Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss life at the intersection of Theology and Psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their life stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
55. Feeling Stuck? A Conversation Worth Revisiting 30: Intensifying Your Binds! (S5 E3)
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We step back into an older conversation that sets the foundation for our Season 5 on Paradoxes, starting with how to recognize a bind when neither option feels like a true way out. This is a re-release of Episode 30 "Intensifying Your Binds" from our 4 part Series on Shame.
We use Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” as an image for how badly we want certainty. Pop culture turns the poem into a pep talk about taking the harder path, but the actual text is full of ambivalence, regret, and that haunting phrase “with a sigh.” We give practical thoughts about decision-making, nostalgia, and why suffering can make us second-guess everything. Instead of bungee-cording out of sadness with quick reassurance, we talk about intensifying the bind and staying with it long enough to find what’s underneath. For us, that leads straight into shame, feeling stuck, the longing for Eden, and the deep need for rescue.
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Introduction to Shame and Binds
SPEAKER_01Before we jump into this episode, we wanted to give you a little context for why we're dropping an older conversation into season five on paradoxes. Emily and I have found ourselves coming back again and again to this idea of bind, places where neither direction seems to offer a true way out. And we've realized there is a progression here that's really important. First, we have to recognize that there's actually a bind. But sometimes the deeper work isn't figuring out which side of the bind wins. Rather than trying to just solve it too quickly, we need to intensify it, to stay with both sides of it long enough to begin to see that underneath the bind, there is often a paradox. Two things that seem contradictory and yet somehow both contain something true. If you listen to last week's episode, you'll be familiar with the phrases bind, alert, choice awareness, and paradox acceptance. In this older episode, recorded a year ago, we use Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken as an image for this. We desperately want to know which road is the right road, which one will get us safely where we want to go, or create the best adventure. Think of this episode as a little bit of a backstory, and maybe even some of the vocabulary for the journey we're taking in season five. Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_01We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_00We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_01We're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00Some people will say I'm in a pickle or between a rock and a hard place. Yeah. And a bind is not just something that we feel one time. These are repetitive, no-way out feelings, maybe as frequently as decisions that come our way. And you feel like a mild all the way up to high anxiety around what do I do? Neither way feels really like the answer.
SPEAKER_01And we recognize that there are times in our lives where we're like, man, I don't know what to do. And you'd call that a bind. But what we're saying here is they're pervasive, they're everywhere, and they go unnoticed. We think most people don't approach your struggles, your dilemmas, the things of this life that are hard as binds. We don't think we do. So when I name it to a client, hey, you might be in a bind, I feel a little bit silly, like duh, you know. But the truth is you hear this kind of concept in life, like something's easy to learn but hard to master. A bind is super simple. We all know what one is. It's when there's no good solution. But it's incredibly hard to master in the sense that, wait a minute, you mean when shame shows up, I'm actually trapped in a bind, it's binding me. And that's what we want to try to sort of prove today, because if we can get to that place, then there's hope for healing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think we want to name the binds, even though I agree with you, it feels like duh when you say, Oh, you're in a bind. Because when we name the bind, it does intensify it just in naming it. It kind of feels like, well, I knew that, but when you said it, it just feels all the more weighty. I remember being with Dan Alender in a workshop setting where we were engaging a story, and he said, find the bind. You want to always find the bind in these stories. And these are past childhood stories. Okay, where was the bind? If they did this, it would be a bad step. If they did that, it'd be a bad step. Find the bind. And it it felt somewhat exciting to have the detective work of it, but then it did feel a little bit like, well, what's the point?
SPEAKER_01And it also feels like, okay, so great. Now what? It exposes a mindset that the reason we don't name binds is we're really trying to solve a problem. We're trying to reasonably and rationally figure things out. On a previous episode, we talked about grandiosity and the idea that we think we have a solution to the shame, even if we've not named the shame. Well, you land on a bind and it's basically saying, guess what? There's no good solution, and you feel trapped. But then the point we're trying to make is there's a third way, right? There's one way it's trapped, the other way is not good either. What's the third way? The third way is what we're going to discuss a bit here. You have to step in by faith, step into the unknown. And I think this is something, the anathema to humans, to Americans for sure. We take charge. We know where we're going. One of the ways I want to illustrate that is with this poem, The Road Less Traveled.
SPEAKER_00Oh, but I don't know if that's the title.
SPEAKER_01I bet if you're listening and you heard that, everyone knew probably the poem I was referring to. And many of you probably thought that's the title, but that's kind of part of the point. There was an article in the Paris Review months ago, and a friend had sent it. The writer is exposing the fact that this poem called The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. By Robert Frost is one of the most searched poems and really works of fiction ever. Back when Google allowed you to do searches in 2012, you could find out the amount The Road Not Taken far outweighed any other work of fiction by like multiples.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01But what's interesting is what it didn't account for was the near 200,000 searches for its faux name, The Road Less Traveled.
SPEAKER_00I actually always thought it was called that. So you made me aware of that months ago, but I really did always think that the poem was called The Road Less Traveled.
SPEAKER_01Listener, I'm going to read the poem. It's very quick, and I'm going to invite you in and just feel what you think is going on in the poem. It's short. This is going to be four quick stances, so don't tune this out. But just kind of imagine you're this person and what are you feeling, and then we're going to quickly show why it's so misunderstood. The road not taken by Robert Frost. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler. Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth, then took the other as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear, though as for that the passing there had warned them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way leads on to the way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. This poem was used in advertisements. One was in New Zealand for a car commercial where the reader of the poem was in the background and we're watching a traveler choose the harder path. That's the predominant assumption. What you're looking for when you come to this moment of a bind where there's two things you could choose, look for the harder one. M. Scott Peck chose this as his title, The Road Less Traveled, in his book on discipline and psychology, even though it's called The Road Not Taken. That book was so popular, and that line is in the poem anyway, The Road Less Traveled, that many of us have read and heard that growing up and thought, yes, the idea is when in doubt, go the harder route.
SPEAKER_00And and even this, I think, goes for the mindset of the Christian. The road is narrow. So it's going to be different. It's going to be the one less traveled by the masses.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. And that's the point we're getting at when it comes to a bind. What we're saying is neither option is the answer in and of itself. In other words, you're going to have to take that step of faith. Just what I want to show from the poem super quickly is you're led into thinking one is harder. But the poet's very clear. The other, he said, then took the other just as fair and having perhaps the better claim. It was grassy and it wanted where. So he's wrestling with which path is more trodden, which had more passage. The third stands, and both that morning equally lay and leaves no step had trodden black. So he's kind of coming back to his senses that they're about the same. But what I love is he makes a decision, right? He's like, okay, I kept the first for another day, exclamation mark. But then he says, yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted that I should ever come back. And so he's wrestling with the fact that if he takes one, the other's gone forever. He'll never know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But the best part of the poem to me is I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference. Like, grandchildren, here's what happened. I took that path, and look where it led me. I made the right choice. This was the way to go, but that word with a sigh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he doesn't really say it as triumphantly as we imagine all these commercials and graduation speeches that have made it sound like, see, I made the right choice in that last stanza. It's feeling like he's even wondering, Did I make the wrong choice? With a sigh. He says, I'll be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages. Like, did I make the right choice?
SPEAKER_01He titles the poem.
SPEAKER_00The road not taken. So he's probably pondered his whole life, what would it have been like if I took that road?
SPEAKER_01What we're getting at with the poem is the fact that we miss it, the fact that we read it collectively as take the harder road shows us that we don't like places in our being where there's no answer. What he's showing is this person seemingly was able to know that and yet still had to realize I better pretend it's the best one. I've got to sort of convince myself there's still this part of him that goes, What was the other road like?
SPEAKER_00I hear the American mentality of convincing ourselves that this was the right path because it was hard. And I think one of the maybe most fertile ground for regret in my life and the friends and family that I know well is when we make a decision, we think that means it's gonna go well. But when it is a hard road, we blame the decision. We don't just think, oh, you know, life's hard, or of course, either road would have led to hardship. We go back and kind of like him, it feels like he's sighing, like, wonder what that road not taken would have been like. Because this has not been easy.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's where if we're honest and we can catch binds in real time, and these are maybe on the deeper issues of life, we realize the reason both have kind of a lose-lose feeling is that in this life, there's no Eden. Neither one are leading to Eden.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But yet we really want it to be triumphant. And so I think that's why the Americans have taken this poem to say, be the rugged cowboy and take that one that's harder, but know that it's for your better.
SPEAKER_01And and again, that principle in and of itself is not what we're against. Rather, what we're trying to expose is that we need to name a bind. We need to come to these places and go, aha, here I am. And I had an experience this week I would like to share, where on Monday morning we were going to help our daughter move out into a dorm. Even though it's in town, the dorm, and we've sort of called it the bubble, you know, the university bubble. We're not going to see her in the mornings. We're not going to see her popping in at night. I think I had blocked that emotion by telling myself, this is fine. She's just down the street. But as that morning loomed, I found myself tearing up and getting super sad. And what happens in these moments is I'm torn because part of me, I start feeling this voice of like, look, she's just a few moments away, and you can see her anytime. And all the bungee cords we all use on ourselves or offer to our friends, like quickly, to kind of rescue them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, to pull out of the sadness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, don't go down that road, no big deal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01On the other hand, I'm like, but if I go down the road of sadness, it's unending because the reality is we're now moving into the category of nostalgia, which means it's not actually about her moving out. It's something far deeper. And so I think what happened that morning is I had to start and what we're going to now speak to is intensify the bind. I'm in a bind because I'm sad about something that has to happen. To use an absurd example, if you have a 20-year-old and you look at a photo of them at four, you may say, I miss that, but you would never have wanted them to get stuck at four, or you'd be going to every specialist on the planet to see what's going on. So you're in a bind. I want something that's not a possibility. I wish I could freeze time, but yet we want it to also march on. I want her to go to college. This is a great move. She's gonna spread her wings and all these things. We want that, and I'm also sad. And this is the phrase we often use. I want to hold death and resurrection. I am sad, but that means I have to name a bind. I have to say, I'm in a bit of a pickle here.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think you named it really well with our other daughter as we got her prepared for high school one day. You had red eyes and looked at me and said, I just would really love to see little five-year-old Bonnie again, and that five-year-old is no longer with us. But you said at best, we wouldn't want that five-year-old to be five forever. We want our children to grow up and they're meant to leave the home and become adults. But time feels like the enemy because we can't get back who they were. The bind is if I just get sad, there's no reason. That's stupid. Just go be happy for her, go celebrate. Because of course she's happy. But if we don't give any weight to the death of what was, we're not really intensifying the bind. We think, this is what our whole podcast episode's about today. We think healing and growth come by intensifying the bind and actually naming it, saying, wow, I want my child to grow up and I don't want my child to grow up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so what we mean by intensifying the bind is to find the bind under the bind, find the pain underneath, right? You said it already, Emily, that you know, we can start with, okay, I want her to go, but I don't want her to go. But then we both have sort of named that when you travel down that road, the ache in the soul that is nostalgia is the ache of the fall. It's the ache that dying is real, that aging happens, that there is a passage of time you can't get back. And we numb it with thoughts of, like, yeah, but look how beautiful a person became or how smart. But the reality is we don't project enough into the future. One of the things about this poem is he says, as we've already named, that he'll be telling this story with a sigh. But what's he doing? He's saying somewhere in the future, ages and ages, he's thinking more about where does it end? And so to intensify the bond is to actually look down the road and go, or what's farther and bigger and deeper. What came to mind with the Meredith story about her going to college is when I get to the deeper pain of the fall, I'm gonna need a bigger rescue than just she's only eight minutes away. I'm gonna need the rescue of heaven. And there's that quote by C.S. Lewis, you know, if you aim at heaven, you get earth thrown in. If you aim at earth, you get neither. What we're really naming with shame and binds is those are little whispers of our soul that we need, we need our father. We need home. We need something far bigger and deeper than what we've named. But shame comes along and goes, Oh, you're bringing up heaven. We're just talking about college or lunch.
SPEAKER_00Well, and the reason I think shame gets us out of that deep thinking that you're talking about, like, why would you think about eternity when your daughter's going to college? Is because shame, which is really an enemy to our souls, can keep us in the space of you're being silly. Then we do stay in the shame. This is why naming it and intensifying it is peeling back the curtain until you hit the core. Like you were saying, what's the shame under the shame? Or what's the sadness under the sadness? If we go back to the very beginning of how we talked about the garden, the whisper of shame is is God really who he says he is? Is God really good? Is there really heaven? Is there really something after this life? Because if this is all you have to live for, then it's gonna be really sad. It shows us we can't fix this ourselves. We can't stop time. We just can't. I think as humans, we love to fix things and have a quick answer and move on. I think shame's playground is this place where we feel like we've got to figure out the reasonable answer and logic our way out of this. But then Jesus stays very relegated to kind of a mascot, like, yeah, Jesus is he's my savior and he's great. But he's not who we're clinging to as we've intensified the sadness of like, okay, I have nothing but Jesus.
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah, we do it and it's embarrassing, but we do it all the time. Even the thought of inviting Jesus into certain spaces feels sheepish. Like he doesn't know about promotion. He wasn't married, he doesn't know what life with this person is like.
SPEAKER_00As long as we think something is silly or you don't have the right to be sad, your daughter's not dead. Some people have lost their children. Your child is alive. As long as we can shame our way out of the feeling, then Jesus isn't invited in.
SPEAKER_01Listeners, here's what we're asking. We would like you to slow down, pause if this is a lot, as you think about the things in your life where you feel stuck. When a person says, I think I'm gonna go see a coach, a counselor, a therapist. Usually there's something happening in their life currently. It can be something very tangible or just a sense of I've lost my direction, I'm stuck. Or maybe a sense of like there are wounds in my past I've just never wanted to look at. I'm a little bit afraid. All of these things are what you might put under the category of the inciting incident. That is the thing, the reason I'm going, what I want to find out. What I find routinely is there's so much more than that when we start working with people. But when we're in the midst of a conversation and someone is explaining a problem, they don't see the bind. It's there, we see it. And it's not because we're trained and they're not, it's because when you're in it, it feels either silly to name or useless to name. If you're in the midst of a situation, say with finances, where on one hand, you demand a certain level of lifestyle. And on the other hand, you're struggling. You're in a bind. But you don't want to name that. Or if you're in a marriage where on one hand, it's there's parts of it that feel miserable, and yet you have this belief no matter what, we stay together, you're in a bind. Because now what are you gonna do? You know, you just stay miserable, or do you leave and go against your moral beliefs, the biblical truths that you hold to? All we're saying is, you know, because I can even hear someone listening to this going, well, then what do you suggest? And that's the point. We're suggesting naming it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, name it. And it feels rotten because there's no answer. And we love to solve problems. I would say as fast as we name it, we need quickly a solution. Or what's the point? This is hard.
SPEAKER_01Often we won't name until there's a sense underneath that there is a solution. It's almost like we need to smell the wind of a solution before we're willing to risk.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And when I was in that workshop and Dan Alander was explaining all of this, like find the bind and intensify it. I remember at one point someone said, Okay, now what? We found the bind. We even made the person feel it more. We intensified it. We really put more words to how hard this is, now what? And he said, nothing. He actually said the word nothing. And I was like, What do you mean, nothing? He's like, No, this is it. You intensify it, you sit in it. And I remember feeling so frustrated by that. Like, I don't know if I want to do this work. What in the world? I like solutions. Now, fast forward several years, I tell people all the time when they ask what we do and what's our modality, I don't give advice. We don't give advice. The main goal of our work is to pull out of people what they already know to be true. They haven't said it, they haven't seen it, they haven't felt it, and hold that space for them to say, How does that feel? I want to be there with you. There's attunement there. There's really good containment of like, this isn't gonna take me out. I can handle whatever this is. And it's amazing to watch. Now that I can feel my frustration back from when Dan Allender said that and now doing the work, it's amazing to watch healing come from just people feeling felt in the angst of naming their bind and looking at me like please rescue me to say something. I'm there and I'm not leaving the room, but I'm not giving them an answer. There isn't an answer. It's let's feel this together. We know that grief is the doorway to healing.
SPEAKER_01I think that's really well said. And I want to clarify because I even feel myself saying no answer. And I want to be clear what we're saying is there's no words or rationale that will take away the pain. That's what we're saying. Kind of the spoiler alert here that we're gonna go toward is okay, so where is the gospel in this? If you know the contours of what the word gospel means, you know, Jesus living a perfect life, dying on the cross, raising on the third day, ascending. The gospel is Jesus had the ultimate bind. And if you want a picture of a bind, watch him in the garden, the second garden, where he's sweating drops of blood. And you go, wait a minute, what's going on there? Like, don't you want to save us? And don't you want to do what you've said you would do since the fall? Of course. And so if you walked up to Jesus and saw that, you would wonder, like, why are you questioning this stuff? What he's wrestling with is not the pain of the nails and thorns. It's the father turning his face away. One of the most beautiful and crazy things about shame for a Christian is we'll never actually experience its true underlying threat. The father will never turn his face away from us. But for Jesus, he actually experienced that. And so if you went to him as he's sweating drops of blood and kind of put your hand on his shoulder and said, Hey, in three days, this is all gonna be better. That would be futile. That would be ridiculous. He knows that. He knows it, but it's still painful. And so often we come to this in scripture, you have this like in Philippians three, where Paul's like, he wants to attain somehow to the right. Resurrection of the dead, but he also wants to share with Christ and his sufferings. And he's saying a routine, regular movement toward shame. In Hebrews 12, we see that, right? The author says to throw off your weights and sins and run your waist and have your eyes set on Jesus. And he says, Be like him, who for the joy set before him endured the cross and scorned its shame. And so here's what we're getting at. Paul says, somehow sharing his sufferings. We think will Jesus suffer on the cross. And Paul himself, at the end of his life, faced similar suffering. But one of the ways he's suffering in that passage, he's anticipating a group of people that come in and say, Paul doesn't know what he's doing, right? And questioning Paul's apostleship. So he begins chapter three by saying, watch out for those dogs. And then he gives his resume. He's like, if they think they have a good resume, my resume is better. I was born of the tribe of Benjamin, yada, yada, yada. And then he mentions how those resume markers are now rubbish. What is he saying? He's saying, look, these were the things that helped me not feel shame. I feel good about myself. I'm fitting into my group, my tribe. I have these markers that make me feel good. But once he met Christ, he realizes these things are kind of useless and they're almost rubbish, not in and of themselves, but as a method to feel better, they're useless. And so we all carry these things. We carry them all the time. Talents, our looks, our bank account, our home, whatever it is, just name it. And he's saying, look, not only does he consider those things rubbish, everything compared to knowing Christ. But what he says is, and I have to share in his suffering. What does that mean? Well, if I live in a world that says, hey, it's pretty important you do X, Y, and Z to be kind of thought of well. And I've decided to not have done those things or to not use those on my resume. I'm going to be getting a lot of looks, a lot of like, hmm. What Paul is saying is because I've chosen the path or have been called down that path, I'm going to get a lot of scorn even from churches I've planted, like Corinth and others. I'm going to get people questioning me, wondering why we're suffering, what's wrong with you. When you come to a bind, there is no way out on your own. That's the point. And shame tries to convince us we're all on our own. So to find ourselves in a situation, a jam that we can't get ourselves out of, and there's really no earthly solution that will solve it, in some ways, is the scariest moment of our existence because we have to actually rely on something else, something bigger, right? We have to actually invite Jesus in, which scares us because we're not quite sure what's going to happen next.
SPEAKER_00That's really good. And I often tell the people that I work with that story work is our nickname for what we're doing, but I believe it's sanctifying work. I believe that to really uncover these binds that either happened in our past or they're happening now, feel them, sit in them, intensify. You get to a place of grief which draws you into the gospel story. Blessed are those who grieve, right? There is no other way at that point. You are in the pit. There is no way but to say, How long, O Lord, will you rescue me?
SPEAKER_01When you're on your path and you take a step in the right direction, all the protectors are gonna squeal, What are you doing? Are you sure this is certain death? I'm gonna actually step toward what feels like dying or shame because my faith says this is the correct step.
SPEAKER_00I think when we hit suffering, it makes us doubt or have regret or look back and think, what did we do wrong? If we don't see suffering as part of the walk, part of the promise of following Christ, then I think when we do hit suffering, we don't make the connection. Shame comes flooding in and we regret what we've done, doubt our decision, or try to blame. We talked about blame shift is a quick indicator that shame's involved. The gospel's completely the third way, completely the rescue. But shame wants to keep us bound to, well, it's a lose-lose. So what are you gonna do? Figure it out.
SPEAKER_01Shame thinks it's doing us a favor. Shame is like that parent who's like, if I don't shame my child, they'll get too heavy and they won't be liked. If I don't shame my child, they'll have smelly armpits and they'll be kicked out. Like their group won't like them. Shame is trying to keep us in some false tribe that doesn't even exist. And that's what the serpent was doing. It's kind of like the uh the prospector who's has a seemingly good desire for Woody Toy Story? Yeah. He he has the good desire for him, but he's using nefarious tactics. He thinks at the end, when they're actually on the airplane, this was the right thing, you know, and then I guess Buzz Lightyear rescues him or whatever, but uh yet he's in a package. He's getting shipped to Tokyo. Shame's like, hey, this is good. This is where we belong. And it's like, no, that's awful. You're in a prison. But the prospector thought, this is good for us. So shame may feel like it's trying to take us out, but in some strange way, it's trying to bind us to some set of rules that keep us in. I think oftentimes parents are our modes of shame. One parent might be like, I'm trying to train my child up to be as successful as they can, and they have to go to this school and make these grades. None of that in and of itself is wrong. If the idea is we're not proud of you, we're gonna steer your choices by showing delight while you do well and withholding delight when you're not doing well. What's happening is shame, your own internal shame attendant, fueled by parents and the system you're in. You're gonna steer into the places where you get that delight. That's your story. Now, another parent in another scenario feels delight when you don't do success because you'll leave. If you do too well, you'll leave me. I don't want you to leave me. So that parent may use shame to keep you in. The point is, whatever form it takes, there's some goal that presumes to be safety. But the truth is the only safety is in the Lord and in eternity, right? Anything short of that is a false Eden. Yet often our families of origin have completely accepted a false Eden as what we need. And you've been trained up for that false Eden. So often what we're doing in story work is trying to go, wait a minute, I was developing vows and agreements, which are shame-based processes, to stay safe in a system that ends up being really bad for me. And now as an adult, those things have residue, and I find myself still living out of these old scripts, these old ideas, which bring up bind after bind after bind, because at the end of the day, what we realize is I'm gonna have to change, and that's gonna feel for a moment like you're gonna die, right? And yet on the other side, you're gonna feel freedom. Jesus shows up, there's your third way. This world and all of these little things I'm drawn to aren't the thing. Yeah, then he lifts above it. And that situation with Meredith that morning, when I'm writing and thinking and praying was like, if I stay in the place of this has to feel good now or make sense now, I'm I'm done. There's no way. But when I intensified the bind and realized what I was aching for was Eden or heaven, and Jesus met me there, it didn't mean it's no big deal that she's going to college. It meant I can enter that sadness safely. And I could also celebrate the resurrection on the other side, which is also yes, she's doing great, and yes, college is fine. But more than that, the actual resurrection. It's fascinating going back to Philippians 3. Paul says, not that I've already done this, he's proposed this process that he's like, I've not done this. I'm not perfect. We're all making mistakes, we're all living out of binds. But when I do, I address the bind by naming where it's following the law, and I seek the third way of heaven, the upward call, and that sets me free in that space to get above that bind, even though that doesn't mean the pain goes away. That's the key. The pain doesn't just disappear.
SPEAKER_00But it does have, and this is how we're trying to wrap it up. This is actually the healing ointment to shame, is what you're describing. Because I watched you in that day have your sadness in the morning, but the whole rest of the day, there was a lightness and a joy, just a lot of fun. And it wasn't a cover-up. It wasn't like I'm just gonna shove it down, try to be brave. I think he'd really gone there. And this is an example we're using to say when you intensify the bind and you feel the sadness and you go to Jesus with it.
SPEAKER_01But go toward the shame. Like he's holding your hand, but you're walking to the sadness. I had to like write about like I spent some time really moving toward those deep sadness. I had to feel them. I we say sit in it. That's what I felt like in that moment. And when I was sitting in it, I realized there's something deeper here. We went a little deeper, a little deeper. And what I found myself realizing was I think I'm grieving time. You know, Drew Holcomb's line, a decade goes by without a warning. Once I got there, I realized, okay, time out. There's something going on deeper. I'm having a fresh sense or experience of the depravity or the darkness that is the fall right now. Rather than running from the feeling, I'm using it. I'm surfing that wave, but I'm doing so in the safety of my savior. I know he's got me. I'm safe. I can now pursue even the darker things of this situation. And when you do that, you start to realize all the things I was so afraid of are like the wizard behind the curtain. They're not the problem. That's Paul, you know, he says it's not flesh and blood, it's the rulers of the powers. It's not these things you think it is. It's not your spouse, it's not your kids, it's not your job, your career, your health issue. It's deeper and more profound by intensifying the bind, we're getting to those places where only Jesus can rescue you.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I think this is the idea of going down deep into a dark place, places we don't want to go. And you even mentioned the bungee cord earlier. Like we will bungee out of feeling certain ways. I don't want to feel that. Um, when you said Paul said, I have not already attained this, it feels like what we're saying is none of us have experienced heaven yet, but we can get glimpses of heaven when we have gone through the gospel story, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We can't just skip over like the you theory or the J curve. It's not like a little easy bridge we walk across. The cross that bridges the gap, the cross is actually a going down into the sufferings of Christ. It feels like death when you face these binds. I think what we're trying to say is the healing agent to shame is the feeling of the resurrection coming out of I've really felt it, I've looked at it, I've gone right at it, I'm not ignoring it, and I'm not giving into it either. I'm not letting it keep me bound. And Jesus is that third way out.
SPEAKER_01In the teaching on the U theory, Kathy Lorzel came up with this idea of bungee quartz, referring to a release valve. You're going down the U and it's too much, and you just release an escape, whatever. A false positive thought, everything's gonna be fine. This is how life is meant to be. The word we need to name that we haven't really hit yet is faith. So often that word has been turned into like this kind of noun, like my belief system. But in Hebrews 11, he says, faith is hoping for something not seen. In a weird way, what we're saying is faith is saying, look, shame is threatening me. I don't want to even go near it, it's danger. But in the power of this attachment to the Lord, I'm gonna go right in. I'm gonna jump off and go right towards shame and I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna survive, and I'm gonna find out I'm okay. And whatever it was threatening me with, loss of community, loss of friends, loss of whatever, it's all fake. I don't need it. But it will always feel like loss at first because you're going over that edge.
SPEAKER_00We're supposed to go down into the depths of our sorrow to be able to go like a half pipe up to the other side of the resurrection. The bungee cord keeps us on that side of I don't want to go suffer. So we kind of keep bungee cording back up to that same hill, like I don't really want to. But the idea is none of us want to suffer, but naming our binds is facing the suffering, facing the shame that's telling us to do certain things. And it does feel like, what's the point? Why are we doing this? And then we realize Jesus does rescue us. We cry out to him. If you don't have an answer and a quick fix to get you out of this bind, and you end up crying out to the Lord, that is your rescue.
SPEAKER_01Let's get super practical. The first question is what is your bind right now? So most of us don't have one, but we have plenty of things we could write down as problems. Jot down a couple of problems or think through them. Here are the things that are nagging at me large, small, medium, and pick one, really just kind of look at it. What's going on in that scenario?
SPEAKER_00Your anxiety could be an indicator. Find your anxiety problem.
SPEAKER_01Anxiety is a response to a bind, right? There's pressure being exerted from two sides. And so when you look at that, you're realizing I'm sort of stuck. I don't, there's nowhere out, left or right. But when you name that, that's the first step. Okay, I'm in a bind. What you're naming is, and this is important, neither path in this scenario will suffice in and of itself, right? If I do that, it seems like it could be good, but it's got bad with it. What we're trying to say is before you make that decision, you have to first intensify the bind. What am I really afraid of? Going back to the poem, I'm afraid if I take a wrong path, who knows where I'll be? Well, we're naming that fear. What are we really afraid of? We're afraid of shame. I'll be exposed, I'll be left, I'll be othered, I'll be abandoned, I won't be enough. What I'm feeling in my body around this bind is all sorts of these protective devices that I've lived with my whole life, doing sorts of warning mechanisms to keep me, including anxiety and depression and accusation. But when you can name it and then intensify it and go, okay, there's something deeper going on. There's something bigger here, even though it's something that seems small, you know, like what's coming up, where is this shame coming from? What's the bind? When you can sit in and feel that and let it roll over you, that's where I think Jesus meets you. And it's not that he's not there before, it's just he doesn't seem helpful yet, right? Because we haven't quite gotten to the place where he's the one to rescue us. This is really following Philippians 4. You know, the Lord is at hand, do not be anxious, but Thanksgiving. Like we're reorienting toward the reality of heaven and to our safety in the Lord. And all of a sudden we can go, wait a minute, I can take a step down a path. Feels dangerous, but I'm safe. I can move, I can take a step. Or maybe a third way does show up or a fourth way, but it won't happen as long as we ignore the bind. Once you name it, you need to intensify it. How do you do that, Emily? How would you intensify it?
SPEAKER_00For me, it's not quickly going to a reasonable fix. And I love to solve problems and I love to fix things. To intensify it would mean there's an unanswerable longing that I need to expose if I'm willing to do that work with the Lord, like partnering with him and saying, Here's how I feel, what's going on? I'm stepping into a place where I have to have faith. Because if shame's gonna whisper, is God really good? Does he really care about this kind of stuff? Then the antidote to that is yes, Jesus, you care about this. Because you Ryan, you said in our first episode about shame that really Adam and Eve had two choices.
SPEAKER_01The third way is to go find the God who walks in the cool of the day and ask him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Originally you had said there's two choices, but you're right. That's kind of the third way, is they could have gone straight to God and said, Hey, we heard this thing. We're wrestling, we're feeling all kinds of ways. The answer to your question, how do you intensify the vine is feel it, take it to Jesus and not have the answer. We're right back to the Beatitudes. We're poor in spirit. I don't know what to do. I don't have a fix. Okay, now what? Well, I'm sad. I'm gonna grieve. Okay. So we're back into that pattern of I'm gonna follow Jesus to the cross and trust that he endured the shame. I'm never gonna be put to shame. He's gonna see me through this. That's how I would do it.
SPEAKER_01I love that. And I just want to add as a closing thought. So often, what I'm noticing when talking to clients, and also in my own life, is the answer is not how do I get rid of this feeling? How do I get rid of this pain? Rather, it's how do I learn that this pain or this feeling is part of the process? If I can get that into my head, oh, this is actually normal. Because shame says it's not normal. You shouldn't feel pain. Fix it, do something. And what we're learning is, oh, wait a minute. Actually, I'm gonna feel things. It's gonna hurt, and I'm not gonna run to drugs or addiction or escape. Huh? I'm gonna actually name a bind. And you said this earlier. I'm feeling the pain and I'm not running to a rescue. That's powerful. That's new. And therein lies grief and healing potential that I think we would invite you to give it a try.