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[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to Reborn and you didn't project podcasts and bracing the beauty and brokenness in your journey with God.
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[SPEAKER_00]: there's a lot of bad ideas about what a human being is and how a human being should function.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those bad ideas actually keep us from deep connection with God ourselves and others.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're really getting after greater emotional awareness so that we can move into relationship with in greater ways in line with our design.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know two guys in the world that are more equipped to have this conversation just really thankful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: for you guys and honestly the decades of ministry that have been building around all these all these themes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so today we have the opportunity to get after the theme of sad.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Todd, I'll start with you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What am I feeling when I feel sad?
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[SPEAKER_01]: of the feeling that God gave us that let's us know that what matters to us or what we're most attached to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think with sadness, sadness is the emotion we'll feel more than any other emotion on the planet, because we weren't meant for loss, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: When God created us in the garden, it was meant for longevity, it meant to never lose anything and at the fall, you know, it wrecked everything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there's that internal in us, like, yeah, this is not how
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when people died, like, oh, gosh, we're not made to die.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're not, we're not made to die.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're not made for loss.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet it's one, it's the thing you will feel every day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you pay attention to yourself, your heart, you will feel sadness to some point throughout the day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it really shows us what, what we're attached to, what matters to us.
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[SPEAKER_00]: okay you mentioned loss and so some people might go all the way to like the loss of a loved one right the death of a spouse but I'm hearing you nuance it to say hey it's it's not just the funeral of of the your spouse it's a lot more daily and ongoing so maybe nuanced tech what are the kinds of losses that people are incurring and a more everyday sense or month a month as they go along through life and a fallen world
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure, here in a few hours, we're going to get filling out, get on the plane ahead home to Nashville, and there will be a sense of loss in relationship with you guys.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, man, it's been a great last few days with you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I know already, I'm like, man, I'm going to miss those guys.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to fill sad, I'm not with them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Glad I'm going home for sure, but a sadness of like, man, I'm going to miss being with the eating guys.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So those places, those spaces.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so even, yeah, that vacation hump, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You get halfway through vacation and realize that you're closer to going home than you are to staying.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, okay, I'm already grieving that vacation will be over and I have to go back to work and back to life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, Phil, how would you also just contribute to that around sadness?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What are some things that we need to, we need to know and understand when we're feeling sad and what, what do we experiencing?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think Christ followers do probably, there is such a rich theology under and around sadness.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the descriptors of Jesus in the Old Testament is Man, Aquina Wassaro, a man of grief.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Todd mentioned that the universal experience of humans is lost itself and we recognize that immediately that we have lost and you look across the pages of Scripture, there's this scene, it's poignant.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The Ephesian elders and Paul are weeping, these men are wailing because they're Paul's leaving and they recognize that we may never see him on Earth again.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And there's one thing we know universally internally
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[SPEAKER_02]: Christ followers are anybody else in the world.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We know one thing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We know that intuitively, we know that every human relationship on earth ends painfully.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Every one of them.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's not one relationship that does not end with pain.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, death, you know, we're not friend anymore.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We drift apart.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We get busy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Kids grow up and have the audacity to get married and have their own lives.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I
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[SPEAKER_02]: Everything we touch, every relationship we have, we know Todd Mitchen yesterday, includes yesterday's three that God is pretty turning the heart of humans.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And part of the eternity is what he said we're made for eternity, but there's so much interruption of it while we're here, from Eden, it's a matter of fact.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so loss is so universal and it is so close to related to attachment.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm unwilling to grieve, I will not attach.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Therefore the more deeply I attach, the more grief I experience, when, not if, when it ends.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, that's a great segue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about what we do with sadness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So actually, let's start with what happens when we won't breathe because of all the emotions we've talked about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So far, I wonder if sadness is the one that's the most impaired.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a lot of people who will not feel their sadness, don't know what to do with their sadness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening when I won't process it, when I won't breathe?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Frozen sadness comes in a very powerful we call them impairments or unhealthy expressions of a feeling.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's very powerful, self-pity.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Pouting, isolation, going behind closed doors.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not, you can't make me unfreeze.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, self-pity is so powerful because when a person is in self-pity, here she can mount all kinds of evidence as to why I'm doing this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It never works out for me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You owe me this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's all kinds of phrases associated.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We have no idea how hard this has been for me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, all that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and it's powerful and the evidence may be more than any other of the impairments as we call them self pity is the easiest to prove because loss is so universal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: self-pity is a person can stand self-pity literally across a lifetime because of all the losses that mount up in all the evidence we can present as to how hard this has been for me and you need to take my sadness for me because I don't want to deal with it myself.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll pound and isolate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in isolation, Todd, if I do that for a decade, I won't feel my sadness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to lament.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to agree.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We're about in over time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think one of the, here's how you know if you're in self-pity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're saying this phrase, because my kids say it often.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's not fair.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when I hear it's not fair, I'm like, my kids are not willing to deal sadness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, oh, man, I say that quite often.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's time I might not say it externally, but I'm saying it internally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't fair.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, no, life is not fair.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But that's me not wanting to deal with the sadness of the loss that I'm experienced.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so if I'm in that place of self-pity, life isn't fair, then we're going to demand the life be the way I
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when I get into self-pity, and I don't actually deal with the self-pity, I'll demand it be a certain way, and that certain way is my way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I would say.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when we get totally into isolation, we'll demand it from other people, demand it from God, and demand it from our spouse, demand it from our kids, that life has to work the way I wanted to work, and if it's not,
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[SPEAKER_01]: then I'll just keep demand.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll become a demand, a demanding machine.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a character in the great divorce from CS Lewis who has lost a child and her husband and son are also probably grieving.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They also lost a son and brother, but she's using her grief like a 9 millimeter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like she's holding into people's heads and she's like, you're going to do everything I say because my life has been hard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and you can just see the demand as a function of unprocessed grief and the way that everybody else is now held hostage like her life has been hard she's not grieving it and now we have to obey her every every demand to I don't know it's almost like to balance out how it's been hard I'm gonna try to write the score a little bit and if you'll do everything I say then maybe it'll slowly get me back to sea level and so yeah it's such a powerful illustration
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[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't heard it said from one of you guys this idea that I'm not going to grieve my sadness but I'm going to tell you about it and almost watch you grieve it like watch your reaction to it and almost get some kind of vicarious benefit of huh that's what it would look like if I grieved it by watching a surrogate I mean is that is that descriptive of some of what's happening in the dynamic when I have when I have self-pity
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's true, for sure, and it's true for all of them.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you take, we recorded a podcast around anger.
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[SPEAKER_02]: A depressed person will watch movies or watch life happen, and they'll vicariously let other people carry their passion, so they don't have to.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So then what you said, Duke is pretty universal around how the impairments actually work.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I can have someone else do the painful part of feeling this feeling, and I'll watch them do it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So there's really robust neuroscience underneath this sadness in particular, James K.A.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Smith and others are written about our liturgies, our cadences, our patterns.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we, like Todd and I have a routine and like I get my car drive to work, Todd's calling me here.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm calling him almost every day.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we talk and some begin to count on that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If, if, if, if,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Todd were to move away or not be my friend or die or something, part of my brain looks forward to that liturgy of calling him.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when I can't do that, it plunges me into, so my left brain or my recognition in life is Todd's not here, but my limbic brain says, but I'm looking for him.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so our brains keep looking for those losses that we've had, you know, we live my family and I lived here for years here in the Metroplex.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so Todd now went over there Monday night or some night when we were here, get lost track of days.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But as I was growing around, it looks different than it did before, things have aged 10, certainly I haven't.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Things have aged over there and I had this sadness in me of seeing the same things I saw for years and years because the neuroscience under my brain, I got to admit our brains is I'm looking for things to be like they were.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I remember what I love when I missed from here and when they weren't, it was confusing to me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's the same way with the liturgies we have in relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When those come to an end in any way, our brains continue to look for the liturgie
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the Psalms, we see a huge category of lament Psalms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a so clearly present that God buys wisdom and has given us tools of prayer for what to do with it, how to process it, we have exemplars doing it, we have David.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But, and let's call it modern evangelicalism and really the milieu that the three of us have largely been formed in, I wouldn't say that the church has been all that famous for lament.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't modeled it very well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we, why do you think the church isn't further along in dealing with sadness, equipping others to deal with sadness, really accessing the limit songs that are right there for us and playing side?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why aren't we stronger in, in, in that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: some of the and I come from the tradition my own family now I love my Mississippi family like crazy but there's there's been a rule that's been applied.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think inadvertently that if we lament and grieve that somehow means we don't trust God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: someone dies I'm not going to be sad I'm just going to celebrate where they are now and I've often said like yes I also celebrate where they are but I agree whether or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Now here with me anymore and there's been this covering put over this feeling in particular in the western church I would say largely that if I grieve it means I'm not trusting or I don't believe in eternity and I don't believe God is good and that's not necessarily true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's so good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll throw a Bible verse at someone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, God causes all things together for good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just move on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's, let's boat raise past the pain into the, the triumph.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, what do you see in that Todd, what do you think is contributing to are just inability, collectively, to really agree well, model that well, even equipped others to do that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's our refusal to do pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We don't, we are pain adverse.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We want to run from pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think doing sadness is so painful because, you know, when you it is the word attachment, when I attach to something, and then it rips from me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's so painful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think we're trying to avoid the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, you know, you're trying to avoid the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Phil has said this often.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He said, if we're going to do sadness and we do it well, then we'll actually honor the pain that we're going through.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think we don't honor the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's the painful places in life that gives us the most growth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think we just want to avoid pain at all cause.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it just comes to a place of acceptance.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And acceptance is it's not okay, but it's going to be okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in my own life, you know, I can see doing sadness has led me to a place of being able to help other people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My dad, 14 years ago, committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And being a Texas really evoked something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'd get off the plane.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something that happens internally in me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, man,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, there was a part of me that was like, I'd love to call my dad and have him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He would have driven up here to Dallas, just to do dinner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I can't even have that experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And some sad about that, agreed the loss of him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I can see now, God's used that my life to be able to speak into other men and women who have their parents have committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And a way I wouldn't have been able to do 14 years ago.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's moments of days.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll just be driving down the road and a tear will come to my eye or my thought about my dad and the loss of him and there's an acceptance and yet God is still using that in my life and in that using the life other people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as you're saying that, Todd, I'm just thinking of St. Corinthians 1 that the God of all comfort is comforted you and you now able to comfort others with the comfort through which you've been comforted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that becomes a part of the body life dealing with this world that losses are going to keep coming and now you're equipped to be an agent of of healing, an agent of comforting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's even an interesting Holy Spirit's first title, and as a John 14 is that the Comforter, which is just kind of as you said Phil, it's like if this is the biggest emotion of the most frequent emotion in the fall world, it's really a good news that the Holy Spirit said, hey, I'm on that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're going to experience a lot of loss and I'm here as a comforter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a title that I bear to attend to that and to help you grow through that towards acceptance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, this is really, really helpful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what else do you think is helpful for people to know about sadness and I feel you said there's a lot of nuance here and there's a lot we can get into.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what else do you think people misunderstand about it or need to understand about it to move forward with it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You kind of tip-to-hand a little bit, you segwayed and totally into this word comfort, which, you know, we know emotionally and relationally with other people that when someone is really, really sad, we want to provide comfort for them, and the word there that the suffix of comfort, FORT, the word literally means to fortify, so comforting, it means, yeah, grant security and a safe place, it also means to strengthen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that we're, you know, the, the, the Jews have a tradition called sitting Shiva and they will just sit with the person on these really low stools to the ground because they know their loved one has been laid low, as they say, and I'm going to sit down right next to the floor with you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: In recognition, you've been laid low and I want to strengthen you with my presence by sitting low with you in that way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so comfort is part of that, you know,
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if we could get really, really competent, I'll say emotionally competent, have a strong theology of sadness in the church, in the body of Christ, I think it would literally revolutionize how not how we view death, how we view life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's valuable and it's wonderful and it's rich and it doesn't last very long, the right of ecclesiasties, you know, called it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: of vapor or smoke, and that it has to do with brevity, but it also has to do with the more I try to control life, the more I try to live in demand and make life work, the faster dissipates like smoke does.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we could do anything magically transformed, Christendom, if we had a fuller, deeper recognition of just the universality of loss,
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[SPEAKER_02]: and how it is the opportunity to give and to receive fortification in the body of Christ and the capital C. Comforter.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would make such a difference in how we approach relationships in the body and relationship with God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's so good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think them now would add to all that is.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we talked in a earlier podcast about anger and many people want to get to anger.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They want that passion, they want that desire.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the doorway to anger is sadness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You see that with Jesus when he overlooks the city of Jerusalem.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He weeps for the city and it was his weeping that led him to the anger to go into the city to do some about it.
17:45.026 --> 17:45.707
[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
17:45.687 --> 18:03.932
[SPEAKER_01]: I often tell people when I'm with them one-on-one in in session and they're like, man, I have a desire to pass, these long as I want to go do something, I'm like, have you done sadness, I'm like, no, and I'm not going to, I'm like, well, then you won't get to that anger that you have, you have to deal with a sadness.
18:03.912 --> 18:12.504
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're not going to deal with the sadness, then we get into the places of desire and passion, you'll then go into demanding that it be your way and it's no longer true anger.
18:12.905 --> 18:15.689
[SPEAKER_01]: So sadness is really the doorway into anger.
18:15.929 --> 18:16.630
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so helpful.
18:17.171 --> 18:19.033
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe give us a couple of pointers.
18:19.093 --> 18:23.119
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's say I've just had somebody in my community experience deep loss.
18:23.099 --> 18:24.601
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm on the receiving side.
18:24.621 --> 18:28.968
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not my loss, it's their loss, but I'm ministering to them or I have an opportunity to minister to them.
18:29.309 --> 18:35.538
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you say to do, you know, what is wisdom on being on the other side of someone who's processing sadness?
18:36.099 --> 18:40.265
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a familiar phrase called being Jesus in human flesh.
18:40.566 --> 18:51.823
[SPEAKER_02]: So to speak, and you look, you've referred several times, like, as we're recording these and other places, lunch and other places about your, you have such a beautiful heart
18:51.803 --> 18:53.905
[SPEAKER_02]: lamenting through the Psalms.
18:54.306 --> 19:00.852
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I've ever told him I've talked about that, my man, Duke, is he has dialed into the beauty of lament.
19:01.513 --> 19:03.595
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and how David so expresses that.
19:03.775 --> 19:18.570
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think around the question you ask in particular, around that is like if we come into the presence of someone that we know is grieving, if we think about those lament Psalms,
19:18.550 --> 19:25.118
[SPEAKER_02]: a person that's crying out that way to God is also going to be crying out that way to me whether he or she says it or not.
19:26.220 --> 19:28.523
[SPEAKER_02]: What do most of the limit Psalms have to do with God?
19:28.543 --> 19:29.344
[SPEAKER_02]: Where are you?
19:29.804 --> 19:31.186
[SPEAKER_02]: How long is this going to be?
19:31.246 --> 19:32.828
[SPEAKER_02]: And is this ever going to end?
19:33.349 --> 19:38.696
[SPEAKER_02]: So, as we can sit with people, we can know that that's judging by the Psalms.
19:38.716 --> 19:48.388
[SPEAKER_02]: We can know that's what's going over and over and over into them and we can offer true hope, not hope that says,
19:48.368 --> 19:52.417
[SPEAKER_02]: But the hope that says, I know what God says is true.
19:52.678 --> 19:54.803
[SPEAKER_02]: I also know where you are is true.
19:54.843 --> 20:01.779
[SPEAKER_02]: And let me sit with you and wait until you can have words to articulate your heart in both of those worlds.
20:02.460 --> 20:05.227
[SPEAKER_02]: But God's word says is true and this loss is true too.
20:05.267 --> 20:07.592
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's just talk all between those two polls.
20:07.572 --> 20:08.093
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
20:08.613 --> 20:20.708
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I remember Eugene Peterson talking about how so many people overfunction in that moment and they throw too many Bible verses or they try to move people too quickly through that into some kind of happy ending or whatnot.
20:20.728 --> 20:28.017
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm hearing a lot around the patience, curiosity, the gift of presence that I can't fix this.
20:28.057 --> 20:29.479
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can attend
20:29.459 --> 20:53.982
[SPEAKER_00]: to you and let you know you matter and your grief matters and your loss matters and I see you yeah which is such a gift for people and maybe even pressure off to someone to say hey you don't have to solve it like you're not you're not the fire department that's come into to deal with this and to make it all better you're actually doing more often by just being there and attending and and giving your presence to somebody who is just sad and
20:53.962 --> 20:56.305
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was such a powerful gift.
20:56.345 --> 21:01.151
[SPEAKER_00]: Todd, any other advice you would give to people, they've encountered a friend who's suffering, and they don't know what to do.
21:01.171 --> 21:04.235
[SPEAKER_00]: They may over-function under-function, but they're trying to figure out the course.
21:04.555 --> 21:06.257
[SPEAKER_01]: Always say, don't do a Joe's friends, did.
21:07.679 --> 21:07.799
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
21:07.819 --> 21:20.695
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, Joe bit lost everything, and his friends come, and for the first, they do, as Phil said earlier, they sit with him, and they're grieving with him, and then they kidn't tolerate their own grief, and not tolerate their own grief,
21:20.675 --> 21:35.892
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to push him into, and just get through this quickly, and so I think it's a patient process of just sitting with people and start paying attention to your grief as you sit with other people's grief.
21:35.912 --> 21:43.540
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you paying attention to your own grief will let give you the courage and the patience that was onelts us.
21:43.700 --> 21:45.362
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's so good.
21:46.523 --> 21:49.146
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a great
21:49.126 --> 21:52.351
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, there's so much there that for seven days they were silent seven days.
21:52.371 --> 22:07.253
[SPEAKER_00]: They nailed it actually Give the press they crushed it and then they they got impatient and and they and they started to presume right they started to imagine They knew more about the situation than they knew they you know Job doesn't even know really what's going on fully.
22:07.533 --> 22:10.037
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what's going on, but they're starting to guess
22:10.017 --> 22:18.190
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and sometimes we talk about that, that the poll of judgment versus curiosity, but even coming in with someone and saying, I don't know.
22:18.931 --> 22:24.860
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't fully know what it's like to lose a child or I don't know sitting with you what it's like to have my father commit suicide.
22:25.040 --> 22:32.211
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got truly don't know if I try to grab a Bible verse and I try to presume on you and I start to just throw that at you and the right answers.
22:32.191 --> 22:34.956
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing what Job's friends have done to him.
22:35.036 --> 22:37.019
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm just presuming all over you.
22:37.480 --> 22:44.231
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to solve you, and it's honestly probably more about my own life and me wanting to get us back to equilibrium.
22:44.272 --> 22:50.302
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's uncomfortable to see you in such a disoriented state and I've got to hurry up and resolve that so I don't have to feel that.
22:50.362 --> 22:51.043
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
22:51.023 --> 23:01.422
[SPEAKER_00]: I would just encourage the audience, even as you have those reactive moments, maybe you would really wish to fast-forward the movie and get somebody through something, I'd be curious about what's going on in your own chest.
23:01.503 --> 23:12.443
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a lot more about you than it is the other person, and it may not actually be that helpful to them if you're trying to move them to quickly pass something that isn't really authentically being formed in them.
23:12.463 --> 23:12.964
[SPEAKER_00]: And so
23:12.944 --> 23:14.987
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this has been really helpful, guys.
23:15.147 --> 23:24.881
[SPEAKER_00]: I think sadness is something that we probably all want to not experience, but we've just said, honestly, you're going to experience it, and there's a way through it, though.
23:25.042 --> 23:32.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a way that can result in comfort, there's a way in which I can move through it authentically and come to acceptance and continue to move forward.
23:33.013 --> 23:42.327
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe even as an agent of comfort for others and be more equipped, maybe more humble and empathetic and a better friend, a better part of the community helping others also.
23:47.909 --> 23:50.574
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for listening to the Reform podcast.
23:51.095 --> 24:00.671
[SPEAKER_03]: If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe button, share it with your friends, leave us a rating, and check out our other resources at theeatenproject.com.
24:01.573 --> 24:02.374
[SPEAKER_03]: Peace!
00:02.731 --> 00:20.082
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to Reborn and you didn't project podcasts and bracing the beauty and brokenness in your journey with God.
00:21.530 --> 00:26.856
[SPEAKER_00]: there's a lot of bad ideas about what a human being is and how a human being should function.
00:27.397 --> 00:32.043
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those bad ideas actually keep us from deep connection with God ourselves and others.
00:32.583 --> 00:40.733
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're really getting after greater emotional awareness so that we can move into relationship with in greater ways in line with our design.
00:40.793 --> 00:46.660
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know two guys in the world that are more equipped to have this conversation just really thankful.
00:46.640 --> 00:52.815
[SPEAKER_00]: for you guys and honestly the decades of ministry that have been building around all these all these themes.
00:52.855 --> 00:56.804
[SPEAKER_00]: And so today we have the opportunity to get after the theme of sad.
00:57.787 --> 00:58.729
[SPEAKER_00]: Todd, I'll start with you.
00:58.769 --> 01:02.117
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I feeling when I feel sad?
01:02.097 --> 01:08.305
[SPEAKER_01]: of the feeling that God gave us that let's us know that what matters to us or what we're most attached to.
01:08.425 --> 01:16.696
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think with sadness, sadness is the emotion we'll feel more than any other emotion on the planet, because we weren't meant for loss, right?
01:16.776 --> 01:25.487
[SPEAKER_01]: When God created us in the garden, it was meant for longevity, it meant to never lose anything and at the fall, you know, it wrecked everything.
01:25.547 --> 01:30.433
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there's that internal in us, like, yeah, this is not how
01:30.413 --> 01:34.060
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when people died, like, oh, gosh, we're not made to die.
01:34.100 --> 01:35.443
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not, we're not made to die.
01:35.463 --> 01:36.705
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not made for loss.
01:36.786 --> 01:40.473
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet it's one, it's the thing you will feel every day.
01:40.693 --> 01:45.823
[SPEAKER_01]: If you pay attention to yourself, your heart, you will feel sadness to some point throughout the day.
01:45.843 --> 01:49.671
[SPEAKER_01]: So it really shows us what, what we're attached to, what matters to us.
01:49.651 --> 02:14.055
[SPEAKER_00]: okay you mentioned loss and so some people might go all the way to like the loss of a loved one right the death of a spouse but I'm hearing you nuance it to say hey it's it's not just the funeral of of the your spouse it's a lot more daily and ongoing so maybe nuanced tech what are the kinds of losses that people are incurring and a more everyday sense or month a month as they go along through life and a fallen world
02:14.272 --> 02:22.865
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure, here in a few hours, we're going to get filling out, get on the plane ahead home to Nashville, and there will be a sense of loss in relationship with you guys.
02:22.905 --> 02:25.769
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, man, it's been a great last few days with you.
02:25.789 --> 02:28.313
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know already, I'm like, man, I'm going to miss those guys.
02:28.333 --> 02:30.095
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to fill sad, I'm not with them.
02:30.576 --> 02:35.143
[SPEAKER_01]: Glad I'm going home for sure, but a sadness of like, man, I'm going to miss being with the eating guys.
02:35.183 --> 02:37.967
[SPEAKER_01]: So those places, those spaces.
02:37.947 --> 02:40.851
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so even, yeah, that vacation hump, right?
02:40.891 --> 02:45.497
[SPEAKER_00]: You get halfway through vacation and realize that you're closer to going home than you are to staying.
02:45.537 --> 02:51.004
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, okay, I'm already grieving that vacation will be over and I have to go back to work and back to life.
02:51.144 --> 02:55.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, Phil, how would you also just contribute to that around sadness?
02:55.930 --> 03:01.457
[SPEAKER_00]: What are some things that we need to, we need to know and understand when we're feeling sad and what, what do we experiencing?
03:02.467 --> 03:10.383
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Christ followers do probably, there is such a rich theology under and around sadness.
03:11.906 --> 03:19.260
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the descriptors of Jesus in the Old Testament is Man, Aquina Wassaro, a man of grief.
03:19.240 --> 03:30.937
[SPEAKER_02]: Todd mentioned that the universal experience of humans is lost itself and we recognize that immediately that we have lost and you look across the pages of Scripture, there's this scene, it's poignant.
03:30.957 --> 03:39.710
[SPEAKER_02]: The Ephesian elders and Paul are weeping, these men are wailing because they're Paul's leaving and they recognize that we may never see him on Earth again.
03:39.770 --> 03:44.337
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's one thing we know universally internally
03:44.317 --> 03:46.700
[SPEAKER_02]: Christ followers are anybody else in the world.
03:46.740 --> 03:47.741
[SPEAKER_02]: We know one thing.
03:47.781 --> 03:54.068
[SPEAKER_02]: We know that intuitively, we know that every human relationship on earth ends painfully.
03:54.729 --> 03:55.469
[SPEAKER_02]: Every one of them.
03:55.690 --> 03:58.092
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not one relationship that does not end with pain.
03:58.853 --> 04:01.076
[SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, death, you know, we're not friend anymore.
04:01.156 --> 04:01.917
[SPEAKER_02]: We drift apart.
04:01.957 --> 04:02.737
[SPEAKER_02]: We get busy.
04:03.979 --> 04:07.503
[SPEAKER_02]: Kids grow up and have the audacity to get married and have their own lives.
04:08.604 --> 04:08.704
[SPEAKER_02]: And I
04:08.684 --> 04:17.091
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything we touch, every relationship we have, we know Todd Mitchen yesterday, includes yesterday's three that God is pretty turning the heart of humans.
04:17.408 --> 04:26.980
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of the eternity is what he said we're made for eternity, but there's so much interruption of it while we're here, from Eden, it's a matter of fact.
04:27.040 --> 04:31.066
[SPEAKER_02]: And so loss is so universal and it is so close to related to attachment.
04:31.106 --> 04:33.789
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm unwilling to grieve, I will not attach.
04:34.630 --> 04:39.957
[SPEAKER_02]: Therefore the more deeply I attach, the more grief I experience, when, not if, when it ends.
04:39.937 --> 04:41.719
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, that's a great segue.
04:41.739 --> 04:44.983
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about what we do with sadness.
04:45.003 --> 04:51.049
[SPEAKER_00]: So actually, let's start with what happens when we won't breathe because of all the emotions we've talked about.
04:51.109 --> 04:54.913
[SPEAKER_00]: So far, I wonder if sadness is the one that's the most impaired.
04:55.674 --> 05:01.120
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a lot of people who will not feel their sadness, don't know what to do with their sadness.
05:01.841 --> 05:05.505
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening when I won't process it, when I won't breathe?
05:05.485 --> 05:11.835
[SPEAKER_02]: Frozen sadness comes in a very powerful we call them impairments or unhealthy expressions of a feeling.
05:12.956 --> 05:15.079
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very powerful, self-pity.
05:15.780 --> 05:19.786
[SPEAKER_02]: Pouting, isolation, going behind closed doors.
05:19.867 --> 05:22.090
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not, you can't make me unfreeze.
05:22.150 --> 05:31.023
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, self-pity is so powerful because when a person is in self-pity, here she can mount all kinds of evidence as to why I'm doing this.
05:31.644 --> 05:33.467
[SPEAKER_02]: It never works out for me.
05:33.447 --> 05:34.949
[SPEAKER_02]: You owe me this.
05:35.069 --> 05:37.373
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's all kinds of phrases associated.
05:37.393 --> 05:39.556
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no idea how hard this has been for me.
05:39.596 --> 05:40.898
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, all that.
05:41.118 --> 05:52.215
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and it's powerful and the evidence may be more than any other of the impairments as we call them self pity is the easiest to prove because loss is so universal.
05:52.195 --> 06:06.199
[SPEAKER_02]: self-pity is a person can stand self-pity literally across a lifetime because of all the losses that mount up in all the evidence we can present as to how hard this has been for me and you need to take my sadness for me because I don't want to deal with it myself.
06:07.201 --> 06:08.263
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll pound and isolate.
06:08.497 --> 06:09.299
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
06:09.319 --> 06:14.451
[SPEAKER_00]: And in isolation, Todd, if I do that for a decade, I won't feel my sadness.
06:14.571 --> 06:15.814
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to lament.
06:15.854 --> 06:16.556
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to agree.
06:17.097 --> 06:18.601
[SPEAKER_00]: We're about in over time.
06:19.323 --> 06:21.929
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think one of the, here's how you know if you're in self-pity.
06:22.049 --> 06:25.898
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're saying this phrase, because my kids say it often.
06:25.878 --> 06:26.839
[SPEAKER_01]: it's not fair.
06:27.680 --> 06:31.566
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I hear it's not fair, I'm like, my kids are not willing to deal sadness.
06:32.026 --> 06:34.129
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, oh, man, I say that quite often.
06:34.169 --> 06:36.812
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time I might not say it externally, but I'm saying it internally.
06:37.573 --> 06:38.154
[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't fair.
06:38.194 --> 06:39.796
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, no, life is not fair.
06:40.778 --> 06:44.523
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's me not wanting to deal with the sadness of the loss that I'm experienced.
06:44.543 --> 06:51.632
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if I'm in that place of self-pity, life isn't fair, then we're going to demand the life be the way I
06:51.612 --> 07:00.267
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I get into self-pity, and I don't actually deal with the self-pity, I'll demand it be a certain way, and that certain way is my way.
07:01.429 --> 07:02.331
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I would say.
07:02.411 --> 07:15.274
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we get totally into isolation, we'll demand it from other people, demand it from God, and demand it from our spouse, demand it from our kids, that life has to work the way I wanted to work, and if it's not,
07:15.254 --> 07:17.317
[SPEAKER_01]: then I'll just keep demand.
07:17.397 --> 07:19.961
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll become a demand, a demanding machine.
07:20.662 --> 07:28.674
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a character in the great divorce from CS Lewis who has lost a child and her husband and son are also probably grieving.
07:28.694 --> 07:33.261
[SPEAKER_00]: They also lost a son and brother, but she's using her grief like a 9 millimeter.
07:33.541 --> 07:38.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she's holding into people's heads and she's like, you're going to do everything I say because my life has been hard.
07:38.609 --> 08:07.907
[SPEAKER_00]: and you can just see the demand as a function of unprocessed grief and the way that everybody else is now held hostage like her life has been hard she's not grieving it and now we have to obey her every every demand to I don't know it's almost like to balance out how it's been hard I'm gonna try to write the score a little bit and if you'll do everything I say then maybe it'll slowly get me back to sea level and so yeah it's such a powerful illustration
08:07.887 --> 08:30.688
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't heard it said from one of you guys this idea that I'm not going to grieve my sadness but I'm going to tell you about it and almost watch you grieve it like watch your reaction to it and almost get some kind of vicarious benefit of huh that's what it would look like if I grieved it by watching a surrogate I mean is that is that descriptive of some of what's happening in the dynamic when I have when I have self-pity
08:30.668 --> 08:33.652
[SPEAKER_02]: It's true, for sure, and it's true for all of them.
08:33.853 --> 08:36.917
[SPEAKER_02]: If you take, we recorded a podcast around anger.
08:37.478 --> 08:45.649
[SPEAKER_02]: A depressed person will watch movies or watch life happen, and they'll vicariously let other people carry their passion, so they don't have to.
08:46.030 --> 08:50.857
[SPEAKER_02]: So then what you said, Duke is pretty universal around how the impairments actually work.
08:51.297 --> 08:55.844
[SPEAKER_02]: I can have someone else do the painful part of feeling this feeling, and I'll watch them do it.
08:56.525 --> 08:56.625
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
08:56.605 --> 09:02.774
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's really robust neuroscience underneath this sadness in particular, James K.A.
09:02.794 --> 09:06.640
[SPEAKER_02]: Smith and others are written about our liturgies, our cadences, our patterns.
09:07.481 --> 09:12.769
[SPEAKER_02]: And we, like Todd and I have a routine and like I get my car drive to work, Todd's calling me here.
09:12.789 --> 09:14.151
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm calling him almost every day.
09:14.171 --> 09:16.414
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we talk and some begin to count on that.
09:16.614 --> 09:17.736
[SPEAKER_02]: If, if, if, if,
09:17.716 --> 09:26.429
[SPEAKER_02]: Todd were to move away or not be my friend or die or something, part of my brain looks forward to that liturgy of calling him.
09:26.669 --> 09:37.125
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I can't do that, it plunges me into, so my left brain or my recognition in life is Todd's not here, but my limbic brain says, but I'm looking for him.
09:37.105 --> 09:44.157
[SPEAKER_02]: And so our brains keep looking for those losses that we've had, you know, we live my family and I lived here for years here in the Metroplex.
09:44.177 --> 09:50.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Todd now went over there Monday night or some night when we were here, get lost track of days.
09:51.829 --> 09:57.358
[SPEAKER_02]: But as I was growing around, it looks different than it did before, things have aged 10, certainly I haven't.
09:57.338 --> 10:09.689
[SPEAKER_02]: Things have aged over there and I had this sadness in me of seeing the same things I saw for years and years because the neuroscience under my brain, I got to admit our brains is I'm looking for things to be like they were.
10:10.229 --> 10:15.834
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I remember what I love when I missed from here and when they weren't, it was confusing to me.
10:16.014 --> 10:19.097
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's the same way with the liturgies we have in relationship.
10:19.117 --> 10:26.063
[SPEAKER_02]: When those come to an end in any way, our brains continue to look for the liturgie
10:26.077 --> 10:30.404
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Psalms, we see a huge category of lament Psalms.
10:30.424 --> 10:39.919
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a so clearly present that God buys wisdom and has given us tools of prayer for what to do with it, how to process it, we have exemplars doing it, we have David.
10:40.841 --> 10:50.717
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and let's call it modern evangelicalism and really the milieu that the three of us have largely been formed in, I wouldn't say that the church has been all that famous for lament.
10:50.697 --> 10:52.140
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't modeled it very well.
10:52.201 --> 11:02.465
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we, why do you think the church isn't further along in dealing with sadness, equipping others to deal with sadness, really accessing the limit songs that are right there for us and playing side?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why aren't we stronger in, in, in that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: some of the and I come from the tradition my own family now I love my Mississippi family like crazy but there's there's been a rule that's been applied.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think inadvertently that if we lament and grieve that somehow means we don't trust God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: someone dies I'm not going to be sad I'm just going to celebrate where they are now and I've often said like yes I also celebrate where they are but I agree whether or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Now here with me anymore and there's been this covering put over this feeling in particular in the western church I would say largely that if I grieve it means I'm not trusting or I don't believe in eternity and I don't believe God is good and that's not necessarily true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's so good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll throw a Bible verse at someone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, God causes all things together for good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just move on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's, let's boat raise past the pain into the, the triumph.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, what do you see in that Todd, what do you think is contributing to are just inability, collectively, to really agree well, model that well, even equipped others to do that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's our refusal to do pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We don't, we are pain adverse.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We want to run from pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think doing sadness is so painful because, you know, when you it is the word attachment, when I attach to something, and then it rips from me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's so painful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think we're trying to avoid the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, you know, you're trying to avoid the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Phil has said this often.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He said, if we're going to do sadness and we do it well, then we'll actually honor the pain that we're going through.
12:37.221 --> 12:38.864
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we don't honor the pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's the painful places in life that gives us the most growth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think we just want to avoid pain at all cause.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think it just comes to a place of acceptance.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And acceptance is it's not okay, but it's going to be okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in my own life, you know, I can see doing sadness has led me to a place of being able to help other people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My dad, 14 years ago, committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And being a Texas really evoked something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'd get off the plane.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something that happens internally in me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, man,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, there was a part of me that was like, I'd love to call my dad and have him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He would have driven up here to Dallas, just to do dinner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I can't even have that experience.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And some sad about that, agreed the loss of him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I can see now, God's used that my life to be able to speak into other men and women who have their parents have committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And a way I wouldn't have been able to do 14 years ago.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's moments of days.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll just be driving down the road and a tear will come to my eye or my thought about my dad and the loss of him and there's an acceptance and yet God is still using that in my life and in that using the life other people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as you're saying that, Todd, I'm just thinking of St. Corinthians 1 that the God of all comfort is comforted you and you now able to comfort others with the comfort through which you've been comforted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that becomes a part of the body life dealing with this world that losses are going to keep coming and now you're equipped to be an agent of of healing, an agent of comforting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's even an interesting Holy Spirit's first title, and as a John 14 is that the Comforter, which is just kind of as you said Phil, it's like if this is the biggest emotion of the most frequent emotion in the fall world, it's really a good news that the Holy Spirit said, hey, I'm on that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're going to experience a lot of loss and I'm here as a comforter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a title that I bear to attend to that and to help you grow through that towards acceptance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, this is really, really helpful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what else do you think is helpful for people to know about sadness and I feel you said there's a lot of nuance here and there's a lot we can get into.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what else do you think people misunderstand about it or need to understand about it to move forward with it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You kind of tip-to-hand a little bit, you segwayed and totally into this word comfort, which, you know, we know emotionally and relationally with other people that when someone is really, really sad, we want to provide comfort for them, and the word there that the suffix of comfort, FORT, the word literally means to fortify, so comforting, it means, yeah, grant security and a safe place, it also means to strengthen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that we're, you know, the, the, the Jews have a tradition called sitting Shiva and they will just sit with the person on these really low stools to the ground because they know their loved one has been laid low, as they say, and I'm going to sit down right next to the floor with you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: In recognition, you've been laid low and I want to strengthen you with my presence by sitting low with you in that way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so comfort is part of that, you know,
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if we could get really, really competent, I'll say emotionally competent, have a strong theology of sadness in the church, in the body of Christ, I think it would literally revolutionize how not how we view death, how we view life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's valuable and it's wonderful and it's rich and it doesn't last very long, the right of ecclesiasties, you know, called it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: of vapor or smoke, and that it has to do with brevity, but it also has to do with the more I try to control life, the more I try to live in demand and make life work, the faster dissipates like smoke does.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we could do anything magically transformed, Christendom, if we had a fuller, deeper recognition of just the universality of loss,
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[SPEAKER_02]: and how it is the opportunity to give and to receive fortification in the body of Christ and the capital C. Comforter.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would make such a difference in how we approach relationships in the body and relationship with God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's so good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think them now would add to all that is.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we talked in a earlier podcast about anger and many people want to get to anger.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They want that passion, they want that desire.
17:33.248 --> 17:35.131
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the doorway to anger is sadness.
17:35.552 --> 17:38.656
[SPEAKER_01]: You see that with Jesus when he overlooks the city of Jerusalem.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He weeps for the city and it was his weeping that led him to the anger to go into the city to do some about it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I often tell people when I'm with them one-on-one in in session and they're like, man, I have a desire to pass, these long as I want to go do something, I'm like, have you done sadness, I'm like, no, and I'm not going to, I'm like, well, then you won't get to that anger that you have, you have to deal with a sadness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you're not going to deal with the sadness, then we get into the places of desire and passion, you'll then go into demanding that it be your way and it's no longer true anger.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So sadness is really the doorway into anger.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's so helpful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe give us a couple of pointers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So let's say I've just had somebody in my community experience deep loss.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm on the receiving side.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not my loss, it's their loss, but I'm ministering to them or I have an opportunity to minister to them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What would you say to do, you know, what is wisdom on being on the other side of someone who's processing sadness?
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a familiar phrase called being Jesus in human flesh.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So to speak, and you look, you've referred several times, like, as we're recording these and other places, lunch and other places about your, you have such a beautiful heart
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[SPEAKER_02]: lamenting through the Psalms.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like I've ever told him I've talked about that, my man, Duke, is he has dialed into the beauty of lament.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and how David so expresses that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think around the question you ask in particular, around that is like if we come into the presence of someone that we know is grieving, if we think about those lament Psalms,
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[SPEAKER_02]: a person that's crying out that way to God is also going to be crying out that way to me whether he or she says it or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What do most of the limit Psalms have to do with God?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Where are you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: How long is this going to be?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And is this ever going to end?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, as we can sit with people, we can know that that's judging by the Psalms.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We can know that's what's going over and over and over into them and we can offer true hope, not hope that says,
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[SPEAKER_02]: But the hope that says, I know what God says is true.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I also know where you are is true.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And let me sit with you and wait until you can have words to articulate your heart in both of those worlds.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But God's word says is true and this loss is true too.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So let's just talk all between those two polls.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I remember Eugene Peterson talking about how so many people overfunction in that moment and they throw too many Bible verses or they try to move people too quickly through that into some kind of happy ending or whatnot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm hearing a lot around the patience, curiosity, the gift of presence that I can't fix this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I can attend
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[SPEAKER_00]: to you and let you know you matter and your grief matters and your loss matters and I see you yeah which is such a gift for people and maybe even pressure off to someone to say hey you don't have to solve it like you're not you're not the fire department that's come into to deal with this and to make it all better you're actually doing more often by just being there and attending and and giving your presence to somebody who is just sad and
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was such a powerful gift.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Todd, any other advice you would give to people, they've encountered a friend who's suffering, and they don't know what to do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They may over-function under-function, but they're trying to figure out the course.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Always say, don't do a Joe's friends, did.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then, Joe bit lost everything, and his friends come, and for the first, they do, as Phil said earlier, they sit with him, and they're grieving with him, and then they kidn't tolerate their own grief, and not tolerate their own grief,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to push him into, and just get through this quickly, and so I think it's a patient process of just sitting with people and start paying attention to your grief as you sit with other people's grief.
21:35.912 --> 21:43.540
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you paying attention to your own grief will let give you the courage and the patience that was onelts us.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's so good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a great
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[SPEAKER_00]: Man, there's so much there that for seven days they were silent seven days.
21:52.371 --> 22:07.253
[SPEAKER_00]: They nailed it actually Give the press they crushed it and then they they got impatient and and they and they started to presume right they started to imagine They knew more about the situation than they knew they you know Job doesn't even know really what's going on fully.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what's going on, but they're starting to guess
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and sometimes we talk about that, that the poll of judgment versus curiosity, but even coming in with someone and saying, I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't fully know what it's like to lose a child or I don't know sitting with you what it's like to have my father commit suicide.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've got truly don't know if I try to grab a Bible verse and I try to presume on you and I start to just throw that at you and the right answers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing what Job's friends have done to him.
22:35.036 --> 22:37.019
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm just presuming all over you.
22:37.480 --> 22:44.231
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to solve you, and it's honestly probably more about my own life and me wanting to get us back to equilibrium.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's uncomfortable to see you in such a disoriented state and I've got to hurry up and resolve that so I don't have to feel that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would just encourage the audience, even as you have those reactive moments, maybe you would really wish to fast-forward the movie and get somebody through something, I'd be curious about what's going on in your own chest.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a lot more about you than it is the other person, and it may not actually be that helpful to them if you're trying to move them to quickly pass something that isn't really authentically being formed in them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this has been really helpful, guys.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think sadness is something that we probably all want to not experience, but we've just said, honestly, you're going to experience it, and there's a way through it, though.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a way that can result in comfort, there's a way in which I can move through it authentically and come to acceptance and continue to move forward.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe even as an agent of comfort for others and be more equipped, maybe more humble and empathetic and a better friend, a better part of the community helping others also.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for listening to the Reform podcast.
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[SPEAKER_03]: If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe button, share it with your friends, leave us a rating, and check out our other resources at theeatenproject.com.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Peace!
