Kingdom Partners Pt. 2: When Your Story Becomes Your Ministry with Jeremey and Michelle King
“Our bodies and our minds respond in these ways to external traumas from the outside in, but God can and will move from the inside out to redeem and restore us.”
This time on Beyond the Bar, Abby continues her conversation with Jeremey and Michelle King, diving deeper into the convergence of psychology and theology that makes their ministry and their stories so unique and momentous. You can expect a practical, tactical discussion of:
- the science behind our stories
- big "T" and little "t" traumas
- how to use the "four C's"
More about the book Try Softer: https://aundikolber.com/trysofter/
“I think that is the best way to describe grace. That God gives it to us and then pours it out of us and we just get to live that story out over and over and over again.”
About Jeremey
Jeremey is the Lead Pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Church in Afton, MN as well as the President of The Master’s Institute Seminary in White Bear Lake, MN. He recently completed his doctorate writing his dissertation on Relational Discipleship: an Attachment Theory Approach to Creating Community Within the Church. In his career Jeremey has planted a church, helped launch two nonprofits, and been a barista. In his spare time, Jeremey loves to hunt, play guitar, and roast coffee.
About Michelle
Michelle is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, who owns a solo practice called Live Restoried. She has been a partner with her husband Jeremey in ministry for 20 years. They have two teenagers, Gabriel & Neriyah. Michelle’s therapy focus has been through an attachment lens and includes EFT (emotionally focused therapy for couples and individuals). She is currently finishing a certification in attachment-focused EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing—a form of trauma therapy). For work or play she loves to travel, find fabulous food, explore delightful coffee shops and go on beautiful hikes.
Read the Podcast
Intro: Welcome to Beyond the Bar, the podcast where coffee and conversation are a catalyst for growth. If you’ve been searching for that coffee-with-a-friend experience that leaves you feeling seen, met, and encouraged, you’ve come to the right place. So grab your cup, listen up, and together we’re going Beyond the Bar.
Abby: Hey friends, welcome to Beyond the Bar. I’m your host, Abby. If you just listened to episode one of this little segment, fantastic. If you didn’t, I would recommend you go back and listen. Our guests today are Michelle and Jeremey King, so this is part two of our episodes with them, so you can go listen for kind of the preface and their story background. But we are going to get into some of the more tactical, boots-on-the-ground details, jumping off of episode one. So, go listen to that and this one will be here waiting for you when you get done with that one. But we’re going to jump right back in with you guys, so thanks for being here! Um, we had done this, like this whole episode idea segment came from being at Redemption, you guys were there one day in the pouring rain, and I was talking with you guys, showing you guys around, and through just chatting, got to know a little bit more bout your guys’ background and stories, shared a little bit about mine, and in that process, I believe it was you who was like, “Hey, I have this book and we’re going to get you a copy and you need to read it,” and low and behold, you guys fulfilled your promise; brought me the book, I read it like in a couple of- even in Redemption season I read it in like a week, so I downed that thing, and it was fantastic. It was so good. And it really became kind of the invitation for this, and, um, is kind of a major part of what you guys are passionate about, right?
Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the, um, that was really fun, to, to get to have that, this interaction, you know, as we said in the last episode, we’d known each other casually, you know, as we came and ordered our, um, almond milk chai, in case anyone needs a good recommendation at Redemption. And, you know, we’d come and we’d order our drinks and it was one of the things that we really looked forward to as we would come up to the cabin was just coming, coming to that space. And as we were having that conversation, which, you know, God’s so kind, sometimes, just to open up a conversation and a connection where our stories had some similar kinds of pieces where, you now, early, young divorce and having to walk through and figure out, you know, what does it look like to take the next steps and to go through a process of healing. And so as I was just listening to you talk, one of the things that has been a part of my journey is not only having people, but also having resources, having books that have helped me along the way, and one of the newer books in my life that, um, and I, and I love this book because it’s so integrative, it’s both a blend of, um, what is, is just pure gospel, like the grace of God, with what is it that happens in our, in our bodies and is our minds, um, taking, taking from some of the best of psychology and really telling the story, helping is tell the story of what it is that has happened to us. One of the quotes that I love, and I brought this book, the book is called Try Softer, and she says in this book, she says, “I want you to begin to develop a new awareness of your story and your wounds so you can attend to your pain with the same tenderness God does.” And that really is the heart of this book. That it’s a space where we really get to slow down and come out of this narrative that we’re supposed to have it all put together or figured out, and we just get to bring our mess and allow God to begin to sit with us as our story goes from something that maybe feels very fragmented in many ways to something that feels and is coherent. And coherent just, you know, in that sense really just means that we begin to sit with the pieces of our story and unpack them in such a way that we can put language to it, that we can put name to it, that this is what happened to me or this is what I’m feeling, and that there can be a sweet space then to begin to consider, “What would I look to not only offer to God in that, but also, where-” and some of the neurobiologists talk about this idea of thin space, “Where would I like to, before I just do the next reflexive thing, where would I like to consider a place of change? Where would I like to do something different?” Because if we don’t know our story, we begin to kind of just live out this reflexive way of being versus having that thin space where Holy Spirit can come in and there can be a new path that we take. And that really has been kind of my journey of watching myself heal, is, moment by moment, as the Holy Spirit walks with me, that there is this, “And what would it look like if just this looked different? This, this one small piece?” And then as I get to consider that and do that alongside of Him, that I watch myself moment by moment becoming more fully who He has created me to be.
Jeremey: So what’s really cool about Aundi’s work… She is a marriage and family therapist who writes this book, Try Softer, from her psychological perspective, but also then from a theological perspective, from a really well-informed Christian perspective. And what Michelle just said about the neurobiologist talking bout kind of thin space, this idea that our neuro-pathways, the way they work can actually change, we can experience movement… the funny thing is that in the theological world, thin space means something very similar. You have people like Teresa Vavila, you have St. John of the Cross, you have the contemplatives throughout church history that have talked about thin space. In fact, I did a pilgrimage to Iona in Scotland where it’s called a thin space, a space where the distance between us and God feels very small. Places where you just, like, can experience Holy Spirit and engage. And so what the world of psychology in its best self is doing is describing how God created us. And so those two worlds don’t need to live separately. And that’s where, Michelle and I, our common work comes into play. That we speak at, for me, I can translate old, dead languages, like I love that nerdy stuff in the scripture, um, but as I read it I discover as Michelle and I do our work together, how her work reflects my work and vice versa.
It all started for us when I was in my second year seminar. We were just married and we would drive from our little place in Huntington; we’d drive up into the inland empire area of Southern California. I’d drop her off at, at Pacific University where she had started her Master’s in clinical psychology, and then I’d drive 30 minutes over to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. And on those drives, those hour long drives, we would take turns and we’d quiz each other with cards. So, you know, she’d have my Hebrew cards out. And she’s like, “I can’t even…” she’d have to hold it up for me because she’s like, “I don’t even know what this says,” you know?
Abby: (Laughs) Yeah.
Jeremey: And so she always jokes that I got kind of two degrees, because, you know I, like, her cards I could understand, you know?
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: So, so she doesn’t have any Hebrew memorized in there, but, but we would quiz each other, and so I got interested in the theorists and the things that she was studying and so that was kind of the beginning of our work together in both psychology and theology and Christian practice.
Abby: I love that. One of the things I think is the coolest things about being a believer is that God created all of it.
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Abby: I think this- my field is not psychology, my field is not theology- but I did do a little bit in marketing and I say this all the time, like, “I think God is the best marketer.” Like, “He’s the best one. He tells the best stories.”
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Abby: “His branding is fantastic and He’s really good at a rebrand. Like, He’s really good at those.”
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And so it’s, like, our God is the best God. Our God is the best theologian. Our God is the best psychologist. And He’s attentive to all of those details because He made them. And so there’s things where I think it can be easy, and I was probably raised in a little more of that type of a culture, where it can be easy to fear something because where, like, Satan comes in and tries to attack everything. So there’s a lot of unholy things in psychology and in that industry. Totally. So is there in the medical field, so is there in marketing, so is there in theology. Because, like, all things, can, you know, we’re fighting a war here.
Jeremey: Yeah, everything can get twisted, right?
Abby: Right.
Jeremey: Yeah. And so back to what we talked about in the previous episode: when grace and truth come together, that’s where momentum happens. And so Michelle’s work is about bringing that grace and truth together, which is really a beautiful combination.
Abby: It is. It’s so cool. And you guys handed me that book and you had been a customer for a couple of years, but very casually. And that was our first genuine connection conversation.
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: And so I had been given this book and I went, “Uh, this looks fantastic,” and like, “Now I’m going to have to discern this as I’m reading through it and see, like what is this thing?” So the first thing I did is, there was a benediction in the back. Like, I went to the table of context and I read through the titles of the chapters and I went, “Oh, this is good.” And then I saw there was a benediction. I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Those typically aren’t in books.” So the first thing I did is, I flipped in the back and I read the benediction. And I started bawling. It was as if God had written, like, it was as if my Heavenly Father was talking to me. And it was like, maybe a paragraph. And her prayer at the end of what she was praying over everyone who read the book and what her hope was for you, that beautiful paragraph, I was like… “Oh.” Like, I mean, I actually just like, I wept and I went, “God, I’m so excited to get into this,” because that alone was like- my soul had been seen and someone was telling me that all of the things I was feeling, um, there was permission for that.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: And so from that, that very first paragraph I was like “I’m excited for this thing!” and the rest of its’ contents proved to be so lifegiving in both gospel truth and just like practical psychology to just put some, like, data and language in a professional sense around things that I had been feeling, to have that felt so empowering and restful at the same time.
Jeremey: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: Yeah.
Jeremey: Yeah. And I think as you have crafted, Michelle, I’m talking to Michelle right now, you’ve crafted tools that you utilize in your therapy room.
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Jeremey: It really is around connecting us to our emotions and our story and creating an environment that we can have those conversations, that each of those conversations move us toward that healing and that experience of grace from the inside out, so redeeming the stories, redeeming that, right, and that doesn’t mean shoving them away or being afraid of them, but that actually means embracing them.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: Which, I think that piece, if we could talk to that a little bit… it is so hard to embrace your story in a way that is beautiful and grace-filled um, and like, giving yourself permission to unpack some of those chapters and I know for me- and I think I shared some of this there at the shipping container where we were talking, um, my body would physically respond in situations. I mean, I still deal with this, um, where you’ll be in a situation and all of the sudden I’m feeling anxiety and I’m feeling scared, like, I’m like, my body is responding as “I need to get out.” Like, I feel in danger. And it’ll be in a circumstance or around people where you’re going, I know I shouldn’t, like, there shouldn’t be anything that’s really tripping this, and it’s being tripped.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: And I started to, by God’s grace, realize that a lot of that was like, oh, some trauma stuff here. So it’s feeling similar. But that book started to put some language around that. But I don’t think that’s an uncommon experience. Could we talk about some of that embracing the story? And the bodily stuff because I think it can be really confusing.
Michelle: Yeah. Well, and I think, to begin, um, talking about what is it that, um, happens in our story that we may not even be aware of, and especially for those of us that have experienced trauma. And sometimes we, as people, will disqualify ourselves as people who have experienced trauma because we say “I have not been in a house fire”, “I’ve never been in a major car accident”, “I haven’t had a sexual assault” or something of that nature, and so we say, “Well, I’ve never had trauma.” Those in, in, in my field are what we call “Big T” traumas and some people will have experienced those and, and they’re, they’re able to kind of point to a particular incident in their life when something happened. And so they may have, in some ways, an easier time saying, “Oh, yeah, this is what- this is in my body because now that I get in a car after I’ve been in this car accident, of course I’m feeling anxious.” But for some of us, our story is something that is harder to put our finger on. It’s harder to put a name to it, and we may not even know that we should be naming what that is because it wasn’t something that was identified in our life as a significant moment. And so those are called “Little T” traumas. They’re, as Aundi says in this book, they’re the paper cuts that come over the course of time, and when you’ve had a thousand paper cuts, the reality is that kind of pain is actually as held in the body as significant as a “Big T” trauma. And I sometimes will say to my, it’s, it can be like the air that you, you took breath in as you grew up, that it can be just what was. That the, the response from a primary caregiver and the way that thy maybe were unpredictable in your household, that sometimes they were very loving but sometimes they maybe felt like a grenade with skin on. And in that sense, we have what we call “Little T” traumas where it might be this unnamed space inside of our bodies where, now when we encounter something that feels similar, our whole system goes, “Uh-oh,” and that, that our body is, um, you know, our, we have a protective system in our brain called the amygdala where we have that “fight, flight, freeze” or what we also call “fawning” and some people don’t know what fawning is, they may identify other ones because they can come up more often, but fawning can actually be this process where we, um, in our, in our system, try our best to essentially be what the other person wants us to be in order for us to be okay in that moment. And so we’ll kind of shift and shape into maybe even putting away parts of ourselves so that that other person doesn’t have access to continue harming. And so as, as the amygdala fires in those moments, we can really lose access to our full self because we are in survival mode. And so part of the idea of slowing down and getting to know our story is to actually give space, not only to name what has happened, but to give a voice to what is happening now. So when you talk about this idea of, and my body is responding, it’s both; it happened in the past but it’s also happening in the now. And so we’re joining those two stories and acknowledging that and “Today, this is what it feels like to be me as I interact with this person or in this circumstance.” And just by bring that, that story together -and often the way that we’ve kind of talked about it in our work is through this idea of the four C’s. That there is this access that we can have as we slow down, the first C being “calm". And I often say, this is space where, when we start to feel activated in our body, if we can just, even in our spirit, say, “Holy Spirit, would you just help me to take a breath right now?” You know? to just give space to slow down, to just, this is the beginning of acknowledging that something is happening. And so as we calm, it gives us a bit of space for the second C, which is to get “curious”. “I wonder what is happening for me right now? I wonder in this moment what the feeling inside my chest or my stomach or maybe the racing in my head… I wonder what that’s about?” And as we get curious, the next move, and this is really what Aundi is pointing to in the idea that as we attend to our stories, that this is like allowing God to kind of come in and minster alongside of us, that- the third C is “compassion", that we would be able to say something along the lines of, “Gosh, it sure makes sense that I would be feeling like this right now.” And as we actually take the space to give language to, and as we give the space for grace to come into our story, there’s something really beautiful that can happen in us in that exact moment. Like, there doesn’t have to be a waiting for that to happen somewhere down the line, that it can happen moment by moment. And then the fourth C being “creative”, that we actually get to, as we’re partnering with Holy Spirit, get to say, “What could this look like that might be different than what the reflexive, what the path I’ve been on, what the automatic response,” as I talked about, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, sometimes we need that invitation to be able to go, “What would I like to do right now that maybe doesn’t look like just what I always do?” Where, you know, I may be caught in a moment that hasn’t felt good for me relationally, and I just keep doing the same thing because it’s what I do when I go into that place of fear and pain and panic. And as we slow that process down, that fourth C, that creative piece is really I think where a lot of the, as we were talking earlier about thin space, where a lot of that thin space of being able to say, “Is there something else? Is there another way that I may want to either attend to myself or show up in this moment and what could that look like?”
Jeremey: I think an example would probably be helpful. So what’s happening in your brain, whether it be a big T trauma or a series of small T traumas, it’s Siegel, I think who says, Daniel Siegel, who says, when your neurons fire together, they wire together, they create pathways, right?
Michelle: He says that, but it’s actually Hebb’s Axiom.
Jeremey: Yes. So, and what’s happening is that your brain is triggered and then you’re going into these reflexive responses which are designed, actually, to protect us. Like, when the primary bear comes, your first response should be to get out of there. Like, it’s, you know, these are safety responses. However, they don’t serve us well in relationships with other humans necessarily when it’s a different context. So, we had an experience early on, the screen door story. So, I think this is a great example of when something in the present fires from a past experience that causes an old reaction.
Michelle: Yeah. So when we were living in California, I lived in a house that was an old house and it had a screen door, a wooden screen door. And Jeremey and I were hanging out and, just, you know, enjoying our day together, and I don’t recall exactly why but there was a gap in communication in terms of him going outside to his car.
Jeremey: And we were having a conversation that was not a fight, but it was like a challenging conversation, like, a disagreement or something.
Michelle: Yeah, yeah. And he needed to go out and get something in his car, but I don’t think he queued me for that, he didn’t say like, “I’m going out to the car to get something and I’ll be right back.” He didn’t say those words. So he goes outside and all I remember is hearing the screen door slam. And the flooding that happened for me was, “He’s leaving. He’s leaving. I’m being left again.” And the way that I responded when he came back in was to lose it. Like, I unleashed on him and, and it was such a response out of, uh, a place where my amygdala had obviously fired into fight. I was, I was ready for the fight. Um, and my perception was off but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see that he had gone out to his car and that he had come back inside and that we were going to be okay. All I could see and feel was that I had been left.
Jeremey: So where psychology and our practical theology life would come together is that, “Ah, so we know now what was happening in that moment is that now her prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that recognizes all these things is shut off. And so the amygdala is firing, and she’s in full protection mode, like, survival mode, and so now she’s going down a neuropathway that is an old neuropathway built by many small T traumas. And so now she’s responding to an old hurt in a new context that wasn’t necessarily the right fit for that.” But we all do that. We all have that. And it isn’t just the property of those who have big T trauma. It’s the small T traumas that can trigger our system in the same way. But this is part of a God-given design, and we’re designed to be relational beings, and we’re designed to have these connections. But like anything, it goes awry from time to time. And so being aware of it, then we begin to make new neuropathways. But we have to do that work when we’re not triggered. So when our brain is fully online, then we can create those new neuropathways that, eventually, over time, can override the old patterns of thinking, the old ways of doing it. and so I think that was just a tangible example.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: Yeah.
Michelle: We actually ended up naming that pretty early on, “The Man in the Purple Shirt”, and the reason we called it that was because we recognized that when my first husband left, he was wearing the purple shirt. And on the day when Jeremey walked out the door, I don’t know, know what color his shirt was, but in my mind he was wearing the purple shirt. Like, that there was this inability at the time for my body, my mind, my spirit to distinguish the difference between Jeremey and my first husband, that all I could feel, all I could see was this sense of being left. And so as he said, my upstairs brain was offline and I’m functioning only from this very primitive survival place.
Abby: That was, that concept was something that she talks about in her book, and it was like a lightbulb moment for me. And it was language I had been using, but almost through self-discovery, but when it was validated by, like, “Oh, this is actually what’s going on,” was so, like, just a breath where you’re like, “Okay,” because that’s how I would, I had like so similar experiences in relationships where I was looking at a person and going, “I know you’re not this other person who hurt me, I know that, like, logically there’s a part of me that knows that, but everything is being tripped right now. Like, every wire is being tripped, so I’m going to need some, like, gracious compassion as we, like, do the unwiring process, um, because I know it’s, I know it’s attached to this piece of my story, but, like, I’m not there yet.”
Jeremey: And this is where tools like the four C’s help us, like, not live in the old story, but live in the restory. So Michelle’s practice is called “Live Restoried,” and it’s about this restoring process, restored process, to give it a new narrative, new stories. So the four C’s, you know, we discovered it as kind of this psychological way of describing how to come back from the being fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn, back up into, “Ah, I can actually think now and make decisions.” And we see this in, actually, the scriptures, in the way that Jesus lives. So a lot of times I’ll read a book or they’ll be like, “We found the method of Jesus’ discipleship.” I’m like, “After 2,000 years you finally found the secret method?” Like, I don’t, you know, and, “Weird, it’s different than the other one that secretly discovered it?” So, I don’t think Jesus had a particular method of discipleship necessarily, but he did have a manner. He had a way of being himself and a way of being with people. And so when we look at the scriptures, I see Jesus’ interactions with other people. He lives out these four C’s. So let’s take John 8, for example. There’s this woman caught in adultery, brought before Jesus. It’s really a political test of Jesus. “What is he going to do?” I could do many, many sermons on this. I won’t. So Jesus did this interaction, and what does he do? Well, first is that he remains calm. He doesn’t get fired up. He himself doesn’t run down paths of instant response, that, he stays centered in who he is. And it says in the scripture that all he does actually is bend down and begin to write in the sand, doesn’t tell you what, which is great, and so he remains calm. So, he’s not triggered. He’s not firing. He’s settled. And then two, he is curious, which allows him to ask some interesting questions. Like, “Anyone here not have sin?” You know, internally, he’s asking this question, right? “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” right? Which moves him into this capacity for being creative, but not without first being moved with compassion. It’s funny because anytime Jesus has a movement towards someone, not every time, but many times in the scriptures, it talks about Jesus full of compassion. And the word there in Greek actually translates out as gut-wrenched, that he’s moved in his inner being, like he’s moved towards someone, right? That he has this compassion. In fact, in the Hebrew scripture, God’s predominant posture towards all of humanity is, I think it’s, I can’t remember the exact Hebrew word off the top of my head, but it’s this movement of compassion. But that compassion is fueled by a centered sense of self and then this ability to be curious about what is going on. And so movement of compassion, God’s posture towards all of humanity is one of compassion. And then you see Jesus creatively address the issue with the crowd of men there, which has its own issues. But you see from the oldest to the youngest, they begin to drop their stones and move on. And then he says to her, “Is anyone left to condemn you? Neither do I condemn you,” right? And then frees her. In Jesus’ interactions with each person I see in the scripture, he has this manner. So Peter, later on at the end of John, after around a charcoal cooking fire Peter denies him, knowing him, three times, Jesus then reinstates him around the same kind of fire. Only two places that word for fire is used in the scripture is where Peter denies Jesus in John and where Peter reinstates Jesus. But Jesus in his interactions is calm. He has a centered sense of identity. He is curious. He is compassionate. And then he’s creative. So this creativity about how he reinstates Peter pulling, him out of his shame cycle and reinstating him as one of the twelve, eleven then, that is a move that he can do because he is in this place of like, “Ah, this is my manner with people.” So as we adopt Jesus’ manner in the time zone we’re not triggered, it helps us identify quickly when we are triggered and be able to slow down enough in that moment to allow our neurons, which have fired together in new pathways, to take the new pathway rather than the old pathway and to say, “Ah, okay, my reflexive response, I’m, I’m recognizing this, I feel it, I feel it, but now I can slow down and breath enough,” and the four C’s are a tool that help us do that with ourselves first and then help us do that with others as we embody them and we live them out.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. I love those because they put some super practical, like, really boots-on-the-ground toolkit things, like, I can put that in my toolkit, and so when I go, like you said, first to myself and say, “Okay, what is happening?”
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And then give yourself permission- I love that you guys are both doing this, and we did it in episode one so people should really listen to that one, but you guys both had to acknowledge your own stories-
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: -and God had to attend to things in you guys separately before you could come together and join forces for the Kingdom. The Lord had some attending to do, and it took you guys, like, giving yourself the grace and space and permission to walk through your your story and acknowledge those pieces, not so that they could define the rest of your future, but so that you could move forward and you could do the rewiring so that the Lord could redeem the thing. That’s so encouraging to me and so hope-filled of an option.
Jeremey: And like, while we’re doing the hard work of showing up, like, of being, there is a work for us to be brave, to not turn away and look, not let ourselves numb out to whatever it is that God wants to do in us. But it is truly Holy Spirit who is rewiring, right? And for me, all of this is founded on this idea that I see in the scriptures of like, “What is it to be human? What is it- what is it to be a soul?” So, in the Bible, when it talks about creation in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, um, creation and then what went wrong with creation…
Abby: Lots. (Laughs)
Jeremey: (Laughs) Exactly. But it says that, He, when He formed them, He made them, He breathed into them, and then they became, some translations say, “living being,” some translations say “soul,” the word is “nephesh” in, in the Bible, and you don’t have a soul, you are a soul, and so we in modern thought have separated body, mind, spirit as separate things. Our soul is something different. But in the biblical understanding of it, it’s one thing. You are one thing, body, mind, spirit. When Jesus comes back and restores all things, we will have bodies. The scripture says that as he is now, we will be like him, meaning that we’ll have a resurrected body. We are body, mind, spirit. There isn’t this, um, there isn’t a separation of those things. That’s actually a Greek thought that comes into the Christian faith much later. The Hebrew thought is nephesh. You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. It’s body, mind, spirit, it’s all mixed. Which makes sense then why our physiological responses then match what is happening for us emotionally. And sometimes we’ve disassociated those. So we think, “Oh, no, we just have to respond this way. We have to ‘take every thought captive,’ we have to…” all these things. And while there is deep truth to that, but we start from a place of recognizing body, mind, spirit, all integrated as part of the created design. And so that frees us then to pay attention to. So when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, which is really interesting, it’s in all the Gospels, but Mark 12 is where I’m most interested, he responds with a prayer. He responds with the Hebrew Shema, the most important prayer. He says, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord of God is one.” And then he goes to the command part of that. “You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” And then in the Greek version, he adds, in the New Testament, he adds “mind” because of their understanding of it. But he’s quoting Deuteronomy. And in Deuteronomy, there’s three words there. There’s with all your heart, with all your '“lev,” the seat of desire and will and things like that. With all your strength, with all your “meod,” your, like, the power you have to do stuff, your external body, your physical sense, self. And then with all your nephesh, like, and I probably got the word wrong. I’m not reading it right now. But with all of that together, inside and outside. And so what we are talking about here is that God works from top down, Him to us, top down, inside out. So inside us and then outward, moving outward. And that’s the way redemption works. And that’s, so what psychology is discovering is what God designed from the very beginning is that, “Hey, our bodies and our minds respond in these ways to external traumas from outside in, but God can and will move from the inside out to redeem and restore us such that we can be aware of how the outside in is affecting us, but be governed not by the outside in but be governed by-” and the Holy Spirit, like, in the New Testament it talks about, like, how the Spirit now lives in and among us, so now that spirit is the one who gets to override the, the wiring and do the rewiring. So for me, that theological foundation of “What is a human soul?” is essential for how we approach this.
Abby: Well, I love the- I’m such a doer. And the Try Softer book was such permission for me to, like, open up some of that and go, “Actually, this is a forever sanctification until, like, the day God calls me home, and so you don’t have to be your finished version right now,” which was a message I very much need to hear as a doer. But I love the encouragement that is, but also you do get to be a doer in this. You do get to participate in work that the Lord offers you, and it’s hope-filled and it’s redemptive and restorative. And so nothing that’s happened to you disqualifies you from, like, redemption, from being set free, from being the restored thing. And that doesn’t mean denying anything that’s happened. It means going, “That- that’s not too big, though.” And now there might be a process to what that looks like, and that process is grace. That process might be a longer journey for some traumas, like, big “T” ones, or maybe even some of those little “t” ones that have been massively impactful, but there’s hope still to be had. And that is such a, like, a breath to me. And some things will come faster, and for others, it’ll be slower, and for myself there will be things that drop off faster and there will be things that drop off slower. And that journey idea is such a meditation to like, “Okay.”
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And I love that. And I love that, you know, if people listen to part one and now part two, they’re seeing that in your own stories. You guys weren’t where you are now at 25.
Michelle: Right, yeah.
Jeremey: (Laughs) Definitely not.
Abby: And right now, if we did this 20 years from now and you were sitting down, you wouldn’t be where you are today.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: It’s like, the work of grace that is using circumstances that seem harmful and maybe were, but then using them as tools of grace. Like, how cool.
Jeremey: Well, one of the kind of theological issues that we sometimes run into with that is like, some will say, “Well, I know God has a reason for everything, so therefore He’s causing me this suffering so that I can come out better on the other side.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t quite see it that way.” God is the master at making reason out of things. So in Romans, when it talks about, like, “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes,” right? That we have this call, God touches our lives, God is with us in this world where things go wrong and He is a master at taking things that go wrong and making purpose out of them on the back end. So He isn’t putting us through suffering intentionally or things like that, at least in my theological framework. But that He is graciously coming alongside us in moment by moment and saying, “Ah, I can use this. I’m going to use this.” We’re going to take this thing, you know, what Joseph says to his brothers at the end of his story is that “What you meant for evil God has used for good,” to restore this family which becomes a people which carries the promise…
Abby: Yeah, and I love that from the beginning of Genesis that redemption story is being told. In the very beginning, like, it’s the first thing out after the fall, it’s like, out, there’s One that is coming.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And that is just such a like, okay, and such a needed reminder because I think it’s, you know, we talked about this. It’s so easy when you’re looking around at your circumstances and your relationships and the brokenness of your story sometimes and going, like, it just can be so easy when your eyes are locked on that to go, like, “I don’t know how to get out of this pit.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: “I don’t know how to get out.” And so I love that, what you guys are doing, and I love how the Lord has put you guys together, and how cool that He’s weaving this thing together where you go, “There’s so much truth here. Here’s some tactical things to look at, to start thinking, like, ‘Well, how, what would it even look like for me to maybe get out of this?’”
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: “What would it look like?”
Jeremey: And so for us, like, the four C’s is great starting point, but like, the idea story stewardship is one I think you could talk about, especially in your practice of like, how we help draw the lines, how we help people connect the dots in story, and how we treat our own story, but then also how we receive the story of another as just as sacred. It’s a sacred gift that we give people that creates the environment that allows grace to break in and I think that’s your primary work.
Abby: I would love to hear about that!
Michelle: Yeah, well, as people enter my, I call it my room still, but I do every, I do all my practice online now, um, but as they enter that, that space with me, I really find that, that, and not every person that comes into the therapy room is somebody who knows Jesus. And so that’s not something that I get to overtly talk about, but being who I am, I get to come into that space with an awareness that this person is created in the image of God and that, that work that we are doing is to get them really, in my mind, to a place where they get to see their ultimate worth and value. And so, how I sit with story, is to, to really invite out the pieces and the parts and to sit in what I would call kind of a slow space, attending to. And in my room, I do that in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is helping connect the behavior that we are doing with the underlying emotion that is driving or the root of what is driving that particular behavior, because sometimes people come in with a particular behavior that’s actually not working out so well in their live. It’s creating pain, whether it be in relationship or in their bodies in other ways. And so, being able to identify what’s underneath that, what’s driving that need to do that behavior, so, whether that behavior is acting out sexually or that behavior is, you know, using substances or potentially that behavior is the way that they’re showing up in relationship, the way that they’re speaking to their partner or not speaking to their partner. Because, you know, I think sometimes, you know, we can look at relationships and think, “Oh, it’s only the person who has the big voice that is creating issues,” and sometimes it’s the person who is going away internally and shutting down and not being emotionally available, and so beginning to look at what, what is it that’s happening on that, on that what looks like a behavioral level that’s actually being driven by something that is emotionally happening under the surface, and not only that, that’s emotionally happening in the moment, but how does it connect to our earlier story. And this is where it, for me, working on the early attachment stories with our caregivers and sometimes that’s our parents or whomever raised us that became that kind of primary caregiver, or it could be that there was another person or event in our life that really shaped how we see ourselves and getting to know that story becomes really important to understanding then, “How is it that I see myself and where emotionally then does that drive and show up as I interact in the world?” And so we begin to kind of put that together so we were talking earlier about this coherent narrative, that, the idea in therapy for me is that what I want people to be able to say is that, this makes sense, that “I make sense.” And that really is my job, is to be so close to your story, that I’m tracking so close, that I’m attuning to what it is that you’re sharing with me and then mirroring it back to you that sense that you are understood, that where you are, that I am not moving, and this is what we were talking about earlier and this is where the church can sometimes get a little off, a little off, is that sometimes, instead of staying close to our story, we move to those platitudes where it’s like, “Well, God’s going to do something with that,” you know? It’s like,
”Hold up, hold up, yeah yeah yeah, that might be true, that’s absolutely true, right, but also in this moment, you’re sharing with me pain, and I’m going to stay close to your pain and I’m going to unpack it with you and understand it in such a way that you can really see that this has value and that it makes sense that you show up then in behavior in particular ways that you may not want to be showing up in any longer because you didn’t understand what this was and haven’t actually had space to put it out there s a place where it could be healed.” So that’s a big part of my work is just that slowing down process to get to the story.
Abby: I’m not at all trained like you are, but I just read this book and was trying to implement some of these practices into my own story. But then, and you guys listened this episode, I know you just did, with my sister-in-law Maryn, and I just had this experience with her the other day at Redemption, she was sitting on the one couch, I was sitting on the other, and she was sharing about something, and because I’ve taken enough time to know her story, she was sharing about something and I was able to look at her and see the, like, “Actually, I think you’re feeling this way because of this,” because I knew her story enough to be able to say, like, “I don’t think your response, or like, this, “I don’t think that’s what you were. I think you were frustrated about this.” And she just burst into tears. And she’s not a crier. And it was the moment where I went, “Oh, I just did the thing.” Like, on accident, from the book, of going like, “I was attentive enough to listening.” And this isn’t a praise-Abby thing. It was just moment for me where, “This works!”
Jeremey: Yeah!
Abby: It was, it was like the moment of, like, “Oh this works!” And the power of, of it, like, I don’t, I started crying then as I’m looking and going, like, I accidentally offered her gift, nd it was, it was, again, I wasn’t trying to do this thing, I just had this epiphany moment of like, I knew her story enough and her emotions and how she was wired and things that she’s wrestled with then to be able to see, because I was a little outside of the situation, to be able to see a little bit more clearly of like, and offer her the grace. I didn’t have a solution to said problem, I just was able to offer her the grace and space to say, “I think we can take a breath here.” And like, “I think those feelings can have some space here,” and like, “At least with me, you can let that air out here, and it’s, like, a welcome spot.” And so, yeah, that was just my own dorky kind of way-
Michelle: Yeah, yeah.
Jeremey: I love it.
Abby: -I learned that, which was cool.
Michelle: But what you’re saying, you know, in this idea of offering is, and I often talk about it in terms of wonder, but it is that idea of creating a bit of space as we offer, right? We offer up, “Could it be that you might be feeling…?” and, and it gives that person the space to consider, “Oh, like, maybe there is something else happening here!” without telling them, “This is what you are,” or, or, what you’re doing, but being able to just sit in that space of wonder, that space of, and I love, I love your term, just this offering. “Can I offer, can I offer it to you that there could be something here and can we just sit in it and have a time together where it doesn’t have to be the way that it’s always been, the way that you’ve always explained it, or the way that we’ve always passed over this, that we can actually slow this down and we can wonder together and in that wondering, that there can be a naming.” One of the greatest things that I took from- Daniel Siegel is an interpersonal neurobiologist out of UCLA, nd e talks about this idea of naming it to tame it, that, actually, in our wiring, it gets pretty chaotic with all of the things that have happened to us, and these, you know, what we come to know as these kind of stories about ourselves that we don’t, that we might have not actually sat with that are just kind of living inside of us, and when we slow that down and we actually begin to give it language, when we begin to name it, that what feels like chaos actually begins to come into order. That it has this way of no longer feeling so overwhelming in our system, but that we have a word, and that’s really what you gave to your sister-in-law is a space to find a word or a space to find story that wasn’t already available to her previously.
Abby: And what’s ironic is it wasn’t, or not ironic, what I think I needed to experience and get correction on probably was that I didn’t need to have the answers.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: I just needed to be a human who created this space.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: And in an environment where it went, “Actually, you can, you can come here and you will be met with some space,” and, and so much of my life, I think I’ve been trained to feel like, and maybe I think a lot of us have been, to be trained that you need to have this, like, answer, or like, know what to say back, or like, have the perfect practical thing. And I think it’s why we can get some of those Christian platitude, you know, Hallmark card things. We’re like, “Well, God is good.” I was like, “Well, yes, that’s true, it’s like, scripturally, theologically true,” but we’ll slap it on moments which then can become kind of offensive when you’re in the hard stuff, because what you were really asking for that maybe didn’t know how to articulate was like, “Would someone create some space for me?”
Jeremey: Yeah, and at the core of that, what you’re doing is being empathetic. You’re having empathy, and so the tool that Michelle was talking about, this, “I wonder…” I was, no one should, Michelle comes at me with the “I wonder…” something’s coming up, you know, like, something good. Like, like, I wonder if, like, maybe this is going on, you know, and we call that empathetic conjecture that we’re beginning. So what you did for Maryn is, in effect, you said, “I wonder if what you’re experiencing here might be related back to this piece of your story that you shared with me.” And as you acknowledge, A, that that story has value and B, that you’re with her in that moment, that you’re, you’re paying attention, and so, and by not fixing it, by not moving to a fixing posture, you’re saying, “Ah, I value you enough that like, I’m, I’m just with you in the journey.”
Abby: (Laughs) I love that! Yeah, I think the empathy part, and it just, it was, it was a cool experience for me because it was an accident. And I was like, “Oh, I think that just happened. On accident. Cool.”
Michelle: Kind of, right? Because there’s- another piece to that is that you actually have to come to know your story over the course of this, you know, and I think especially as you went through your divorce, it sounds like you really had to dig in and get to know, what, “Who is Abby and what is happening in me?” And you’re paying attention now to layers that you maybe didn’t even know you had needed to pay attention to previously.
Abby: Oh, yeah.
Michelle: And so there’s something really beautiful about that because what it gives you access to is, as Jeremey was talking about empathy, is it gives you access to the place in me that knows, and maybe not exactly knows, my sister-in-laws story or her emotion exactly, but I generally know that feeling. I generally have touched a place in myself that knows what this maybe could be or has been, and when I get to, when I get to that space where I can touch that emotion in myself, it gives me access in the other to be empathetic; to go, “Hey,” like, “can I lean in with you and can I, can I wonder with you about that, that emotional space that just came up?” because essentially what you’re saying is, “I kind of know this. I, I’ve been something similar,” you know? “And I recognize that that feeling, at least in my own story maybe, has come out of something else and it connects to something else. And so as I’m paying attention to your story, it’s easier for me then to recognize that when I see an emotion, or I see you telling a part of your story, that my wonder then about where it connects more naturally,” and I think that is what was happening with you, is actually something that is a work that was already in you, and that’s now flowing from you, and that I think is the best way to describe grace. That God gives it to us and then pours it out of us and we just get to live that story out over and over and over again.
Abby: That’s so good and so true and I think now that you’re saying it, I’m having revelations talking to you- sorry all podcast listeners, it’s like my personal session- but listening to you talk about it, I’ve had multiple circumstances with some people in my life recently over the last couple of months where they’ve shared some heartbreaking, massively traumatic things with me, and I’ve looked at them and been able to extend grace and go like, “Well, that doesn’t change how I think about you at all.” And they’ve not been able to comprehend, I mean, not even be able to like comprehend how I could say the thing, and I didn’t have any way to explain why except just kind of saying, like, “Because I know I’m chief most, like, of broken humans,” like, I think it’s Paul who says-
Jeremey: Yep, “chief among sinners.”
Abby: “Chief among sinners,” and I love that phrase he uses, I say it all the time, because it’s like, because of my story, because of connecting with it, it’s like, I, the Lord brought me to a position and a spot where it was like, I finally raised my hands- and I was raised in a Christian home my whole life- but it was like I finally, by God’s grace, was brought to a spot where you raise your hands and you go, “I am chief most in need of grace, in need of God’s help, in need of redemption,” and when you get to that point, it’s like, it’s what you’re just describing. You’re able to connect with empathy in someone else, you’re like, “Well, that’s not my story, but like, it is.” And not in a way of where you’re trying to invalidate their actual, or like, say that it’s the same, or level up in their pain in some way.
Michelle: Yeah, right.
Abby: But at an empathy level going like, “Oh, I see you, friend.”
Jeremey: Yeah, the way that empathy is different than like, say, sympathy, is- Brene Brown has this great video about it- but sympathy stands outside and like offers, like, “Oh, let me fix it for you,” or, “Here’s an idea,” or “At least…” right, “At least you have a marriage,” you know, “Johnny is,” you know, “Getting all F’s, well at least Suzy is good at,” you know, whatever, right? Sympathy does the fixing that at least, but the empathy comes in this, “Gosh, I don’t even know what to say right now, but I’m so glad you told me,” and when we receive empathy then, we can’t help but become empathetic. It is what grace does to us. Grace makes us graceful,
Michelle: And, and I think in that, you know, the concept that’s talked about with sympathy is that sympathy drives disconnection, empathy drives connection. That when we find that part inside of our self that knows pain or that knows that similar, not same, but similar emotion, when we can connect to that- and that’s a vulnerable thing to do because often we want to block and be like, “I’m not that messy, that’s not me, that’s not what’s happening here.” It’s like if we can get to that space where we say, “Yeah, I’m chief most, I can feel this too, I can be with you in this when we go there,” that’s so good, because now we have connection. You have something where, you know, you, you were able to minister in a moment to your sister-in-law to a place inside of her that needed permission to know that there was more than what met the eye.
Abby: And what is so humbling about it, and this is just like what God does, is, most of Abby’s life, which, people will chuckle because I’m 25, so, but like, for, like, there’s so many versions of myself before where you would look at and go, “No, I was the sympathy person.” And I thought that’s what being Christ looked like. And now you can look back and go, “Oh, there are so many times where I was massively un-Christ-like.” And it wasn’t because I, you know, my heart’s desire wasn’t to be, but now you can look back and go, “Oh, you did not look grace-filled. You did not look like love in the way you approached something then, because, like, it was just from your own Abby-ness,” and like, nobody needs that. Nobody needs her actually. (Laughs)
Jeremey: Well, it’s, and with each version of ourselves, God is, like, building the capacity for it, right? So, so, um, Jesus tells this in parables all the time. Like, he does this one parable where he talks about, like, two guys going for prayer, one’s a Pharisee and one’s a, maybe I’m, maybe a tax collector. It comes and beat, one beats his breast and says, “Lord forgive me, I’m a terrible sinner,” and the other one standing next to him in the temple’s like, “Lord, thank goodness I’m not like this guy,” you know? Who walks away restored is the question, right? And it’s this awareness of our need. In Luke 7, he goes to Simon’s house and there’s a party. So a woman breaks in and anoints him, and he says, “Simon, do you see this woman? Like, are you aware? She has loved much because she’s been forgiven much.” And so as we experience grace- and then he goes on to tell the parable of the debt collector, and, um, one having huge debt forgiven and yet not becoming forgiving himself and going to his brother and like “Give me what you owe me!” and missing what’s happening in us is that God’s reminding us again again He has empathy for us in Jesus Christ and understands the pain of human condition, and what is required, what, what grace we need. And so Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of God’s empathy towards us, and invites us then through the power of the Holy Spirit to be that way with others. And so every version of you is the version that is growing more Christ-like. And so we grow in that.
Abby: Yeah, and it’s so, it’s just so, like you just get excited about it then. You get excited about what God is doing and how he uses people to do those things. And like, so, my dad doesn’t have a super messed up- I shouldn’t say messed up- my dad doesn’t have a lot of blatant traumatic things in his story.
Jeremey: No big “T” traumas.
Abby: No big “T” traumas from, you know, and he would say this, and one of the things that he actually struggled with a lot of his life is, he’d hear people’s testimonies and feel like, “I don’t have a testimony.” And so he kind of struggled with that. One of the things I think is so cool is, it’s not that this even has to be like- if someone is listening to this and they’re like, “I don’t know, I don’t know, like, how do I be empathetic with people if I haven’t been through a lot of hard things?” It’s not, that’s not what we’re even just talking about necessarily, we’re saying that, “Well, it doesn’t matter what hard thing you’ve been through. It doesn’t disqualify you. You can be empathetic and God can redeem the thing.” Also though, you can be an empathetic person who extends grace and knows grace and that not be your story. And so there’s no one on the spectrum of that that we’re trying to say is disqualified.
Michelle: Yeah.
Jeremey: Absolutely, and what was really cool about your dad? And I don’t know your dad, I’ve actually never met him.
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: But I went to a church service that you guys had outside at a campground and I listened to your dad at the end of every testimony affirm something deeply true and grateful about the person who shared. So, I watched your dad do this.
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: And he was just acknowledging. He was seeing something in the other that God had put there and then calling that out as they finished telling their story. Like, that is good story stewardship. That is good empathy. And anyone can do it. Regardless of whether we’ve had big “T” or little “t” trauma, whatever it is.
Michelle: Well, because I think what we have to as humans acknowledge, is that we’ve actually all experienced the emotions of anger and sadness and frustration, and that, the sense of feeling inadequate or shameful,. that we’ve had a myriad of things in our life, no matter who we are, there’s not one of us that gets out of this life without experiencing those things, but there is a vulnerability in acknowledging that. And as I said, the first part of this, my struggle with perfection was wanting to hold everything together and not talk about and not really feel fully those. And so sometimes we get locked in a particular way that we believe we need to show up in the world. And that actually can block us from being able to have real connection, not only with ourselves, but with others, because, because it is in that place where we can touch those tender spots, that we actually then gain access to being able to connect to others in a really deep and meaningful way. That not only is a moment, but it’s a transformation opportunity that can, that can seed something that will carry and that, that for me is like, worth it every day, you know?
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: And, and so going back to the, like, you know, “I’ve never had a big ‘T’ trauma,” like, I, you know, “I don’t even know how to relate,” that’s where we resist what they call comparative suffering. Like, either in the negative, like, “You can’t understand me because you haven’t gone through…” or like, “I, like, I can’t possibly understand where you’re coming from because I haven’t experienced that.” We can compare our suffering and say, “Oh, well, I don’t even have room to talk about this, because, like, this person is going through way worse than I am,” right? So that’s a way of denying what we’re experiencing and shoving away. But we resist that and we come to know our own story. And then back to what, like, Brene had said in that video of like, “Gosh, I don’t even know what to say right now, but I’m sure glad you told me,” is, those are statements that open and invite more story. So like I said before, how we receive someone’s story is just as sacred, like, people train us in the church to like, tell your story, share your testimony, but listening and receiving testimony is, is a huge act of grace. Helping someone just walk through their story and asking good questions, and just hearing and receiving that is an act of holy presence. Is actually a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Abby: Yeah, well I think that in times that people haven’t- and you can see this I think even throughout church culture- and we’re using church as like the whole church.
Jeremey: Yeah, big “C” church.
Michelle: Mm-hmm, yep, big “C.”
Abby: Right, not like a specific local church we’re not saying right now.
Michelle: Right, yep. (Chuckles)
Abby: But I think you can see even throughout church culture when people have been poor receivers of stories and there’s been a lot more condemnation, you see that authenticity and actually talking about sin and bringing it to light becomes not what people are doing because they feel condemned by their own story, and the idea that, “If I brought this to Sunday and someone found out…” like, the fear of people receiving their story, which is so sad, because that’s the exact place where the Lord would want you to bring the story. And I think so many of us, myself included, have been in stages of life where you would go, “I can’t bring this part of my story to Sunday.”
Jeremey: And, you know, we want to show up to Sunday with our whole self, for sure. However, you know, there are appropriate places to bring, right? So like with the trusted friend or trusted pastor to show up in the fullness of like, how dark the dark can be.
Abby: Yes.
Jeremey: The goal is to create a safe place and a safe community. And so how, as a church, the Church, we should be the safest place there is. We should be the safest community there is. Unfortunately, the church does not have a reputation for being that, right? But as we embrace the subversive gospel that is God coming to us in grace, in truth, and letting the transformation that happens top down, inside out, then pour from us to others in a non-fixing way, but in a like, “Hey, I’m with you, just as God is with us.” Then what happens is that we become safer and safer, and then the community, over time, becomes safer and safer.
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: The church will always make mistakes. We’re a human organization, like, we’re, we’re made up of humans, and so every expression of the Christian Church will make mistakes and fumble, but it’s how we repair that is the most important- same in a human relationship. We won’t be perfect, like, I miss it with Michelle, I miss with our kids, I miss it, like, but it’s how we repair, how we come back and say, “Gosh, I missed it. Let’s start again. Can we start again?”
Abby: Yeah, I love that.
Michelle: Which is really the antidote to perfection. You know, whether we’re talking about friendships or we’re talking about marriage or we’re talking about parenting: that we don’t need to be perfect. But having this mission to repair is the, and it has, it just has to be, because we won’t, you know, this side of heaven, we’re not going to get it right on the, on the level that, at least, that I wanted to get it right, you know? Like, I’m recognizing that now, but what I need is, you know, repair is like this embodied grace, you know, for self and for the other to say, “Can I come to you with what I believe I may have said or done that didn’t feel good? And can I,” as Jeremey said, “Can I begin again? Can I hear you better? Can I attune in a way that I may have missed the first time?” And as we do that then in relationship, it really gives access to something that I think God has been trying to work in us from the beginning, which is this idea that, um, when we make mistakes, that He is, He is moving in us, through us, in a way that is all about grace, um, that it really, it serves as this kind of centerpiece for that. And it’s like, now we become the Kingdom embodied, versus just being these people that are trying to show up with our veneer, with our best image. He really wants that reflected image of Him. And He can only do that by pouring His grace in and through and that happens in the repair, because He knew, He knew, He knew from the beginning that we were going to mess this up. And so that’s no surprise. He’s not like, “Uhh,” you know, like, “Really, Michelle? You messed that up again?” He’s like, “Yeah, and stay close to Me. I’m going to pour my grace into you and through you, and you get to sit in this relationship, and it’s going to be okay.”
Abby: Yeah, and it’s such a beautiful invitation for all of us, which is so cool. So I love that. We end every episode of Beyond the Bar with two questions…
Michelle: Mm…
Jeremey: Yep!
Abby: You guys are going, “Yep, like, we’ve listening, we know this is coming!” First question is, “If you could go back and tell your younger self one question, what would it be?” and then the second one is, “What’s one thing you want to be remembered for?” And I will let you guys rock-paper-scissors.
Michelle: Well, I can, I can start with that, um, because I was just talking about it, I would 100% tell my younger self that you don’t need to be perfect. That God’s grace is sufficient.
Jeremey: 1998? Don’t buy that leather jacket. (All laugh) Don’t buy it.
Abby: I love it! Perfect.
Jeremey: Yeah, yeah. But honestly if I could tell my younger self something, it would be, “Slow down. You’re in the middle of the story, and don’t jump to any conclusions.”
Abby: And what would you guys, one thing you’d like to be remembered for?
Michelle: I would love to be remembered as someone who sat in people’s stories and gave them a deep sense that they had value and worth and that they were and are loved by the God who created them.
Jeremey: So there’s this funny passage in like Acts chapter 4, like, Peter, and they had, they’d healed this guy and the Jewish people, the Jewish leaders were mad at them, they called them in, and they, they argued with them, and then it says in the Greek language, it says they realized they were unschooled and ordinary, and the word there actually is “idiotes,” like, they were idiots. Like, they were unschooled and then the powerful phrases, but, they had been with Jesus, and I would like to be someone who’s better with Jesus. Like, all the degrees are tools and things, like, that the things, the roles we have, the jobs we have, all of that, are, there are tools that we get and hard work absolutely, but may we be people who’ve been with Jesus so that we can be like Jesus in all the best ways.
Abby: I just am blown away by the goodness of our God and King because, I mean, we’ve tried to articulate it, but this really, like, we barely knew each other. So I don’t, people could look at this and think that we’ve had countless conversations, and realistically, it was like one maybe 10 minute one, and this, and so I feel so honored and privileged to have gotten to know most, like, a lot more of your guys’ stories, and I know this was a fraction minute point of them as well but it has been such an honor and a joy and just, just the amazing beauty of our God and how He can do this and that this is actually what the community of Christ looks like.
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: Like, you guys joyfully said yes and deep-dived in with me, trusted me, and opened up, and like offering the same. Like, what a beautiful representation of everything we were talking about. So just, it’s been a joy and an honor and a privilege. I just thank you both.
Michelle: Well thank you, this has been really good. We love, well, we love coming to Redemption, clearly, but for us to be able to see that even as we go to our cabin space, that God is still at work inviting us to community, it’s beautiful and so we’re grateful to have been here.
Jeremey: Yeah, same here, great time, thank you, thanks.
Abby: And now you get to go back to the cabin! Or maybe back to work, I’m not sure.
Michelle: Cabin!
Abby: Well thank you guys, thank you guys! This wraps up our part 2 episode with the Kings, so hopefully you were as blessed by it as I was.
