July 31, 2025 • 54 mins
đź“– Episode Summary
In this deeply moving episode of the Faithful Fitness Podcast, Coach Alex sits down with Jennifer Neufeld, a registered nurse, Revelation Wellness instructor, and founder of Fresh Journey—a grief-focused hiking ministry.
Jennifer shares how her own decade-long experience with grief transformed into a soul-healing mission to help others process pain through nature, movement, and faith.
Together, they explore how hiking becomes both metaphor and method in navigating the valleys of sorrow—illuminating how the physical act of moving forward mirrors the spiritual journey of trusting God through loss.
Jennifer introduces the CORE framework (Completely Honest, Open to the Spirit, Responsible for Self, and Empathetic) and describes how it empowers grievers to walk with integrity and purpose, even through pain.
If you or someone you love is carrying unresolved grief, this conversation offers practical hope, grounded truth, and an invitation to walk with Christ—literally and figuratively—on the path to healing.
đź’¬ Main Discussion Themes
-Why grief isn’t something to “fix,” but to walk through—with Jesus beside you
-How hiking provides physical, emotional, and spiritual processing space
-The science of grief and how exercise helps the brain reconcile loss
-Jennifer’s CORE framework for building inner strength in hard seasons
-The role of journaling and nature in trauma recovery
-Why Christians must grieve differently—not less—than the world
-How Fresh Journey is inspiring new grief-walking ministries across the U.S.
⏱️ Timestamped Episode Outline
00:00 – Introduction and show setup
02:30 – How Fresh Journey was born from Jennifer’s decade of grief
10:15 – The three-circles method: physical, emotional, spiritual healing
14:00 – Grand Canyon training and the trail as metaphor for grief
17:45 – The science of grief and why movement matters (Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor)
22:00 – Daily journaling as a healing tool (Jennifer’s personal prompt)
25:30 – How God speaks through nature: birds, waterfalls, rooted trees
30:15 – How Fresh Journey has multiplied into new hiking ministries
34:00 – Introducing Jennifer’s new workbook: Hiking to Explore Grief
36:00 – Grieving with hope vs. grieving like the world (1 Thessalonians 4:13)
43:00 – The CORE acronym for Christ-centered healing
52:10 – Lightning round: trail snacks, worship music, waterfalls, and community tips
57:30 – Prayer for the grieving and encouragement for listeners
59:00 – Close: Train Hard. Pray Harder.
🧰 Additional Resources
📖 Visit  https//:Faithfulfitnessdevo.com to explore the Faithful Fitness Devotional
🎧 Subscribe to the Faithful Fitness Podcast for more real conversations at the intersection of faith and health
📬 Share this episode with a friend or church leader who’s walking through loss or leading others in grief
🥾 Connect with Jennifer at Fresh Journey’s Journal Prompt
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/faithful-fitness-by-better-daily--5150768/support.
In this deeply moving episode of the Faithful Fitness Podcast, Coach Alex sits down with Jennifer Neufeld, a registered nurse, Revelation Wellness instructor, and founder of Fresh Journey—a grief-focused hiking ministry.
Jennifer shares how her own decade-long experience with grief transformed into a soul-healing mission to help others process pain through nature, movement, and faith.
Together, they explore how hiking becomes both metaphor and method in navigating the valleys of sorrow—illuminating how the physical act of moving forward mirrors the spiritual journey of trusting God through loss.
Jennifer introduces the CORE framework (Completely Honest, Open to the Spirit, Responsible for Self, and Empathetic) and describes how it empowers grievers to walk with integrity and purpose, even through pain.
If you or someone you love is carrying unresolved grief, this conversation offers practical hope, grounded truth, and an invitation to walk with Christ—literally and figuratively—on the path to healing.
đź’¬ Main Discussion Themes
-Why grief isn’t something to “fix,” but to walk through—with Jesus beside you
-How hiking provides physical, emotional, and spiritual processing space
-The science of grief and how exercise helps the brain reconcile loss
-Jennifer’s CORE framework for building inner strength in hard seasons
-The role of journaling and nature in trauma recovery
-Why Christians must grieve differently—not less—than the world
-How Fresh Journey is inspiring new grief-walking ministries across the U.S.
⏱️ Timestamped Episode Outline
00:00 – Introduction and show setup
02:30 – How Fresh Journey was born from Jennifer’s decade of grief
10:15 – The three-circles method: physical, emotional, spiritual healing
14:00 – Grand Canyon training and the trail as metaphor for grief
17:45 – The science of grief and why movement matters (Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor)
22:00 – Daily journaling as a healing tool (Jennifer’s personal prompt)
25:30 – How God speaks through nature: birds, waterfalls, rooted trees
30:15 – How Fresh Journey has multiplied into new hiking ministries
34:00 – Introducing Jennifer’s new workbook: Hiking to Explore Grief
36:00 – Grieving with hope vs. grieving like the world (1 Thessalonians 4:13)
43:00 – The CORE acronym for Christ-centered healing
52:10 – Lightning round: trail snacks, worship music, waterfalls, and community tips
57:30 – Prayer for the grieving and encouragement for listeners
59:00 – Close: Train Hard. Pray Harder.
🧰 Additional Resources
📖 Visit  https//:Faithfulfitnessdevo.com to explore the Faithful Fitness Devotional
🎧 Subscribe to the Faithful Fitness Podcast for more real conversations at the intersection of faith and health
📬 Share this episode with a friend or church leader who’s walking through loss or leading others in grief
🥾 Connect with Jennifer at Fresh Journey’s Journal Prompt
- Https://sites.google.com/view/fresh-journey-selfcare/home
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/faithful-fitness-by-better-daily--5150768/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Faithful Fitness Podcast. For My Dad, Coach
Alex Van Houghten helps to get stronger and mind, body,
and spirit. He believes that your body is a temple,
so taking good care of it is an actual worship.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I should know.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I live with him. Every week. He brings truth from
the Bible, tool of some science and stories that will
set your heart on fire. May God bless you to
become everything He made you to be, just one percent
better every single day.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hey there, and welcome back to the Faithful Fitness Podcast.
I'm your host, coach Alex vn Houghton, and I'm super
excited about today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Big question, what.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
If You're healing was meant to begin on a hiking
trail and not in a therapist's office. That's what I'm
gonna be talking about today with our guest Jennifer Neufeld,
the founder of Fresh Journey Stick Around. We're going to
be talking about tools that you can use in your
life and in the lives of your loved ones, the
core method for processing trauma and grief with honesty and hope.
(01:04):
And we're gonna be talking about the neuroscience of loss.
You're not gonna want to miss this. Also, if you
haven't picked up your copy of the Faithful Fitness devotional,
you need to go to Better Daily, Dot Live, slash
devo and pick up your pre signed copy today. We're
gonna have an awesome launch party when the book comes out,
and I want you to be a part of it.
That's Better Daily, Dot Live, slash Devo.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
One, two, three, what's up, guys. This is coach Alex
Vann Houghton on the Faithful Fitness Podcast. Thank you so
much for joining us today. I'm so excited about this conversation, actually,
maybe more strangely excited than I should be in a
conversation about grief and processing grief with miss Jennifer new Fellow, Jennifer,
(01:51):
how are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Good?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I'm so glad to have you.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
We are two hours different, so I've had a bit
more coffee than you have thus far.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
So yeah to the listeners.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
If I'm overwhelmingly energetic, it's not because Jennifer's not. It's
because she needs two more hours of coffee and maybe
a good hike under her belt.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So I want to dive right into this conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You are working with individuals to help them overcome grief
in a very unique way and maybe not overcome, maybe
walk through. I think that's something we can talk about
here today. I want to start by asking you how
your enterprise Fresh Journey started, was, what was kind of
the place that it began, and what are you guys
(02:34):
doing in the world right now?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
All right, Well, so Fresh Journey actually started right before
the pandemic and after I had completed walking through my
own seasons of grief for about nine ten years.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So I had done a lot of a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
Of work, a lot of group work, a lot of
my own counseling to work through.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Difficult seasons in marriage with children.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
You know, obviously we all come with our own baggage
from growing up and all of those things to kind
of work through. And just as the pandemic was starting,
I had already had the idea going that fresh journey,
which is freedom, rest and encouragement for your soul and
healing journey. And so I had this, I had this
(03:29):
vision of having a community of people who enjoyed getting
out in nature and just working through the challenges of life,
because that's how I made it through. And so I've
developed a pathway of sorts based off of what my
own counselor told me as I showed up.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
You know, just a wreck of tears as my life.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
You know, I give the image of falling into a
pit or into a canyon kind of as what grief
feels like.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And so you know, you're.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
You're trying to claw your way up the hill after
you kind of realize where.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
You are and everything's falling on you, and you know,
you just.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Get battered and bruised by the whole the whole experience.
And so asking my counselor, I was like, how am
I even going to survive this?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (04:23):
You know what, what.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
What can I do that's going to help me get
through this? Let alone even get better?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Right?
Speaker 5 (04:30):
So, so she's she drew out three little circles and
labeled them physical, emotional, and spiritual, and then she explained
to me, you're going to do one thing in each
one of these categories every day and you're.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Gonna be okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
So in that I had found evlation wellness within the
season of grief that I had already been active a
little bit with, and so I just said, okay, well,
then you know, my revelation wellness fits into my my
physical category and being able to listen to podcasts that
(05:14):
encourage me spiritually, emotionally and you know, get me out.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Moving my body. And so I used.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I use those a lot, and I encourage people even
today to use those tools and resources to get out
there and care for our bodies and to you know,
use the resources that are already there that people are
putting their whole lives and ministries into serving others, and
you know, we can we can benefit from each other.
(05:42):
And I love that about my Revelation Wellness community.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, so yeah, So.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Right before the pandemic, I kind of had this vision
going already, and then all of a sudden, you know,
our world stopped, and I decided to just put it
on Facebook book and try it out in a couple
of different hiking communities.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Hey, I'm going to be out on.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
The trail at our local park that has some hills,
and you know, I'm going to be out there for
my own mental and physical health and if you want
to come and join me, you know, And.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Strangely enough, people, now, now, where where are you in
the world that that people will I'm in.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The Bakersfield, California area.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Okay, so we're in.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
The large central valley. We have the Sierra Nevauta Mountains
real close. But yeah, our area is mostly crops and farmland.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I see.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
So I'm just baffled by the idea that around the
time of the pandemic you offer people an opportunity to
come join you physically for.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I don't know, a mental health hike. It sounds like, yeah,
they could have taken it that way there.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's at that point it was very much
about mental health.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I had.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, they showed up and what did you do?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
And some of them, some of them wore their masks,
but many didn't. You know, we were outdoors and we
felt comfortable enough to be walking and talking and sharing
our journeys.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And yeah, some.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Of those people that started with me out back then
have now started their own hiking groups. Back back then,
there was only really one local hiking group, and.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It wasn't always welcoming to New Bees.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Sure.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
So back in twenty eighteen is when I hiked the
Grand Canyon with Revelation Wellness, and so I did the
Rim to Him hike, you know, which is an intense
season of training yeah, and in the middle of that,
I was walking my own season of grief and very
very much felt connected to that canyon. And so yeah,
(08:07):
so in in my in my training and trying to
find groups that were out there, you know, helping people.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Learn about hiking and get connected and stuff.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
Yeah, I got left behind a couple of times because
I couldn't keep up. Oh man, didn't get a lot
of encouragement, you know, saying You're never going to make
it across the.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Canyon at this pace.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
And I just had to tell myself, I'm going to
make it across the canyon just like everybody else, one
step at a time.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Just me and God.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's just one step at a time. That's how everybody's
going to make it.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Across, right, and so and Revelation Wellness was super, super
encouraging and the all the all.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
The instructors and guides were We're just what my soul needed.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
And so I felt very connected to that, and that's
what I wanted to offer people as the pandemic and
all the things.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
You know, we all have our.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Own seasons of life and challenges, and you know, so
many people show up they've just become divorced or they
have aging parents who have moved in and they're caring
for them special needs children, you know, and they just
need that space that's something for themselves to kind of
pour into. And you know, if they're willing to try hiking,
(09:23):
it's really fun to get to connect and lead them through,
you know, the growth.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, yeah, Well, thank you for the origin story there,
and i'd like to talk about what you guys are
up to at the moment and what with the next
steps in the journey of fresh journey is. But I'm
I'm very interested in a couple of things here. One
of the first things I'm interested in is I read
a lot of literature in the exercise science community, and
(09:52):
I read a lot of literature in the psychology community.
And it's not like you can you can pull, like
you can cherry pick some research sources on this subject,
but it's not like a screaming billboard somewhere that hiking
is a very powerful methodology for actually taking steps through
(10:13):
And I don't mean that as a dad joke because
it could be, but actually taking steps through trauma, processing
and grief. And I know that in my own personal journey.
I've learned that in the journeys of many of my clients.
Sounds like you have also learned that in your personal
journey and working with with groups and whatnot. What do
you think and maybe maybe this might tie to your
(10:37):
own personal experience with walking through grief. What do you
think it is about hiking that makes it so powerful
in the process of working through grief?
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Well, so a couple of my own thoughts.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Yeah, in that betrail, right, it leads you to someplace, right,
So there is a pathway through. And often when we're
dropped into grief, we don't see the path. We can't
we can't see that this is even you know, a
good part of a story. Let alone, you know something
we want to walk And so in following a trail
(11:18):
you learn there are markers, there are you know, resources
there at each step. You've got a watering hole, you've
got a bathroom break, you need to stop and fuel,
you know. So there's these the are there are these
markers that we can kind of travel through and and
doing it repeatedly right kind of tails your brain to
(11:41):
calm down that you're gonna get through this, that there
is an end to this. And and in doing the
hard things right, training for the Grand Canyon in the
middle of processing a very life disrupting event with my
children us. It was quite frankly exhausting, yes, and life giving. Right, So,
(12:07):
how do you train for a marathon? Right? You can't
do it without training for a marathon out across a
grand canyon.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
And so it.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
It involved me making an investment in my time and
energy and and doing hard things that would build my
ability to physically and both mentally, you know, ascend out
of that canyon, and to do so.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
At my own pace.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I like the picture of grief.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
Grief all going to go through grief at our own pace,
and it's you know, the trails are similar, but they're
never all identical.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right, Well, I like I like that picture of grief,
by the way, being in the Grand Canyon because because
like grief is definitely not like your normal functioning level,
it feels a lot like being in the pit. I
think the Psalmist says the pit a lot, or the
valley of the shadow of death. As Psalmist three says,
like this very terrible place, but but it's it's cool
(13:12):
on that ascension front.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I read a very powerful book on the science.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Of grief, and I just pulled it up here because
I was I was interested in Doctor Mary Francis O'Connor
wrote a book called The Grieving Brain. But she described
it this way because I actually read this book because
we lost my wife's father just a couple of years ago,
and I was as as a man trying to lead
my four year old and my seven year old through
(13:40):
a grieving process well, and I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
That I knew how to grieve well, you know, like
I had wrestled with my own grief in life, but
I was I was an adult and I was adulting,
and I wasn't doing it great, but I was doing
my best. And but but she describes it this way
because when we think about the science of grief, it's like,
what's actually happening up here? And what we've what we've
learned in neuroscience is that there's a portion of our
brain that when when we have a loved one or
(14:04):
a situation that we're comfortable and confident with and that
goes away, there's a portion of our brain that sees
that as lasting as forever. So I have a loved
one and I can't imagine them not being there. I
don't know what that's like, so that it's called permanence.
I have permanence in my mind of that individual. But
in grief, what happens is there's another part of my
brain that understands they're gone, and so I have permanence
(14:28):
and they're gone, and those two parts of my brain
don't talk to each other. Then they don't naturally communicate,
and so you can have like a you can have
This was the case in losing my wife's father, the
boy's grandfather. The widow are my mother in law, the
(14:48):
boy's grandmother. She would go to the grocery store and
she would grab his favorite things and put them in
the cart and then break down crying a couple miles
over when she realized she was not bringing these home
to him because he's not there, right Because the part
of the brain that's like, oh, every time I've ever
gone grocery shopping for the last forty years, I grab
(15:10):
this thing because this is his thing that he loves.
And then two aisles over the part of the brain
that's like, he's not at home when you get there, and.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
They're like dealing with each other.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And the scientific way that you manage that is you
break down crying, like that's the physiological response in that
moment when those two parts of the brain aren't speaking together.
But one of the things she finds in this particular
trek through the grief work is that exercise is actually
way more beneficial when those two parts of the brain
(15:45):
are fighting with each other then crumpling into a ball
and crying. Not to say that if you crumple into
ball and cry, you're wrong. That there is something about
movement that helps you battle through that process in a
way that those parts of your brain can start to talk,
that they can actually communicate in a way that doesn't
(16:06):
doesn't devastate you. Now as I'm speaking, I imagine there's
some things coming to your mind when it comes to
your own story and maybe the story of your clients.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Do you care to add or share?
Speaker 5 (16:16):
No, Actually, I'm finding that fascinating because I can understand
that experientially, and I do know that journaling equally kind
of connects those two disconnected parts. Yes, and so I do.
I do have a journal prompt that I developed and
(16:39):
pretty much have used daily for the last ten years.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Do you mind sharing that I would love to hear it.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
Yeah, Yeah, so I've got that in the in the
link that I sent you. So yeah, but that my
counselor helped explain to me that as we process, and
especially handwriting, she said, you know kind of like releases
things from our brain and then allows us to like
take a more step back look at them, right, so
(17:07):
you actually see them written on the page, and you're
able to now take your emotional brain and your your
rational brain and to kind of evaluate, is that really
the choice I want to make? Because a lot of
times what we want to do, or what we feel
instantly is the right fix isn't going to work. Yes,
right and so and and my journals are messy. I
(17:30):
tell people they you wouldn't be You wouldn't think that
I'm this nice person if you looked at my journal
because I have a.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Right but I've learned that I can't act on all
of them, right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So absolutely absolutely, And you know that's the thing, right,
If you have chatter on two sides of your brain,
you're trying to put them together. You as a cohesive
individual is the product of putting those things together. But
if if and I mean I would hazard to say,
anybody listening or watching this, if you if you could
be in your brain not just yours, mine and any
(18:03):
as they go. I don't know if anybody needs to
be up there. It'd be very confusing place.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Yeah, So I tell my kids, you know, all the time,
I'm like, you might have thoughts and ideas on things
you want to do or need to do in this moment,
but take a minute step back. Is that really the
direction we want to.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Go with our lives?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
So, so coming back to this picture of hiking, you
mentioned several things in there, the path, like knowing there's
a path that I can go at my own pace. Right,
Two things came to mind while you were speaking that
that I think are true of my experience to One
of the things in hiking is that it's what's what's
cool is it's a physical manifestation of the reality there's
(18:43):
no way out but to keep going, Like like if
you if you're hiking out in the middle of nowhere
and you can't even and you just sit down, like
I mean, short of getting a GPS signal out to
nine to one one, like like, there's no there's no
way out, like you you have to keep going. And
griefs a lot like that, like you can go at
(19:05):
your own pace. There are many paths through It's it's
not easy, but the only way out is to put
one foot in front of the other. Really, yeah, like
that's the only only way grief processes forward.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So I like that about hiking as on that front.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And I think, finally, what I love about hiking in
relationship to the grief aspect is is there are oftentimes
in hiking. I don't know how this feels for you,
there are oftentimes in hiking where I'm following the path
and following the path and following the path, but then
I stop and I look up and I just appreciate
the beauty of what's around me, and I appreciate the
moment I check in with my breath. I love the
(19:42):
feeling of being out here. I love the smells. I
love the sounds. You know, there's a waterfall, there's a mountaintop,
there's a there's a snake. You know, there's there's stuff
and griefs.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Like that too.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Like there's there's the process of putting the one foot
in front of the other. There's the climb, there's difficult
things to manage and stuff. But sometimes you stop and
appreciate the beauty of maybe the memories you had, or
the beauty of how far you've come, or the just
the beauty of the moment. I feel like hiking kind
of core correlates to that too.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Is there anything you would add to that picure?
Speaker 5 (20:13):
Yah, Yeah, definitely. That's I think I've noticed for myself
and even as I've taken other people out onto trails.
You know, the Lord speaks to us each in our
own way. And one time we were on a trail
and a little bird was just like jumping ahead of us.
(20:34):
Every he didn't fly away right, he wanted to stay
like within that trail area, but he just kind of
jumped around. And I asked, asked the crew. I was like, Hey,
is anybody you know? Is that bird speaking to anybody?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:47):
Is there something something that you're getting out of this experience?
Speaker 4 (20:51):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:51):
And and so several people were just like, Yeah, I
feel like, you know, the bird's not scared of us,
but it's not you know, it's also not like wanting
to be right next to us. So you know, I
feel like God connects things in our minds.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Butterflies have done the same thing for many.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
People, and you know, just being able to get out
and witness and see the power of water, right, you know,
the erosion, the coolness, the refreshing, all the things that
water can be damaging, and yet we have to have
it for life, right, So it's it's a tremendous I
(21:29):
feel like God just gives us metaphors out in nature
all the time, right the people people write about the
sequoias and how they're interconnected and that's the only way
they can grow to their massive sizes. And yeah, all
the all the different biomes and things like that.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
That sounds like you've done a lot more research into
than I have.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
But it's occupational, very cool, Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
I love I love it and experientially. Yeah, that's definitely
been my experience in taking people out and for my own.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Self well as a Christian. It also brings me nearer
to the heart of Christ. You know, he he when
he spoke many of his parables are related to nature
in some form or fashion. And and it's hard to
be out hiking, you know, if you've spent if you've
spent some time in scriptures, it's hard to be out
hiking and not see it mirrored, you know, like you
could you could hang out with Moses on a mountain,
(22:24):
you know you can. You can see the mustard seed
tree that started from this tiny little thing, and then
you're like, oh, my gosh, faith is that way I
remember I spent I've We have a wonderful state park
relatively near to our house. It's this little gym. It's
so weird. The locals don't come here. I don't understand it.
But there are people from all over the place that
come come here. You know, I meet more out of
(22:47):
state people than locals. But when I'm hiking, but I
hike there and I pray there often, and I remember
coming by this uh this waterfall over and over and
over again, and I was fixated on this tree. I
don't I didn't know why. I just I would sit there.
I'd like consider it. And I'm not that guy. I'm
not no offense to the tree huggers out there, but
I'm not that guy. Like I'm not like, oh, this
is such a beautiful tree.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm not that guy. But I'm fixing on this tree.
I couldn't figure out why.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
So I sat there and I followed it followed the
trunk down and it was rooted in a rock, and
for some reason for me, that just was such a
deep metaphor for being rooted in the things that last,
that matter. And it was it was sitting on top
of a waterfall, so like it had had a hard life,
Like how do you grow in a rock at the
top of a waterfall. You're constantly being beaten, You're constantly
(23:33):
being being hit by the waves and the power of
this thing.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's not like you have soil around you know, but
here you are. And so it was. I spent a
lot of time praying at this tree.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
And that might sound weird to anybody who hasn't spent
much time in nature praying through difficult things. But God
really does I believe minister to our souls through through
the natural. So I wanted to ask, you know, fresh
Journey started what five six years ago?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, fast forward to today. How are things going?
Speaker 3 (24:08):
What kind of presence do you guys have in your
community and and how do you feel the missions progressing?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (24:16):
So I I want to say I love the better
daily one percent kind of thing Like when the Lord
spoke to my heart to do this, it was like, well,
how many people am I going to make the difference
to you know, and I said, well, even if it's
one percent, even if it's one percent of the people
in my community that this makes a difference for, then
(24:37):
that's that's good for me. And I mean probably I've
hiked with thousands of people over the last few years,
because some will come once and some will you know,
come for years. So in that season, so many of
those people who stayed with me throughout the pandemic than
(25:00):
the following years as we've you know, all come out
into a new a new season and figuring out what
it is we want to do with our lives. And
and a lot of the people had didn't done their
own healing and you know, walked through their journeys, and
now they wanted to offer something similar.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
To what what they got when they were walking with me.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
So it's really cool that there's sprung up out of
out of this ministry. There's been another group called Soul Adventurers,
and they tend to take on more of the trail
running aspect and love spartan races and things like that.
I'm not that adventurous. I'm really afraid of like tearing
(25:46):
my a c L and being down for the rest
of my life.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
So so.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I'm good with just you know, one foot in front
of the other, not climbing over crazy things or mud.
And then there's another group that has more younger children
in their in their sphere, and so they've taken on
the Little Hikers of Bakersfield, and so it's a bunch
of moms who get together and their kids get out
(26:15):
and it's so wonderful to watch, so wonderful to watch
and just to kind of be the parent of these
different these different groups and just encouraging them to go
out and to you know, make it a safe place
where people can get out learn about nature, you know,
how to get out there safely, and to get their
families out there, and to encourage their friends to come
(26:36):
join them, you know, even if it's not for the
benefit of grieving or moving through something hard, right, just
to just to do something outdoors and you know all
the benefits of that walking and all those sciencey things.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
So there's been several several groups that have sprung up
out of this, and so in the last year it's
kind of like I feel like I've transitioned into where
there's groups here. Now people will find places that they
are able to connect and get outdoors if they wanted to,
(27:14):
whereas you know, pre pandemic, there wasn't a lot out
there and your options were very limited.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
And so that's really exciting.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
And so I feel like the Lord's kind of pulling
me back now into I'm very confident that I can
physically train people because I've done it for enough years
now and so I'm moving more into the actual grief
maybe science or coaching kind of realm. And so I
(27:44):
have written the curriculum called Hiking to Explore Grief, and
I've had my first book study group this summer going
through that, which is super fun. And I've partnered with
a ministry called Wildhaven Sanctuary and they're actually out in
North Carolina, and so there's a group out there. It's
(28:06):
been online and so we've had people from the East Coast,
from the Central and out here with me in Bakersfield.
And so next weekend we're taking our celebration hike that
we've been training for in our grief process and understanding
what are those trail markers of things that you would
(28:28):
be looking for in grief to kind of show that
you're moving on to the next season.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
You walked through that section.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And so kind of going through that, and then the
book is in the process of being published or workbook
more is what it's more than a book, it's more
of a workbook.
Speaker 6 (28:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and gives a lot of practices because
you really have to do this experientially, right, And most
of us aren't taught how to grief, right.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
That's not something our culture embraces or that we're taught
even in the church, even though there's so much grief
in life, and so we haven't been taught that well,
and we don't know what to expect. And once you
kind of learned that process, hard as it is to accept, right,
then when new waves come, you kind of have the
you have the faith that it's going to You're going
(29:22):
to move through this, okay. And that's you know, as
the seasons of life continue to sometimes overwhelm and send
the title wave, you know, you understand, Yes there's devastation,
that's no more. Now where are we going to go through?
And how are we going to.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Get through this?
Speaker 5 (29:40):
And and so for my own self, that's been you know,
part of the journey is that I've had to deal
with so many title waves.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yes, yeah, you know, I oftentimes so my wife's a dietician, okay,
and I, uh, twenty years ago, I became a personal
trainer and I've been working through the health coaching process
and all that, and so so my children live with
a master level trainer and a registered dietician.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
And so I tell them a lot. In our line
of work.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You're learning this intensely practical stuff that most people don't
know how to do. But you get to just take
it for granted that every single day. You know how
to get enough protein, you know how to exercise, you
you know what these benefits are, and you know that
if you don't, you're.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Gonna pay for it. You know, like all those things.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
And understanding grief and how to move through that is
very similar, because it's not like I pray that nobody
has to grieve every day, but it is inevitable, just
like having to eat is inevitable.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It is inevitable that.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
You will wrestle with grief in your life. And and
if you don't know how, it's gonna shellack you. And
if you do know how, it'll probably still shellack you,
but at least you'll know what's happening.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
How to water, Yeah, yeah, right, How to tread water.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, that's that's well said. And so I'm just so
grateful for what you're doing in the world. Bless you
for that. I had to I had a thought that
I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
To share because grief is like, uh, grief is this
thing that if you don't know how to handle it,
or you've never been through it yourself, or you have
been through it, but you're not dealing with it.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
You're like, it's there, but it's not there, you.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Know what I'm saying, Like you're breaking the breaking down
to the grocery store a lot.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I'm not laughing at you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
That really stinks, but but you know, it's just a
regular thing you're life.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
You haven't worked through it, it's just there.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
If our world generally likes to take something that difficult,
even in the church and turn the other way, like
act like it's not there, I don't want it to
be there, and that's not biblical. There's a the Apostle
Paul says, we do not grieve as the rest of
the world grieves. That doesn't mean we don't grieve. That
means that we have a hope as Christians. We have
(31:50):
a hope in the faith that we can we can
grieve with that. This is this thing that makes it
a powerful and good process, even though it's painful. But
what I love about my faith as a Christian, what
I love about the Christian faith is at the center
of everything. It's right behind me on the right there,
at the center of everything is this symbol of grief
(32:12):
and difficulty. It also becomes a symbol of redemption. But
the symbol of the cross is grief and difficulty. Every year,
if you celebrate Good Friday and Easter, you get like, like, hey,
here's here's an innocent man, beaten, bruised and tortured for
the sins of the whole world. His friends have abandoned him,
he's been wrongfully accused, He's done nothing but help everybody
(32:35):
around him. And there he is bleeding to death and
dying on a cross right and look at it, like
and and grief is kind of like that greet Like
if you're going to wrestle through grief, can't You can't
do it by saying I'm not grieving, it's not affecting me.
Everything's fine, and I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Nah.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
It's like, hey, I am going to go for a
hike because I'm not okay, And I'm going to go
face this in in a way that that honors it,
in a way that that doesn't try to shy away
from it. And I'm gonna I'm gonna journal about it.
I'm gonna write about the things that are hard to say.
(33:12):
I'm going to write about the things that are difficult
to even think and feel right and and well, what
I love about what you're approaching here and what you're
you're doing in your world as you're saying, Hey, it's okay,
it's okay to be grieving, but we're not going to
not do anything about it. We're gonna we're gonna come
together and we're gonna walk through the difficulty. And I'm
(33:36):
sure I don't know if you have a guarantee with
your hikes, but it's like, hey, you will survive this,
like you'll be okay, We'll make sure you make it.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
We do, Yes, we do.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
And even in pointing to the cross, right, the prediction
was that this was a man of sorrows, a man
who would understand. And I'm pretty sure it's in Hebrews
where it says he's experienced the grief of our life.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
He knows what it's like.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
And so my favorite image of the Lord is the Immanuel.
He is with us and as he left, they said,
he promised, I will be with you. And so it's
it's lovely that even you know, through all the trials
of life, he is with us. And a lot of times,
without these trials, we wouldn't turn to him, right, we
(34:22):
would think we have life on our on our own.
And so yeah, that's that's equally an experience that you know,
my family's had to walk through. And you know, my
husband really in some of our challenges, he's.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Like, I need Jesus. Now I need him.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
And you know, before you could kind of handle you
life on your own, but now life is different.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
And you know, and so that's.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
It's a tool in the Lord Minister's through it, right,
not that he causes it or that anything like that,
but we know that he's with us, and he is good,
and it's good to be with him.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
And would that we turned to him without having to
experience pain and difficulty. But but glory to him that
in pain and difficulty he's there. Yes, yes, and and
I I my papa. So it's my wife's grandfather. So
he's a second Baptist preacher. He he actually he passed
three years ago, and I remember him telling me one
(35:22):
time over breakfast. He said that he never ministered better
than when he was doing a funeral. So like he
would go to a funeral and he would speak, you know,
the eulogy, he would he would take time to minister
to the family and stuff. But he said that he
always made sure, as weird as it might sound, that
there was an alter call in the funeral because because
(35:46):
his what he said is that our hearts are never
more raw and open to God in our life than
in the moments when we understand we're not going to
be okay by ourselves. And even the hardest heart, if
you lose somebody that you love, even the hardest heart,
is like, where's God right now?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Like I need him?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And and you know, there if if if God did
not intervene, if God did not love, if he didn't care,
if he didn't if he didn't step into that, then
we would just be lost and alone in that situation,
which is so wonderful that He's faithful to do that
even if we were hard hearted prior so so at
Papa's funeral, I remember saying I remember saying, Papa would
(36:29):
come down from heaven and slap me in the face
if I did not give an alter call.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
And he wasn't that kind of guy, but laugh.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And and three people came to Christ and that that,
and I'm not much of a preacher myself, but but
three people came to Christ because of what he taught
me and told me at that time, because he meant
something to somebody enough that that without him, there was
there was somebody in the room that was like, I
don't know how I'm going to get through this man's
loss without God in my life. So, uh So, anyway,
(37:00):
thank you for the ministry that you do. I'd like
to transition and talk a bit more about one of
the one of the tenets of what you're working with,
and that's an acronym called CORE.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Can you walk us through that. I liked your acronym
for fresh. That was cool.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It was a yeah, I had to write it down freedom, rest, encouragement,
and healing, soul healing.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Okay, but what is CORE? What what does that have
to do with fresh journey? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
So there is a great counselor in the Christian world
named Leslie Vernick and I've spent years under her coaching
and ministry in she deals with a lot of spiritual
abuse situations and times when maybe churches don't recognize a
(37:46):
lot of women suffering in their marriages, and.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
So she offers a lot of tools.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
And so I've kind of combined what I've learned with
revelation wellness and the you know, the core strength ability
of our bodies physically and how important that is to
keeping us upright and you know, our intestines even working
right and things like that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
That our core is super important.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
And so leslie Verneck's teaching of core the sea is
completely honest, completely honest with yourself, with God.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And with others. And so they may this may not
be word for what she teaches, but this is how I've.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Maybe can come on and argue with right.
Speaker 5 (38:36):
Yeah, I'm like, maybe that's not exactly what she says.
But a lot of times as I'm doing a core
workout or leading some some groups in some core strength
even on the trail, we try to find our core
and and do stuff like that when the trail is boring.
So a lot of that I'll be talking about, you know,
(38:58):
this is this is how we do in life is
being completely honest with ourselves, God and others. And I
use the journal as part of that teaching that a
lot of in my own experience, I was a very
shut down emotionally person when I started every every group
that I had to start going to for my own
(39:20):
my own healing. You know, I didn't know how to feel.
I didn't know that I was allowed to feel. I
didn't know any of these things and was just kind
of a hollow shell of a person, it felt like.
And so being completely honest with myself kind of had
to be like the first trauma almost you know, as
I wrote down this, this really happened. You know, this
(39:43):
really happened, and I have to accept that as part
of my story and be completely honest with myself and
then I can take it to God, right because I
can't even ask for healing if I don't know what
I'm asking for healing for from. And so you know,
being completely honest with myself taking it to the Lord
and then being able to bring it into community and
(40:06):
to recognize, you know, a lot of times we feel
so alone when we've been through something hard, and yet
once we start sharing, we realize, oh my gosh, all
these people have been through this too.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
You know, there's nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
Why, you know, because we have a lot of self
talk that there's something wrong with us, that's why this
happened to us. And then we find out this is
a more common occurrence than we would have ever believed.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
And so.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
That see is the beginning steps of taking taking into
developing that core strength that's going to get you through life,
just like your own core, Okay, and then the o
is open to the Holy Spirit and other people who
are wiser than you. So that's where your counselors, your pastors,
(40:56):
and then you know, just good friends that maybe have
walked through hard things or are willing to walk with you.
And that's another thing to grieve sometimes in these hard
things that you know, sometimes you lose friends. Sometimes you know,
they don't agree with what's happened in your life, or
they want to argue, or you know, even in the
case of spiritual abuse, right they're they're like trying, they're
(41:19):
trying to wrestle their own emotions about this.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Situation or this person.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
And so we lose some people in our in our walks,
and so trying to find that community trying to really
anchor into the Lord.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
And you know, he promised he would send us a counselor.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
And more times I've seen and experienced enough people really
anchoring into the Lord to find you know, they're like,
oh my gosh, he really is the counselor. He will
help me, you will guide me in. My sister walked
through a season and she explained, she explained to me
(41:59):
how the Lord was giving her the shield of faith
to stop the fiery darts, you know, and I was
just like, so good, so good, And then the next
one is ore. And that's responsible for your own self,
your own behaviors. And again the journaling prompt does a
lot for this core strength ability in being able to
(42:23):
be personally responsible, which is one of my like the
things that that's really anchored deep in my soul is
that I'm I'm only responsible for myself, right, I'm not
responsible for the outcomes. I'm responsible to be faithful and
to to do my own work, and then the Lord
(42:44):
will have to do his work in other people in
his time and at their pace, right, and that's not
my pace really, it's never fast enough, right. And so
being responsible for yourself and looking into what it is.
As you're journaling, you know, what is it you want
(43:05):
to do? And is that really what you want to do?
And you know, make a prayer.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
And to decide what it is.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Yeah, I feel like I could do this, but maybe
that's not the direction I want to go. I want
to go this way and to be able to take
responsibility for a lot of that and then but not
the outcome, right, that's God's and E is empathetic, and
I think as Christians this is where we get to
(43:33):
apply the Gospel. So empathy does not mean I'm going
to enable someone else's bad behavior, but I can understand
that they're acting out their bad behavior based on their
own feelings, emotions, experiences in life. It's not necessarily a
reflection on me. Right, But I can apply the Gospel
and say, hey, you know what they need Jesus in this,
(43:56):
and I can share if i'm if I'm inspired by
the Lord to share, Hey, you know what I've been
through a season that's been really hard, and you know
the Lord has met me there and if you're willing,
he will meet you too.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
So you know a lot of times it's do you
do you want the Lord to meet you?
Speaker 5 (44:18):
In this walk and so empathy in understanding right, but
it doesn't mean we're going to enable bad behavior. And
that's Leslie Vernock. A lot of her her ministry is
in that empathy, real fine line right, empathy versus enabling,
(44:39):
and especially with marriages that are real controlling and things.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Like that that.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
She talks about leaving well or staying well. So how
do you do that as a wife in a in
a devastating kind of situation? And so in my own
in my own marriage, it was I was called to
stay well. And so in having to walk through that
(45:06):
journey learning how to stay well, this little three little
circles that my counselor drew was how I got through it,
you know. And so I've kind of adopted that into
the fresh journey and how to help other people to
get through that in that caring for your body, your mind,
and your spirit every day and moving through that.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
You know, because as adults, we've got lots of things
to do.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
Yeah, it's not like we can just sit down and
heal all day, you know, So how is it gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
It's gonna happen in a fifteen minute workout.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
It's going to happen in reading your Bible or listening
to it like I do on my drive to work.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
You know, like, how are you going to do that?
Speaker 5 (45:49):
You're going to have to be intentional and you have
to I call it practices, you know, you just simply
have to practice right and in doing so, every day
it builds. You know, there's that staircase, little drawing, you know,
and usually the guys way up there and you're like,
how am I going to get there?
Speaker 4 (46:06):
We'll make the steps smaller, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
So one percent every day?
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Yeah, day love it.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
So yeah, we don't we don't have that benefit of
all that time, but we we have to do the work.
We're responsible for it to get better and to move
in that direction, and the Lord will meet us as.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
We do it.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
So core is is uh wait wait almost had it.
It's honesty, complete honesty. There we go, okay, honesty, openness,
and then we have responsibility and empathy and those those
are all reflected in you said you sent me a
link that I'll make sure is in the Showdows. Those
(46:46):
those tenants are reflected throughout that journal entry.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Correct, Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
So so I'm I'm going to invite the listeners right now,
if what what Jennifer just said resonates with you and
you're like, hey, I need to move forward in this,
you can start with this journaling prompt the links in
the show notes.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
You need to grab that and get started on it.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So I'm going to tie up a conversation in just
a second, but I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Pray over you.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
But I also want to do a quick, kind of
fun lightning round of kind of random questions, but not
really random, like I thought of them ahead of time,
so they're not that random. Although although my brain's a
little strange.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So I got to know.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
You're hiking on this trail with a bunch of strangers.
I mean, they're not strangers by the end of it, probably,
which is great. But if you hike on the trail
a bunch of strangers and you want a snack, what's
your favorite trail snack, Jennifer, I love an apple, perfect,
very portable, no must, no fuss, And you can throw
the core back back into the woods.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
Right, But we don't leave a trace.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
We don't leave, so you don't throw your core. You
keep your core. Yes, Oh okay, well.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
Pack it in, pack it out.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
Yeah. The animals will We'll find that and become more
accustomed to.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
Our dependent Okay, well, here in Arkansas, the animals will
find it and then they'll probably be lunch.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
But come hunting season, I don't know how it is
where you are, Okay, noted? Okay, So Apple love it now.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I love worship music when I hike by myself, specifically,
if I'm gonna hike with somebody else, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Usually a conversation.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
But but if you go for a hike by yourself,
are you listening to music?
Speaker 2 (48:25):
And if so, what kind of music do you like?
Speaker 5 (48:28):
So I typically don't listen to music when I hike.
I listen to music out on my daily.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
Walks, things like that.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Am They is one of my favorite bands.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, they're good. They're good. Cool.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
So, So, if somebody wanted to start a hiking group
and they've heard what you said, and they maybe they've
wrestled through their own grief, or maybe they are currently
wrestling through their their own grief, you've learned a thing
or two putting together hiking groups.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
What would you recommend to them?
Speaker 3 (49:00):
It sounds like you wrote a workbook that would be
really helpful to them When it when it comes out.
What would you recommend to them?
Speaker 5 (49:07):
I would recommend in looking around for a hiking group
that is in your area already. That way, if you're
not familiar with the outdoors, you know, it is good
to have people who've been out there a time or
two to kind of help you out and teach you.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
You know, some of the natural wildlife that your area has.
Speaker 5 (49:26):
You know, I wouldn't know a copperhead from a from
a cotton mouth, you know, so I wouldn't be very
good on your trails.
Speaker 4 (49:35):
But but I do.
Speaker 5 (49:38):
Know what a rattlesnake looks like versus a king snake,
and things like that.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
So having somebody.
Speaker 5 (49:43):
To to kind of walk with you through just trail
safety things like that, and then who are more familiar
with with your area and and the challenges that each
each area comes with, so and finding people, and a
lot of times you can connect with somebody in those
So I I often say look on Facebook or there's
(50:05):
an app called meet up, and there's a lot of
times people will have hiking groups in there, and that
at least gets you a little connected into that hiking world.
And then maybe there will be somebody that would want
to join up with you more more frequently, or that
you really connect with and feel like you can go
on the trail safely with, which is what I love.
(50:28):
And then yeah, if you're if you're feeling called to
start a hiking group, I'll help you. So that is Yeah,
that's part of what I love is just getting people
together and being able to find that camaraderie and take
a journey together. And you know, sometimes you got to
(50:48):
backtrack and find find the way together, but that's all
all the more part of the story.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
It so. So you're hiking and you come across a
cold waterfall. Do you get in it?
Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yes, that's so funny. That's a rule, Like, that's a
rule in my own head. I come across the call,
I have to get it.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
I can't not. It doesn't matter what the temperature is.
I just got to go. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (51:13):
I did the Camino Santiago last summer, okay, and there's
quite a few places where the trail is and I'm
just like, every time at lunch, if there's a creek there,
I'm going to put my feet in.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
I got to get in. Okay.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Well, I didn't know if we could be friends, but
now now we can be friends. Sweet Well, Jennifer, I
sincerely appreciate this conversation. I know there's a lot more
that could be said about grief. We might have to
have you back as you publish your book and whatnot
so that we can talk through some more. But I
really love to close this conversation by praying over you
and your ministry and those listening who are wrestling with grief.
(51:48):
If you would join me, sure, Father, God, thank you
so much for this day. Thank you for the opportunity
to spend time with my sister Jennifer, and for the
ministry that you've led her in through her own very
pain full road. Lord that you met her, that you
brought healing and grace, and thank you for the way
that she's pouring that out to others, planting seeds that
are turning into other groups who are connecting families or
(52:12):
taking on adventurous, high energy, acl risking challenges. And thank
you Lord that you've called her to an area that
many people need and want. So Lord, I just pray
for those who are listening and watching who have wrestled
with grief. God, I pray that you'll meet them in
that grief and that You'll You'll bring healing to their
(52:33):
heart and their life so that not only can they
serve others, but that they can be close to you
and find joy in you again. And I also pray
for those who haven't wrestled through their grief, either they
haven't had the event yet or or are avoiding it. Lord,
I just pray that that you help them to be honest,
help them to be honest with you, help them be
(52:53):
honest with themselves. Lord, and I pray that you'll give
a hunger to them right now to find healing, to
pursue that to be willing to step out, to get
out in the woods and spend time with you and
just open their heart and being honest with themselves and
with the pain that they're wrestling with. Lord, and I
pray that your redemption and your healing come quickly for them.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
In Jesus' name a minute.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Thank you so much for the time to day, Miss Jennifer,
I sincerely appreciate it. And to our listeners, you guys
know how I'm going to end this. This has been
coach Alex Van Houghten on the Faithful Fitness Podcast. Until
next time, train hard, but pray harder.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Hey, if this episode helped you, jare it with someone
who needs to hear it, and don't forget to subscribe
and leave us a raving review so more people can
find faithful fitness. Oh and my dad's new devotional is
almost out now. You can grab a copy for yourself
and then join our free community at Better Daily by
(53:58):
clicking on moning in the show notes below. We all
have a cross to carry, but it's lighter when we
do it together, so check out both links in the
show notes. Don't be a big well bob, just do
it until next time. Don't forget. Train hard and pray
even harder.
Welcome to the Faithful Fitness Podcast. For My Dad, Coach
Alex Van Houghten helps to get stronger and mind, body,
and spirit. He believes that your body is a temple,
so taking good care of it is an actual worship.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I should know.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I live with him. Every week. He brings truth from
the Bible, tool of some science and stories that will
set your heart on fire. May God bless you to
become everything He made you to be, just one percent
better every single day.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hey there, and welcome back to the Faithful Fitness Podcast.
I'm your host, coach Alex vn Houghton, and I'm super
excited about today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Big question, what.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
If You're healing was meant to begin on a hiking
trail and not in a therapist's office. That's what I'm
gonna be talking about today with our guest Jennifer Neufeld,
the founder of Fresh Journey Stick Around. We're going to
be talking about tools that you can use in your
life and in the lives of your loved ones, the
core method for processing trauma and grief with honesty and hope.
(01:04):
And we're gonna be talking about the neuroscience of loss.
You're not gonna want to miss this. Also, if you
haven't picked up your copy of the Faithful Fitness devotional,
you need to go to Better Daily, Dot Live, slash
devo and pick up your pre signed copy today. We're
gonna have an awesome launch party when the book comes out,
and I want you to be a part of it.
That's Better Daily, Dot Live, slash Devo.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
One, two, three, what's up, guys. This is coach Alex
Vann Houghton on the Faithful Fitness Podcast. Thank you so
much for joining us today. I'm so excited about this conversation, actually,
maybe more strangely excited than I should be in a
conversation about grief and processing grief with miss Jennifer new Fellow, Jennifer,
(01:51):
how are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Good?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I'm so glad to have you.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
We are two hours different, so I've had a bit
more coffee than you have thus far.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
So yeah to the listeners.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
If I'm overwhelmingly energetic, it's not because Jennifer's not. It's
because she needs two more hours of coffee and maybe
a good hike under her belt.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So I want to dive right into this conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You are working with individuals to help them overcome grief
in a very unique way and maybe not overcome, maybe
walk through. I think that's something we can talk about
here today. I want to start by asking you how
your enterprise Fresh Journey started, was, what was kind of
the place that it began, and what are you guys
(02:34):
doing in the world right now?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
All right, Well, so Fresh Journey actually started right before
the pandemic and after I had completed walking through my
own seasons of grief for about nine ten years.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So I had done a lot of a lot.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
Of work, a lot of group work, a lot of
my own counseling to work through.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Difficult seasons in marriage with children.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
You know, obviously we all come with our own baggage
from growing up and all of those things to kind
of work through. And just as the pandemic was starting,
I had already had the idea going that fresh journey,
which is freedom, rest and encouragement for your soul and
healing journey. And so I had this, I had this
(03:29):
vision of having a community of people who enjoyed getting
out in nature and just working through the challenges of life,
because that's how I made it through. And so I've
developed a pathway of sorts based off of what my
own counselor told me as I showed up.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
You know, just a wreck of tears as my life.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
You know, I give the image of falling into a
pit or into a canyon kind of as what grief
feels like.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
And so you know, you're.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
You're trying to claw your way up the hill after
you kind of realize where.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
You are and everything's falling on you, and you know,
you just.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Get battered and bruised by the whole the whole experience.
And so asking my counselor, I was like, how am
I even going to survive this?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (04:23):
You know what, what.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
What can I do that's going to help me get
through this? Let alone even get better?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Right?
Speaker 5 (04:30):
So, so she's she drew out three little circles and
labeled them physical, emotional, and spiritual, and then she explained
to me, you're going to do one thing in each
one of these categories every day and you're.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Gonna be okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
So in that I had found evlation wellness within the
season of grief that I had already been active a
little bit with, and so I just said, okay, well,
then you know, my revelation wellness fits into my my
physical category and being able to listen to podcasts that
(05:14):
encourage me spiritually, emotionally and you know, get me out.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Moving my body. And so I used.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I use those a lot, and I encourage people even
today to use those tools and resources to get out
there and care for our bodies and to you know,
use the resources that are already there that people are
putting their whole lives and ministries into serving others, and
you know, we can we can benefit from each other.
(05:42):
And I love that about my Revelation Wellness community.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, so yeah, So.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Right before the pandemic, I kind of had this vision
going already, and then all of a sudden, you know,
our world stopped, and I decided to just put it
on Facebook book and try it out in a couple
of different hiking communities.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Hey, I'm going to be out on.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
The trail at our local park that has some hills,
and you know, I'm going to be out there for
my own mental and physical health and if you want
to come and join me, you know, And.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Strangely enough, people, now, now, where where are you in
the world that that people will I'm in.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The Bakersfield, California area.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Okay, so we're in.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
The large central valley. We have the Sierra Nevauta Mountains
real close. But yeah, our area is mostly crops and farmland.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I see.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
So I'm just baffled by the idea that around the
time of the pandemic you offer people an opportunity to
come join you physically for.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I don't know, a mental health hike. It sounds like, yeah,
they could have taken it that way there.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's at that point it was very much
about mental health.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I had.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, they showed up and what did you do?
Speaker 5 (07:07):
And some of them, some of them wore their masks,
but many didn't. You know, we were outdoors and we
felt comfortable enough to be walking and talking and sharing
our journeys.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And yeah, some.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Of those people that started with me out back then
have now started their own hiking groups. Back back then,
there was only really one local hiking group, and.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It wasn't always welcoming to New Bees.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Sure.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
So back in twenty eighteen is when I hiked the
Grand Canyon with Revelation Wellness, and so I did the
Rim to Him hike, you know, which is an intense
season of training yeah, and in the middle of that,
I was walking my own season of grief and very
very much felt connected to that canyon. And so yeah,
(08:07):
so in in my in my training and trying to
find groups that were out there, you know, helping people.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Learn about hiking and get connected and stuff.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
Yeah, I got left behind a couple of times because
I couldn't keep up. Oh man, didn't get a lot
of encouragement, you know, saying You're never going to make
it across the.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Canyon at this pace.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
And I just had to tell myself, I'm going to
make it across the canyon just like everybody else, one
step at a time.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Just me and God.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's just one step at a time. That's how everybody's
going to make it.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Across, right, and so and Revelation Wellness was super, super
encouraging and the all the all.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
The instructors and guides were We're just what my soul needed.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
And so I felt very connected to that, and that's
what I wanted to offer people as the pandemic and
all the things.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
You know, we all have our.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Own seasons of life and challenges, and you know, so
many people show up they've just become divorced or they
have aging parents who have moved in and they're caring
for them special needs children, you know, and they just
need that space that's something for themselves to kind of
pour into. And you know, if they're willing to try hiking,
(09:23):
it's really fun to get to connect and lead them through,
you know, the growth.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, yeah, Well, thank you for the origin story there,
and i'd like to talk about what you guys are
up to at the moment and what with the next
steps in the journey of fresh journey is. But I'm
I'm very interested in a couple of things here. One
of the first things I'm interested in is I read
a lot of literature in the exercise science community, and
(09:52):
I read a lot of literature in the psychology community.
And it's not like you can you can pull, like
you can cherry pick some research sources on this subject,
but it's not like a screaming billboard somewhere that hiking
is a very powerful methodology for actually taking steps through
(10:13):
And I don't mean that as a dad joke because
it could be, but actually taking steps through trauma, processing
and grief. And I know that in my own personal journey.
I've learned that in the journeys of many of my clients.
Sounds like you have also learned that in your personal
journey and working with with groups and whatnot. What do
you think and maybe maybe this might tie to your
(10:37):
own personal experience with walking through grief. What do you
think it is about hiking that makes it so powerful
in the process of working through grief?
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Well, so a couple of my own thoughts.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Yeah, in that betrail, right, it leads you to someplace, right,
So there is a pathway through. And often when we're
dropped into grief, we don't see the path. We can't
we can't see that this is even you know, a
good part of a story. Let alone, you know something
we want to walk And so in following a trail
(11:18):
you learn there are markers, there are you know, resources
there at each step. You've got a watering hole, you've
got a bathroom break, you need to stop and fuel,
you know. So there's these the are there are these
markers that we can kind of travel through and and
doing it repeatedly right kind of tails your brain to
(11:41):
calm down that you're gonna get through this, that there
is an end to this. And and in doing the
hard things right, training for the Grand Canyon in the
middle of processing a very life disrupting event with my
children us. It was quite frankly exhausting, yes, and life giving. Right, So,
(12:07):
how do you train for a marathon? Right? You can't
do it without training for a marathon out across a
grand canyon.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
And so it.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
It involved me making an investment in my time and
energy and and doing hard things that would build my
ability to physically and both mentally, you know, ascend out
of that canyon, and to do so.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
At my own pace.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I like the picture of grief.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
Grief all going to go through grief at our own pace,
and it's you know, the trails are similar, but they're
never all identical.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right, Well, I like I like that picture of grief,
by the way, being in the Grand Canyon because because
like grief is definitely not like your normal functioning level,
it feels a lot like being in the pit. I
think the Psalmist says the pit a lot, or the
valley of the shadow of death. As Psalmist three says,
like this very terrible place, but but it's it's cool
(13:12):
on that ascension front.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I read a very powerful book on the science.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Of grief, and I just pulled it up here because
I was I was interested in Doctor Mary Francis O'Connor
wrote a book called The Grieving Brain. But she described
it this way because I actually read this book because
we lost my wife's father just a couple of years ago,
and I was as as a man trying to lead
my four year old and my seven year old through
(13:40):
a grieving process well, and I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
That I knew how to grieve well, you know, like
I had wrestled with my own grief in life, but
I was I was an adult and I was adulting,
and I wasn't doing it great, but I was doing
my best. And but but she describes it this way
because when we think about the science of grief, it's like,
what's actually happening up here? And what we've what we've
learned in neuroscience is that there's a portion of our
brain that when when we have a loved one or
(14:04):
a situation that we're comfortable and confident with and that
goes away, there's a portion of our brain that sees
that as lasting as forever. So I have a loved
one and I can't imagine them not being there. I
don't know what that's like, so that it's called permanence.
I have permanence in my mind of that individual. But
in grief, what happens is there's another part of my
brain that understands they're gone, and so I have permanence
(14:28):
and they're gone, and those two parts of my brain
don't talk to each other. Then they don't naturally communicate,
and so you can have like a you can have
This was the case in losing my wife's father, the
boy's grandfather. The widow are my mother in law, the
(14:48):
boy's grandmother. She would go to the grocery store and
she would grab his favorite things and put them in
the cart and then break down crying a couple miles
over when she realized she was not bringing these home
to him because he's not there, right Because the part
of the brain that's like, oh, every time I've ever
gone grocery shopping for the last forty years, I grab
(15:10):
this thing because this is his thing that he loves.
And then two aisles over the part of the brain
that's like, he's not at home when you get there, and.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
They're like dealing with each other.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And the scientific way that you manage that is you
break down crying, like that's the physiological response in that
moment when those two parts of the brain aren't speaking together.
But one of the things she finds in this particular
trek through the grief work is that exercise is actually
way more beneficial when those two parts of the brain
(15:45):
are fighting with each other then crumpling into a ball
and crying. Not to say that if you crumple into
ball and cry, you're wrong. That there is something about
movement that helps you battle through that process in a
way that those parts of your brain can start to talk,
that they can actually communicate in a way that doesn't
(16:06):
doesn't devastate you. Now as I'm speaking, I imagine there's
some things coming to your mind when it comes to
your own story and maybe the story of your clients.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Do you care to add or share?
Speaker 5 (16:16):
No, Actually, I'm finding that fascinating because I can understand
that experientially, and I do know that journaling equally kind
of connects those two disconnected parts. Yes, and so I do.
I do have a journal prompt that I developed and
(16:39):
pretty much have used daily for the last ten years.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Do you mind sharing that I would love to hear it.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
Yeah, Yeah, so I've got that in the in the
link that I sent you. So yeah, but that my
counselor helped explain to me that as we process, and
especially handwriting, she said, you know kind of like releases
things from our brain and then allows us to like
take a more step back look at them, right, so
(17:07):
you actually see them written on the page, and you're
able to now take your emotional brain and your your
rational brain and to kind of evaluate, is that really
the choice I want to make? Because a lot of
times what we want to do, or what we feel
instantly is the right fix isn't going to work. Yes,
right and so and and my journals are messy. I
(17:30):
tell people they you wouldn't be You wouldn't think that
I'm this nice person if you looked at my journal
because I have a.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Right but I've learned that I can't act on all
of them, right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So absolutely absolutely, And you know that's the thing, right,
If you have chatter on two sides of your brain,
you're trying to put them together. You as a cohesive
individual is the product of putting those things together. But
if if and I mean I would hazard to say,
anybody listening or watching this, if you if you could
be in your brain not just yours, mine and any
(18:03):
as they go. I don't know if anybody needs to
be up there. It'd be very confusing place.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Yeah, So I tell my kids, you know, all the time,
I'm like, you might have thoughts and ideas on things
you want to do or need to do in this moment,
but take a minute step back. Is that really the
direction we want to.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Go with our lives?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
So, so coming back to this picture of hiking, you
mentioned several things in there, the path, like knowing there's
a path that I can go at my own pace. Right,
Two things came to mind while you were speaking that
that I think are true of my experience to One
of the things in hiking is that it's what's what's
cool is it's a physical manifestation of the reality there's
(18:43):
no way out but to keep going, Like like if
you if you're hiking out in the middle of nowhere
and you can't even and you just sit down, like
I mean, short of getting a GPS signal out to
nine to one one, like like, there's no there's no
way out, like you you have to keep going. And
griefs a lot like that, like you can go at
(19:05):
your own pace. There are many paths through It's it's
not easy, but the only way out is to put
one foot in front of the other. Really, yeah, like
that's the only only way grief processes forward.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So I like that about hiking as on that front.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And I think, finally, what I love about hiking in
relationship to the grief aspect is is there are oftentimes
in hiking. I don't know how this feels for you,
there are oftentimes in hiking where I'm following the path
and following the path and following the path, but then
I stop and I look up and I just appreciate
the beauty of what's around me, and I appreciate the
moment I check in with my breath. I love the
(19:42):
feeling of being out here. I love the smells. I
love the sounds. You know, there's a waterfall, there's a mountaintop,
there's a there's a snake. You know, there's there's stuff
and griefs.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Like that too.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Like there's there's the process of putting the one foot
in front of the other. There's the climb, there's difficult
things to manage and stuff. But sometimes you stop and
appreciate the beauty of maybe the memories you had, or
the beauty of how far you've come, or the just
the beauty of the moment. I feel like hiking kind
of core correlates to that too.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Is there anything you would add to that picure?
Speaker 5 (20:13):
Yah, Yeah, definitely. That's I think I've noticed for myself
and even as I've taken other people out onto trails.
You know, the Lord speaks to us each in our
own way. And one time we were on a trail
and a little bird was just like jumping ahead of us.
(20:34):
Every he didn't fly away right, he wanted to stay
like within that trail area, but he just kind of
jumped around. And I asked, asked the crew. I was like, Hey,
is anybody you know? Is that bird speaking to anybody?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:47):
Is there something something that you're getting out of this experience?
Speaker 4 (20:51):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:51):
And and so several people were just like, Yeah, I
feel like, you know, the bird's not scared of us,
but it's not you know, it's also not like wanting
to be right next to us. So you know, I
feel like God connects things in our minds.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Butterflies have done the same thing for many.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
People, and you know, just being able to get out
and witness and see the power of water, right, you know,
the erosion, the coolness, the refreshing, all the things that
water can be damaging, and yet we have to have
it for life, right, So it's it's a tremendous I
(21:29):
feel like God just gives us metaphors out in nature
all the time, right the people people write about the
sequoias and how they're interconnected and that's the only way
they can grow to their massive sizes. And yeah, all
the all the different biomes and things like that.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
That sounds like you've done a lot more research into
than I have.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
But it's occupational, very cool, Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
I love I love it and experientially. Yeah, that's definitely
been my experience in taking people out and for my own.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Self well as a Christian. It also brings me nearer
to the heart of Christ. You know, he he when
he spoke many of his parables are related to nature
in some form or fashion. And and it's hard to
be out hiking, you know, if you've spent if you've
spent some time in scriptures, it's hard to be out
hiking and not see it mirrored, you know, like you
could you could hang out with Moses on a mountain,
(22:24):
you know you can. You can see the mustard seed
tree that started from this tiny little thing, and then
you're like, oh, my gosh, faith is that way I
remember I spent I've We have a wonderful state park
relatively near to our house. It's this little gym. It's
so weird. The locals don't come here. I don't understand it.
But there are people from all over the place that
come come here. You know, I meet more out of
(22:47):
state people than locals. But when I'm hiking, but I
hike there and I pray there often, and I remember
coming by this uh this waterfall over and over and
over again, and I was fixated on this tree. I
don't I didn't know why. I just I would sit there.
I'd like consider it. And I'm not that guy. I'm
not no offense to the tree huggers out there, but
I'm not that guy. Like I'm not like, oh, this
is such a beautiful tree.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm not that guy. But I'm fixing on this tree.
I couldn't figure out why.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
So I sat there and I followed it followed the
trunk down and it was rooted in a rock, and
for some reason for me, that just was such a
deep metaphor for being rooted in the things that last,
that matter. And it was it was sitting on top
of a waterfall, so like it had had a hard life,
Like how do you grow in a rock at the
top of a waterfall. You're constantly being beaten, You're constantly
(23:33):
being being hit by the waves and the power of
this thing.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's not like you have soil around you know, but
here you are. And so it was. I spent a
lot of time praying at this tree.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
And that might sound weird to anybody who hasn't spent
much time in nature praying through difficult things. But God
really does I believe minister to our souls through through
the natural. So I wanted to ask, you know, fresh
Journey started what five six years ago?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, fast forward to today. How are things going?
Speaker 3 (24:08):
What kind of presence do you guys have in your
community and and how do you feel the missions progressing?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (24:16):
So I I want to say I love the better
daily one percent kind of thing Like when the Lord
spoke to my heart to do this, it was like, well,
how many people am I going to make the difference
to you know, and I said, well, even if it's
one percent, even if it's one percent of the people
in my community that this makes a difference for, then
(24:37):
that's that's good for me. And I mean probably I've
hiked with thousands of people over the last few years,
because some will come once and some will you know,
come for years. So in that season, so many of
those people who stayed with me throughout the pandemic than
(25:00):
the following years as we've you know, all come out
into a new a new season and figuring out what
it is we want to do with our lives. And
and a lot of the people had didn't done their
own healing and you know, walked through their journeys, and
now they wanted to offer something similar.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
To what what they got when they were walking with me.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
So it's really cool that there's sprung up out of
out of this ministry. There's been another group called Soul Adventurers,
and they tend to take on more of the trail
running aspect and love spartan races and things like that.
I'm not that adventurous. I'm really afraid of like tearing
(25:46):
my a c L and being down for the rest
of my life.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
So so.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I'm good with just you know, one foot in front
of the other, not climbing over crazy things or mud.
And then there's another group that has more younger children
in their in their sphere, and so they've taken on
the Little Hikers of Bakersfield, and so it's a bunch
of moms who get together and their kids get out
(26:15):
and it's so wonderful to watch, so wonderful to watch
and just to kind of be the parent of these
different these different groups and just encouraging them to go
out and to you know, make it a safe place
where people can get out learn about nature, you know,
how to get out there safely, and to get their
families out there, and to encourage their friends to come
(26:36):
join them, you know, even if it's not for the
benefit of grieving or moving through something hard, right, just
to just to do something outdoors and you know all
the benefits of that walking and all those sciencey things.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
So there's been several several groups that have sprung up
out of this, and so in the last year it's
kind of like I feel like I've transitioned into where
there's groups here. Now people will find places that they
are able to connect and get outdoors if they wanted to,
(27:14):
whereas you know, pre pandemic, there wasn't a lot out
there and your options were very limited.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
And so that's really exciting.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
And so I feel like the Lord's kind of pulling
me back now into I'm very confident that I can
physically train people because I've done it for enough years
now and so I'm moving more into the actual grief
maybe science or coaching kind of realm. And so I
(27:44):
have written the curriculum called Hiking to Explore Grief, and
I've had my first book study group this summer going
through that, which is super fun. And I've partnered with
a ministry called Wildhaven Sanctuary and they're actually out in
North Carolina, and so there's a group out there. It's
(28:06):
been online and so we've had people from the East Coast,
from the Central and out here with me in Bakersfield.
And so next weekend we're taking our celebration hike that
we've been training for in our grief process and understanding
what are those trail markers of things that you would
(28:28):
be looking for in grief to kind of show that
you're moving on to the next season.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
You walked through that section.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And so kind of going through that, and then the
book is in the process of being published or workbook
more is what it's more than a book, it's more
of a workbook.
Speaker 6 (28:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and gives a lot of practices because
you really have to do this experientially, right, And most
of us aren't taught how to grief, right.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
That's not something our culture embraces or that we're taught
even in the church, even though there's so much grief
in life, and so we haven't been taught that well,
and we don't know what to expect. And once you
kind of learned that process, hard as it is to accept, right,
then when new waves come, you kind of have the
you have the faith that it's going to You're going
(29:22):
to move through this, okay. And that's you know, as
the seasons of life continue to sometimes overwhelm and send
the title wave, you know, you understand, Yes there's devastation,
that's no more. Now where are we going to go through?
And how are we going to.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Get through this?
Speaker 5 (29:40):
And and so for my own self, that's been you know,
part of the journey is that I've had to deal
with so many title waves.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yes, yeah, you know, I oftentimes so my wife's a dietician, okay,
and I, uh, twenty years ago, I became a personal
trainer and I've been working through the health coaching process
and all that, and so so my children live with
a master level trainer and a registered dietician.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
And so I tell them a lot. In our line
of work.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You're learning this intensely practical stuff that most people don't
know how to do. But you get to just take
it for granted that every single day. You know how
to get enough protein, you know how to exercise, you
you know what these benefits are, and you know that
if you don't, you're.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Gonna pay for it. You know, like all those things.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
And understanding grief and how to move through that is
very similar, because it's not like I pray that nobody
has to grieve every day, but it is inevitable, just
like having to eat is inevitable.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It is inevitable that.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
You will wrestle with grief in your life. And and
if you don't know how, it's gonna shellack you. And
if you do know how, it'll probably still shellack you,
but at least you'll know what's happening.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
How to water, Yeah, yeah, right, How to tread water.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, that's that's well said. And so I'm just so
grateful for what you're doing in the world. Bless you
for that. I had to I had a thought that
I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
To share because grief is like, uh, grief is this
thing that if you don't know how to handle it,
or you've never been through it yourself, or you have
been through it, but you're not dealing with it.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
You're like, it's there, but it's not there, you.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Know what I'm saying, Like you're breaking the breaking down
to the grocery store a lot.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I'm not laughing at you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
That really stinks, but but you know, it's just a
regular thing you're life.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
You haven't worked through it, it's just there.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
If our world generally likes to take something that difficult,
even in the church and turn the other way, like
act like it's not there, I don't want it to
be there, and that's not biblical. There's a the Apostle
Paul says, we do not grieve as the rest of
the world grieves. That doesn't mean we don't grieve. That
means that we have a hope as Christians. We have
(31:50):
a hope in the faith that we can we can
grieve with that. This is this thing that makes it
a powerful and good process, even though it's painful. But
what I love about my faith as a Christian, what
I love about the Christian faith is at the center
of everything. It's right behind me on the right there,
at the center of everything is this symbol of grief
(32:12):
and difficulty. It also becomes a symbol of redemption. But
the symbol of the cross is grief and difficulty. Every year,
if you celebrate Good Friday and Easter, you get like, like, hey,
here's here's an innocent man, beaten, bruised and tortured for
the sins of the whole world. His friends have abandoned him,
he's been wrongfully accused, He's done nothing but help everybody
(32:35):
around him. And there he is bleeding to death and
dying on a cross right and look at it, like
and and grief is kind of like that greet Like
if you're going to wrestle through grief, can't You can't
do it by saying I'm not grieving, it's not affecting me.
Everything's fine, and I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Nah.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
It's like, hey, I am going to go for a
hike because I'm not okay, And I'm going to go
face this in in a way that that honors it,
in a way that that doesn't try to shy away
from it. And I'm gonna I'm gonna journal about it.
I'm gonna write about the things that are hard to say.
(33:12):
I'm going to write about the things that are difficult
to even think and feel right and and well, what
I love about what you're approaching here and what you're
you're doing in your world as you're saying, Hey, it's okay,
it's okay to be grieving, but we're not going to
not do anything about it. We're gonna we're gonna come
together and we're gonna walk through the difficulty. And I'm
(33:36):
sure I don't know if you have a guarantee with
your hikes, but it's like, hey, you will survive this,
like you'll be okay, We'll make sure you make it.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
We do, Yes, we do.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
And even in pointing to the cross, right, the prediction
was that this was a man of sorrows, a man
who would understand. And I'm pretty sure it's in Hebrews
where it says he's experienced the grief of our life.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
He knows what it's like.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
And so my favorite image of the Lord is the Immanuel.
He is with us and as he left, they said,
he promised, I will be with you. And so it's
it's lovely that even you know, through all the trials
of life, he is with us. And a lot of times,
without these trials, we wouldn't turn to him, right, we
(34:22):
would think we have life on our on our own.
And so yeah, that's that's equally an experience that you know,
my family's had to walk through. And you know, my
husband really in some of our challenges, he's.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Like, I need Jesus. Now I need him.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
And you know, before you could kind of handle you
life on your own, but now life is different.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
And you know, and so that's.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
It's a tool in the Lord Minister's through it, right,
not that he causes it or that anything like that,
but we know that he's with us, and he is good,
and it's good to be with him.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
And would that we turned to him without having to
experience pain and difficulty. But but glory to him that
in pain and difficulty he's there. Yes, yes, and and
I I my papa. So it's my wife's grandfather. So
he's a second Baptist preacher. He he actually he passed
three years ago, and I remember him telling me one
(35:22):
time over breakfast. He said that he never ministered better
than when he was doing a funeral. So like he
would go to a funeral and he would speak, you know,
the eulogy, he would he would take time to minister
to the family and stuff. But he said that he
always made sure, as weird as it might sound, that
there was an alter call in the funeral because because
(35:46):
his what he said is that our hearts are never
more raw and open to God in our life than
in the moments when we understand we're not going to
be okay by ourselves. And even the hardest heart, if
you lose somebody that you love, even the hardest heart,
is like, where's God right now?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Like I need him?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And and you know, there if if if God did
not intervene, if God did not love, if he didn't care,
if he didn't if he didn't step into that, then
we would just be lost and alone in that situation,
which is so wonderful that He's faithful to do that
even if we were hard hearted prior so so at
Papa's funeral, I remember saying I remember saying, Papa would
(36:29):
come down from heaven and slap me in the face
if I did not give an alter call.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
And he wasn't that kind of guy, but laugh.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And and three people came to Christ and that that,
and I'm not much of a preacher myself, but but
three people came to Christ because of what he taught
me and told me at that time, because he meant
something to somebody enough that that without him, there was
there was somebody in the room that was like, I
don't know how I'm going to get through this man's
loss without God in my life. So, uh So, anyway,
(37:00):
thank you for the ministry that you do. I'd like
to transition and talk a bit more about one of
the one of the tenets of what you're working with,
and that's an acronym called CORE.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Can you walk us through that. I liked your acronym
for fresh. That was cool.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It was a yeah, I had to write it down freedom, rest, encouragement,
and healing, soul healing.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Okay, but what is CORE? What what does that have
to do with fresh journey? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
So there is a great counselor in the Christian world
named Leslie Vernick and I've spent years under her coaching
and ministry in she deals with a lot of spiritual
abuse situations and times when maybe churches don't recognize a
(37:46):
lot of women suffering in their marriages, and.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
So she offers a lot of tools.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
And so I've kind of combined what I've learned with
revelation wellness and the you know, the core strength ability
of our bodies physically and how important that is to
keeping us upright and you know, our intestines even working
right and things like that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
That our core is super important.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
And so leslie Verneck's teaching of core the sea is
completely honest, completely honest with yourself, with God.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And with others. And so they may this may not
be word for what she teaches, but this is how I've.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Maybe can come on and argue with right.
Speaker 5 (38:36):
Yeah, I'm like, maybe that's not exactly what she says.
But a lot of times as I'm doing a core
workout or leading some some groups in some core strength
even on the trail, we try to find our core
and and do stuff like that when the trail is boring.
So a lot of that I'll be talking about, you know,
(38:58):
this is this is how we do in life is
being completely honest with ourselves, God and others. And I
use the journal as part of that teaching that a
lot of in my own experience, I was a very
shut down emotionally person when I started every every group
that I had to start going to for my own
(39:20):
my own healing. You know, I didn't know how to feel.
I didn't know that I was allowed to feel. I
didn't know any of these things and was just kind
of a hollow shell of a person, it felt like.
And so being completely honest with myself kind of had
to be like the first trauma almost you know, as
I wrote down this, this really happened. You know, this
(39:43):
really happened, and I have to accept that as part
of my story and be completely honest with myself and
then I can take it to God, right because I
can't even ask for healing if I don't know what
I'm asking for healing for from. And so you know,
being completely honest with myself taking it to the Lord
and then being able to bring it into community and
(40:06):
to recognize, you know, a lot of times we feel
so alone when we've been through something hard, and yet
once we start sharing, we realize, oh my gosh, all
these people have been through this too.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
You know, there's nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
Why, you know, because we have a lot of self
talk that there's something wrong with us, that's why this
happened to us. And then we find out this is
a more common occurrence than we would have ever believed.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
And so.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
That see is the beginning steps of taking taking into
developing that core strength that's going to get you through life,
just like your own core, Okay, and then the o
is open to the Holy Spirit and other people who
are wiser than you. So that's where your counselors, your pastors,
(40:56):
and then you know, just good friends that maybe have
walked through hard things or are willing to walk with you.
And that's another thing to grieve sometimes in these hard
things that you know, sometimes you lose friends. Sometimes you know,
they don't agree with what's happened in your life, or
they want to argue, or you know, even in the
case of spiritual abuse, right they're they're like trying, they're
(41:19):
trying to wrestle their own emotions about this.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Situation or this person.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
And so we lose some people in our in our walks,
and so trying to find that community trying to really
anchor into the Lord.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
And you know, he promised he would send us a counselor.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
And more times I've seen and experienced enough people really
anchoring into the Lord to find you know, they're like,
oh my gosh, he really is the counselor. He will
help me, you will guide me in. My sister walked
through a season and she explained, she explained to me
(41:59):
how the Lord was giving her the shield of faith
to stop the fiery darts, you know, and I was
just like, so good, so good, And then the next
one is ore. And that's responsible for your own self,
your own behaviors. And again the journaling prompt does a
lot for this core strength ability in being able to
(42:23):
be personally responsible, which is one of my like the
things that that's really anchored deep in my soul is
that I'm I'm only responsible for myself, right, I'm not
responsible for the outcomes. I'm responsible to be faithful and
to to do my own work, and then the Lord
(42:44):
will have to do his work in other people in
his time and at their pace, right, and that's not
my pace really, it's never fast enough, right. And so
being responsible for yourself and looking into what it is.
As you're journaling, you know, what is it you want
(43:05):
to do? And is that really what you want to do?
And you know, make a prayer.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
And to decide what it is.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Yeah, I feel like I could do this, but maybe
that's not the direction I want to go. I want
to go this way and to be able to take
responsibility for a lot of that and then but not
the outcome, right, that's God's and E is empathetic, and
I think as Christians this is where we get to
(43:33):
apply the Gospel. So empathy does not mean I'm going
to enable someone else's bad behavior, but I can understand
that they're acting out their bad behavior based on their
own feelings, emotions, experiences in life. It's not necessarily a
reflection on me. Right, But I can apply the Gospel
and say, hey, you know what they need Jesus in this,
(43:56):
and I can share if i'm if I'm inspired by
the Lord to share, Hey, you know what I've been
through a season that's been really hard, and you know
the Lord has met me there and if you're willing,
he will meet you too.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
So you know a lot of times it's do you
do you want the Lord to meet you?
Speaker 5 (44:18):
In this walk and so empathy in understanding right, but
it doesn't mean we're going to enable bad behavior. And
that's Leslie Vernock. A lot of her her ministry is
in that empathy, real fine line right, empathy versus enabling,
(44:39):
and especially with marriages that are real controlling and things.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
Like that that.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
She talks about leaving well or staying well. So how
do you do that as a wife in a in
a devastating kind of situation? And so in my own
in my own marriage, it was I was called to
stay well. And so in having to walk through that
(45:06):
journey learning how to stay well, this little three little
circles that my counselor drew was how I got through it,
you know. And so I've kind of adopted that into
the fresh journey and how to help other people to
get through that in that caring for your body, your mind,
and your spirit every day and moving through that.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
You know, because as adults, we've got lots of things
to do.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
Yeah, it's not like we can just sit down and
heal all day, you know, So how is it gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
It's gonna happen in a fifteen minute workout.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
It's going to happen in reading your Bible or listening
to it like I do on my drive to work.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
You know, like, how are you going to do that?
Speaker 5 (45:49):
You're going to have to be intentional and you have
to I call it practices, you know, you just simply
have to practice right and in doing so, every day
it builds. You know, there's that staircase, little drawing, you know,
and usually the guys way up there and you're like,
how am I going to get there?
Speaker 4 (46:06):
We'll make the steps smaller, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
So one percent every day?
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Yeah, day love it.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
So yeah, we don't we don't have that benefit of
all that time, but we we have to do the work.
We're responsible for it to get better and to move
in that direction, and the Lord will meet us as.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
We do it.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
So core is is uh wait wait almost had it.
It's honesty, complete honesty. There we go, okay, honesty, openness,
and then we have responsibility and empathy and those those
are all reflected in you said you sent me a
link that I'll make sure is in the Showdows. Those
(46:46):
those tenants are reflected throughout that journal entry.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Correct, Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
So so I'm I'm going to invite the listeners right now,
if what what Jennifer just said resonates with you and
you're like, hey, I need to move forward in this,
you can start with this journaling prompt the links in
the show notes.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
You need to grab that and get started on it.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So I'm going to tie up a conversation in just
a second, but I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Pray over you.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
But I also want to do a quick, kind of
fun lightning round of kind of random questions, but not
really random, like I thought of them ahead of time,
so they're not that random. Although although my brain's a
little strange.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So I got to know.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
You're hiking on this trail with a bunch of strangers.
I mean, they're not strangers by the end of it, probably,
which is great. But if you hike on the trail
a bunch of strangers and you want a snack, what's
your favorite trail snack, Jennifer, I love an apple, perfect,
very portable, no must, no fuss, And you can throw
the core back back into the woods.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
Right, But we don't leave a trace.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
We don't leave, so you don't throw your core. You
keep your core. Yes, Oh okay, well.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
Pack it in, pack it out.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
Yeah. The animals will We'll find that and become more
accustomed to.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
Our dependent Okay, well, here in Arkansas, the animals will
find it and then they'll probably be lunch.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
But come hunting season, I don't know how it is
where you are, Okay, noted? Okay, So Apple love it now.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I love worship music when I hike by myself, specifically,
if I'm gonna hike with somebody else, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Usually a conversation.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
But but if you go for a hike by yourself,
are you listening to music?
Speaker 2 (48:25):
And if so, what kind of music do you like?
Speaker 5 (48:28):
So I typically don't listen to music when I hike.
I listen to music out on my daily.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
Walks, things like that.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Am They is one of my favorite bands.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, they're good. They're good. Cool.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
So, So, if somebody wanted to start a hiking group
and they've heard what you said, and they maybe they've
wrestled through their own grief, or maybe they are currently
wrestling through their their own grief, you've learned a thing
or two putting together hiking groups.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
What would you recommend to them?
Speaker 3 (49:00):
It sounds like you wrote a workbook that would be
really helpful to them When it when it comes out.
What would you recommend to them?
Speaker 5 (49:07):
I would recommend in looking around for a hiking group
that is in your area already. That way, if you're
not familiar with the outdoors, you know, it is good
to have people who've been out there a time or
two to kind of help you out and teach you.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
You know, some of the natural wildlife that your area has.
Speaker 5 (49:26):
You know, I wouldn't know a copperhead from a from
a cotton mouth, you know, so I wouldn't be very
good on your trails.
Speaker 4 (49:35):
But but I do.
Speaker 5 (49:38):
Know what a rattlesnake looks like versus a king snake,
and things like that.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
So having somebody.
Speaker 5 (49:43):
To to kind of walk with you through just trail
safety things like that, and then who are more familiar
with with your area and and the challenges that each
each area comes with, so and finding people, and a
lot of times you can connect with somebody in those
So I I often say look on Facebook or there's
(50:05):
an app called meet up, and there's a lot of
times people will have hiking groups in there, and that
at least gets you a little connected into that hiking world.
And then maybe there will be somebody that would want
to join up with you more more frequently, or that
you really connect with and feel like you can go
on the trail safely with, which is what I love.
(50:28):
And then yeah, if you're if you're feeling called to
start a hiking group, I'll help you. So that is Yeah,
that's part of what I love is just getting people
together and being able to find that camaraderie and take
a journey together. And you know, sometimes you got to
(50:48):
backtrack and find find the way together, but that's all
all the more part of the story.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
It so. So you're hiking and you come across a
cold waterfall. Do you get in it?
Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yes, that's so funny. That's a rule, Like, that's a
rule in my own head. I come across the call,
I have to get it.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
I can't not. It doesn't matter what the temperature is.
I just got to go. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (51:13):
I did the Camino Santiago last summer, okay, and there's
quite a few places where the trail is and I'm
just like, every time at lunch, if there's a creek there,
I'm going to put my feet in.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
I got to get in. Okay.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Well, I didn't know if we could be friends, but
now now we can be friends. Sweet Well, Jennifer, I
sincerely appreciate this conversation. I know there's a lot more
that could be said about grief. We might have to
have you back as you publish your book and whatnot
so that we can talk through some more. But I
really love to close this conversation by praying over you
and your ministry and those listening who are wrestling with grief.
(51:48):
If you would join me, sure, Father, God, thank you
so much for this day. Thank you for the opportunity
to spend time with my sister Jennifer, and for the
ministry that you've led her in through her own very
pain full road. Lord that you met her, that you
brought healing and grace, and thank you for the way
that she's pouring that out to others, planting seeds that
are turning into other groups who are connecting families or
(52:12):
taking on adventurous, high energy, acl risking challenges. And thank
you Lord that you've called her to an area that
many people need and want. So Lord, I just pray
for those who are listening and watching who have wrestled
with grief. God, I pray that you'll meet them in
that grief and that You'll You'll bring healing to their
(52:33):
heart and their life so that not only can they
serve others, but that they can be close to you
and find joy in you again. And I also pray
for those who haven't wrestled through their grief, either they
haven't had the event yet or or are avoiding it. Lord,
I just pray that that you help them to be honest,
help them to be honest with you, help them be
(52:53):
honest with themselves. Lord, and I pray that you'll give
a hunger to them right now to find healing, to
pursue that to be willing to step out, to get
out in the woods and spend time with you and
just open their heart and being honest with themselves and
with the pain that they're wrestling with. Lord, and I
pray that your redemption and your healing come quickly for them.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
In Jesus' name a minute.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Thank you so much for the time to day, Miss Jennifer,
I sincerely appreciate it. And to our listeners, you guys
know how I'm going to end this. This has been
coach Alex Van Houghten on the Faithful Fitness Podcast. Until
next time, train hard, but pray harder.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Hey, if this episode helped you, jare it with someone
who needs to hear it, and don't forget to subscribe
and leave us a raving review so more people can
find faithful fitness. Oh and my dad's new devotional is
almost out now. You can grab a copy for yourself
and then join our free community at Better Daily by
(53:58):
clicking on moning in the show notes below. We all
have a cross to carry, but it's lighter when we
do it together, so check out both links in the
show notes. Don't be a big well bob, just do
it until next time. Don't forget. Train hard and pray
even harder.
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