Episode 296 - Alan Fadling, "A Non-Anxious Life"

Welcome to "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." Today, we explore the depths of a non-anxious life with guest Alan Fadling. We discuss the power of embodying peace and the transformative practice of God’s presence in our daily lives. Alan shared insights from his new book and his journey of replacing anxiety with gratitude, patience, and the rhythm of God's grace. We also see that peace is not just the absence of turmoil but the tangible presence of the divine we can experience moment by moment.

Join us in embracing the simple virtues—humility, gentleness, and kindness—that counter anxiety and guide us toward a life marked by serenity and trust in God's perfect pace.

Click here for a link to purchase Alan's book.

Transcript

MICHAEL CUSICK: 0:00

My relatively new friend Alan fedlink, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back.

Alan Fadling: 0:05

Thank you so much. It's nice to be together again,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 0:08

it's been a treat to get to know you over the last two years, and your wife, Jim, at the apprentice gathering out at Friends University. And we talked a little bit before we hit record that I missed you this year. And so excited to talk about your new book.

Alan Fadling: 0:23

I'm glad to have a chance. Thank you.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 0:26

Let's jump right in, because your book is called a non anxious life. And we are living in a time at the beginning of 2024. When the world is extremely anxious, the world is wringing its hands. And I know within me, there's so much of a desperate desire for control, and to feel empowered. And that's really what generates a lot of anxiety. So here's what here's how to open a conversation, then we'll just see where this goes. I love the first paragraph, which is the first sentence of your book. And I'll read it says, for most of my adult life, I've been a master of anxiety, I'm working to become a master of peace. unpack that I like that's a sense that tells you where the whole book is going, but also your story. So unpack your story first.

Alan Fadling: 1:19

There's a few ways I could go one I'll start by saying when I proposed this book, we were one month into the way COVID changed all of our lives, early 2020. And I proposed this because it felt like a natural next step to the idea of unhurried the more I talked with leaders about hurry. The more I realized for a lot of leaders hurry is anxiety. And so that was my experience, too, for for has been really for a long time. But my personal story of anxiety begins with a story of my own mom who grows up in a post world war two orphanage in the Midwest, where she and her older sister and her older brother had reason to be anxious, they quite literally didn't have enough of what they needed for all those years. Well, that young girl becomes wife and then a mom and has a firstborn son, me. And God bless her. I don't blame my mom for anything. But I got I got a PhD level training in anxiety. It was our family way. It was how you prove you cared. It was a basic mode of operation. And so it's been an awfully long journey to realize i i might be better off without it, than I have been with it.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 2:41

Interesting that you say it's how you prove you care for two reasons. Number one, that sometimes caring is I worry about you. And I'm trying to arrange everything in your life. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah.

Alan Fadling: 2:56

So the idea that you will, the interesting thing is in the Greek the word for caring and the word for anxious are really the same one in context besides which it is. So they look a lot like worrying about somebody and genuinely caring. But you know the difference when somebody's caring for you feels like a burden, instead of a help. And I've been on the giving side of that kind of caring, unfortunately, too many times.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 3:25

I like to think of anxiety, as arising from wanting to be attached to certain outcomes. So the mother is worrying about the child, and that comes out of care. But if the child doesn't get the good grades, that the parent thinks that that child needs, then the parent worries or if the child isn't home by curfew, or if the child starts to question the faith or that kind of thing, or if my book or your book doesn't seem to be selling enough copies, right? Yeah. So that's a little bit more of a therapeutic idea. And then of course, there's the biological aspect of anxiety. But what's your basic definition of anxiousness and of anxiety?

Alan Fadling: 4:12

So there's probably more than one way I could answer that. But maybe the simplest would be I've come to believe that anxiety is a kind of caring minus God. It's it's a way of caring that doesn't realize God actually cares more. It's a kind of caring that doesn't seem to realize God is already at work already watching over the one I'm worrying about or the thing I'm worrying about. And so that's been a very operational definition for me, I realized that my anxiety not just the feelings that arise on invited in my body or in my thinking, but my adding worry to the feelings. That has been kind of like almost a practice of the absence of God that makes me I feel like it overstated. But my anxiety seems to be that it seems to be a practice of God's absence more than a, an awareness of God's presence.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 5:09

I love that. I think you and I have had the conversation before about practicing the presence of God brother Lawrence's phrase from his classic, what 15 century book and, and how, if we struggled to practice the presence of God, it's because we're not able to be present to ourselves. And in the book, you talk about presence and absence. And so let's jump to the chapter on practicing presence. You cover a lot of ground there. What does that mean? First of all, for listeners, and what's the key idea behind that? Because I think a lot of people struggle to, you know, okay, this week, I'm really going to be more tuned in to God, I'm going to be more aware of his presence. But there's a lot of reasons for why that doesn't happen.

Alan Fadling: 5:55

Yeah. Well, I what I've realized is, I quite mean, quite literally mean practice, like I have had to be training to notice the presence of God with me, I, if I just want to, if I just mean to, if I just hope to, that doesn't usually lead to very much. So for me, for example, I just remember Dallas Willard always quoting that line from Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not find myself in a situation of want. That's either real, or it's not real. And it's good to put that up against what feels like a very real, threatening situation, or threatening idea that's just caused my body to break out in a sweat, or my stomach to go into roiling turmoil, or my my shoulders to tense or my thoughts to erase all which are ways that anxiety shows up without my having ever invited it. And to practice that God is with me, right there is what I have needed to do that. One year, I had a whole year where not one of my flights went where it said it would go, or how it said it would go. And if there's any time when I feel less in control, it's when I'm sitting in an airport in some other country or some other state. We're at the absolute mercy of weather and airlines, and who knows who else. And it may sound awfully like a first world problem. But it's been one of those places, I've had to learn. Actually, the Lord really is shepherding me right now. And this is not going to leave me in a place where I'm hanging in a lurch uncared for unprovided for.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 7:37

So let me ask you the question that I hear so many people ask in the therapy room, and they come to counseling therapy for any number of issues. And this has happened over 30 years. And sometimes our conversations are explicitly spiritual, and sometimes not. But the question and I know this is why you wrote the book, but what do you mean, you're sitting in an airport, and you have to get home to your family? Or you have an important meeting? Or I remember, there was a time where I had a class to teach. And my wife was suddenly in pre pre labor with our firstborn son, and it's like, how am I gonna get home and get to the hospital? I feel a little bit like, it's almost inappropriate to ask this question. But so what does that mean that the Lord is my shepherd? And I shall not be lacking? I shall not be in one. How does? How does one make the bridge from that reality to the reality of sitting in the airport? And you've been waiting for your flight for 12 hours? Yes.

Alan Fadling: 8:45

So I'm not saying it's easy. And I'm not saying it always seems to make sense in the moment. But one of the things I will do is I will look back at moments when I was certain that a particular delay or my inability to get to where I meant to be ruined my life or someone else's. What I can think of is number of times I predicted ruin. And what came out instead actually was an alternative reality, an alternative path I hadn't thought of. I think at one time I was trying to get to be with the bishops of the Church of Uganda. We were to be with him on a particular morning and too long a story says why we didn't end up there the day before. Like we thought we got there three hours before we I was to speak at like three in the morning. Now, that felt like a disaster. I'm going to be exhausted. Instead what I discovered was one we got to see a part of Europe we never seen before because of how we got rerouted. That was a gift actually was a gift and I had a much greater sense of felt dependence on God's guiding empowering presence with me, having only a couple of hours of sleep than I would have, if I got everything the way I wanted it the way my itinerary had been planned. So one of the things I would say is that unexpected good is one of the opportunities to trust, God may be able to do good for me, that is outside my expectation, or outside my control, really. And having an eye open for alternative goods, has given me a way of saying maybe what my anxiety is demanding isn't the only good possibility.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 10:43

I love that. And so some of that tension in the question of, okay, here's what the Scripture says, Psalm 23, for example, that I shall not be and want. And I know what that says, But I'm so anxious. Soon as you talk about, oh, there's potential good here, something in me settles. And it's no longer about I have to be less anxious. Instead, what happens in me is like, something opens up, and I get to think about receiving. And that, that seems, seems like a theme in the life and the teaching of Jesus. It's like, if you slow down and pay attention, there's actually something here for you, instead of something being taken away. That's

Alan Fadling: 11:28

so well said, I realized that for the longest time, my journey with anxiety was trying to make anxiety stop. Like, get rid of this feeling, I don't ever want to feel this way. Again, I hate how it feels. And I still kind of do. But I began to realize peace was a something of a peace, shalom, a presence a person. That's very different than trying to aim at a negative, not anxious. Now, the irony, of course, the book is titled A non anxious life. I know that. But in many ways, what I'm trying to do is practice peace. I'm finding peace, displaces my anxiety, at least the worrying variety. I

MICHAEL CUSICK: 12:10

love that the idea that piece is a something and not What did you say pieces of something, and not a nothing?

Alan Fadling: 12:19

Or nothing? Not an absence? You know? Yeah, isn't

MICHAEL CUSICK: 12:23

that I think that's also true through most of the spiritual life is that we define, you know, doing well spiritually is the absence of certain things. But we never really experienced the presence of something. So if I'm not lusting, or if I'm not angry, then I'm doing well spiritually, versus I have a sense of deep contentment, or sense of peace or something like that. Well,

Alan Fadling: 12:47

exactly. And so suddenly, then when language like, we talked about the fruit of the Spirit, in other words, it's something that happens because of something else. This fruit is something that is born from a communion with God. There's something about the peaceful presence or the joyful presence, or the hopeful presence of God that impacts me and fuses me, inspires me moves me. And I find again, that more so my anxiety gets displaced, then it gets solved.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 13:22

I love that displaced again, we could be talking about any number of problematic issues in our life, emotionally and spiritually, that it's more about displacement. Which reminds me of Dallas's idea of indirection. That is you're working on something else that hit this goal that you're hoping to accomplish happens indirectly. Absolutely. Alan, you had some wordplay in chapter two, anxiety isn't for the birds. And most of us know Jesus teaching on you know, the birds of the field. Do not worry. Talk about just I mean, so there's such beautiful illustration and teaching where your book points out that Jesus talks a lot about peace. You know, we often hear that, you know, we might think that he talks the most about salvation or dying on the cross, but he talks a lot about money, for example, and the number of times, so the way that peace is just quantitatively talked about in Jesus teaching, it's it's pretty big. So talk about the birds of the air. Yeah, the lilies of the field.

Alan Fadling: 14:32

I love that language in the Sermon on the Mount, and I think for the longest time I sort of took it as like a you know, theological Maxim you know, just theoretically Look at the birds Look at the lilies you know, God takes good care of them God take good care of you pee and and I what I literally started doing, especially when we moved into the more isolating season of COVID A few years ago, is ice sat at this table in this library in our home most every single workday. But I have a sliding door in front of me and I have bird feeders just outside the door. And I literally got to know the birds of our neighborhood. I had the couple of little woodpeckers, I almost had names for them. And these little guys, teeny tiny birds with tails, three times the length of their body, got to know them. And here's what happened. They never looked like they were worrying. I mean, it's just as dumb to say, I mean, you never saw them with one clop and their beak, you know, chewing their nails off, or whatever it would have looked like for a bird to worry. None of them had a farm, as far as I could tell. None of them had an annual, you know, retirement plan.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 15:53

And none of them were debating whether to wear masks or not, during this time in the pandemic, I never

Alan Fadling: 15:59

saw that happen. And you know, again, you can be a little silly with this. But I really think there's something to be said one morning, I got up an hour before sunrise. And I sat there in the quiet of the cool morning. And I literally for about two hours just paid attention to the birds, which at first were non existent. It's too early, they started hearing little sounds like they're waking up. And I just had this feeling like I was a part of something beautiful in the creation of God. And then there came a moment where I realized God is looking at me, God is seeing me better than I'm seeing these birds who have come to love and have a great affection for. And I if there was something of the presence of God that came to me as I was present to something beautiful God made that really transformed my perspective.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 16:53

That's beautiful. That idea strikes me in the sounds like a kind of a Celtic idea is that living creation is not anxious. That it's it's human beings that are anxious and the creation outside of us, whether it's animals, or the wind, that there's not an anxiety to that it just, it just is.

Alan Fadling: 17:16

Yeah, it just is. And God is and I'm with God, and God is with me. And what's nice is to realize as real as my anxiety feels, and it does, man, it feels really real sometimes, like it's taking over a lot of my perceptions and a lot of my physical sensations. But I can practice that God is even more real than those experiences that I have. And that I can actually be a person who says, Oh, yep, there's fatling. There I am worrying, again, angst, anxiety is rising. That's not new. But God is with me. The Lord really is shepherding me right now exactly as I feel exactly what I'm facing exactly where I find myself. This is the place where he shepherding me. And that's really good.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 18:07

And so much of what you're talking about, has this massive assumption of the reality of real presence of God, that God is not up somewhere in a celestial sphere, that God is not in a church in a tabernacle, but that God dwells among men, and that God dwells within Christ is in us the hope of glory. And so there's right back to that idea of practicing presence.

Alan Fadling: 18:37

Yes, I've, I've thought sometimes when I've noticed my own praying that sometimes the way I pray seemed, I seem to be assuming I know better than God does what is needed, I seem to think I care more about things than God actually cares. And then I've got better ideas than God has about what's going on. And when I began to realize God's love is bigger, God's wisdom is bigger, God's presence is bigger, that has a really has a calming effect on the way my anxiety is sometimes, is something I bring into the presence of God instead of leaving in the presence of God finding a way to let him carry those things the way he says that he'd like to do for me.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 19:21

I like how you modeled a minute ago, kind of saying, okay, fatling you're starting to get anxious, it's rising in you the goal. And even though your book is called the non anxious life, the goal is not to eradicate or eliminate anxiety. The goal is to practice the presence of peace, and to practice the presence of God which then as you said, replaces supplants the anxiety. And so we're about midway through the book you wrote, when I started out, you know, I kind of thought that I'd get to a place where I wouldn't have any anxiety, right? It's like, hey, yes, if I write a book on overcoming sex addiction, I'm not going to struggle anymore in my case, and so What what you discovered was this idea that you continue to practice, as you said earlier, your whole life? And in your case, because anxiety is so much a part of your story, your genetics, your neurobiology, tell me if this feels right, but that the anxiety itself becomes a platform, a channel by which you uniquely be able to practice God's presence. Yeah,

Alan Fadling: 20:29

I think that's true. I mean, one of the metaphors I've sometimes used as I'm learning to let anxiety be a kind of little light on the dashboard of my life, that reminds me that I could practice God's presence, that I could remember that God may be wiser than my anxiety is. I've joked sometimes that if, if you were to look at the way I listened to anxiety in years past, you'd imagine I think of it as my wonderful counselor. But anxiety has not offered the most wonderful counsel most of the time, in my experience. So yes, I think I've learned how to notice feelings of anxiety and let those move me into the presence of God into practicing that God is with me.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 21:16

So you, you make this journey. In the book, where you're unpacking your own story of learning to have a non anxious life, you're not just a guy, who's a doctor of spirituality, in ministry, in theology, telling people how to trust Jesus, but this is your journey. And that's one of the things that's so cool about your your ministry is your your speaking and teaching out of lived experience. What has been the hardest thing for you, in the midst of real realizing and owning your story about how anxious you can be and moving into a place of practicing peace?

Alan Fadling: 21:57

Yeah, so there are probably a few different answers that come to mind. So one of them would be the temptation to feel embarrassed at how much my struggle with anxiety how deep it has run, like, I don't want to look like the anxious guy, you know. And it's been good to, in a sense, almost befriend my anxiety, like it was a little me inside, you know, way back when I was four or seven or 11. You know, it really anxious, really overwhelmed by that anxiety. So that's been there was challenging and has become a gift. I think the other is, like any of us, when I find my anxiety being provoked by something new. So for example, when I proposed this book, I thought, like many people that the quarantining of COVID might last a few weeks, oh, who knows, maybe a couple months. And then it lasted years, and it changed everything in the way we do what we do. And that amount of unexpected and really unwelcome change provoked my anxieties, at levels and in ways that really surprised me, even as I'm writing the book. And so the book changed because of that. And so that was hard. I thought I would write the book in a year, it took me three years to get a first draft into the publisher. And a good part of that was because of how much wrestling it took, for me to feel I could speak with integrity, about a personal experience, of stepping into places of peace in the face of new anxieties.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 23:37

I really appreciate that. Because you're you're a somewhat prolific author, this will be your fifth book, you've written a lot of other things or not books you've co authored, you do a lot of speaking and training. And unlike me, where I do a lot of speaking training, but it's actually hard to get things written on paper or on a computer. And so I know for you because you talked in a previous interview, about your journaling, and your your last book, and you're slowing down with so much of your journaling. So you write, write, write, write, write, but to take three years to get a cut, where you kind of probably had already mastered the content but not mastered the practice. And would say that you still have a kind of surprising chapter, in terms of the indirection idea is you talked about simple virtues, which initially seem unrelated to anxiety. So humility, for example, is one of them talk about how and why simple virtues are important to be aware of in developing a non anxious life?

Alan Fadling: 24:39

Yeah, so I just loved that idea anyway. But what I came to realize is that there were ways in which my pride had a way of fostering more anxiety than a feeling of being in control. That there was an irony there, that God gives grace to the humble but that God opposes the proud. That's not about God's, you know, meanness toward proud people and his niceness toward humble people. It's more of a statement about how things work. And I've just found that when I right size, my own self perception, there's a piece that comes alongside that. And when I'm trying to be too big for my britches, or when I'm being proud in reverse, and just being so self engrossed, not in a self promoting way, even if it's in a self deprecating way, there's too much self focusing. And that has a way of provoking my anxiety. So taking my eyes, this sounds almost Sunday School ish, but having my eyes less focused on me and more focused on God, which is, I think the essence of what humility is, has also led to peace for me.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 25:55

I love that I hadn't I hadn't made that connection between humility in the practicing the peace, what are some of the other virtues? Well,

Alan Fadling: 26:05

so virtues like humility, humility, after humility, gentleness, it's not a very gentle culture that we live in. And there's a way that my harshness tends to also foster an anxious orientation. But when I can settle down, and treat my life with gentleness, treat my shortcomings with gentleness, treat others shortcomings with gentleness, there comes in the wake of that peace. Part of it is maybe as simple as many of these simple virtues I write about are also listed as fruit of the Spirit. And through the spirit of singular. It's just what God does in our lives. And so peace is very good friends with patience, and gentleness and goodness and faithfulness. They just they, they go to very, they pair nicely, you know. And, on the other hand, the opposites of those simple virtues, have a way of fighting against the presence of peace in me and therefore have a way of provoking anxiety. In Me,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 27:17

I spend a fair amount of time on this podcast talking about Colossians 312, where I say that for many years, I read it. And I never saw that it was applied to self where the writer of Colossians says, Therefore you who are chosen, dearly loved and holy, clothe yourself, not others, but clothe yourself with compassion, humility, kindness, gentleness, and patience. And as I think about that, today, in this conversation, it's like, therefore, you who are chosen, dearly loved and holy, clothe yourself with compassion, humility, kindness, gentleness, and patience, because if you don't, you're going to be anxious, you're going to have to be working really hard to make sure that everything's okay, you're going to have to be working really hard to make sure that you're better than you are, or that you don't make too many waves. Or that, you know, you don't look shameful or embarrassed or insignificant. And I love the there's a simplicity to the the teaching of Jesus, but the way that you're tying this all together, so two other things I want to talk about related to the book and non anxious life. I love, love, love the fact that you included a chapter on embodiment, and when what you do and what Jim does, I know she does a lot of this in her spiritual direction work is embodiment work. So talk a little bit about your perspective on embodiment, and how peace is actually a physical bodily reality, not just a spiritual cloud that comes.

Alan Fadling: 28:56

Right. So you know, it won't shock anyone that growing up with you know, some of the dynamics that I faced, I became a thinker person, I managed my life by thinking about it. And so I lived in my head, some people call this the dynamic of a brain on a stick. And so I imagined, you know, that I could mostly solve any problem. And I could do almost any piece of work just with my brain cells, and didn't give much attention to the fact that actually God had given me a body that I lived in. And that in fact, a lot of times my anxiety was arising in my body that was not being very well attended, in many different ways. So for example, beginning to realize embodiment, in part is what happened when I started noticing the birds I wasn't thinking about the birds, I wasn't cataloging them or I wasn't bird watcher like trying to check off all the different varieties of birds of each Just enjoying the birds. And that was bodily for me it literally my eyeballs and my my heart and my hands like everything was, was a part of that. And then the idea that piece is something that could be embodied, that quite literally Christ was with me. Christ was in me that this is a physical bodily reality, this physical body is a temple of God's very presence. And if that God is a God of peace, then embodying peace is something available to me something I could actually practice and it wouldn't be solving my anxiety by writing 1000 words in my journal, though I do journal a lot. It would be, again, we're back to displacing that experiencing peace as a gift in my god given body had a way of displacing the physical symptoms of anxiety that were so familiar. Ellen,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 31:05

if you would do the honor of reading the prayer that you wrote in appendix A to a non anxious life, that would be wonderful. And I want to just thank you for being on the podcast again. It's always great to talk with you. I'll have you read the prayer, and then we'll just fade out. So thanks for being here.

Alan Fadling: 31:22

Great to be together. So Father, thank You for the piece I can find and being chosen by you. How good to grow confident that you enjoy being with me. Thank you for all the good things you've prepared in advance for me to enjoy and to share with others. Grant that my life would become so full of your goodness and grace, that I would overflow for the good of others. May I learn in that way to work hard, without working, hurried? Show me how to work closely with you father, rather than serving you at a distance. enable me to be active without being hyperactive. Teach me to work at the pace of relationship at the pace of love. Give me eyes to see the people under whom alongside whom and for whom I serve. Guide me in the ways of fruitfulness that our productivity at the pace of peace. Protect me for the temptation to be driven by anxious activity. I want to learn how to join Jesus in the very fruitful work he is already doing in and around me. May I grow in working hard at the pace of grace, rather than working frantically at the pace of driven achievement helped me to walk in the presence of grace rather than out running grace. And may Your Spirit empower me to follow grace to be strengthened by grace and to walk in grace. And when I'm tempted to believe that this peaceful, non anxious way of living and working is impossible, because of my current situation? Grant me a clearer vision of Jesus's holy and unhurried way of living and leading that is present with me now. Grow my discernment so that I learned how to walk with Jesus rather than hurrying ahead of Jesus. Show me how to live and work at the pace of abiding in Christ. May this depth result in far greater fruit than frantic busyness will ever produce. Grant me a steady, calm vision of Jesus, the non anxious one with me. Grow in me patients to watch for him listen for him and follow him in whatever challenges crossed my path. When I feel hopeless, helped me remember the God of hope with me. When I feel lonely, helped me know the presence of God with me. And when I feel anxious, remind me that the Prince of Peace is with me in this very moment. God You never change. You are always bright light in my darkness. Sure, hope in my despair, deep peace in my anxious worry. In your stillness, I find joy and refreshment speak words of love and calm over me in this moment. give me ears to hear you speak to the storm of my emotions. Peace. Be still may your spirit of perfect peace reign in my mind, my heart, my body. And so then may my visible life bear the outward fruit of my soul growing in peace strengthened me with joy and peace so that I can bear up under whatever change cares. Distractions stresses disappointments or temptations may cross my path. In these trying situations, may my soul find itself at home, in your loving care. Grant me a heart of peace as I step out to do the work you've given me to do. May you do all this and more in the name of the God of peace. Amen.