lens of grief, somebody who's looking at it through the lens of deconstructing their faith. Are there different lenses that you can think of, different aspects of the prologue and the introduction that need to be addressed, explained, or just softened maybe for an audience member? And I want to be clear, my audience for this book are what I like to call rolling stones, just like you, my listeners here on the podcast. You are a rolling stone, meaning you're already in motion, you are already heading towards a certain goal, and you're already walking with God, and in your walk with God, you are continually submitting to God's discipleship and his example that he gave, and you are already taking steps to grow, but you're looking for somebody else, you're looking for a community where you can also, you can roll along together. You can find not only that you're not alone, but also that there are people to discuss and wrestle out different difficult passages in the Bible that you're trying to apply to your life or just simply to get inspiration. And for how you can take the next step forward. Those are that's my audience. And so with that in mind, as you give me feedback, those are the people, those are the women specifically that we're reaching out to that I really want to find community in this book, as well as find encouragement and genuine challenges to encourage them as iron sharpens iron to sharpen them and for us to sharpen one another and not just find a um you know, if we're talking about different levels of relationship, there's the introductory level where you're just kind of getting to know each other. And this book is meant for people who are at a different level, a little bit higher of a level, and in and not in a superior way. When I say higher, I just mean there's a deeper level of intimacy because there's already been time and action put and invested into the relationship. So when I'm talking to people who are women who are rolling stones in their spiritual journey, they are women who are already move on the move, who are already investing, who've already spent time in God's word and in relationship with God, and they are looking for something more. That's what we're going for here, both on the mentors table as well as in the book. Okay, and finally, I just want to give a little personal update. As I have mentioned often and even at the beginning of this podcast, we are about a month away from graduation for our eldest daughter. And I don't know, I as a recovering perfectionist, recovering control freak, I've definitely had to face a lot of tensions to manage as I am working to release and launch a daughter while also fighting that desire to like have my fingers in everything and make all the choices. That's not my place right now. And so I am learning a lot along this process. But for those of you who have never been in this season, I just here's what I'm thinking right now. This season of launching our first child is a lot like grief. And I don't mean that in a Debbie Downer kind of way. I just mean this idea that as you are walking through grief, it is not a linear progression. It isn't better described as coming in waves or the ebb and the flow of waves on the beach. So there's a time when things are just crashing down on you, and then there's a time where it is ebbing out to sea, and you barely even notice that it is a factor in your timeline right now, or in the season of life that you're in. But then every once in a while, man, those waves come in hard, heavy, and fast and crash down on you. And with them comes all sorts of emotions, all sorts of irrational and rational thoughts, all sorts of regret, shame, excitement, plans, and again, like I was saying before, tension in between all of those to try and figure out what is the appropriate response in this situation. I have had days where I almost forget that my daughter is graduating, and I have had days where I am in intense anger, feeling all the feels about either how I have failed as a mother, how my daughter is proving to be a teenager and not a mature, fully grown adult. And I know that that's natural, and I know that that's exactly the season that we're in. And yet every once in a while I find myself frustrated and angry because I have this expectation of her that is 20 years older than what she actually is, and I have to walk through that without burning bridges or without losing my cool in front of my daughter, my husband, whatever the case may be. So if you have not been in this, buckle up as you're getting ready, because very similar to grief, it's gonna come in waves, and generally it's gonna come at times that you do not expect it. Also, may I say that graduating your firstborn while also going through perimenopause is like a cruel joke. I found myself saying that the other day, and I was like, ooh, that's good. If you are in this season with me, I just want to give you a hug. Yep, it's hard. Let me just say, yep, it's hard. You're not alone, and your hormones are seemingly working really hard against you right now, and that's not fair either. I'm so sorry. Also, we're gonna get through this. We're gonna get through this, we're going to get through this with God's help, of course. And our children are going to be shining lights in the world, and the good seeds that we have sown into them will not return void. Let's hold on to that. We have that promise from the Bible that says, train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it. I love that. I love that promise, and that promise will come to fruition in our children's lives. Thanks again for joining me here at the table for our new series, Table Read. I'm so excited to hear back from you, your comments and your clarifications that about the book, and I cannot wait to discuss this with you more. Remember, we're gonna go to an every other week format, so I will see you in two weeks.