Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
39. Tender Hearts, Strong Hope: More with Mary Ellen Owen
What if the shortest path to joy runs straight through your tears? We sit down with Mary Ellen Owen to unpack why uncomforted harm teaches us to banish tenderness, how that “closed book” stance blocks love, and why grief— often done in the presence of a safe other—becomes embodied surrender that restores our capacity for connection. This conversation bridges trauma theory, attachment, and Christian hope, showing how the Spirit turns stony, stubborn hearts into tender, responsive ones.
We name the defenses that once protected but now imprison, and we explore the “banished feminine” as the lost capacities of openness, need, and comfort that every person carries. You’ll hear practical ways to begin: change your posture to signal intention, seek a wise story-hearer, notice unexpected tears in films, songs, poems, or scripture, and cultivate imagination for God as the tear collector who comes close. Along the way, we wrestle with desire and risk—why grieving well actually expands longing for God and people, and how hope invites us to love again even after deep loss.
Threaded through are anchoring scriptures: Ezekiel’s promise of a heart of flesh, Paul’s mirror of being known, and the Revelation vision of home where God dwells with us and wipes every tear. Rather than managing pain by numbing, we practice grieving as those with hope, enlarging our inner home for the Comforter. If you’ve ever wondered how to move from self-protection to real presence, this is a gentle, courageous guide.
If this resonates, share it with someone who needs permission to cry, subscribe for more story-centered conversations, and leave a review with the question you’re sitting with right now.
We are forming Story Groups that will begin in January 2026, all the information is on our website StoryMattersCoaching.com or email us with any questions!
Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_03:We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_02:We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_03:We're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, welcome back. Mary Ellen Owen is with us today on the Story Manners Podcast. Listeners, if you did not catch the last episode, you definitely will want to go back and listen to part one. This is a to-be-continued conversation, and we are just so blessed by this topic and getting to talk through things about grief and joy. And by the way, listeners, there's nothing written down for any of us. Any verses we throw out there, bear with us. We're going at it. But Mary Ellen, I just want to take a minute and say how much you have impacted me. My experience of you has been through the Allender Center in Seattle. You were a facilitator, you weren't mine, but I've been around you kind of in a group setting where you would throw in your thought on something every time I hung on every word. You have been a huge influence. You have been my midwife of grief. Thank you. I think I'm most surprised in the work we do, how often I'm calling people into grief. I had no idea. That's what I feel like I'm now a professional grief midwife myself, but I owe it all to you. And yet we've never really gotten to interact a lot. And so I just want to personally say thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thank you. If we were on visual, you would see tears in my eyes because what you just said is that's the most important thing. If we can help each other find our way home, like capital home, and I mean like home deep in our hearts where we commune with Jesus. That's what I care about. At the beginning of this academic year, I was teaching at the Elinder Center, but I recorded a lot of my teaching. And so that is very hard for me because I can't see the faces. So I texted you, Ryan, and I was like, what did your group think? Like, I because I couldn't see the participants' faces because what I care about the most is like feed the people. Like if there's something that I can participate with how the spirit is calling you deeper and freer, amen. I'll do it.
SPEAKER_04:And they loved it by the way.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, oh my gosh, I feel weird. I'm like, Ryan, did your participants get anything out of that? Because I couldn't see.
SPEAKER_02:But Mary Analyn, what you're even getting at there, I love that you're letting us in on how important it is for you to see and have those mirror receptors show you. And you you talked to us before about being a wailing woman. You needed someone to look in the face of her tears to bring your tears. We need those movies, we need those humans.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:That's such an important part of your story. Of I need to look in the face of a comforter in a choir. And so you need those participants to say, Yes, you're feeding us.
SPEAKER_01:And we need really good story hearers and story interpreters. That's what we do as counselors, creating space, creating space for the spirit to do the spirit's work, right? And I love when Ryan said, Will you do a podcast with us? I was like, Oh my gosh, yes. Like, yes, yes, because I knew that the three of us would just get into a really good, deep hearted, like we're all on the same page conversation of this is what healing is, this is what redemption means. We're all on this path trying to find our way home. And I mean, ultimately, I mean home when Jesus comes back. But even the paths of our heart, like, oh, okay, well, it didn't occur to me just to sit in some sorrow or to sit in a painful story and be like, all right, Spirit, you gotta be here.
SPEAKER_04:That's so good. When I first heard your teaching on grieving, one of the things that really landed for me was how you explained that often when we have faced shame or wounds or trauma early in our lives, we've banished the feminine.
SPEAKER_01:We probably should unpack what that means.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I'm gonna ask you to do that. But I do want to name that it's funny now how I use so many of these words. But at the time during your lecture, I thought, okay, wait, like what does she mean by banished? You know, that's fascinating. Why does she use the word, you know, what do you mean by the word feminine? These were new concepts to me, and I'd love to just hear you unpack those a little further.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is an answer to what we're reading. Um, trauma theory will say that, okay, first of all, let's start with the premise that all harm is relational, right? And so, Emily, even what you pointed out with my story last time of but you knew not to go to your mother by the time you were 12. So even though the moment of the story when I'm 12 years old isn't watching a movie, it's pulling out or going right into the relational harm, it's speaking of the relational harm between my mother and I. So you could say, like, wait, then all harm isn't really uh relational, because Mary Ellen was watching a movie, but it was so much about the mother-child bond that it was just speaking to. There's a lot of abandonment there. And so trauma theory is gonna say that when harm comes, and again, anywhere on the spectrum, and it is uncomforted, meaning unmitigated. There's no safe adult going, oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry, trying to repair the harm. When there's mitigation, when there's comfort, when there's the safe adult in your childhood or teenagehood regrounding you, that story does not become traumatized. It's the uncomforted, the trauma plus isolation. And in our isolation, we come to our own conclusions, our own interpretations of what happened, consciously or unconsciously. I think my little body as an infant came to some conclusions screaming my head off in the crib day after day that my mother didn't know what to do with, right? So our psyches and our nervous systems are gonna try to figure out as best as they can how to avoid that. I think we all live deeply, deeply, deeply committed to one thing and one thing only until there's intentionality around not doing that. And it is, I will not be hurt again. And I always whisper again because we don't even like to admit that there was hurt before. And so we have to devise, and most of this is unconscious, we have to devise our systems, and I think in our style of relating or our defense styles, or however we're going to manage going forward, we have to do something with, and I think everyone's structure, our defensive styles will look very different, but the primary energy here is I've got to do something with vulnerability, I've gotta do something with tenderness or care and comfort, which is all in the feminine energy sides of both of us. You know, when it says in the Psalms, God, this is what I know of you, you're a God of strength and mercy. He created a male and female, like up until very recently, it was a giving construct to say, here's your feminine side, here's your masculine side. The feminine tends to be the more relational, the vulnerable, the tender. And nobody had a problem with this. And the masculine was like the strength and the justice and the ambition. And we were always all supposed to be this like fabulous individual mix of those things. All men, all women have a relational side and a logic side, the heart and the head. And we're housed in biological bodies, but that is a whole different podcast altogether. That does inform, in my opinion, which I have to say that now. Um, but because harm comes in relationships, that's what we're going to at best become vigilant around my relational vulnerability, my openness, my tenderness, my need and hope for care, which is in the feminine. At best, we become hyper-vigilant around that. And at worst, I think we banish those things, send those into exile, or we become closed books. You know how people describe people as, oh, she's an open book, or he'll see anything that they'll let you in. We line up our protection mechanisms and they take the front line. And behind them are things that we try to banish and get rid of because, like, if I wasn't in such need for comfort after that that movie, or such need for a mother, like a normal human being need for attachment, then I would not be in so much pain, is how I'm interpreting it as a child.
SPEAKER_02:Like your need was the problem, not the lack of comfort.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. Or my need would be the ongoing problem. I'm not putting myself in this position again. I cannot and will not let myself go to such a place of just tenderized pain that I'm just raw in those two weeks where I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm in sixth grade. So I instead of being like, oh, it's comfort that you need, like, all right, maybe your mom's not gonna comfort you, but maybe your next door neighbor will, or your older sister will. Instead, I just head myself off at the past, and I'm like, I'm not gonna need comfort anymore.
SPEAKER_04:Sort of shed some of the needs. Like I imagine I have a lot of men clients who would agree they have banished feminine to tender yeah. Maybe it's not so clear when and how, it's just more of I'm I'm uncomfortable. You start talking a lot of husbands, you know, you start getting into the sensitive area to the emotional areas. I just kind of shut down. I want to keep it at surface level. So, would that be an example where you think there's probably wounding behind that?
SPEAKER_01:100%. Yeah. When you're like, I don't want to go, that thing where I get uncomfortable, and okay, do you know what is uncomfortable? Yeah, well, it's just it's too raw. It's too tender. Okay, what's your story there? How long have you been left? We know this happens like in the moment when clients or friends or whoever, when they back away from a tender moment, there's a way to tenderly invite them back. I actually think that the goal, the hope, the healing is to be tenderized again. And Ezekiel 36, 26, one of my favorite verses in the world. Like when I'm not in a good place, I'm like, God, you're not giving me a heart of flesh. You said you were gonna, I'm still a stone. And so that verse is the one in the NIV. It says, I will take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. But the NLT says it in a way that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna just paint those words on a really big canvas that says, I will remove your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. So we have to do something with tenderness and care and all of those things that were absent that made us managers of our pain. Like all of this is in the service of freedom and healing in order to be wild lovers of Jesus and people, right? That is the only force in the world that's going to conquer evil. Like it is the only thing. The generative power of love, I think, is what the kingdom of darkness is terrified of.
SPEAKER_04:What if I love everything you're saying, but I don't want to have to grieve to get there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh you know what? When people say that, that's your time to disrupt them with tenderness and say, Will you just talk to me about what you're so afraid of? You're so angry about, or what's the story there?
SPEAKER_02:Like, what are you longing for? And you kind of started with that like early on in our other episode. It's our desires that lead us into these places of unmet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And so if we're banishing that, are we also banishing desire? Are we banishing other things along with it, like on accident? Sort of like collateral damage.
SPEAKER_01:I think so. But here's what I love. I think those like deep implanted desires of our heart can never be fully extinguished. Like that's the life of God in us that wants more. I mean, I'd be a terrible Buddhist because I'm pretty sure it's all about managing desire. And I think the more you grieve and the more you heal, the more you desire.
SPEAKER_02:That's beautiful. Wow. Say it again.
SPEAKER_01:The more you learn how to grieve, and the more you heal, the more you want of the presence of God and the deep conversations and the connection with people and like true fellowship. It's stuff that we were all, I mean, I think this was hugely a part of Eden. There was, I mean, the whole problem with Genesis 3 and the fall is attachment disruption, right? Or attachment rupture, like we're separated from ourselves, we're separated from each other, and now we're separated from God. That's all attachment rupture. And we were meant for union. And I think the more healing really is becoming less afraid to turn into the fear and be like, what am I so afraid to feel right now? What am I so afraid to comfort right now?
SPEAKER_02:You just said the beautiful sentence we had you repeat. But here's what comes up for me. You say, you know, it leads to more desire, right? Which is kind of the thing we're talking about. Joy, it expands, your joy expands. You're just you're becoming more human, but with more desire comes more hope, which is dangerous because in desire, we'll we we can be harmed freshly. So I think about relationships. Okay, we we've lost this relationship. Okay, I'm gonna risk to love again. Or, you know, our precious family pet has died. I'm gonna risk to bring another little furry friend back into our world. I mean, from everything, it's like, no, I don't want to risk anymore. It's not worth the risk with all this banishing conversation.
SPEAKER_04:I think about we, by the way, we did not give you any of these questions ahead of time. So thank you for letting us just go anywhere.
SPEAKER_02:So how do you speak to that if someone's lost a child and you shut their bedroom door to never go in there again? Like, talk about grief. Yeah, how do you speak into that?
SPEAKER_01:I think the first thing I would say is, how's it going for you? No, like avoiding that shut door. What are you afraid of? Then let's sit down outside that door or maybe downstairs from that door, right? People need space, they need time. I don't think it'd be terribly helpful to be like, come on, let's go in the room. Right? Pacing with people towards grief is everything, but there is always gonna be the invitation, and the invitation refused, and then there's the very kind next sentence of like, well, I don't think you'd be here in counseling or telling me this story if there wasn't a part of you that wanted something around all of this, right? You know, like the desire is freaking everything. Yeah, and I agree with you, like it like when you said and if we try again or we love again, we could get hurt. I'm like, you will be hurt.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's such a promise that we will suffer. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God will see him through everyone, and yet it's such a promise that we'll be comforted.
SPEAKER_04:Grief is the pathway you were saying unto resurrection, in the sense of unto healing, unto newfound desire, a newfound affection. Things that we can't even comprehend right now where we are sitting. You talk about like lingering grief and ambiguous grief.
SPEAKER_01:Well, people call it ambiguous grief.
SPEAKER_04:You like lingering grief.
SPEAKER_01:No, you have your word you should.
SPEAKER_04:Mine was uh I was telling a client um after I listened to your podcast at Wild at Heart. I trying to remember your word, uh, knew it started with an A, and I just kind of came up with ambient grief, and uh I thought later found out was ambiguous. I really still love that word. Kind of like a sound machine out there, it's an ambient noise, it's always there. But you referred to a story that Emily shared from our podcast where I told her, um, you know, she asked me about my sadness or if I ever get sad, and I just said I'm often like one breath away from tears because I, you know, I'm a four on the Enneagram. So there's like, you know, at any moment if I really wanted to tap into that ambient noise, there would be this sense of sadness that could come to the surface. And I would hear the noise of grief.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But working at the same time really hard to not ever have to feel those. You know, I've developed all sorts of mechanisms to never have to do that.
SPEAKER_02:I know we do that. There's a lot of things that the average Christian, I think, would ascribe to uh to say, yes, that's an important practice, you know, a whole list of things prayer, fasting, Bible reading, you know, something on a daily basis or within my walk with Christ, but grief just isn't one of those that we think of. It's just not, you know? Yes. So can we come up with a new word? Because I love the concept of embodied surrender. I love that you coin that. But is there any other word that's synonymous with grief that we could start using? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I've been thinking about this recently too, because I'm like, wait, is it grief? Or is it the need to be softened and tenderized and reopened to the things of the spirit? I mean, the whole idea of embodied surrender, meaning we have to be really connected to the story, to grief, right? It can't be a head exercise of, oh yeah, I remember when that happened. Yeah, that was probably pretty bad. If you're only 12 years old, and like you're risking refeeling that. And I think, though I've never read anything about this, and I would love to have like a scientific study on it. I think when you're connected to it emotionally, like on both sides of your brain, the work of grief actually disconnects it from the fear and the shame and restores it somewhere else, which lessens the power of trigger. And the and the word restore. Like I was like, oh my gosh, is that what restoration means? Like restores. But you know what I think it is? Maybe we don't spend some time every day asking the spirit, like, do I need to grieve anything today? But the practice is how do I keep my heart tender and responsive? I think grief is always gonna be like in the top one or two of those things because like when we have stony, stubborn hearts, what are we doing? We're running our own program of I will make my world work, I will manage this, I will not slow down, I will not bring my attention to like when you guys were talking about the fight. Yeah, but now we're good. Like I won't go back to the fight because it's just harder. How do we turn that into a spiritual discipline?
SPEAKER_02:Like revisiting a conflict, seeing where there was a lack of love?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's so necessary. In First Corinthians 13, it's an elaborate, almost unattainable exhortation or whatever the word is for love. You know, love is patient and kind, and you're like, oh my gosh, like who does this? Who experiences this? And Paul goes through this elaborate thing of this is what love is, and this, and that's so great. And then all of a sudden in verse 11, he goes, and when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I acted like a child, now I'm a like I literally used to think of that as what that is so non-sequitur. Like I would hear like the screeching breaks sound in my head of like, what does that have to do with anything? But I think that is what has to do, it has everything to do with it. Our childish ways are what we did, and I always say, I have issue with Paul calling it childish ways. Why can't he say defense style or style of relating? Like in our childish ways, staying really married to our way of making our world work, which is pain management, and I will not hurt again, is hindering love. Like it's hindering this big thing of like, this is possible because this is what love is. But until you address your childish ways, or psychology would say, like your defense structure, or how you make your world work, or how you manage and be very vigilant around vulnerability, like that needs to be addressed for love to grow, to for you to become a person who's so loved and can be loved, right? And the rest of the half chapter goes on, I love this. You know, then he goes on about like all prophecies will stop. And then he says, now we see dimly as if we're veiled, but then we will see face to face. And I think that is the restoration of naked and unashamed shattered in Genesis 3. I'm like, oh, the face-to-face is the restoration of it's been a long time since I was naked and unashamed relationally or even with God, but love our maturity, like putting away our childish things, which will grow the way we house the spirit, right? When you encounter God as tear collector, that will change your life. When you hedge your bets on blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted, or you have some little monicum of faith that God's gonna meet you in the grief that you know, Jesus' whole business of like, so the comforter can come, will happen. Like that's life-changing. And I think that's it, the expansion of the indwelling spirit.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Instead of the word grief, we could say it's an expansion of the housing of the comforter. Like without grief, we don't need a comforter. Yes, yeah, right. The cavity, if it's small because you have no grief, you have this little need, but then it's expanded into like, I need more of the comforter.
SPEAKER_01:Because we're fools if we don't think that we need to daily grow our intimacy and our authority in Jesus. Like, if you don't grow your intimacy of that communion, of that housing, I mean, it's a miracle. Like, we can't even really get our heads around the divine God dwells in me, he's available. I just need to turn towards him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I've actually worked through these first Corinthians verses as well, um, having preached through First Corinthians, but also, you know, doing weddings. And the part that's kind of always caused me to pause is uh, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, is where Paul says, we look as into a mirror dimly. I mean, in the ancient world, there were not really there were not glass windows like we have, so but you would expect him to say you're looking through a glass to Jesus, right? You're looking through it, and right now that glass is hazy. That's that's what I would imagine, but he chooses instead of that a mirror, which of course reflects your own reflection, and in that time it would have been shiny bronze. But you know, Dan Alander is fond of saying we can't see our own face, yeah. And so I do, I've just always wondered is this idea of looking into a mirror and seeing the reflection of Jesus in our face, is there something of him reflecting back almost like what we would call you know, attachment theory? You know, we only know ourselves by the way our own caregivers, our mother, would respond to us, the way their eyes would light up, the way they would delight. And so I've just been really curious about Paul's use of the word mirror rather than a window.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Because that's a union idea of looking at Jesus, but seeing in an essence a reflection of ourselves. Yeah, Paul goes on to say, you know, being known as we have been known.
SPEAKER_01:Like Yeah, I forgot about that part, but the known part, yeah, yeah, because I bet I haven't thought about it in the framework that you just set up, but I love that. But I bet when we see Jesus looking at us, we see what he sees. Yes, yes, he's in so much celebration of our glory and our beauty, and I think we're going to be able to see that in his face because I think our moms and dads were supposed to communicate to us delight and honor and how many of us got the there he is, but there she is on any consistent basis, if ever, growing up. I think of Jesus opening the door to my heart because he's in there, like, oh, there you are.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Like he just, and I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't error anything.
SPEAKER_03:I love that. We're the ones running.
SPEAKER_01:Right? Like, I'm the one who doesn't live in my heart. Jesus lives in my heart. I just need to open the door again and again. Sometimes when I'm really like in a space with Jesus, like there's a verse in Revelation. I stand at the door and knock, and anyone that opens the door, I'll come in and suck with him. Sometimes I see it in my mind's eye as I'm going to the door of my own heart. And Jesus is already in there, like, I've been waiting for you. Come sit down. Oh, it's good to see you. You know, because it's me that's running all over the place. He's not. Like, he's there.
SPEAKER_04:This concept of grief, it's a returning home, right? It's a returning where he is. And I think we're risking rejection.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:In other words, our own shame is saying, don't do that. But to your point, he's delighted, and we're welcomed in like the prodigal. But I wonder if that ties into why we agree we're grieving as those with hope. So we're actually acknowledging our need of him, that's hope, as we grieve, but we're taking a risk to do this, essentially asking, will I be comforted?
SPEAKER_01:Or it's gonna be inevitable that I'm like, wait, I know cognitively that Jesus delights in me. I know cognitively, but I'm his beloved. Why can't I feel that? And that's gonna turn me to story. That's gonna turn me towards I did not get that when I was growing up, or a pinpointed story. When we can't receive from the spirit or we can't hear from God, there's something of our stories or something of trauma blocking that that means tending to. Yeah, and I think grief is always in that progression. You talked about on your podcast the the youth theory.
SPEAKER_04:Our first series was the youth theory, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because like I always see the youth theory as the prophet speaks first, there's new truth, there's new insight to what really happened in that story, there's new interpretation. And as you're like going, Oh, so this isn't a story of me deserving abuse, or like I asked for it, but or however we've interpreted. And I think the prophet hands you off to the priest or the priestess because it's like, oh my gosh, this new truth. Now I'm repenting of my self-contempt. Now I'm shedding the shame and the bondage that that story has brought. Because I this is what I believed, and I don't believe. I didn't previously believe that you're clothed in righteousness, like you're covered by prophet, priest, and king. And there's repentance, and there's there's such sorrow for the child or the teenager that took on those really dark structures. And then I feel like the king or the queen on the other side of the you comes and gets you up and is like braver now. Like these things that were controlling your life, you went head into. How now do you want to live?
SPEAKER_02:That's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, just for those that are listening who maybe haven't heard our earlier episodes in the first season, we do reflect the shalom arc from the Allenders Center, specifically beginning with Shalom Shattered and going through the false attempts, right? The Shalom sought. We're trying to find our way back into Eden, you know, or making up false Eden's without having to go through the restoration with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:Why do we say Shalom demanded? Mine's minds demanded. In that same line between Shalom sought or demanded and shalom restored is almost always will you grieve? The harm that you could not grieve when you were younger. Or also now when I teach at the Allener Center, I'm like, here's where I am on the chart. I'm just this line, I'm not the chunk, I'm the line of will this be your turning towards restoration.
SPEAKER_04:I love that you say that. And there's this piece I'm just always aware of. But you kind of have to like yourself a little bit to want to move toward that grief. In other words, our self-contempt can keep us from actually entering grief. It's almost like you don't deserve that. And we can repeat that message, you know, the the early accusations from childhood. But what you're inviting us to, Mary Ellen, and Jesus is asking us to bring all of this to him. He calls us to love ourselves enough to say, I want to be cared for in this space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Um tell me what you guys think of this. I think the thing that's coming up against the contempt, riskier, a little bit stronger invitation is desire. Like, how's the contempt going for you? Like, what if you stop calling God a liar? I mean, we love our self-contempt or others than a contempt because it's how we've managed. You can retrench in that if you want. God will knock again, right? But doesn't this kind of suck?
SPEAKER_04:Like so, what would be some practical advice that you might have for someone who's in the category you were in where you knew that you wanted tears but you couldn't find them?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Like prompts, right? Like one is imagination. When you develop um an imagination that God is the tear collector, that was a game changer for me. And gotta come pretty close and pretty tenderly to be a tear collector. What if God's that interested? In that verse, it says, All your sorrows, all your tears. And it's Kierkegaard or Kierkegaard's mentor, they don't know who said this, that's quoted as saying, How then will we dry your tears? referring to Revelation 21, it says, We'll wipe all your tears if you do not cry them. Right? So it's the risk. Why don't you take God up on who he says he is? What if you developed an imagination that God is the original wailing woman? Or that Jesus is actually incarnated, crucified. I think he came to make way for the spirit to dwell. So I would say, do not isolate, find a story hearer that can hold space, pray for one. I would say there's practical things like get on the floor.
SPEAKER_04:I've heard you say that, but say more to that one.
SPEAKER_01:When you literally change the physicality of your body, and some people can't get on the floor, like then put your hand on your heart or hold your face so that you're alerting your body to I'm making way for something. There's intentionality here, or like go to the stories of the unexpected tears, commercials, movies, things that catch you, and you're like, What were those for? Like, you know, that famous speaker quote about when you find unexpected tears in your eyes, it is best to pay close attention. That's such a good quote. Like, it's one of my all-time favorites.
SPEAKER_02:I had an experience. I have not been a Lord of the Rings follower, reader, movie watcher. And one of our sons is he's asked for years for me to watch it with him. And so he had to sit next to me and basically, you know, I'm one of those movie watchers that's like, wait, who's that again? Wait, who now what now what you can explain everything that James?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He's narrating the whole movie to me. You know, I'm really trying to be a good mom and care and really understand. And plus, it's I mean, why shouldn't I? This is very cultural. I need to know this stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And there are a little too many battle scenes.
SPEAKER_02:So we get to the end, and I've just barely hung on by a thread to understand the storyline. It ends, and and this is so parallel to your story. And I start weeping. Like, not not just a little teary eye like that with sweet, like like the kind where you can feel in your gut, and I'm kind of got my hands on my knees, and I find my breath, and I said to him, Why am I crying? What I don't even know what I'm sad about. And he's like, That's it, mom. That's the whole idea. This is it, because you don't know exactly. It's tapping into something much deeper, mom. I'm like, old soul of a son. And so fast forward a month or two, and I'm I'm reading my Bible and I'm like, you know, I think I don't read Revelation enough. I love the seven churches, I love the first few chapters, but when it gets into the weird dreams, I'm like, enough weird dreams. I don't want to read about them. And but I just sensed the spirit saying, why don't you treat it like Lord of the Rings? And don't try to stop and understand. Just read it all the way through. Don't push pause and just read it, read it, read it, and just see what happens. And I tell you what, I got to the end and I started weeping. Like, I don't know exactly why, but there's a longing in my heart for something in a far-off country that a revelation tapped into.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love that. And didn't you love those tears?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yes, like my my body's longing for something that only God can give me. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Like your Beakner quote. Um, you know, I'm on this mission to have people stop apologizing for their tears. We all, oh, I'm sorry, I don't know what's happening. You know, it's like, what do you think?
SPEAKER_01:I know. I hate it when people apologize for their tears.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe we should maybe we should get little glass, beautiful flasks, and when someone starts crying, we just go put it up against their cheek.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, when that'd be so good.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's what a beautiful liturgy that would be.
SPEAKER_01:Like, no, I have a little glass bottle that is no more than an inch, it's probably an inch and a half, and there's dirt in it, and it's old. It was my dad's, and I keep it in my purse. And it's it's always a reminder, like the father cares about every tear. And even more recently, here's another reason why you risk grieving. You know that verse when it's like, I collect all your tears in my bottle, I record them in my book. I was asking Jesus, I'm like, why? Like, what are you doing with the book? And I really feel like he said to me, It's my blueprint for your restoration. Like when I make all things new, like that's what he's gonna do. He's gonna restore and make all of it new. So I'm like, oh my gosh, of course, the hope in that is so crazy, and that longing for that day, that's the part in Revelation that kills me. Like, right before the verse, and I will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more crying and no more pain, and the old will pass away. The verse right before that, so it's Revelation 21, 3. Every time I think about this, and then I'm like, Annalise, it's the verse that killed you, like like just broke you wide open. It's I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, and there's an exclamation point. I don't think there's a lot of exclamation points in the Bible. God has come to make his whole, like it's announcing the return. And I'm like, oh my gosh, all of our sorrow is rooted in. Like if you trace every grief back, it's because we're not home, and we do so long for home. He's right here, like we live again with him. I love that verse. Revelation 21. Woke God's dwelling places now among the people, and he will dwell with them. And it goes on to be like, and he will be their God. All of our harm comes from the separation from love at first from our parents, but really it's deeper than that. It's that we're not home yet. Like we live here in occupied territory that will be made new someday. So risk your tears. Why not fill up your book?
SPEAKER_04:Mary Ellen, Owen, thank you so much. What an honor to get to have you come on the Story Matters podcast, not just for one, but two episodes.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. For me, this was so blessed because I was in your presence in a much more personal way. Thank you so much for being our grief midwife.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Thank you. When Ryan said we do a podcast, I was like, yeah, because we're gonna sit there and we're gonna be so tenderized just by talking about it. That it will be where our hearts are so joined and aligned, and all three of us have given ourselves permission to be tenderized. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks again for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any questions or thoughts about the topics today, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached through our website, emails, and social media. Just go to Story Matters Initiative. If you're interested in doing individual or group work, we'd love to discuss that with you as well.