Faith-Based Healing: Embrace Still Waters for a Transformed Life

On the Still Waters Podcast, Teri talks with Julie Adams, founder of The Still Waters, about what “still waters” from Psalm 23 means as a faith-based refuge for peace amid life’s storms. They clarify trauma as a “wound” caused by an event, not everyday discomfort, and discuss how emotional and mental wounds can exist without physical injury. The conversation explores why people struggle with rest, how rumination keeps mind and body in hyperarousal, and the need to retrain thoughts, stop cycles, and set boundaries on oneself. They describe healing as a difficult process that may leave scars but no longer rules one’s life, connect healing to faith and Jesus’ question “Do you want to be healed?”, and conclude by describing Still Waters as a safe, team-based place for counseling and support.

00:00 Welcome to Still Waters
01:03 Why Still Waters Began
02:02 Adoption and Trauma Lessons
03:04 Psalm 23 Still Waters
04:36 What Trauma Really Means
06:07 Trauma as a Wound
09:11 Why Rest Is Hard
11:35 Rumination and Retraining
13:11 Breaking Cycles With Boundaries
15:22 Wholeness and Healing
17:14 Scars and Childhood Healing
18:33 Healing Takes Work
19:29 Triggers And Boundaries
21:47 Facing The Perpetrator
22:33 Forgive But Dont Forget
24:34 Do You Want Healing
26:37 Faith Requires Action
28:25 Psalm 23 Still Waters
29:51 Psalm Therapy Practice
30:25 Still Waters Safe Place
31:15 Final Thanks And Farewell 

Contact The Still Waters Team 

www.stillwaterslife.com

Email us at:

• Julie@stillwaterslife.com
• Rufus@stillwaterslife.com
• Teri@stillwaterslife.com
• Abrielle@stillwaterslife.com
• Melissa@stillwaterslife.com
• Chris@stillwaterslife.com

Let us help you find healing and wellness at The Still Waters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome back to the Stillwaters podcast. Today, Julie Adams, who's the person who actually started the Stillwaters and created our fabulous team, joins me for discussion about what it really means to have this concept of Stillwaters in our lives, that settled peace that we are supposed to glean from Psalm 23 and what it points to. Even when we find that we are going through seasons of difficulty and we are experiencing all sorts of things that would not be considered peaceful or calm. So thank you for joining me today, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Oh, this is uh I can talk about the Still Waters all day long. I'm sure you can. Yeah. Because when this, you know, and I will say you're right, there is an incredible team with the Stillwaters. It's uh we have an awesome team. So proud of everyone because they bring such um gifts and talents to the table. Um, and so uh even starting the Stillwaters, I wanted to start it with something that had a Bible base to it. And the reason is because this was going to be a faith-based space for counseling, coaching, those kind of needs, and I didn't want to steer away from that. I didn't want anybody to wonder, is it faith-based or not? You know, uh, I didn't want to hide from that. So the Still Waters was really started because there were a lot of unsettled rages and storms going on in my life that I needed Still Waters. And what I mean by that is back in, let's see, it would have had to be in 2015. I started doing some life coaching and started and started that. Then in 2016, we started an adoption process and adopted three teenagers uh from Bulgaria. In 2017, they came to our home. And in all of that, I learned about trauma to the extent I'd never learned about it before. And I continue to learn more about it. And one of the things I tell people is when you have trauma come into your life from other people, from their own messy lives that were of no fault of their own, you start learning about yourself. And that's where I learned a lot about my own trauma and how I had not dealt with it. So in those years after the adoption, there was a lot of time, a lot of rough and bumpy, as one of the therapists used to tell us. You know, this is gonna be rough and bumpy. And she was she was right about that. And I needed my place to go. Where am I gonna go? So it was Psalm 23 that caught my attention and caught the words, he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still waters. Some places will say quiet waters, some places will not even have the word the in there, but that's what brought me to the stillwaters.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Well, that's quite a story, and I know there's a lot more to it than we have time to go into today. Yeah. Uh, but thank you for for giving us that little synopsis of that. Um, I it's interesting. I I've got two two thoughts running through my head. The first one is whenever I think of still waters, I think of water, which I love water. I've always loved to be near water, swim in the water, go boating, that sort of thing. Um, but at our house, we have a river behind our house or our neighborhood. And um, I've never really thought of a river as still waters, but it can be. And so just going down to that river, and I don't do it very often, um, but uh like my daughter, every time she comes home, she goes down there. She just loves it because the kids grew up down there, right? You know, and they enjoy going down there and they find it peaceful. So I always think of still waters, you know, just as not just as a metaphor, but a literal thing that you're seeing, you know, still waters that's that's out there. Um, but the other thing that I was thinking about here is you you brought up this word trauma, and that word I think is just thrown around so much now. And so I was thinking it might be good for us to kind of clarify what trauma really is, because I think, you know, I find myself explaining it a lot. And especially, well, I mean, older people don't understand it either, but like especially when I work with young people, they really use the word a lot. You know, I'm traumatized by this, I'm traumatized by that. So let's talk about that a little bit. Um, because my understanding of trauma is that, you know, trauma, uh, you can have big traumas in your life and you can have little traumas in your life. We call them big T's and little T's, right? But um trauma is not just something you feel, it's something you experience. So, for example, you lived through a huge tornado that took out a lot of people. That was a traumatic event. Um, you know, people live in abusive situations or experience abusive uh circumstances. That's a be that's a traumatic event. But it goes way beyond just how I feel about something. Somebody looked at me funny, somebody gave me a bad vibe. So now I'm traumatized. So what so what would you like to add to that? I think you explained it all. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Moving out, next question. Um, no, I I like what Dr. Gaber Mate says about trauma, and he and he looks at it in this way. Um, the Greek word for trauma is wound. Wound. Yeah. And and so if we look at being somebody's wounded, we all automatically have this picture of what a wound looks like. And a wound, when we look at our bodies, is a place that is visible, and we can see where the skin has been cut, torn. There could be bleeding, there could be infection, but something's not coming together. Trauma, as you said, is is the is the umbrella word, but it came from the wound. So when someone is having a disagreement about something, that's not trauma. When someone has a misunderstanding, that's not trauma. If someone is having anxiety, that is not trauma. And I think probably there are lots of therapists who have misused that word, and then it goes out into the communities and they start misusing that word. So if I look at it as a wound that came about because of some kind of event, that makes all the difference. So, for instance, in a child who's been uh was sexually abused, physically abused, and uh emotionally, whatever, all the abuses, that is a wound. And that wound has then made them decide things about themselves or has given them a perception of things that could not be true. Or, for example, that tornado event. That event uh was back in 1974, had never experienced anything like that. It was life-changing for a lot of people, it was life-changing for me. Not that I was wounded physically in that, but the the community was wounded. We had to change a lot of things for the next several months, and so I think we have to be really careful when we talk about that somebody has has trauma because we have to go look at what happened to you that created this word for you, and so when we talk about how Psalm 23 to me is such a comfort to a wound, very comforting to a wound, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, so that you brought that up that um that wound is not just physical, like you know, that the trauma is not necessarily that you didn't experience physical harm through the tornado yourself. Some other people did, but you didn't, but that still caused an emotional or a mental wound that you had to to deal with. So exactly, and that's what people have. They don't they don't grasp that a lot. So, okay. Um, so why do you think so many? This is circling back to Psalm 23. So many people have trouble with this idea of rest, you know, when we're talking about that in connection to Psalm 23.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Uh a lot of times people use busyness to avoid things that they don't want to have to think about. And I also want to say that we have to remember that our head and our body are connected. Right. So many times, especially among religious people that have an extreme idea that the body itself from the neck down is disconnected from the the head that has the mind. And and and we talk about in church so many times about how the body is one, we talk about that we're all one, and we we and that's true. That's that's very true. But in in these situations, for whatever reason, we don't want to look at the mind, and the body are one, and whatever's happening in the mind related to some kind of event, the body will remember that. The body will perhaps many times have some kind of manifestation that that has happened. So when we when we struggle to bring the head and the the body together, when we struggle to do that, we struggle with I think rest. Because we we we don't understand that rest and trust in God and acknowledging what's going on with our body gives us emotional rest. I don't I you know if that's the direction you're going, because I I don't emotional rest is where we struggle. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

What what were you thinking? Well, that's so that's what I was I was kind of leaning into that direction is what the difference, what is the difference between resting your body physically and resting your soul, basically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how and how do you help people really tell the difference, you know?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, because I will say that when you're rumination is when people are not resting, they're not resting their mind, they're not resting their soul, they're and their body's not resting because their body's on this constant hyper-arousal, hyper-vigilant state. So when we are ruminating and we are having this overthinking, and we are having this process that's going through our head over and over and over, and we're creating stories that more than likely won't happen, we are not resting at all. What we try to do sometimes, and I know people try, they say, I'm just gonna give this over to God, I'm gonna pray to Jesus and gonna be done. That's great. We need to do that, but in order to do that, you have to retrain your brain. That's why I love using Philippians 4.8. I love, I mean, when people talk about there not being therapy in scripture, uh, I do believe Philippians 4.8 is cognitive behavioral therapy. Yeah, that it just has a word, it just has a name for it now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, and so when we're not able to rest our minds, when we're not truly able to release that stuff that rents space in our head, we're gonna have a hard time with Psalm 23. A real hard time.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

So, how would you advise someone to stop that rumination? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Other than other than what you just already said. Okay, rumination is a cycle, right? It's like a lot of behaviors, you know. Sometimes we talk about narcissistic behaviors and narcissistic patterns, they're always cyclical. So when the the person has a cycle, you can pretty much start to predict it. And until that person understands their own cycle, they're gonna stay in it and they're gonna not be able to break it. The idea is to be able to break that cycle in rumination. It's the same way. When we start in our heads going through that same story, we're allowing thoughts to go just all kinds of deep dark places. We have to intentionally talk to ourselves and go, hey, stop, stop, stop the cycle. We have to stop the cycle. Because if we don't stop the cycle, we're not going to be able to do a Philippians 4.8. We're not going to be able to be led by still waters. Right. Yeah. So it the this the cycle is where we get stuck. We can get set stuck in a cycle of of self-harm, of verbal self-harm, self-destruction, uh, self-sabotaging. We can get so stuck in that because we this is what I think we've got to do, Terry. We have to put boundaries on ourselves. And what I mean by that is everybody's about boundaries nowadays, and they're gonna put a boundary about other people. Okay. But until you've put a boundary on yourself, you can't really successfully put boundaries on other people. Yeah, that's true. You can say, I'm not gonna follow them on Facebook anymore, uh, I'm gonna block them on my phone, I'm gonna do all this stuff. But how many people still try to find a way to figure out what that person's doing? A lot of people do that, yeah. And they start thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yeah, and that's not setting a boundary on yourself. You just have to let that go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

You gotta lock that gate and quit leaving it open.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah. So a lot of times what I talk to people about is this idea of personhood and our wholeness in our personhood, and that there's multidimensional, it's multidimensional in that when we are not just a physical body, but we are emotional and mental and social and spiritual and ethical, you know, that sort of thing. So let's talk about that in relation to this concept of healing, because if we are struggling with whatever it is and rumination about something, or any, you name it, anything that that gets harmful, it has it manifests itself in different ways. So we talk about all the time that healing is important, but how do we how do we um recognize that that it's not just okay, it's not just a physical wound that I've got, it's not just a mental wound I've got, an emotional wound, but it's the whole thing. You see where I'm going with that line of questioning? I hope so. I'll tell you what I heard. Okay, okay. No, that's not what I'm happy. Okay, it's all right, go ahead. Well, I guess I guess what I'm saying is, are they the same thing when we talk about being whole and being healed? Okay, okay. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yes, yes. So if we if I look at it uh it in how we like to practice practice, if I can say practice, yes, holistic medicine. Holistic medicine means that I want I want that which is not man-made, but more that I can get from other avenues besides big pharma, something man's decided, can I do it through other types of modalities that can give me some kind of healing? And healing can leave scars. Right. So, for instance, when I was a kid, I was riding my bike, fell off, hurt my knee, bad wound, scarred. The scar is still there. The scar is still there, right? Is it healed? Yes. Is the reminder there? Yes. As an adult, does that bother me anymore to see that? No, doesn't bother me anymore. I'm healed inside, my body's healed on the outside. So let's take that to where we have been, excuse me, we've had a a really rough childhood. Because I I think you and I know this, that childhood just gives us a lot of ugly in our in our adult selves if we don't work on it. So in childhood, you could have had lots of abuses and you don't work on them, and sometimes they're going to show up in adulthood and behaviors you don't even recognize. So once you start working on them, it gets hard. You're starting to identify the problem, you're starting to cleanse the wound, you're starting to help put something on it to help the healing, knowing that in order for it to heal, it has to start from the inside out. The problem a lot of times is people won't continue. They may go to one or two sessions with therapy and then they want to stop. So what they've done, they've just put a band-aid on it. Yeah, because it's hard. Because it's hard. Yeah. And in order for people to truly heal, it's going to be hard. That doesn't mean you're going to forget it, but what it does mean is it's not going to rule your thoughts, it's not going to create within you something where you can't function anymore. That doesn't mean that there's going to be something come along the way that's going to remind you of it. But it doesn't rule your life, it hasn't robbed all your joy anymore. So healing, like for my own sexual trauma, being sexually molested at age 12, I am healed from that. I am healed from that. That does not dominate my life anymore. Uh, the behaviors that I have are different. Are there some things that will trigger me? Yes. And sometimes my response will be based on the healing. I have put that boundary on myself that there are some places and some people where I will and with whom I will not go. Not gonna go there. That doesn't mean I'm avoiding my healing. It means why would I go and do that to myself? Right. Why would I step into a place and and and just stir all that up? I can prove things. I can prove that I can do it, but and you can, but make sure you're really healed. Right. Make sure you're really healed, and I'll and you're the only one who can decide that for myself. Um last year I went in uh to a place where I had completely taken off my list for 14 years that I could not go there. Could not go there. Finally, in my healing, I said, I'm gonna do that because I can and I can go through it and I'm okay. And I did it. I did it because I was truly healed. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah. But not some people take a while to get truly healed, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, and I just the whole it's a process. That's what I try to remind people of all the time, is that this doesn't happen overnight. No, and you do have to be willing to cooperate with the process. You have to be willing to do the work. And if you're not willing to do the work, then the the things that are happening in your life that are causing you whatever the anxiety, the depression, the you know, the rumination, whatever, they're not gonna go away unless you be proactive to take care of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

It's kind of like Terry, the victims doing victim statements in front of their perpetrators. Yeah. They have to get to a place where they can do that. That's that's a really hard spot. And I'm sure you've watched those before where where women or um maybe just uh adult now adult children who've been who are boys when things happen, when they can step into that arena and face that perpetrator and tell them that's an amazing healing place, right there. That's not easy, no, but it's a healing place, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

And it's amazing to watch when you see something like that happen. Oh, it is huge, huge victory for that person.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

So it is, and here's the thing, Terry, too, is that there will be some people who would say, Don't do that, uh, because once you forgive, you have to forget and you don't go back there and visit that. And what I would say is that that's an interruption of healing, that's an interruption. Because if what it's gonna take for me to completely move through that process is to be able to sit in front of someone or write someone and tell them what I need to tell them in order to relieve myself of carrying that burden, then that's what I'm that's what I'm going to do. You know, Jesus tells us that he's gonna carry our burdens, and he does. I would I would like to suggest that he also express expects us to do something about that. Yeah, we we just like to say here, and then we go on and do whatever. Um, no, we can we can step up too, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Well, I'd argue that going through that entire process of healing actually draws you closer to Jesus. Oh my goodness. If that's your perspective, obviously not everybody would agree with that because people don't believe in Jesus, but but if you are a believer, when you go through that healing process, that I don't know how people even go through life without that.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

You know, they haul.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

So um I've heard people say, you know, claim that people's struggles are sometimes because of them. Like they've they are the root of the problem. Uh maybe their work too much, or maybe they don't study enough, or maybe they don't have the right relationships, or whatever, you know, just it could be any kind of circumstance. But if you take the time to do the work, then it's a whole different ballgame.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Well, if you think about too, when Jesus was going to heal that um lame man by this by the pool of um Bethesda, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, I think that's right.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

I he asked him, Do you do you want to be healed? Right. That's exactly what I'm saying. What kind of question is that? Yeah, he just didn't go up to him and go, hey, I'm gonna heal you. Yeah, he goes, Do you do you even want this? Right. And what what was that? What's that about? It was about are are you going, do you are you happy just being the lame man here and not having to do anything? Or do you want healing so that now you can do things? Which is it? Yeah, which do you want? Yeah, and I think that's a question for a lot of people. Is that you want to just stay in your in your muck and mire and and just complain and just say everything who poor pitiful me? Or do you want me to help you with it? I can help you with it, I can get you to where you can do things, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, hello. That's that is an excellent illustration. I mean, excellent illustration. Um, yeah, because we have to want it. You have to want it. So you have to want it.

unknown 26:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

And then, like you said earlier, that everybody's gonna come into that at their own timing. Yeah. Um I'm hopeful that people who maybe try to start down that road, but then don't finish that get to that point, that they will eventually come back to it and realize, yeah, I've got to do more to get to a better place with all that.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah, and you know, there are people who carry very heavy wounds, people who've lost their children, people who um have been involved in such horrific um crimes against them. Right. And and we can't expect that to just be turned off. Right. But if people want to have a better life, they're gonna have to do something with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, and and and this idea of well, I I'm just I just follow Jesus and I just I just read it the read the Bible all day long. And and you know, this is gonna sound terrible, and I don't mean for it to sound terrible, but the truth of it is that I have talked to people who just say, I'm just reading the Bible, all I gotta do is read the Bible, and I'll ask them, well, tell me what, tell me what you're getting from it. Well, I'm getting from what Jesus told me to do. Okay, what did he tell you to do? Yeah, and it's usually just this long pause, it's because it's just checking off Bible reading, right? Yeah, but if you start looking at a lot of the truths in scripture, you're gonna see that people had people who were warriors for Christ had to take risks and do hard things, yeah. Uh, in order to stay connected with Jesus, they had to do hard things, right? Yeah, and resolving stuff in your life is hard. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

And I just love when you think about all of the examples where where Jesus healed people in the scripture, that their life was so completely different afterwards, and they were joyful and there was no turning back, like they that we know of anyway, right? There was no turning back from what they had been or had seen in their life, and then once Jesus comes into their life and heals them, now what their life looks like. So there's a joy that we talk about, joy all that time, and that and there's a joy that's that they can't escape from that. And it's the same for us today, and I wish more and more people could see that and and get to that point, and get to that point. So all of that encapsulates us into this concluding by saying that's what the still waters is all about, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:53

It is, it it is what it's all about because if you look at look at Psalm 23, I I love the I love how it starts is that you know, Lord, you're my shepherd, and there's nothing I really need. And when we can get to that place in our lives that there's nothing I really that that I really need because I have so so much, but but there are things that happen in my life that I need refreshing, I need repairing, I need stillness, I need a place where I know I'm safe. I need to know that when I'm in dark valleys, that you're there. I need to know that you're not gonna leave me, and I need to know that one day I'm gonna be with you forever. And that's all right there in that psalm. And I and honestly, this is a journal entry. This is a journal entry from David. Yeah, if you look at a lot of David's journal entries, they're amazing. Yeah, he gets mad in there, he feels defeated in there, he comes back to the Lord again, he messes up again, but it's the Psalms is just journal entries, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

I like to call it Psalm therapy, yeah. Psalm therapy, yeah. Because if you and that's what a lot of times I'll tell people just read the psalms and figure it out, like figure out if you were the person that wrote that, how does that apply, you know?

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yeah, and rewrite it yourself, right? Rewrite about that, rewrite it yourself, just make it make it sound like you want to make it sound, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Very therapeutic in and of itself. Oh very much so, very much so. Yeah, all right. Well, this has been an interesting conversation, and I'm I'm glad that you were with uh with me today. Do you have any other thoughts you want to conclude with?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Um, no, I just want people to know that the Still Waters is a safe place um for anybody. We have such a strong team that can address multiple things, and we have four women, I believe, and two men. We've got another one coming on the um 1st of August. And so that's gonna give us there's be six people total, and it's I I don't know how else to describe it, but that all of us have had stuff, and all of us have worked through our stuff, all of us understand that um what it feels like to be unheard and unseen, and we're here, we are here to walk alongside you and help you the best way we know how.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yes, we are. So, all right. Well, thank you. Thank you for being here. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in today. We would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts or or comments about uh what you heard today. So feel free to send us some fan mail at the link that's in our show notes and share this episode with anyone that you think would benefit from hearing it. So until next time, may you find healing and wellness at the Still Waters.