#25 – What It Cost to Be the 'Good' Christian Girl

On this week’s episode: Dez and Mel share their personal journeys of deconstruction, healing, and rediscovering a healthy, loving relationship with God beyond toxic church culture. This heartfelt conversation explores the cost of perfectionism, shame, and the transformative power of God's invitation into authentic humanity.

Resources from this episode:

The Shack by Paul Young 

Melissa Runacres' Instagram 

Desiree Amariei's Instagram

Let's stay connected! 

The Road Back Podcast socials:

Instagram: @the.road.back.podcast

YouTube: youtube.com/@TheRoadBackPodcast

Transcript

The Journey to Healing and Understanding

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Welcome to the Road Back Podcast. We're so glad you're here. I'm Melissa and I'm Desiree. We're two trauma-informed coaches and real life friends.

SPEAKER_03 0:11

If you're returning to yourself, your dreams, or your sense of belovedness, this podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_04 0:19

We'll pull from our own stories and hard-earned wisdom to support your journey. So take a breath and remember, you belong exactly as you are.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

When I realized that I wanted to do a podcast years ago, on some level, I knew that the topic we're going to discuss today was something that was really important for me to talk about. And so I can recognize that today's conversation feels like it's been years in the making. Beginning just to settle into a conversation that I think is incredibly timely and very important for people, especially women of faith and women who have grown up in a church culture. I haven't spent as much time on other episodes in the prep and the lead up as I have to this one because I could tell that it felt weighty and it felt important, even vulnerable. It's a conversation around the cost of being a good Christian girl. The cost of growing up in 90s, even early 2000s, church culture, purity culture, evangelical America. Des and I just want to unpack some of our own journey, some of the things we learned in church, what it cost us and where we've landed today is we've gone through a lot of our own healing process, a hefty amount of deconstruction, and then I would even say reconstruction again on the other side, and how we've learned through it all keep our relationship with Jesus while also challenging some of the toxic elements of religion that serve to keep us bound and dare I say, even traumatized at times. This conversation feels really sacred to us because not only are we going to dive into our own story, but I just know from the people that we've worked with and friends and other women that we've conversed with over seasons and years that this is a conversation that affects many of us. We are wading into aspects of our stories, and I'm sure we'll touch on your stories potentially as a listener as well.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

Yeah. Just feeling so tender as we're beginning and setting the tone for what this episode means to us, because in a lot of ways, our roadback stories have meant that we've had to look at the pain in our stories, in our lives, and the context around that pain. Our heart's prayer is that as we look at those things and you hear us share about the things that we were taught and uh rewarded for and what it cost us in our lives and how we've had to untangle. Like you're talking about deconstruct and reconstruct and untangle. We're just really still in that process in a lot of ways. And even the two of us have very different church environment

Exploring Church Culture and Its Impact

SPEAKER_04 3:15

backgrounds, and we have so much in common. And different unique stories, and yet we belong together. We hope that the listener can feel a sense of belonging and togetherness too. How would it feel for you to open by just sharing some of the things in your history, Mel? Some of the things in church culture that you were rewarded for as you were growing up. What got you the gold star and the kudos?

SPEAKER_03 3:43

Let me say this to even start that I was an incredibly conscientious child by nature and very sensitive by nature. I was naturally inclined to want to do a good job. I think I leaned towards perfectionism as it was. And so put me in a church culture that had a huge value for submission to authority, obedience without question, pastor knows best, or leader knows best because they are a representative of God. And of course, God knows best. It shaped me in ways, in some ways that were very beautiful. I had a really high value for wanting to serve God, wanting to hear him, wanting to obey him. I think that's a beautiful value. And it very much shut me down. And because I was rewarded by outsourcing my autonomy to everybody else around me. Yes. Suppressing my femininity was definitely rewarded. Suppressing any strong feminine expression, anything beautiful, anything attractive, anything that could be seen as my natural feminine expression, very much needed to shut anything like that down because, of course, you don't want to lead any man into sin. There was a very strong pressure on that. And all of those things, even if they weren't always overtly addressed. I mean, I remember singing songs like, I may never march in the infantry, ride the utility, whatever, fly over the enemy, or whatever it might be, that I'm in the Lord's army. Yes, sir. You know, I've I've messed up the words. I remember singing that song with all my heart. And everything that I was taught about God as a child was really that He demanded obedience. I was there to say yes, sir. And I was fortunate in that my parents did encourage critical thinking. Even in the midst of them encouraging critical thinking, I think I still largely absorbed the actually don't question the church. It's not necessarily what they wanted me to pick up, but it's what I picked up nonetheless by being even in Christian schools. So it was, it was very surrounded with do what you're told, don't rock the boat, and don't be too much if you are a woman, because you might have a negative impact on the people around you.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

What would what would you add to that, Des?

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Well, first I agree wholeheartedly with each of those. And you're really speaking to the human experience because all humans are made to belong to something or to a group. If you think of the attachment system and biologically wired for this from infancy, when I'm even hearing you share about being in a culture, every human, whether you're an Ineagram one and a sensitive kid who likes the joy of finding, oh, there's a right way to be. To be long is such a fundamental need. And so I just I really hope listeners can understand, and I can even understand myself, Abraham Mars, a biological imperative to belong in something as special and as close to us as God is. That's the closest attachment relationship we have. And so when we're taught how to relate to him through obedience, through don't question, give everything and never hold anything back, over-responsibility for how another person was feeling regarding our femininity. That over-responsibility became a very heavy burden for me. It became I should be able to figure out how to help another person control their lust or whatever thoughts or feelings they might be having. If I was quote unquote failing, that was a reflection of me and not of somebody else's. So it was a very distorting experience of autonomy and agency, all in the name to belong. This is a such a challenging thing to share. And even for clients and other people that I'm sitting with, for them to understand just how nuanced, just how many things are at play when we're talking about an experience

The Cost of Compliance and Obedience

SPEAKER_04 7:51

like this. And some people may be listening to this and they they may not have the same church background that we uh have. And so just bringing some context of how this is such an important, vital part to our systems to get these inputs of what's good, what's right, how to belong, how to make papa happy. Because that was kind of the messaging. How to do this right, how to do this the best way.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

I found this when we were prepping for this podcast. Many of us were formed in environments that prioritized compliance over curiosity. We were praised for silence, for modesty, for obedience, but we were not always taught how to discern, question, or process. Yes. And I feel that like that sums up a lot for me, maybe a lot for you as well. And our desires to be good girls, we gave away a lot of our own agency and autonomy. And it's cost us something. It's actually taken me a long time to even say this out loud. But there are aspects of church culture that were highly traumatizing to me. I didn't feel permission, it didn't even occur to me that I could say that for a long time because I didn't know how to disentangle church culture from God. And I would never want to say that God traumatized me. So how does this all work? But being able to name trauma and being able to recognize the cost or the toll that those cultural values, the norms, the way things were set up, that has been an ongoing process. I, it's not even something that I can say there's an end date to that, because in

Shame and Its Consequences

SPEAKER_03 9:36

prepping for this episode today, I realized that there's still so much more that I'm unpacking, even amongst all the healing work that we've both done. Deser anything that you would like to share about some of the cost of being rewarded and being uh praised, having your identity wrapped around some of these principles or belief systems that we both embraced as kids, whether we meant to or not.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

I think one of the biggest costs for me, especially when it comes to the idea that I was responsible for how other people were feeling about me, their internal world, whether that's lust or you name it, whatever the feeling was, that imbalance of responsibility where they don't have any ownership, but I had too much ownership of their feelings and not enough ownership of my own. I'm not trying to say this in a victim way, but a direct result was a life full of shame. Yeah. I I feel emotional just saying that. A life shrouded in shame. Because all the bad things that were happening, all the hard things were because I could have done something different. So in this culture where women have this inappropriate power over men in this dynamic, then every bad thing that's happening is somehow my fault. And so I was completely shut down in shame. And shame informed me of my identity, my value, and it influenced a lot of what I did and didn't do. I think of this with my clients. Like I could sit and we could weep and grieve for a whole lifetime to think about it, but caused me not to speak up for myself when things weren't okay. Because shame telling me this was a reflection of me. I believe it hypercharged a lot of my coping mechanisms of being a good girl in order to sort somehow make right with God what I had screwed up.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

Oh man.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Yeah, you can feel that too. I can. Yeah. I can hold so much nuance now because of the years and years of work. But it feels valid for me to also say a lot of becoming a missionary at 18 years old was in order to make right a lot of what Shane was telling me was fundamentally wrong about me. I also made vows at that time and I felt very drawn to help women who needed a voice because I didn't have a voice. Now I I wasn't able to articulate that at all as an 18-year-old. But to see now that that was probably one of my main coping mechanisms and intentions, not wholly, part of it, was to do for Branether in a very vulnerable situation what I didn't do for myself or didn't have done towards me or for me.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:51

So there's a lot of good, so many beautiful things from my life and time in Romania. And but decades and decades of my life was shrouded in in shame. And that would probably be my one of my number one costs.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah. Yeah. Which is why I I speak so often of shame. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

One of my deepest works is to untangle and have compassion and understand the context of why Shame showed up and the stories it was telling me. It'll probably be something that I will always do for my heart and for my younger self to keep letting her know that Shame's story isn't the whole story. There's other stories, and we don't have to believe those stories. We don't have to act or respond all the time from those stories.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Yeah, wow. Feel really tender hearing you say and share what you're sharing because not just because you're my friend and I love you, and I feel sad for the things that she had to walk through.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

I also just know that this is true for a lot of women, and that makes me sad too.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Your story isn't an isolated one. And again, the nuance of you having to walk through some really hard things by yourself to now also seeing the fruit of your work and now the gift that you get to give to other people because of of what you've chosen to embrace and heal. Uh gosh, I feel really proud of you. Thanks, Mel. Thank you. Yeah, it just felt really tender and beautiful to see I think I'm always in awe when I see people who've had to figure out hard things, often with very limited resources. And then seeing the redemption of God woven through leaves me in awe and again feeling the sacredness of it all too. So thank you for sharing that, friend. Of

Untangling God from Trauma

SPEAKER_03 15:12

course, of course.

SPEAKER_04 15:13

I think building shame resiliency also included a lot of untangling God from perpetrator, God from failing leaders, God from parental figures, God from fill in the blank. And I think this is such a sacred, deep work. Yeah. That I'm committed to for the rest of my life. And I just help people understand it's worth the lifelong journey.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Yeah. I love that you said that. I agree. I'm with you on that. For listeners who might be listening and going, I know I have a lot of church trauma or stuff that I haven't even known how to touch because it feels so overwhelming. I just want to say it's worth it. It is worth it. It's worth finding the healing process and taking those first steps for sure.

unknown 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

How about you, sweetie? What would you say that it costs you?

SPEAKER_03 16:08

I feel grief over what it cost me, gosh. I learned to gaslight myself from a pretty early age. I see the cost of disconnecting from my own intuition, disconnecting from my God-given discernment, disconnecting from what I intuitively knew I should do this or I shouldn't do that. I said yes to a lot of things because people asked me to. And it's not even necessarily that they were bad. I know I've said this already, but I outsourced so much of my decision making to other people. There was a cost of years and years of my life that were run on good intentions and me trusting that other people would lead me in the way I should go. But sometimes just ending up on the verge of burnout, absolutely worn down, exhausted, tired, on a level, probably resentful, but then feeling guilty about it, angry, but not feeling like I could be angry. I couldn't sit with emotion. I had incredible loss in especially my early teen years with my mom dying and losing extended families members and my mom within a few year time period. I didn't know how to even begin to process grief. I didn't feel like I was allowed. I had somehow learned that emotions couldn't be trusted. And therefore, especially what we would say hard emotions, painful emotions, right? You know, they weren't godly, you needed to get rid of them. It wasn't until I started getting into my healing journey that I started to learn how to sit with some of the emotions that I had been carrying for years, but because I didn't feel like I was allowed to feel them, there was no room for them. It cost me uh a delay in my own healing, but also I didn't know how to sit with suffering. I didn't know how to sit with hard things because I thought I just had to pray it away or pray it off or break this off in Jesus' name or whatever. I'm not dismissing some of the things I learned, but spiritual activity for the sake of it without embracing the fact that we are a spirit, a soul, and a body. Yes. I I lived a very compartmentalized life. Yes. I felt fine with being anything spiritual, but I didn't feel permission to really allow any of those other parts of

Finding One's Voice and the Cost of Silence

SPEAKER_03 18:23

my human existence to unless they were positive, I wasn't allowed any room for them. I was like, oh, I'm bad if I feel like this. I'm bad if I am upset. I'm bad if I question something that I see that a leader or somebody is doing. And am I allowed to do that? I this doesn't look healthy, this doesn't look ethical. I am so proud of the fact that I could see things at times. And some of the cost was that I there were times I should have spoken up and I didn't. There were times that I could have confronted and I didn't. There were times that I silenced myself or went along to get along. And it cost me years of potential side detours and pain that had I known that I could have had a voice, would have made things quite different for sure.

SPEAKER_04 19:12

You spoke to so many things I really can relate to. Disproportionate amount of highlighting spiritual things and an under-appreciation or under-supporting of your internal world, your emotions, your body, general care

The Hierarchy of Spirituality and Human Experience

SPEAKER_04 19:26

because it seems like spirituality was a hierarchy. And so you had to almost bypass grief, bypass painful, challenging emotions in the name of something that was already put at a higher value. You miss being a human. Yeah. Like you couldn't be a human because you had to gaslight all of your experiences. The cost to that is tragic. It's a tragic sense of life because you probably could have made so many other decisions by when you didn't outsource things. Like there was like life that you just didn't know about. But the amount of internal pain to you, I just really wanted to validate this to you, but also to the listener. Like the internal pain of believing that you're not allowed to be a human is a deep pain as you relate to God. I think this is probably one of the number one things that I've gone after in the last five years is letting myself be a human and believing that God wants to relate to me because he created me as a human. As a human, he wants to relate to me.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Like rewiring that. Coming back to my humanity has felt so important because I felt like I had to disconnect from those parts of me. It was fueling that shame narrative again of there's something inherently wrong with me. I'm not allowed to feel that, but I do. So there must be something wrong with me. So I'll just pretend like I don't feel that at all, or I'll quote a scripture to it, or the number of things I attributed to, oh, that must be a demon when probably it was nothing to do with a spiritual demonic force or those kinds of things simply because there was such a narrow spectrum of human experience that I felt was allowed. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

It's a very, very narrow that you're allowed to experience. And then everything else is like, what do you do with it? I've had so many clients who saying the exact same thing. I feel afraid, but they're not allowed to feel afraid because they have to bind it, whip it, yeah, strick it out. That type of experience where you can't actually bring congruency to yourself. I'm actually in grief. I'm actually afraid. I'm tired. I'm worn out. That is one of the things that I personally believe that the life of Jesus shows that he

Reconnecting with Humanity After Crisis

SPEAKER_04 21:48

was actually really interested in. Those are the things that really matter to him. The internal places, the landscapes and terrains of our inner worlds.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

I could think of something that was pretty significant to helping me. Reconnect to that truth in particular. But I wanted to know if was there anything for you as well that really helped you on that journey of starting to feel like your humanity was okay?

SPEAKER_04 22:10

Believe it or not, after my nervous system breakdown, my whole my whole body, mind, soul, I can't quite understate this experience in 2019. Everything that you know you've always done to survive and kind of pivot and keep pushing through, it stopped. It just broke. I just couldn't keep doing those things. In a way, I think that that's probably given me the biggest gift to be a human. It was a really hard way for me to learn, but it was a really great way for me to learn too. I would say recuperating my body, just convalescing and recovering, it hit so many old rules that I wasn't allowed to take care of myself or that I shouldn't need these things because I only actually needed God. If I could serve God, then all my needs would be met and I wouldn't actually need to go to the doctor or rest or I wouldn't fall apart. I was very disillusioned. That invitation, somehow God's given me this one human body to experience this earth to actually know him in. I actually can't know God outside of this. This is the only thing I know. Of course, my eyes can see the tree in front of me, I can see the earth, I can bear witness. But it's because of my humanity that I understand him and know him. And when I saw myself as broken as I was, and I was like, this is what I've been given. I felt Papa said, You can either love it and help me take care of it, or not. But this is like, would you do

The Role of Literature in Healing

SPEAKER_04 23:57

this with me? Would you help nurse yourself back to health? Wow. And that to me helped me get my humanity, and it was messy as hell. I was like, I didn't want to be in my body, and that's what he was telling me. That's the way he wanted to save me. To actually get a hold of healing me was first by scooping me up as broken as it was, and just being like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

So how about you?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Wow. I I have two things. My husband and I were in our financial crisis, and I was a young mom, and I had two very, very young children. I was hitting a wall emotionally, mentally, and I knew that I had to turn around almost like an inner knowing or conviction of I have to make some steps or I'm I'm gonna just break. This isn't sustainable. And around that time, my dad had sent me a copy of The Shack by Paul Young. Yeah. That book couldn't have come at a more timely moment in my life. It's a fiction book, but it's also a mirror of his own healing journey. When I read that book, I felt like I was constantly being invited into an encounter with the love of God. That's how that book personally landed with me. When you read something or hear something from somebody who has walked their own journey and has had to go into the depths of their own pain and brokenness and with God begin putting the pieces back together again. I could feel the work that Paul had done in his own life when I was reading those pages myself. So I could feel the weight of his own healing journey and the depth of healing that he went through personally and the way his relationship with God informed so much of that healing and how he had to take off some of the misconceptions, confront some of the lies he had believed about God in the process. It gave me a sense of, first of all, not being alone, but it showed me the path that I needed to walk for me in that season. The book was so instrumental. I've read it many times since.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

But it has always been an encounter book for me where I've seen aspects of Papa God's nature, the kindness, the compassion of his nature that I had really struggled to connect with beyond an intellectual level prior to that. That book, in conjunction with, I think my heart was just so ready and I was so hungry for breakthrough. Yep. And I loved that it was a bit outside of the box. It challenged me a little bit. And it also felt like it was full of permission to be in my humanity, to be in my messiness for somebody who isn't Enneagram one, who is very much wired to what's the right thing and what's the best way, those perfectionistic tendencies. Messiness wasn't a safe thing for me to feel. I did not want to not feel put together. That was scary. That didn't feel safe to my nervous system at all.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

And having permission to see through that story how somebody could be so messy in their grief and their loss and the kindness of God to come and not rush the process, to not rush the forgiveness, to let the main character be where he was in his devastation.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

It opened up such a big space for me to go, oh, I actually don't have to have it together right now. And it doesn't make me bad if I'm not, because I didn't have it together. Right. I was the only one I was fooling by feeling like I wasn't allowed to not have it together. So feeling like I had permission to go, I'm a hot mess right now, and that not be laden with shame in the shack.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

It feels like Paul Young offered a different, I call it a different theology of God, a different point of view. Where Papa was extremely patient. He had so much time. He was not rushed, he wasn't stressed about your humanity, your process, the messiness of it all. And that probably helped those permissions because you're speaking to something I think that a lot of good girls need to do on their roadback journey. Is we sort of need to get a new view of Papa. We need to get a new understanding of how he's looking at us. And that's what it sounds like in the shack. It's like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

It wasn't fiction to me. Yeah. Because God was meeting in those me in those places. You know how when we talk about, because we do trauma-informed work with people, we talk about co-regulation. We would say in a dysregulated state in their nervous system, or they're stuck in the sympathetic nervous system, their fight or flight response or something, just talking at somebody, going, oh, well, you know, God's good. You know, everything's going to work together all for those who love God and start quoting scriptures. That that sometimes just doesn't work. What I needed was the felt experience of I'm going to tell you to come out of fight or flight mode or your panic or your freeze or whatever it is. But let me demonstrate. Let's show and tell. Let me show you what that nervous system feels like. Let me demonstrate to you so that you can come alongside. And I'm not just telling you something logically. I had had many encounters with God before this. It wasn't that I didn't have a relationship with him. I had just always struggled to connect to his compassion because I just hadn't seen a lot of it demonstrated. And something about that book, because I knew Paul was speaking from experience. He was sharing his testimony. And because of that, it comes through the pages. You can't fake something like that. I had experienced amazing breakthroughs on a spiritual level, but what my heart and my emotion and my physical body needed was that nervous system, like we would say, attunement to understanding. And I needed somebody to else to show me this is what it looks like. I'm not just going to tell you what God's like. So in that story, it felt like the way he was able to paint the picture because of his experience again helped me step into those moments myself and meet God in an encounter nervous system emotional level, which is what I needed to really begin seeing freedom. It's on stages, right? You can experience a healing and then you

Reparenting Through Parenting

SPEAKER_03 30:25

can go to another level. And that's what it felt like. It felt like the next level that I was desperately in need of at that time.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

Wow. That's amazing. A lot of what I'm hearing both of us share in in terms of our journeys towards more humanity, it sounds like we untaggled shame that there was a sense of failure in our humanity. And we've really leaned into saying, this is what matters. This is allowed. And to shame our humanity is to be separate, to be segregated, is to be fragmented from ourselves. And if you think of healing as all the parts get to be loved and all the parts get to belong, it's at the core why this experience has such a radical impact. What used to be separate as not good enough, not valued, not spiritual enough. It's too human, too, a little too messy.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 31:23

Now it's saying, like, no, this is exactly what's needed. This is exactly loved as it is. It gets to belong. It's like that's the core of what healing is.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

I agree. And I think it leads a beautiful segue even into what we were wanting to also talk about, which was what does that healthy faith expression look like for us now? And what even aided in the process? Are there things that have helped you that you would want to add to what we've already talked about?

SPEAKER_04 31:50

Because this is such a continual journey and we'll be doing for the rest of my life. One of the gifts my life is inviting me to right now is because I have daughters that are gorgeous teenagers. They're stunning and amazing. I get to have two daughters. My parenting them right now is a lot of invitation to reparent parts and younger versions of myself. Anyone who's done a little bit of therapy or parts work and inner child stuff, understanding that part of what I feel I'm participating in is a redemption for my younger self is a reframing and a rewiring of beliefs as I'm parenting my girls in real time now. So teaching them to value their inner knowing. When I tell them about that, I can feel my own heart healing and being like, you can trust if you get a little twinge of ick, get out. You don't have to second guess. I will always pick you up, I will always believe you, I will always trust you, whatever it is, do it. That type of experience for me is a big part of my continual healing journey. And I think to myself, what do I actually think Papa believes? How is he feeling towards my girl? So how is he feeling towards me? How do I parent in accordance to that new framework of God that helps reorient my system in real time as I'm checking in with myself? Why do I feel so much shame about this thing? Is it the shame about them or their femininity, or is this really about my own parts? So I'm examining this. Like I get, I'm encountering in real time often old things that are coming up that helps me expand into like, oh no, that doesn't serve me. That's not the way I govern my system anymore. That's not what I actually believe God thinks about it, or that's not how I think God feels about my femininity or their femininity. And so I'm in real time just noticing and being exposed to so much.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

I think that's beautiful. It's even a mirror for us when we see our own growth, when we're going, oh, I am showing up differently. I'm able to have a voice in ways that maybe I wouldn't have had 20, 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

I love the idea of mirror because a lot of times my kids are so much healthier than I ever was at their age. I'm like gobsmapped. I'm like, oh, that is so amazing. Who are you? You are so cool. Their freedom or lack of this type of baggage also helps me. So yeah, I think it's incredible how the mirror feels like it's happening. That's a lot of that invitation for me right

Evolving Faith and Personal Responsibility

SPEAKER_04 34:48

now in my life. How about you, Mel? What are some ways that your faith looks now?

SPEAKER_03 34:57

I feel healthy. I don't think I would have ever felt permission to say that for a very long time because I would have thought maybe that was meant I was being prideful or, you know, can I really say that about myself? But when I think about the amount of healing that I've gone through, I feel healthy. I think that there is going to be that ongoing process because Jesus even said to us, in the world you will have trouble. There's going to be pain and things to navigate. And I'm such a strong believer in our own free will. And the fact that I get to have free will and agency in my life also means that other people get to. And that means I am not responsible for controlling other people. I've let go of so much of the control and the need for certainty that I used to have because, like you, I felt so responsible for other people's behavior, their actions, their eternity, their salvation. There was such a heavy weight to carry. I can honestly say I do not, I don't worry about my kids' eternity. I don't worry about humanity's eternity. I'm so much more grounded in love, being my driving motivator than I used to be. I used to call things operating out by love, but honestly, it was operating by fear. I was so afraid. Same. And it was driven and it expressed itself sometimes in control or codependency. Yes. Of like, if you're not okay, I can't be okay. I have to work to make sure you're okay. I have to take on responsibility for how you think, you feel, your actions, your reactions. Again, kept me very other focused, whereas now I'm much more focused on this is my lane. I

Navigating Spiritual Growth and Compassion

SPEAKER_03 36:35

get to flow in that. I can hopefully operate in levels of self-control as a fruit of the spirit, but I am actually not responsible for managing you. And that has been one of the biggest shifts I would have said over the last maybe 10 to 15 years, even. I've learned to trust myself on levels that I never did before. Yeah. That's something that's interesting for me sometimes, getting around people that I would say are maybe still quite ingrained in really strong religious systems, which to be honest, I feel a lot of compassion for those people and a lot of like, oh, you get to go on your own journey. I don't need to control your belief in God. I don't need to control your theology. I have a much larger God in my own understanding than I used to. I used to be so afraid of God's reactions and emotions. I was essentially trying to control him as well because I didn't think he could handle me questioning. I didn't think he could handle me having a bad day. I was constantly worried that my bad day was gonna spin him out home. Now that I've understood how secure and comfortable and and related God is on his own, I don't need to manage that. It's allowed me to go into places I can see people who are where I used to be with no judgment. I think that's sometimes where I can see the growth where I've gone and like, oh, I feel really comfortable with this being my reality right now. I feel really comfortable with mystery. Oh gosh. That is a big one for me. The nuance. Yes. Yeah. Nuance and mystery and not having to understand why in order for me to be okay. I do know that something that I have settled on a core level for myself is that I I believe in God and I believe that he is good. Those realities for me are not up for negotiation. They're bedrock foundational beliefs in me that God is good and he's real. And because I believe that he's good, it lets me hold things loosely when I can't understand why things are happening the way they are. Just because I can't see how it's going to work out yet doesn't mean that it's not going to work out well.

SPEAKER_04 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

And and being able to cultivate a the relationship with my inner world, with my own heart.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Yes.

Embracing Healing and Holistic Spirituality

SPEAKER_03 38:45

I was very disconnected from, and I would say I am very connected to now that I have embraced healing, getting into therapy and finding people who have a value for the spiritual and the mental health side of things, that is a big deal for me as well. Is I don't want to disconnect from the spiritual, but like we said before, I am a holistic being. So allowing space for all of my parts to exist feels like part of the human experience and something that feels important to me as well.

SPEAKER_04 39:15

Yeah. I I would resonate with that. Like a more holistic version of myself has emerged in my spirituality and in my life. Like there's a lot of parts to me. And I I just wanted to highlight because I really resonated oftentimes, especially when I work with Christian women. So this is like a little tell on all of us. When we're doing the work to be connected to our hearts and to actually show kindness and compassion and any of the fruits of the spirit towards yourself, most women are like, I'm not allowed. This is selfish. This is unholy. It is hitting against so many rules. Like God wouldn't want that. And so part of my healthy expression now is I'm so grounded and rooted in love now. I'm allowing them to be right where they're at in their process. If you think about even at the beginning of the episode, we were talking about we have a core need to belong as every human is designed that way. That's how God made us. And so to feel like I belong to love. And I'm like rooted and grounded in that has transformed because the work of caring and offering and extending those fruits of the spirit towards my humanity has been one of the deepest works in my life. I always tell my clients, it feels like I'm applying the gospel now. Deep into the places that I had prohibited, I had deemed them unlovable, I had deemed them as too dirty, too wrong. I'm allowing the gospel to get in. It's transformed

Authentic Love and Self-Compassion

SPEAKER_04 40:45

my life. I feel like I'm flowing in more authentic love than ever. By doing that work for me, the natural outcome is true, safe love, not fear. Not I'm afraid for your salvation. I'm afraid for your choices, what they mean to me or what that means about me. It's just, it's like a very authentic love. And I always just encourage people to understand that like healing your heart will lead to such a beautiful overflow of love.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

I'm so glad you said that because I wrote down as you were sharing, I'm doing more things out of love. And I remember a leader that I really respected, she would tell her staff, I don't want you to do it if you don't love it. And I remember that feeling so liberating when I heard that, because this was actually within a church ministry context. And it so flew in the face of if there's a need, you feel it. Doesn't matter whether you're even gifted to do it or not. Like you just feel the need, you just serve, you just head down, get to work. And when she said, I don't want you to do it unless you love it, it was in such alignment with the journey I was already on, which was taking me back to the foundation of love. What is it that you would love to do? We talk about desires a lot, but that is one of the things that I see as an expression of healthy spirituality and healthy faith is coming back to this is what would be delightful. This is what I most long to do. And it doesn't mean that I don't do the jobs or the work that sometimes aren't my favorites, but that foundation of love allows the overflow. It bubbles up even into the, you might say, the mundane or the day-to-day, the grind of like, oh, I'm loading the dishwasher and doing the washing and all those things that we just do as moms in our day-to-day life that are always fun. Reorienting ourselves around to what is it that I love to do. I don't know that I could have come to that place if I had stayed in the position of I cannot trust anything in my heart. Everything within me is bad and I can't rely on it. So therefore I must look externally to what somebody else is telling me is good or right or fair for me. And again, the nuance of it, I don't throw out wise counsel. I'm regularly meeting with people, having them speak into my life, friends, community, counselors that are speaking in and helping me see more clearly my blind spots or things like that. But my default now is no longer my heart must be bad, I can't trust it. My default now is what do I want to do? What would bring me delight? What would I love? How do I follow that path? Because that's

Invitation vs. Performance in Faith

SPEAKER_03 43:33

so often where God is inviting me. And it and it touches on something else that I would say is I feel like Jesus leads me by invitation more than anything else. I can't remember the last time he's ordered me to do something. And it's not that he couldn't, it's just not how he talks to me. He doesn't demand, he invites. I really think that this is the language of the kingdom. I believe. Believe the language of the kingdom is one of invitation. I don't believe in coercing somebody to do anything. And I don't think it's biblical to even think that. I think of some of the evangelistic outreaches I've been on in the past that felt like nothing more than a manipulative attempt to get somebody to say the sinner's prayer so that the person at the end of the night could say, we led 15 people to Jesus tonight. That's its own conversation for another time because I know I have some strong feelings about some of the ways I saw stuff like that led and done. But it feels different. The spirit with which you do something, the motive with which you do something actually matters. Your intention matters. I find myself sometimes doing less activity-wise for God than I used to. But what I say yes to feels very aligned and very in tune with what I feel the capacity and season is in my life while also being open for God to lead me into something that maybe I wasn't initially considering.

SPEAKER_04 44:59

I just really like invitation too. Like that's one of my favorite ways that I've reframed and understood the relational dynamics between God and I. That's been very healing. Where even if you think about the beginning of the episode, it was like hard rules perform this way to make God happy. And so it was a very much performance-driven and invitation versus performance is so wildly different.

SPEAKER_03 45:27

Absolutely. It feels more collaborative, even. Yeah. Hey, I'm doing this. Would you like to come along? I'd love you to come to this. Totally. Let's create this together.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

Yeah. I've prayed about things and I've held God say, well, if you said yes, it could be fun. I'll be with you. And if you say no, I'll be with you too. He's just like, what's what do you feel? Like, what's in it for you? What are where are you at? And that is huge. Him giving me permission to be right where I'm at, and that I don't have to perform all the time for him to still stay with me, for me to be in whatever place is very healing.

Speaking to Our Younger Selves

SPEAKER_04 46:05

So I love that we've shared this. To me, this feels like a smorgasbord because we're just like all these healthy expressions now, in contrast to some of the isolating, painful, shameful lack of agency that we we were exposed to. I'm wondering if there's anything you would want to leave with the listener. Anything that you would want somebody who's on their road back. They may be confronting some pain in their story and looking at the context for the first time, or maybe they've circled around it a hundred times. And anything you would want to share with them?

SPEAKER_03 46:45

One of the things that felt really clear to me when we were prepping for this episode was I felt drawn to think of the younger versions of me and what would I want to say to her if I could go back and speak to 17-year-old me or 25-year-old me or 32-year-old me, some of those seasons of my life when I was really in pivotal moments of growth or challenge or even deconstruction, even in those seasons of my life. I think that's what I'm wanting to end with is speaking to the hearts of all of us, listener, you, me, those parts of us that were trying so hard to be good, and recognizing I see how hard you were trying to be good. Hmm. I see those times when you actually weren't wanting to doubt God. You were just simply trying to understand him.

unknown 47:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

For those parts of us that felt like we were too much when we actually just weren't given room. There wasn't space for us. For those parts of us that make sense, because that is something that I've learned is in the context of our lives, we make so much sense. We can look at our behavior in isolation, but when we look at it in the context of the bigger picture, it's like, oh, you make sense. It made sense that you didn't speak up. It made sense that you didn't want to question. It made sense that you didn't want to rock the boat because you didn't want to threaten that sense of belonging. It made sense that you did what you knew to keep safe.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

It made sense that you were surviving the only way you knew how. And I just want to say over all of us that in all the seasons, your love for Jesus was real. Your devotion was sincere. Your desire to please God was beautiful. God was never rolling his eyes at you. Jesus was always closer than the fear made him seem.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

And I think for those parts of us

Permission to Grow and Change

SPEAKER_03 49:16

that are wanting to heal, that are growing, I just want to speak permission over you. You are allowed to grow up spiritually. You are allowed to think for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

You are allowed to trust your discernment. You are allowed to change your mind.

SPEAKER_03 49:40

You are allowed to disentangle church culture from Jesus himself.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

That is actually a good thing. You are allowed to have a voice and to take up space. You are not broken. You're not behind. And you are not disappointing God. You make so much sense.

SPEAKER_03 50:12

Your questions make sense. Your growth makes sense. Your grief makes sense. And you're not losing Jesus when you deconstruct your faith.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

You're just meeting him in a deeper way. There are many hearts that might need to hear this. I believe you. I believe you. And everything you're feeling. It's real and it matters. It actually really matters. That really matters to me. And it really matters to us. It matters. I can see that there are hearts who are like a little scared. Like, am I allowed to do this?

SPEAKER_04 51:20

I see this picture of what would it feel like if you believed that Papa had led you to this exact moment. And he was really happy that you're gonna start, or you're in the middle of detangling all the crap. Like, what if he's like, yes, I've been waiting for you to go after? Like, yes, it's ready. It's time. She's ready. She's ready. Let's do this. Let's unmask. Let's detangle. Let's let's take the face of God off all this crap and all this false stuff. What if you just imagine him being really proud of you and really happy?

unknown 52:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

And celebrating you doing this and cheering you on as your biggest help and your biggest advocate. Whatever pace you need and whatever time you need. He's just so patient and really proud and really happy that you're doing this. What if that was his intention all along for you to govern yourself? I just feel like he's like restoring governance. And people are like, Am I allowed? And I just see him like shaking his head and smiling and being like, oh, this is how it was supposed to be from the beginning. Wonder how that would land to just believe that and feel that Papa's really okay with it. He's not threatened with you having your agency and your self-governance restored to you. That's what he created it to be like, and that's what he wants, and that's his intention for you.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agency was his idea. Good idea. It was his idea. How do we end? How do we end this?

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Let's just all take a collective breath in. We're cheering for you every step of the way, friends.

SPEAKER_04 53:38

Yeah. Thanks for being with us in this conversation. If you want to share anything that might be coming up for you or any feedback, we would really love to hear from you. It would mean a lot. Send a message. See you next week.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

We love you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

Bye, friends.