August 8, 2023 • 35 mins
Ever wondered how renaming your traumatic experiences could lead to a transformative journey towards self-empowerment? That's what we're exploring today - the potential to reprogram ourselves, break free from negative self-definitions, and aligning with the divine truth - we are beloved. Join us as we tackle the challenge of believing in our worthiness and discuss how our bodies' physical memories often serve as reminders of past traumas.
On our journey towards healing, we'll leverage the power of decision-making and a handful of influential books to help us redefine our identities. We'll break down the insights from popular books like Body Keeps a Score, Man's Search for Meaning, Loving What Is, The Untethered Soul. Together, we'll explore the power these resources hold in redefining our personal identities post-trauma and setting us on the path to self-empowerment.
As we conclude today's episode, we'll invite you to participate in an exercise of growth and self-reflection. We'll navigate the concepts of gentleness in decision-making and underscore its potential to rewrite our narratives. We'll dive deep into the wisdom carried in Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry's "What Happened To You?", and Dan Allender's "A Story Yet To Be Told". Lastly, we'll speak about the profound importance of self-love, understanding God's love, and how it reshapes our relationship with ourselves and the divine.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to season two of so much more, a lifestyle
podcast by Dennis and HeatherDrake.
So much more is a podcast basedon our lives, eclectic and
inspired, one whererelationships are honored and
invested in.
We invite you to join us as wecontinue a lifestyle and a
(00:23):
lifelong discussion.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So good, you know what I was thinking about, you
know what you're saying, jerry,about.
You know, in trauma weexperience it and then we put a
definition on it or anexplanation.
But oftentimes that was like a10 year old kid that made that
determination.
And so now this, I'm a 54.
(00:49):
So the 54 year old man livesunder the sentence or the
definition that this young childin a trauma made.
And so we do identify thatthose traumas, we integrate them
(01:10):
in some capacity or they becomepart of us.
But that's not hopeless, becauseif they were wired in at one
point, I certainly have maybedidn't realize it before, but
have the potential, theopportunity to rewire.
(01:32):
And so you know you and I weretalking the other day about, you
know, just kind of thisrevelation that, oh my God, I am
just a pile of programming.
I'm a pile of wiring that wasmostly done by a hack, a very
young human that was raised bywolves and didn't know what they
were doing.
So, and so I think that,presented with the idea that I
(01:59):
can reprogram, is both excitingand terrifying, because
primarily, I think, only for thebrave, I think a lot of people
will just go back to drinking orgo back to burying their head
under some kind of religiousbasket, and this is really a
(02:21):
calling by God and anopportunity for life, and life
more abundant.
But make no mistake, no one'ssaying that it's easy.
But I think all three of us arepresenting the idea to
ourselves, to each other and tothe listeners that, man, this is
absolutely possible, that youcan rewire, reprogram this stuff
(02:42):
that has trapped you.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And just in the idea of bringing things back to my
particular Christian root, isthis idea that, since the very
beginning, god gave the job ofnaming things to humans, and
sometimes as little people asyoung people or people that are
in experience.
When we name things, we namethem, things that need to be
(03:06):
renamed.
We see God coming through overand over again in humanity and
renaming people, renamingsituations, even renaming
geography, and so the idea isthat, following in that
spirituality, we would also berenamed.
And then, ultimately, you know,in the book of Revelation it
talks that one time we'll seeGod and he'll rename us, because
, ultimately, we will have neverbe fully known till we're known
(03:29):
by love.
And this idea that the renamingis a maturing and so we can go
back to those places of traumaand rename them, not diminish
them, not ignore them not, callthem.
Not to call them what they'renot, but to rename them instead
of calling ourselves worthlessor dumb, being able to go back
(03:51):
and go.
No, we were inexperienced, andthere's a huge difference
between someone who's stupid andsomeone who is inexperienced.
We have so much compassion andinexperience.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, it's so interesting.
Right when I became a Christianat the age of 17, I had so much
trauma that I didn't resolve ordeal with, and at that time the
church's solution was tobelieve, to pray, to read your
Bible and to just make adecision to forgive or to do
that.
Well, it didn't get to the corebelief system or the wiring
(04:22):
that had happened in my body.
And the church is getting somuch better at looking at trauma
and trying to figure out.
What does that look like and howto.
Trauma is so complicated, right, I'm not an expert in trauma.
I'm an expert in my own traumaand the trauma I've caused
myself and others have caused me.
But I think, as we look at it,it happened for me in a
childhood, others it might havehappened in a very abusive
(04:44):
relationship later, or ahorrific event of abuse, sexual
abuse or just a life event of atragic moment or car wrecks or
whatever and that trauma, as Iwas looking at it in my story,
is that others you're sayingrename when that moment would
(05:04):
happen.
I made a decision, so I made adecision about myself as not
being lovable, and so that thencaused me to hide the unlovable
parts of myself, caused me tohave to try to earn love, and it
showed up in so manydysfunctional ways.
I think there's a real keypiece of going back to that with
(05:26):
help, therapy, professional orhowever that works for an
individual on their journey ofrenaming that or that decision.
Right, a person may have gonethrough a horrible relationship
and a person left them and itwas the decision I make about
myself in that moment is maybeI'm unlovable, right, and I'm
going to be alone forever andnobody's going to know how to
(05:48):
love me.
And then that starts to playout my life by sabotaging
potential relationships or notputting myself back out there.
Reality is, we're invited backinto aligning that traumatic
moment and that decision withwhat God actually says about us
that you are the beloved.
And so and it goes back toloving ourselves instead of
(06:11):
hating ourselves, because ourtrauma defined us and made a
decision about ourselves.
What was that decision we made?
I'm not lovable, I'm not enough, I'm not worthy.
Well, that's why so much in thepower of believing about loving
yourself is going back andgoing no.
In that moment, my parentsdidn't know how to show up for
me and my five-year-old braindidn't know how to categorize
(06:32):
that, and so I made thesecertain decisions.
I could go back to that moment,make a different decision about
myself.
It is aligned in love andaligned with what God actually
says.
And that becomes the difficultpart of playing that out in your
life.
I remember, as I started doingthat, it felt uncomfortable
(06:53):
physically for me to believethat I wasn't bad.
And then, as I realized, oh,that's my body's memory, that's
my brain's highway of neuronsgoing.
I'm more comfortable withthinking horrible about you than
thinking good about you.
But as I just kept plowingthrough it with my mind, the
(07:14):
thoughts I thought, the wordsthat I spoke, and then the
emotion that I attached thescience behind the thought of
not only do we need toexperience the thought of what
we want to believe aboutourselves, but also feeling the
emotion of what that would feellike to love ourselves and
(07:35):
actually sitting with that.
It's a very powerful force torewire us, because our brains
often don't know the differencebetween us and a vent happening
now, or is it simply a memoryI'm replaying.
And as I'm replaying thatmemory, we've all known it right
, we've replayed a moment whereyou've gotten an argument and
then those chemicals start toflow back in you, you start to
(07:55):
get tense and frustrated and itcan ruin your whole day.
So your brain thinks it'sreplaying or happening again.
To where?
If I say in this moment I'mgoing to think a thought of who
I believe that I am aligned withGod, feel the emotion that goes
with that, wow, yeah, and thenspeaking the words that align
with that, it's allreprogramming and retraining,
like we said, that big bag ofprogramming that we are.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Some of this is easier and some of it's harder,
but I think the practicality isto make this a practice.
Thank you.
Because, I was.
I remembered something I thinklike a year ago.
I remember being in fifth gradeand I remembered one of our
teachers had taken a long hiatusfor some sickness or whatever.
So we had a substitute teacherand it was a young, younger guy
(08:42):
and and I remember liking theguy a lot but, but probably
being a crazy fifth grader withmy other buddies acting silly or
whatever we we must have beenquite difficult to be in a class
with.
I only think that with hindsight, because I remember
experiencing the couple ofmonths that that guy was my
teacher and then not seeing himfor like a year, and I happened
(09:03):
to be walking home from schoolthrough the college and I was by
myself and he happened to bewalking in the college the other
direction by himself, and I sawhim and like Mr I don't
remember his name but I'm likeMr So-and-so, it's so great to
see you and he goes, dennis, andhe started gritting his teeth,
dennis, dennis, and he picked meup by my hair, he lifted me off
(09:27):
the ground.
You know my feet are danglingand I'm a, you know, fifth
grader and and I remember ithurts so bad that I wanted to
cry.
But then I thought to myself.
The first thing I interpretedthat thing was I must be such a
horrible person that when thisgrown man gets a chance to see
(09:49):
me he wants to hurt me.
Now, you know, now I'm 54 yearsold.
I look back at that and I thinkyou know I mean the knee jerk
reactions, what a jerk he was,you know right.
But then I can actually evenhave some compassion on him
going.
He was a college guy that wasput in charge of a bunch of
fifth graders.
No one should have to do thatand it must have been really
(10:10):
hard for him and he probablydidn't have the skills to know
how to handle someone like me.
And so he handled itinappropriate but so fascinating
that probably most of thehandling that we had as young
people were by somebody thatdidn't know what they were doing
, were new at it or messing up,and we're interpreting that
(10:31):
wrong.
So that's like a whole stew orwrong, you know.
But what I did was that for thelongest time it became another
belief, another card in the inthe full deck of, you know, the
royal flush of your garbageCause.
Obviously, if that teacherwhatever his name was he
couldn't stand me, to the pointthat when he saw me and he had
(10:53):
his opportunity.
He inflicted pain against me.
That's the kind of human I was,so much so that I needed to be
hurt by an adult, you know.
And so obviously we'reinterpreting the whole wrong and
so so that's maybe an easierone to step back as an adult.
But I think sometimes you haveto set with him a little bit and
I think you've said it even askGod what you think of me, ask
(11:17):
God what, how to discern eventhat situation.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
I definitely think that we should ask God, but we
should ask God, maybe with afriend or with someone we trust,
because sometimes God is soangry, because, again, obviously
not God is not angry, but theway we, the image we have of God
, that God would sit in judgmentof us.
And then we need a trustedfriend or someone, a therapist,
who can counsel us and say, youknow, perhaps there could have
(11:43):
been a misunderstanding.
And perhaps you know there'scompassion here and there's love
here and there's mercy.
I think one of the things that Ikeep hearing as we're going
around and around the greatdisservice that we've done to
ourselves is we haven'tnormalized failure and it really
impedes practice and impedesthe way that we live our lives,
because we so value perfectionor rightness or the end of
(12:08):
something and process andfailure need to be something
that we are so just comfortablewith, and we are just so
uncomfortable with any of thoseparticular things, particularly,
I think, in the Christian faith, the idea of failing at
something and the idea, if wereframe failure, it just means
you tried and that's a beautifulthing.
It may not have had the desiredresult, but you're.
(12:30):
The effort is there and thatyou know, understanding that
even with ourselves we may notget to this right away or allow
the full process to happen rightaway, but that the practice and
the failing that comes throughit, and the practice and the
practice and the practice thatit does, the process, is already
built in to growth, healing allthose things.
(12:53):
It's in the DNA of this lifethat God put in the planet.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And I appreciate what you're saying and I absolutely
do think that we ought to not dothat in a vacuum, but I do.
I pushed back a little bit onthe because I do think that if
we'll trust the Holy SpiritAgreed, you know the Holy Spirit
will tell us how to reframethose things, but I think you
know that I think, if we lookback with honesty on our lives,
(13:21):
we thought the Holy Spirit toldus to say and do a lot of stuff
that the Holy Spirit never saidto do.
So, but I just do.
I do want to challenge on theidea that there there's almost
like this really holy part of ofjust, you know, asking God, I,
I, I'm seeing myself in this waywhat did you see?
(13:42):
And it's, and I've just, I'vehad such a great experience
about him giving me, I mean, andjust this, hopeful words that
are so kind to me and they feelvery foreign.
That's why I can almostguarantee their God, because
they were, like, actually very,very kind towards, in a way of
(14:03):
looking advantage point that Iwas unable to see.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
I certainly don't mean to say that you only have
to with a friend, but I thinkthat if you find yourself stuck
or you find yourself in patternsthat are repeating, repeating
and you're not getting anywhere,then it might be time to bring
someone else in and say this iswhat I'm thinking and this is
how I'm thinking it and this isthe conclusion I'm coming to,
and maybe someone else can helpus see something differently or
hear the voice of love speak ina way that is gentle.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well, I think that we gave some pretty good practical
things today.
I did tease the idea thatHeather would share books and I
know, jerry, you're an avidreader as well.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
And Jerry already mentioned too.
I'll make sure they're in theshow notes.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Okay, yeah, and they are again.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Well, I'll write.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
The one was body keeps a score.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah, and the other one by Victor Frankel.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, victor Frankel.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And was there anything off the top of your
head, that man?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
search for meaning.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Victor man search for meaning.
You do have a top five jury ofbooks that have been influential
in that, just say, in the pastfive years.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Oh gosh.
So yeah, that's something thatif I've got a top five, you
might need to give me a beat,because I'm going to have to
categorize those in my mind.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Okay, but there's no one else who knows what top five
you're talking about, so nojudgment here.
You can change your top five in10 minutes, even.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
What are the things that you know?
If somebody was embarking onyou know you just what we talked
about today.
You know you gave to thank youfor that, and that might not be
enough, but if there is anythingI always like to do, the Oprah
had a book club, and so I thinkHeather and she are like you're,
(15:48):
Oprah.
No, no, no.
I'm not open to this scenario.
My book club would be like DrSeuss or something.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
So Dr Seuss is pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So you guys can have.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Okay, I'm going to give a few of books that I think
that you would agree.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
At least two, loving what is loving.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
What is Yep Byron Katie?
Yeah, absolutely.
There's Michael Singer's bookthe untethered soul, or you know
, that's just one that talksabout the thoughts and the over
identification with thoughts.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh man, was that ever a powerful conversation?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, that that really did unlock some stuff and
so just really helped me seethat the thoughts are thoughts,
they're not me, but thedecisions, as you said earlier,
we made the decisions about whowe are and what we believe about
(16:42):
ourselves, which also is soempowering to say I can make a
new decision about myself andyou say, well, I didn't make
that decision, my dad made thatdecision.
Well, your dad or your motheror your ex partner or spouse or
childhood event in later in lifeevents, yes, influenced it, may
(17:05):
have even transferred itthere's the idea of transferred
trauma and all of that stuff butI continued to reinforce those
stories, reinforce thosedecisions and because I have
that power to make that decisionabout myself, I also have the
power to make a differentdecision.
And that's all.
(17:27):
That's some work.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But it's worth it.
I know that for me, thatconversation that you and I had
several months ago has been lifechanging to me because I so
identified with my thoughts aswho I am At the minute I had a
bad thought, then obviously I'mbad, I'm the one that had that
thought.
But if you do kind of separateyourself from it in the sense of
(17:51):
my soul or my spirit, or thedecision maker within me, the
one who agrees really has thatdeciding vote.
So there is within thisexpression I think we've heard
in churches forever that youcan't help that a bird flies
over your head, but you can'tstop them from making a nest in
(18:12):
your hair, Right, Unless you'rebald.
Then there's no hope for you.
But, knowing all seriousness, ifI know that birds would fly
over my head, then the idea is,you know you'll have thoughts,
but I.
So the minute I had a thought Iwas defeated.
But when we had thatconversation, like you know, I
am not my thoughts, I am thespirit who decides.
(18:35):
Well, no, I disagree with that.
I'm going to go ahead and agreewith what God says about me.
It was just like all of asudden I at least got a chance
out of the gate to win, becauseI was defeated before I ever
started the race because I soowned, that being who I am.
So, yeah, if you could get somebenefit out of that book, by
(18:57):
all means I would recommend thatyou would read it.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, yeah, the Brinamani stuff.
You know, all is grace.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Anything by Henry Nguyen.
You should read all of that.
Absolutely, father RichardRohrer.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yes, and then there's a great one that you know it's
what happened to you and it'sone of those really really good
books.
It's Oprah Winfrey, as well asa doctor, dr Bruce Perry, and it
reframes the conversation fromlike what's wrong with you is
(19:33):
what we often ask.
What's wrong with you, what'swrong with him?
You know, the better questionis what happened to you?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And not in a sarcastic tone.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah right, what happened to you?
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Yeah, yeah right the idea of that curiosity that says
, oh, I bet there's a story here.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah, it's the same question we can ask ourselves
right, instead of what's wrongwith me to what happened to me,
what is my story?
And well… what else would Ithink about myself with those
events in my life?
Or what else would I thinkabout myself in a religious
system that says I'm bad, thatI'm horrible?
(20:08):
Of course, that's gonna startprogramming me to think that and
that's something that ishappening that I can make new
decisions about.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Yeah, we love everything that we've read by
Dan Allender.
He has a story, a book called AStory Yet to be Told, and that
idea of rewriting, renamingstories that we tell about
ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's so funny because these conversations they pivot
like a pinball machine bam, bam,bam.
But each one of those littlebounces have really been maybe
long studies or long periods, oreven sometimes short periods,
but still moments wherecontemplation and prayer and
(20:49):
consideration and study.
Because, yeah, we do someresearch a long time ago with
the father wound, with JohnEldridge, and all of a sudden he
speaks of Dan Allender and thenwe bump over here to listen and
(21:10):
then the next thing he's likeabsolutely rocking our world to
the point where we're I don'tknow if we'll stop listening to
him and never speak of him againor regularly.
Let that thing open up,whatever it was opening up.
And so I think, wherever youfind yourself on the journey,
there are the times wherethere's a grace to it and
(21:30):
there's a time where it's afight.
But it's worth it for you topress in to get the more of the
so much more that God is.
It's worth it for us to do this.
But if it were easy, everyonewould walk in it and I think
it's not for the fate of heartor the weak of will, but you
(21:51):
gotta decide.
I wanna be a better husband formy wife and I wanna be a better
friend to you, jerry, and Iwanna be a better father to my
children and I wanna be anawesome grandpa one day.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, absolutely, and , like you said, it's not easy.
But I think the key, even formen I mean for men this is a
hard one to be gentle withyourself in the process,
realizing that it is hard.
And just because it isdifficult doesn't mean that
you're the only one who's notgonna be able to figure this out
right.
Shame will end.
All this stuff will keeptelling you the message Well,
(22:26):
that works for everybody else.
I had that thought for so manyyears.
That works for everybody else.
That's not gonna work for mebecause I'm different and wired
this way, and this happened tome.
Now it is the work that we do,and we do it in gentleness,
because when we beat ourselvesup, our minds and our bodies say
I don't wanna go back into thatwork again, because every time
I go into that work with you totry to resolve that, you beat me
up and I start to avoid it.
(22:48):
And.
But if I'm gentle with myselfand loving towards myself, I
invite myself back into the workinstead of resisting myself to
go into the work.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
There's another wonderful book called the Allure
of Gentleness by.
Dallas Willard.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You can get to it.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
The scripture tells us it's an evidence of the Holy
Spirit.
So being gentle with ourselveswould then allow us to idealize
this.
This is the presence of Godworking gentle.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
My examples of teachers, coaches, parents were
mostly I'm not feeling sorry formyself, it's just kind of the
way it was.
It was like more of a.
You'll get this if I yell youinto this.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Very masculine text.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, and a lot of us have experienced that and so
I've dealt with my sons,unfortunately, like that.
But it's ultimately again goesback to because that's how I
deal with me, and so I thinkmaybe even a year ago we were
presenting that idea.
What would it be like if I wasgentle with the young Dennis or
(23:53):
the young Jerry?
Like, how would I treat theyoung Dennis if I saw him
walking?
If there was a time machine andI was walking down that college
campus, would I lift him up bythe hair and wanna hurt him?
For years I think I did, becauseI felt like that.
Maybe I didn't really followthe thought through, but I think
(24:15):
that reminded me of weakness,because I was little, I was
young, I was weak, but I wouldreally want to have that time
machine just to hug him.
And that's so contrary to how Iwas raised or what I observed
(24:36):
from the way I was raised, and Ijust think that gentleness
towards us.
That's a hard thing to do,probably for me at any moment,
but certainly for me as a man Icould say that and we're so
afraid of gentleness because inour minds it doesn't equate with
(24:56):
justice.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
If I'm gentle, then I'm letting someone get away
with that, I'm letting myselfget away with that.
And if we understand theevidence, or what?
Is revealed to us in scripturesthat justice is gentle.
I mean not on evil, but on thevictim, on that which is good in
that it is restorative, notretributive, and we have a lot
(25:19):
of retributive theology asopposed to going, what is love
offering and what doesgentleness lead us into?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, there's a great set of books.
It's not a set of books, it's agreat author, doctor.
There's a great system thatRichard Swartz, dr Richard
Swartz teaches, and it's aboutinternal family systems.
Great book by that talks aboutyou are the one that you're
(25:49):
looking for how to show up inrelationships healthy, but then
another one called no Bad Parts.
But what it does is itaddresses exactly what you were
just talking about, dennis,which is there's parts of us
that along the way, we'veabandoned about ourselves.
Right when we look back atthose moments of that moment
(26:14):
when you dealt with that teacherand you felt a sense of
weakness, so you decided in thatmoment that weakness was
something that was bad.
I'm not sure if you did, butI'm just playing on that and so
what you did was you wanted to.
I'm saying what you did, butwhat a person would do in that
situation is to want to Thanksfor reading my mail in front of
(26:36):
everybody.
Yes, what a person might do inthat situation is I want to
abandon the weak Dennis.
Yeah, okay, but that's not aweak Dennis.
That was a Dennis who justneeded to be loved and treated
in a different way.
And so what we do then is wedevelop protectors, and so I
(26:56):
want to abandon the weak part ofme or I want to protect
actually, I want to protect thatpart of me.
So then I create this piece ofme that shows up angry or
dominant, because I feel likethat protects that piece of me
that feels weak.
But going back with gentlenessto visit that kid and to love
them is all so much about whatDr Richard Schwartz talks about
(27:19):
in internal family systems.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
And also what Jesus invites us when he invites us to
witness being able to go backto those painful places unafraid
, because we're bringing Jesuswith us, but being able to say
how should we name this?
What does this look like?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Thank, you yeah, I know, in contemplation you can
you know if you're directed atall in it.
You can do that in a practicalway, because we're talking about
some practical things here.
I think one of the practicalthings I learned was just asking
the spirit what do you, youknow, what do you have to say
(28:01):
about this?
Or, you know, what do you thinkabout this?
Because I like to play guitar,I play music and I've had a lot,
oh, through my life, a lot ofpeople tell me turn that guitar
down, it's noisy, you know,you're, you know.
So I've had this like gift orsomething that I like to share,
but not everybody wanted toreceive what I was offering.
(28:24):
And, you know, through somecontemplation, you know, I asked
actually kind of a veryopen-ended question to spirit
what do you, you know, tell mesomething that I don't, that I
didn't know about myself?
You know, and I really feltlike I heard the spirit Lord say
I like to sit and listen to youwhen you play guitar.
(28:47):
And I just wept when I had thatthought.
That hopeful thought wasamazing to me because, you know,
it kind of makes sense if he'somnipresent, he's got spare time
, because we think oftentimeshe's got to be out, you know,
feeding all the hunger orwhatever but he can be
everywhere.
Oh yeah, that's our job, right?
Good point, so I can I can,through contemplation, ask him
(29:14):
about those things.
And it's amazing like we'reoftentimes afraid to ask the
question because we say, what?
What if he doesn't answer?
But my thing with people is,what if he does?
It's worth asking those kind ofcontemplative questions because
it's amazing, what anundercover's.
And for me it was such a coolthought because I had, because
it echoes in my head.
(29:35):
People say I want you to turnthat dang guitar down to him.
I imagine him sitting right inmy little recording studio
sliding up one of the chairsright in front of me as I'm
playing guitar and enjoyingbeing there, and that's.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
What does that do for you as a man to feel like
you're enjoyed by God, Right?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
right that I'm not despised by everyone, everything
which is kind of like sometimesmy view about myself and my
assumption about other people,and that, because you do, you
read anyone's sour, look attheir fate.
While they must think I'm just,you know, they might have just
got a pinched nerve in their hip, who knows, but we read into
that always through our story,you know.
So what if we could ask thesethings and begin to address
(30:15):
these things?
And ultimately, I think youknow the message of today is
what if, if you could loveyourself?
Just not not that you're sayingyou'll never change, but right
now, what if you didn't changeanymore right now?
Could you be loved by yourselfand by God, and he's able to?
And what prevents you Otheryeah, I mean other than our?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
other than our history of thinking and wiring.
And, you know, when I don'tlike myself, I naturally assume
that God doesn't like me, right?
And and then I say no, no, no,I believe God loves me.
Okay, I just invite you to like, and that may be absolutely,
maybe 100% on.
No, I totally feel that Godloves me and I have no issue
(31:02):
there.
I just had maybe have an issuewith myself and loving myself,
but then, you know, I for me, Ihad to look at how I even was
having communication with Godand my communication with God
was showing up more so on theI'm so sorry repentance, you
know, and focus it on so muchnegativeness, because I thought
(31:24):
that that's what God wasfocusing in on about me, right?
And when I think that God isfocusing in on all the bad about
me, then do I really or I thinkthat I've got to keep figuring
out how to please that God Ireally then think that the God
that talks to me that way orviews me that way, really loves
(31:45):
me?
Because at that point it's moreof a conceptual yeah, no, I
believe God loves meunconditionally and, yes, I felt
his love at times and, you know, it was beautiful, but the
overarching theme was that Ineeded to prove something.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
You could quote a bunch of doctrine or a bunch of
things that you're supposed tobelieve, but if you, in your
quiet place, what do you reallybelieve?
And for me, the one of the theyou know cards that had to be
pulled out of the house of cardsthat I built myself was, you
know, I studied and preached asermon called God likes me, yeah
(32:22):
, and cause obviously he's gotto love you, that he wouldn't
even be good if he's in lovewith everyone, but does he like
you?
You know, and so, meditating onthat kind of thing and it was
funny too, cause I wasstruggling in this area and as a
preacher, you know, you got toprepare and it's I felt so
woefully unable to preach andhelp people with something that
I struggle with so much, and butit's really within that study,
(32:44):
cause I really felt inviting mewell, no, go ahead and study it
out, because that what you findout you'll share and what you
find out will be helpful to youtoo, you know, so I did, I just
took the journey and and it wasreally kind of wrestling that
idea that he likes you, and alot of people can't even say
that, right, you know, yeah, heloves you, but does he like you
(33:06):
you?
know cause you got to look, youknow but when you choose to be
around you, and I and I thinkthat the end of that study for
me is to find out that he reallywould for us, right, yeah, and
that's, that's a hopeful thought.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Well, and if you think about it, if love heals,
then love also heals ourrelationship with ourself, cause
we have a relationship withourself Right.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
And how we view ourselves and see ourselves.
It heals our relations.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
love heals that relationship that we have with
the divine right, that we'veseen the divine in a certain way
or but it also heals ourrelationship with ourselves and
as you look at Christ and how heinteracted with people, there's
a lot of healing of therelationship between people
themselves Think that Jesusreally did a beautiful job in
(33:53):
showing us what it looks like tolive as the beloved, where he's
able to, I guess deep in hisbones, know how deeply he's
loved because he is able to dothese incredible wonderful
things and have people receivethe incredible wonderful things
all different ways and never bedefensive, and that living in a
(34:14):
in a way that you would neverhave to defend yourself.
What freedom that would be ifyou didn't feel like you were
constantly on trial.
Like what if you could live soloved?
And what if we could practice,you know, these embodied
practice of living as thebeloved.
What if everything we did wasnot on trial?
And that would be, that wouldbe.
(34:35):
There could be a lot of joy inour lives, and that I see a lot
of joy in the way that Jesuslived, even a very difficult
life.
Yeah, and there was.
He found practices that alloweda lot of joy Table practices,
table sharing one of them.
Yeah, table sharing.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
You've been listening to Season 2 of the so Much More
Podcast with Dennis and HeatherDrake.
We want to take a moment andexpress our sincerest thanks for
the investment of your time andif you're interested in
continuing conversation or moreinformation about what we
discussed, please email us atsomuchmorepodcastatgmailcom.
If you're interested in some ofthe creative projects that
(35:14):
Dennis has done, you can findout more information at
drakensonscom or find us onTwitter at so much more podcast.
We'd love to hear from you.
Welcome to season two of so much more, a lifestyle
podcast by Dennis and HeatherDrake.
So much more is a podcast basedon our lives, eclectic and
inspired, one whererelationships are honored and
invested in.
We invite you to join us as wecontinue a lifestyle and a
(00:23):
lifelong discussion.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So good, you know what I was thinking about, you
know what you're saying, jerry,about.
You know, in trauma weexperience it and then we put a
definition on it or anexplanation.
But oftentimes that was like a10 year old kid that made that
determination.
And so now this, I'm a 54.
(00:49):
So the 54 year old man livesunder the sentence or the
definition that this young childin a trauma made.
And so we do identify thatthose traumas, we integrate them
(01:10):
in some capacity or they becomepart of us.
But that's not hopeless, becauseif they were wired in at one
point, I certainly have maybedidn't realize it before, but
have the potential, theopportunity to rewire.
(01:32):
And so you know you and I weretalking the other day about, you
know, just kind of thisrevelation that, oh my God, I am
just a pile of programming.
I'm a pile of wiring that wasmostly done by a hack, a very
young human that was raised bywolves and didn't know what they
were doing.
So, and so I think that,presented with the idea that I
(01:59):
can reprogram, is both excitingand terrifying, because
primarily, I think, only for thebrave, I think a lot of people
will just go back to drinking orgo back to burying their head
under some kind of religiousbasket, and this is really a
(02:21):
calling by God and anopportunity for life, and life
more abundant.
But make no mistake, no one'ssaying that it's easy.
But I think all three of us arepresenting the idea to
ourselves, to each other and tothe listeners that, man, this is
absolutely possible, that youcan rewire, reprogram this stuff
(02:42):
that has trapped you.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And just in the idea of bringing things back to my
particular Christian root, isthis idea that, since the very
beginning, god gave the job ofnaming things to humans, and
sometimes as little people asyoung people or people that are
in experience.
When we name things, we namethem, things that need to be
(03:06):
renamed.
We see God coming through overand over again in humanity and
renaming people, renamingsituations, even renaming
geography, and so the idea isthat, following in that
spirituality, we would also berenamed.
And then, ultimately, you know,in the book of Revelation it
talks that one time we'll seeGod and he'll rename us, because
, ultimately, we will have neverbe fully known till we're known
(03:29):
by love.
And this idea that the renamingis a maturing and so we can go
back to those places of traumaand rename them, not diminish
them, not ignore them not, callthem.
Not to call them what they'renot, but to rename them instead
of calling ourselves worthlessor dumb, being able to go back
(03:51):
and go.
No, we were inexperienced, andthere's a huge difference
between someone who's stupid andsomeone who is inexperienced.
We have so much compassion andinexperience.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, it's so interesting.
Right when I became a Christianat the age of 17, I had so much
trauma that I didn't resolve ordeal with, and at that time the
church's solution was tobelieve, to pray, to read your
Bible and to just make adecision to forgive or to do
that.
Well, it didn't get to the corebelief system or the wiring
(04:22):
that had happened in my body.
And the church is getting somuch better at looking at trauma
and trying to figure out.
What does that look like and howto.
Trauma is so complicated, right, I'm not an expert in trauma.
I'm an expert in my own traumaand the trauma I've caused
myself and others have caused me.
But I think, as we look at it,it happened for me in a
childhood, others it might havehappened in a very abusive
(04:44):
relationship later, or ahorrific event of abuse, sexual
abuse or just a life event of atragic moment or car wrecks or
whatever and that trauma, as Iwas looking at it in my story,
is that others you're sayingrename when that moment would
(05:04):
happen.
I made a decision, so I made adecision about myself as not
being lovable, and so that thencaused me to hide the unlovable
parts of myself, caused me tohave to try to earn love, and it
showed up in so manydysfunctional ways.
I think there's a real keypiece of going back to that with
(05:26):
help, therapy, professional orhowever that works for an
individual on their journey ofrenaming that or that decision.
Right, a person may have gonethrough a horrible relationship
and a person left them and itwas the decision I make about
myself in that moment is maybeI'm unlovable, right, and I'm
going to be alone forever andnobody's going to know how to
(05:48):
love me.
And then that starts to playout my life by sabotaging
potential relationships or notputting myself back out there.
Reality is, we're invited backinto aligning that traumatic
moment and that decision withwhat God actually says about us
that you are the beloved.
And so and it goes back toloving ourselves instead of
(06:11):
hating ourselves, because ourtrauma defined us and made a
decision about ourselves.
What was that decision we made?
I'm not lovable, I'm not enough, I'm not worthy.
Well, that's why so much in thepower of believing about loving
yourself is going back andgoing no.
In that moment, my parentsdidn't know how to show up for
me and my five-year-old braindidn't know how to categorize
(06:32):
that, and so I made thesecertain decisions.
I could go back to that moment,make a different decision about
myself.
It is aligned in love andaligned with what God actually
says.
And that becomes the difficultpart of playing that out in your
life.
I remember, as I started doingthat, it felt uncomfortable
(06:53):
physically for me to believethat I wasn't bad.
And then, as I realized, oh,that's my body's memory, that's
my brain's highway of neuronsgoing.
I'm more comfortable withthinking horrible about you than
thinking good about you.
But as I just kept plowingthrough it with my mind, the
(07:14):
thoughts I thought, the wordsthat I spoke, and then the
emotion that I attached thescience behind the thought of
not only do we need toexperience the thought of what
we want to believe aboutourselves, but also feeling the
emotion of what that would feellike to love ourselves and
(07:35):
actually sitting with that.
It's a very powerful force torewire us, because our brains
often don't know the differencebetween us and a vent happening
now, or is it simply a memoryI'm replaying.
And as I'm replaying thatmemory, we've all known it right
, we've replayed a moment whereyou've gotten an argument and
then those chemicals start toflow back in you, you start to
(07:55):
get tense and frustrated and itcan ruin your whole day.
So your brain thinks it'sreplaying or happening again.
To where?
If I say in this moment I'mgoing to think a thought of who
I believe that I am aligned withGod, feel the emotion that goes
with that, wow, yeah, and thenspeaking the words that align
with that, it's allreprogramming and retraining,
like we said, that big bag ofprogramming that we are.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Some of this is easier and some of it's harder,
but I think the practicality isto make this a practice.
Thank you.
Because, I was.
I remembered something I thinklike a year ago.
I remember being in fifth gradeand I remembered one of our
teachers had taken a long hiatusfor some sickness or whatever.
So we had a substitute teacherand it was a young, younger guy
(08:42):
and and I remember liking theguy a lot but, but probably
being a crazy fifth grader withmy other buddies acting silly or
whatever we we must have beenquite difficult to be in a class
with.
I only think that with hindsight, because I remember
experiencing the couple ofmonths that that guy was my
teacher and then not seeing himfor like a year, and I happened
(09:03):
to be walking home from schoolthrough the college and I was by
myself and he happened to bewalking in the college the other
direction by himself, and I sawhim and like Mr I don't
remember his name but I'm likeMr So-and-so, it's so great to
see you and he goes, dennis, andhe started gritting his teeth,
dennis, dennis, and he picked meup by my hair, he lifted me off
(09:27):
the ground.
You know my feet are danglingand I'm a, you know, fifth
grader and and I remember ithurts so bad that I wanted to
cry.
But then I thought to myself.
The first thing I interpretedthat thing was I must be such a
horrible person that when thisgrown man gets a chance to see
(09:49):
me he wants to hurt me.
Now, you know, now I'm 54 yearsold.
I look back at that and I thinkyou know I mean the knee jerk
reactions, what a jerk he was,you know right.
But then I can actually evenhave some compassion on him
going.
He was a college guy that wasput in charge of a bunch of
fifth graders.
No one should have to do thatand it must have been really
(10:10):
hard for him and he probablydidn't have the skills to know
how to handle someone like me.
And so he handled itinappropriate but so fascinating
that probably most of thehandling that we had as young
people were by somebody thatdidn't know what they were doing
, were new at it or messing up,and we're interpreting that
(10:31):
wrong.
So that's like a whole stew orwrong, you know.
But what I did was that for thelongest time it became another
belief, another card in the inthe full deck of, you know, the
royal flush of your garbageCause.
Obviously, if that teacherwhatever his name was he
couldn't stand me, to the pointthat when he saw me and he had
(10:53):
his opportunity.
He inflicted pain against me.
That's the kind of human I was,so much so that I needed to be
hurt by an adult, you know.
And so obviously we'reinterpreting the whole wrong and
so so that's maybe an easierone to step back as an adult.
But I think sometimes you haveto set with him a little bit and
I think you've said it even askGod what you think of me, ask
(11:17):
God what, how to discern eventhat situation.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
I definitely think that we should ask God, but we
should ask God, maybe with afriend or with someone we trust,
because sometimes God is soangry, because, again, obviously
not God is not angry, but theway we, the image we have of God
, that God would sit in judgmentof us.
And then we need a trustedfriend or someone, a therapist,
who can counsel us and say, youknow, perhaps there could have
(11:43):
been a misunderstanding.
And perhaps you know there'scompassion here and there's love
here and there's mercy.
I think one of the things that Ikeep hearing as we're going
around and around the greatdisservice that we've done to
ourselves is we haven'tnormalized failure and it really
impedes practice and impedesthe way that we live our lives,
because we so value perfectionor rightness or the end of
(12:08):
something and process andfailure need to be something
that we are so just comfortablewith, and we are just so
uncomfortable with any of thoseparticular things, particularly,
I think, in the Christian faith, the idea of failing at
something and the idea, if wereframe failure, it just means
you tried and that's a beautifulthing.
It may not have had the desiredresult, but you're.
(12:30):
The effort is there and thatyou know, understanding that
even with ourselves we may notget to this right away or allow
the full process to happen rightaway, but that the practice and
the failing that comes throughit, and the practice and the
practice and the practice thatit does, the process, is already
built in to growth, healing allthose things.
(12:53):
It's in the DNA of this lifethat God put in the planet.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And I appreciate what you're saying and I absolutely
do think that we ought to not dothat in a vacuum, but I do.
I pushed back a little bit onthe because I do think that if
we'll trust the Holy SpiritAgreed, you know the Holy Spirit
will tell us how to reframethose things, but I think you
know that I think, if we lookback with honesty on our lives,
(13:21):
we thought the Holy Spirit toldus to say and do a lot of stuff
that the Holy Spirit never saidto do.
So, but I just do.
I do want to challenge on theidea that there there's almost
like this really holy part of ofjust, you know, asking God, I,
I, I'm seeing myself in this waywhat did you see?
(13:42):
And it's, and I've just, I'vehad such a great experience
about him giving me, I mean, andjust this, hopeful words that
are so kind to me and they feelvery foreign.
That's why I can almostguarantee their God, because
they were, like, actually very,very kind towards, in a way of
(14:03):
looking advantage point that Iwas unable to see.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
I certainly don't mean to say that you only have
to with a friend, but I thinkthat if you find yourself stuck
or you find yourself in patternsthat are repeating, repeating
and you're not getting anywhere,then it might be time to bring
someone else in and say this iswhat I'm thinking and this is
how I'm thinking it and this isthe conclusion I'm coming to,
and maybe someone else can helpus see something differently or
hear the voice of love speak ina way that is gentle.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well, I think that we gave some pretty good practical
things today.
I did tease the idea thatHeather would share books and I
know, jerry, you're an avidreader as well.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
And Jerry already mentioned too.
I'll make sure they're in theshow notes.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Okay, yeah, and they are again.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Well, I'll write.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
The one was body keeps a score.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah, and the other one by Victor Frankel.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, victor Frankel.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And was there anything off the top of your
head, that man?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
search for meaning.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Victor man search for meaning.
You do have a top five jury ofbooks that have been influential
in that, just say, in the pastfive years.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Oh gosh.
So yeah, that's something thatif I've got a top five, you
might need to give me a beat,because I'm going to have to
categorize those in my mind.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Okay, but there's no one else who knows what top five
you're talking about, so nojudgment here.
You can change your top five in10 minutes, even.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
What are the things that you know?
If somebody was embarking onyou know you just what we talked
about today.
You know you gave to thank youfor that, and that might not be
enough, but if there is anythingI always like to do, the Oprah
had a book club, and so I thinkHeather and she are like you're,
(15:48):
Oprah.
No, no, no.
I'm not open to this scenario.
My book club would be like DrSeuss or something.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
So Dr Seuss is pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So you guys can have.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
Okay, I'm going to give a few of books that I think
that you would agree.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
At least two, loving what is loving.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
What is Yep Byron Katie?
Yeah, absolutely.
There's Michael Singer's bookthe untethered soul, or you know
, that's just one that talksabout the thoughts and the over
identification with thoughts.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh man, was that ever a powerful conversation?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, that that really did unlock some stuff and
so just really helped me seethat the thoughts are thoughts,
they're not me, but thedecisions, as you said earlier,
we made the decisions about whowe are and what we believe about
(16:42):
ourselves, which also is soempowering to say I can make a
new decision about myself andyou say, well, I didn't make
that decision, my dad made thatdecision.
Well, your dad or your motheror your ex partner or spouse or
childhood event in later in lifeevents, yes, influenced it, may
(17:05):
have even transferred itthere's the idea of transferred
trauma and all of that stuff butI continued to reinforce those
stories, reinforce thosedecisions and because I have
that power to make that decisionabout myself, I also have the
power to make a differentdecision.
And that's all.
(17:27):
That's some work.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
But it's worth it.
I know that for me, thatconversation that you and I had
several months ago has been lifechanging to me because I so
identified with my thoughts aswho I am At the minute I had a
bad thought, then obviously I'mbad, I'm the one that had that
thought.
But if you do kind of separateyourself from it in the sense of
(17:51):
my soul or my spirit, or thedecision maker within me, the
one who agrees really has thatdeciding vote.
So there is within thisexpression I think we've heard
in churches forever that youcan't help that a bird flies
over your head, but you can'tstop them from making a nest in
(18:12):
your hair, Right, Unless you'rebald.
Then there's no hope for you.
But, knowing all seriousness, ifI know that birds would fly
over my head, then the idea is,you know you'll have thoughts,
but I.
So the minute I had a thought Iwas defeated.
But when we had thatconversation, like you know, I
am not my thoughts, I am thespirit who decides.
(18:35):
Well, no, I disagree with that.
I'm going to go ahead and agreewith what God says about me.
It was just like all of asudden I at least got a chance
out of the gate to win, becauseI was defeated before I ever
started the race because I soowned, that being who I am.
So, yeah, if you could get somebenefit out of that book, by
(18:57):
all means I would recommend thatyou would read it.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, yeah, the Brinamani stuff.
You know, all is grace.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Anything by Henry Nguyen.
You should read all of that.
Absolutely, father RichardRohrer.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yes, and then there's a great one that you know it's
what happened to you and it'sone of those really really good
books.
It's Oprah Winfrey, as well asa doctor, dr Bruce Perry, and it
reframes the conversation fromlike what's wrong with you is
(19:33):
what we often ask.
What's wrong with you, what'swrong with him?
You know, the better questionis what happened to you?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And not in a sarcastic tone.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah right, what happened to you?
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Yeah, yeah right the idea of that curiosity that says
, oh, I bet there's a story here.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah, it's the same question we can ask ourselves
right, instead of what's wrongwith me to what happened to me,
what is my story?
And well… what else would Ithink about myself with those
events in my life?
Or what else would I thinkabout myself in a religious
system that says I'm bad, thatI'm horrible?
(20:08):
Of course, that's gonna startprogramming me to think that and
that's something that ishappening that I can make new
decisions about.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Yeah, we love everything that we've read by
Dan Allender.
He has a story, a book called AStory Yet to be Told, and that
idea of rewriting, renamingstories that we tell about
ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's so funny because these conversations they pivot
like a pinball machine bam, bam,bam.
But each one of those littlebounces have really been maybe
long studies or long periods, oreven sometimes short periods,
but still moments wherecontemplation and prayer and
(20:49):
consideration and study.
Because, yeah, we do someresearch a long time ago with
the father wound, with JohnEldridge, and all of a sudden he
speaks of Dan Allender and thenwe bump over here to listen and
(21:10):
then the next thing he's likeabsolutely rocking our world to
the point where we're I don'tknow if we'll stop listening to
him and never speak of him againor regularly.
Let that thing open up,whatever it was opening up.
And so I think, wherever youfind yourself on the journey,
there are the times wherethere's a grace to it and
(21:30):
there's a time where it's afight.
But it's worth it for you topress in to get the more of the
so much more that God is.
It's worth it for us to do this.
But if it were easy, everyonewould walk in it and I think
it's not for the fate of heartor the weak of will, but you
(21:51):
gotta decide.
I wanna be a better husband formy wife and I wanna be a better
friend to you, jerry, and Iwanna be a better father to my
children and I wanna be anawesome grandpa one day.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, absolutely, and , like you said, it's not easy.
But I think the key, even formen I mean for men this is a
hard one to be gentle withyourself in the process,
realizing that it is hard.
And just because it isdifficult doesn't mean that
you're the only one who's notgonna be able to figure this out
right.
Shame will end.
All this stuff will keeptelling you the message Well,
(22:26):
that works for everybody else.
I had that thought for so manyyears.
That works for everybody else.
That's not gonna work for mebecause I'm different and wired
this way, and this happened tome.
Now it is the work that we do,and we do it in gentleness,
because when we beat ourselvesup, our minds and our bodies say
I don't wanna go back into thatwork again, because every time
I go into that work with you totry to resolve that, you beat me
up and I start to avoid it.
(22:48):
And.
But if I'm gentle with myselfand loving towards myself, I
invite myself back into the workinstead of resisting myself to
go into the work.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
There's another wonderful book called the Allure
of Gentleness by.
Dallas Willard.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
You can get to it.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
The scripture tells us it's an evidence of the Holy
Spirit.
So being gentle with ourselveswould then allow us to idealize
this.
This is the presence of Godworking gentle.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
My examples of teachers, coaches, parents were
mostly I'm not feeling sorry formyself, it's just kind of the
way it was.
It was like more of a.
You'll get this if I yell youinto this.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Very masculine text.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, and a lot of us have experienced that and so
I've dealt with my sons,unfortunately, like that.
But it's ultimately again goesback to because that's how I
deal with me, and so I thinkmaybe even a year ago we were
presenting that idea.
What would it be like if I wasgentle with the young Dennis or
(23:53):
the young Jerry?
Like, how would I treat theyoung Dennis if I saw him
walking?
If there was a time machine andI was walking down that college
campus, would I lift him up bythe hair and wanna hurt him?
For years I think I did, becauseI felt like that.
Maybe I didn't really followthe thought through, but I think
(24:15):
that reminded me of weakness,because I was little, I was
young, I was weak, but I wouldreally want to have that time
machine just to hug him.
And that's so contrary to how Iwas raised or what I observed
(24:36):
from the way I was raised, and Ijust think that gentleness
towards us.
That's a hard thing to do,probably for me at any moment,
but certainly for me as a man Icould say that and we're so
afraid of gentleness because inour minds it doesn't equate with
(24:56):
justice.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
If I'm gentle, then I'm letting someone get away
with that, I'm letting myselfget away with that.
And if we understand theevidence, or what?
Is revealed to us in scripturesthat justice is gentle.
I mean not on evil, but on thevictim, on that which is good in
that it is restorative, notretributive, and we have a lot
(25:19):
of retributive theology asopposed to going, what is love
offering and what doesgentleness lead us into?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, there's a great set of books.
It's not a set of books, it's agreat author, doctor.
There's a great system thatRichard Swartz, dr Richard
Swartz teaches, and it's aboutinternal family systems.
Great book by that talks aboutyou are the one that you're
(25:49):
looking for how to show up inrelationships healthy, but then
another one called no Bad Parts.
But what it does is itaddresses exactly what you were
just talking about, dennis,which is there's parts of us
that along the way, we'veabandoned about ourselves.
Right when we look back atthose moments of that moment
(26:14):
when you dealt with that teacherand you felt a sense of
weakness, so you decided in thatmoment that weakness was
something that was bad.
I'm not sure if you did, butI'm just playing on that and so
what you did was you wanted to.
I'm saying what you did, butwhat a person would do in that
situation is to want to Thanksfor reading my mail in front of
(26:36):
everybody.
Yes, what a person might do inthat situation is I want to
abandon the weak Dennis.
Yeah, okay, but that's not aweak Dennis.
That was a Dennis who justneeded to be loved and treated
in a different way.
And so what we do then is wedevelop protectors, and so I
(26:56):
want to abandon the weak part ofme or I want to protect
actually, I want to protect thatpart of me.
So then I create this piece ofme that shows up angry or
dominant, because I feel likethat protects that piece of me
that feels weak.
But going back with gentlenessto visit that kid and to love
them is all so much about whatDr Richard Schwartz talks about
(27:19):
in internal family systems.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
And also what Jesus invites us when he invites us to
witness being able to go backto those painful places unafraid
, because we're bringing Jesuswith us, but being able to say
how should we name this?
What does this look like?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Thank, you yeah, I know, in contemplation you can
you know if you're directed atall in it.
You can do that in a practicalway, because we're talking about
some practical things here.
I think one of the practicalthings I learned was just asking
the spirit what do you, youknow, what do you have to say
(28:01):
about this?
Or, you know, what do you thinkabout this?
Because I like to play guitar,I play music and I've had a lot,
oh, through my life, a lot ofpeople tell me turn that guitar
down, it's noisy, you know,you're, you know.
So I've had this like gift orsomething that I like to share,
but not everybody wanted toreceive what I was offering.
(28:24):
And, you know, through somecontemplation, you know, I asked
actually kind of a veryopen-ended question to spirit
what do you, you know, tell mesomething that I don't, that I
didn't know about myself?
You know, and I really feltlike I heard the spirit Lord say
I like to sit and listen to youwhen you play guitar.
(28:47):
And I just wept when I had thatthought.
That hopeful thought wasamazing to me because, you know,
it kind of makes sense if he'somnipresent, he's got spare time
, because we think oftentimeshe's got to be out, you know,
feeding all the hunger orwhatever but he can be
everywhere.
Oh yeah, that's our job, right?
Good point, so I can I can,through contemplation, ask him
(29:14):
about those things.
And it's amazing like we'reoftentimes afraid to ask the
question because we say, what?
What if he doesn't answer?
But my thing with people is,what if he does?
It's worth asking those kind ofcontemplative questions because
it's amazing, what anundercover's.
And for me it was such a coolthought because I had, because
it echoes in my head.
(29:35):
People say I want you to turnthat dang guitar down to him.
I imagine him sitting right inmy little recording studio
sliding up one of the chairsright in front of me as I'm
playing guitar and enjoyingbeing there, and that's.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
What does that do for you as a man to feel like
you're enjoyed by God, Right?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
right that I'm not despised by everyone, everything
which is kind of like sometimesmy view about myself and my
assumption about other people,and that, because you do, you
read anyone's sour, look attheir fate.
While they must think I'm just,you know, they might have just
got a pinched nerve in their hip, who knows, but we read into
that always through our story,you know.
So what if we could ask thesethings and begin to address
(30:15):
these things?
And ultimately, I think youknow the message of today is
what if, if you could loveyourself?
Just not not that you're sayingyou'll never change, but right
now, what if you didn't changeanymore right now?
Could you be loved by yourselfand by God, and he's able to?
And what prevents you Otheryeah, I mean other than our?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
other than our history of thinking and wiring.
And, you know, when I don'tlike myself, I naturally assume
that God doesn't like me, right?
And and then I say no, no, no,I believe God loves me.
Okay, I just invite you to like, and that may be absolutely,
maybe 100% on.
No, I totally feel that Godloves me and I have no issue
(31:02):
there.
I just had maybe have an issuewith myself and loving myself,
but then, you know, I for me, Ihad to look at how I even was
having communication with Godand my communication with God
was showing up more so on theI'm so sorry repentance, you
know, and focus it on so muchnegativeness, because I thought
(31:24):
that that's what God wasfocusing in on about me, right?
And when I think that God isfocusing in on all the bad about
me, then do I really or I thinkthat I've got to keep figuring
out how to please that God Ireally then think that the God
that talks to me that way orviews me that way, really loves
(31:45):
me?
Because at that point it's moreof a conceptual yeah, no, I
believe God loves meunconditionally and, yes, I felt
his love at times and, you know, it was beautiful, but the
overarching theme was that Ineeded to prove something.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
You could quote a bunch of doctrine or a bunch of
things that you're supposed tobelieve, but if you, in your
quiet place, what do you reallybelieve?
And for me, the one of the theyou know cards that had to be
pulled out of the house of cardsthat I built myself was, you
know, I studied and preached asermon called God likes me, yeah
(32:22):
, and cause obviously he's gotto love you, that he wouldn't
even be good if he's in lovewith everyone, but does he like
you?
You know, and so, meditating onthat kind of thing and it was
funny too, cause I wasstruggling in this area and as a
preacher, you know, you got toprepare and it's I felt so
woefully unable to preach andhelp people with something that
I struggle with so much, and butit's really within that study,
(32:44):
cause I really felt inviting mewell, no, go ahead and study it
out, because that what you findout you'll share and what you
find out will be helpful to youtoo, you know, so I did, I just
took the journey and and it wasreally kind of wrestling that
idea that he likes you, and alot of people can't even say
that, right, you know, yeah, heloves you, but does he like you
(33:06):
you?
know cause you got to look, youknow but when you choose to be
around you, and I and I thinkthat the end of that study for
me is to find out that he reallywould for us, right, yeah, and
that's, that's a hopeful thought.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Well, and if you think about it, if love heals,
then love also heals ourrelationship with ourself, cause
we have a relationship withourself Right.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
And how we view ourselves and see ourselves.
It heals our relations.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
love heals that relationship that we have with
the divine right, that we'veseen the divine in a certain way
or but it also heals ourrelationship with ourselves and
as you look at Christ and how heinteracted with people, there's
a lot of healing of therelationship between people
themselves Think that Jesusreally did a beautiful job in
(33:53):
showing us what it looks like tolive as the beloved, where he's
able to, I guess deep in hisbones, know how deeply he's
loved because he is able to dothese incredible wonderful
things and have people receivethe incredible wonderful things
all different ways and never bedefensive, and that living in a
(34:14):
in a way that you would neverhave to defend yourself.
What freedom that would be ifyou didn't feel like you were
constantly on trial.
Like what if you could live soloved?
And what if we could practice,you know, these embodied
practice of living as thebeloved.
What if everything we did wasnot on trial?
And that would be, that wouldbe.
(34:35):
There could be a lot of joy inour lives, and that I see a lot
of joy in the way that Jesuslived, even a very difficult
life.
Yeah, and there was.
He found practices that alloweda lot of joy Table practices,
table sharing one of them.
Yeah, table sharing.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
You've been listening to Season 2 of the so Much More
Podcast with Dennis and HeatherDrake.
We want to take a moment andexpress our sincerest thanks for
the investment of your time andif you're interested in
continuing conversation or moreinformation about what we
discussed, please email us atsomuchmorepodcastatgmailcom.
If you're interested in some ofthe creative projects that
(35:14):
Dennis has done, you can findout more information at
drakensonscom or find us onTwitter at so much more podcast.
We'd love to hear from you.
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