Attending to Your First Formation

Most of us think we’re reacting to what’s happening right now, but a huge part of our “right now” is actually our first formation talking. We sit down to unpack how early shaping moments and family patterns create a false self, the fig leaves we learn to wear to secure love, safety, control and significance. Mac also shares a brief personal update after a serious medical emergency and why this season is sharpening his focus on what is life-giving and honest.

We work through the biggest pushbacks we hear from Christians: “Isn’t this just narcissistic navel gazing?”, “Aren’t I a new creation in Christ?”, and “My childhood was great so this doesn’t apply.” Then we offer a grounded path forward that keeps the gospel at the centre: identify a shaping moment or pattern, name the message you downloaded about God, yourself and others, notice the vow you made to cope, and trace how that vow still shows up in your relationships, boundaries, conflict style, people pleasing or perfectionism.

The turning point is learning to replace bad news with good news. We talk about prayerful journaling, listening with the Holy Spirit, and letting God speak to identity first, not just behaviour. We also share real examples from our own stories, including perfectionism, overcommitting and learning to trust that emotions are not a liability but a doorway into healing and deeper connection with Jesus. If you’re searching for Christian authenticity, spiritual formation tools and practical discipleship that actually touches real life, this conversation will give you language and next steps. Subscribe, share this with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Authenticity And Being Fully Known

Mac 0:02

Welcome to Praxis, a podcast where we explore how to practice and embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen. We are in a series on authenticity right now. While authenticity is enjoying a moment in the cultural spotlight, its value is nothing new. It's deeply rooted in the biblical vision of being fully known and fully loved. As human beings created in the image of God, we are wired for relationship. We were made to know and to be known. And yet, so often we hide, we perform, and we manage impressions by burying our weaknesses. Slowly we begin living divided and inauthentic lives. The truth is, real relationship is impossible while hiding. Genuine connection requires courage, the willingness to show up vulnerably and authentically. So in this series, we're exploring what authenticity is, what gets in the way of it, and what it takes to pursue it in a relationship with God, ourselves, and others. Today we want to talk about how attending to our first formation is essential to living authentically. Let's get into it.

New Recording Room And Banter

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Welcome everyone. My name is Katie.

Josiah 1:19

I'm Josiah. And I'm Mac.

SPEAKER_04 1:22

Well, it's good to be here, you guys. We it is.

Mac 1:27

We have a new room design, thanks to Josiah. We do. So you all can't see us, but up until this point, it feels like we've been recording in a closet. Well, we have. It basically was a closet. Yeah. Boxes. Right. And now we've kind of got a new room. And well, to be fair, it's the same room. It's the same room redesigned.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Yeah.

Mac 1:48

And it feels so much better.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

It feels very official.

Mac 1:52

Yeah, it does. And perhaps at some point uh we'll we'll record an episode, like video record an episode. We'll see. It's a pretty small room, but but um yeah, we could try. But at least for us, our experience of recording this is gonna feel totally different than previous episodes.

SPEAKER_04 2:09

Yeah.

unknown 2:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

It's the real deal.

Mac 2:10

It's the real deal.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

It almost feels like we should have sponsors or something.

Josiah 2:13

Right. Well, hopefully we can like sometimes we can like say we can mention products and then maybe they'll, you know, offer to sponsor us. So if there's anything you guys are hoping to get sponsored, you know, about that. Just any free items. Yeah. I mean, you do talk about, you know, ca caffeine and coffee being an issue.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Yeah. Right now I'm into Rise. There you go. We could get a Rise commercial. R-Y-Z-E. Yes. Um, yeah, well, it's been a bit since we've recorded. It's been six weeks, maybe four or four to six weeks. And

Italy Greece And A Medical Emergency

SPEAKER_04 2:50

a lot has happened since then. Uh Mac, you spent some time in Europe.

Mac 2:55

I did. I mean, the fact that we haven't recorded is 100% my fault. I I was on vacation. Uh, we took our two older boys to Italy and Greece, and it was amazing. I mean, you know, just the our boys behaved awesome. Like they were, they were just in it, had a great time, we got some great memories, we laughed a lot. I didn't realize how Italian I am. I have like my mom is Italian, my dad is Irish. We went to Ireland last year and I had some aha moments. But I think having visited both places, I'm probably 25% Irish and 75% Italian. In spirit, yeah. I had all sorts of moments where I read- You are wearing your Ireland shirts.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

You should probably get an Italy shirt.

Mac 3:43

I should get one of those. But it just, I was like, there were all these like mirror moments where I was like, oh, that explains so much. And then I we so we got home on a Sunday, and then um a couple days of work, and we had our volunteer appreciation banquet where I got to see lots of people, which was fun. And then the next morning, I had a medical emergency. I was working out like I do most days and got like the worst headache of my life. And there's tons of little like, I would call them God moments where it's clear God was ahead. And one of them was that Josie, my wife, got called off of work that day for the first time in over six months. She rarely gets called off. And so I told her I have this headache. And she's like, Well, if it's not better by the time I get Griff back, dropping Griff off at summer school, we're gonna have to take you in. And by the time she left, I was in the car and we were on our way there. And I got to the hospital and was throwing up, and they did a CT scan and found a brain hemorrhage, and then they uh flight for life to me, so I got to ride on the helicopter to St. Luke's, which is sort of like a neuro a hospital that specializes in neurocare. And um, so I ended up with uh what's called a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage. And it sounds like the spider. Well, it's sort of like the arachnophobia. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of like where it was located. And I probably I shouldn't share all of it. There's just I shouldn't go into all of it here. I will probably, when I get back, uh probably like create some space while preaching to share more of the story, particularly where I notice God intervening to save my life. And just I have a laundry list of thank yous because our community has just been incredible over the past um few weeks supporting us. Um, and that includes the staff. So I just have a lot of thank yous that I need to make. And I don't know if the podcast is like the primary place to do that. But um, for those who are listening and have had concerns, like, how am I doing? I'm doing really well. I feel like my recovery is going great. It'll probably be a while till I'm present on Sunday. So like I am not back to work. What I am doing is engaging work that's helpful for my recovery and is life-giving. And this podcast is one of those spaces. I just got done sleeping 10 hours. I'm fully caffeinated. Talking with friends is not a heavy lift for me. But Sunday mornings is. Um, I have like some like too much stimulation is not helpful to me at this point. And so if you just think about what a Sunday morning involves, in my position, it's a lot of interaction, a lot of stimulation, and it'll probably be a little bit before I'm ready to re-engage that space. And so for now, I'm just kind of cherry-picking things that are really life-giving to me that don't tax me, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 6:33

Yeah.

Mac 6:33

And this is one of those places.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

So I'm so glad to hear that.

Mac 6:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Yeah. It was three weeks ago today.

Mac 6:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Right?

Mac 6:39

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

Well, we're glad that you're here.

Mac 6:41

I'm glad to be here. Yeah. Staying in a hospital is not fun. Um all the poking and prodding and all those things.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

So we missed you and we're glad you're back.

Josiah 6:53

Yeah, it was nice. It was nice. I I mentioned it when you came in today, but and I've seen you a few times since being out of the hospital. Today, when I saw you, you just seem more, much more Mac normal.

Mac 7:05

That's great. Yeah, each day I'm feeling better and better. And I was sharing with some other folks that like every complication you could have with a brain hemorrhage, there's like all sorts of things that could go wrong that would make recovery more difficult. And at every single, every single variable, I like dodge that bullet. So I'm just grateful because that means my recovery is going really well. Nice. Yeah. And I know a lot of it is prayer and all sorts of things. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Yeah, there are a lot of people praying for you.

Mac 7:37

Tons. Yeah. Anyway, so let's hit up pause on that for now. Um I'll have more to say about it in the future, you know.

SPEAKER_04 7:47

Yeah. Yeah. Sounds

Fig Leaves And The False Self

SPEAKER_04 7:49

good. All right. Well, you're kicking us off.

Mac 7:51

Yeah. I mean, speaking of helicopter rides, um and the false self. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, we uh we spent the last episode talking about this the false self and the religious false self. Those are the last couple episodes we did. Um, and remember just that that is our self-referenced way of being in the world apart from deep trust in God, to borrow from Robert Mahullen Jr. And uh we used, Josiah, you came up to this and came up with this, it's been really helpful for me. This metaphor of fig leaves to describe these eight overlapping characteristics that Mahullen names to describe how the false self and the religious false self show up, right? Yeah. But you also said something that I think set the table for today in a really helpful way, right at the end of our last episode. I think it was you, Josiah. You mentioned something about how we put these fig leaves on at a really young age. And then they become part of our identity over time. And the thing is, is the longer we wear them, A, the more likely we are to mistake them for who we really are because we've been wearing them so long. And B, the harder then they are to take off. And that's exactly, I think, what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about how our false self develops during our first formation. And it's important to remember that our false self is not who we truly are in Christ, right? It's who we learn to be in order to secure love, safety, control, significance. So our false self is formed early through wounds and unmet needs, family systems, cultural expectations, and we end up organizing our behavior around self-protection and self-promotion. And again, Josiah, you did us a favor by saying, and this starts really young. And so um, if we're gonna live into our new self, our identity in Christ, we must attend to our first formation, noticing how those experiences we had shaped us and even malformed us, and how that still shows up today in a false self, um, so that we can learn how to take it off and be who God wants us to be. Make sense? Yeah. Now, when it comes to reflecting on our first formation, I've noticed that not everyone gets excited about this topic. Um as I've pastored and coached people over the years, I've noticed some common objections people have to sort of resist engaging first formation work. And I think it might be helpful to interact with some of them as an entry point to our conversation today.

Josiah 10:35

Sorry to interrupt, maybe it'd be helpful, and maybe I missed that you already said this, but for people who don't know what you mean

Defining First Formation Clearly

Josiah 10:42

by first formation, fill it out. I'm asking you what oh.

Mac 10:47

Yeah. Um so what when I say first formation, I'm referring to how you were shaped and formed in your early stages of life. That doesn't mean that there aren't significant shaping moments that happen in adulthood, but it is to say that these that there's something unique that happens when you're young that then you carry into the future. So we're we're kind of thinking of your uh childhood, yeah, maybe your teenage years to a degree, and how those experiences you had in your home or outside of the home, in school, whatever shaped you, that still impact how you be, how you are present today. And what I've noticed is in coaching and pastoring people to attend to their first formation, not everybody gets excited about it. And I've encountered over the years some objections to doing this work. So I thought maybe as a segue into our conversation today, I would like name some of those objections I hear and then allow you guys to interact with them. And I'll add my own voice if I feel like there's something I want to say. But I like objection number one is that attending to first formation stuff is just narcissistic

Is This Narcissistic Navel Gazing

Mac 12:05

navel gazing. That is a very common sort of objection or response I get when people are asked to do this work.

SPEAKER_04 12:14

How would you fill out that um objection? Like, what do you mean by narcissistic navel gazing?

Mac 12:20

Um yeah, so um we're as Christians, we're not to be focused on ourselves, we're to be focused on Christ and other people. And so any sort of space you're creating to examine yourself and think about your past and is is sort of like self-focused navel gazing and is kind of like you're preoccupied with self in a way that is counter to the gospel.

Josiah 12:45

Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, like it's a like it's a prideful reflection of of me as the most important person or character in my score. Yes. In my story.

Mac 12:56

This is probably the top objection that I encounter um with a spiritual veneer. And I'd be curious what would you guys say about that?

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Yeah. Well, I mean, my first thought is we God gives us our our bodies and our life and the relationships and the people around us. And I feel like anything he gives us, we're supposed to be good stewards of. And anything I'd want to steward well, I would want to understand better. Right? Like take a car, for instance. If I'm gonna buy a car, I look at the car fax, right? In theory. If you buy a car, you look at the car facts. I wouldn't do it, but Alex would do it for me. Um Well, I'm just thinking, because I would want to know like, has this car been in an accident? Right? Like, if there's faulty brakes, I'd want to know about it so I can get the brakes.

Mac 13:48

What's the safety rating and the gas mileage?

SPEAKER_04 13:51

And yeah. Are there specific issues that I need to know about so that I can care for this car better? Do I have to do something different with how I care for it? So looking at the history would help me be a better steward of that thing going forward. I think I would say the same thing with like our physical bodies. If I have some sort of injury in my past, I would want to understand that injury so I can know how I'm supposed to like exercise and move and strengthen it moving forward. Like, the more I understand what happened to me, the better I can't.

Mac 14:22

Like a subarachnoid uh brain hemorrhage, brain hidden.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

I probably won't ever learn how to exercise. Spider brain.

Mac 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

But yeah, I mean, it would be it would be unwise for you to not be like, well, that's over, and then never think about it again, never try to understand it, right? And just move on. Like I would I think anyone who wants to steward their body well would go, huh? Okay, did I do anything? Should I do anything differently? What in my, you know, so that I can have a care plan going forward. So to me, this seems to be tied to just good stewardship, which in the end does serve other people better.

Mac 14:52

Yeah, I hear you reframing it from self-absorption to steward stewarding your life.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

Yeah.

Mac 14:58

Stewardship. I think so.

SPEAKER_04 15:00

Yeah.

Josiah 15:00

Yeah. I you know, I would say that the objection itself, well, I'm I'm sure it started somewhere, right? Like I'm sure someone and people do use uh reflecting on their past and on their upbringing in an in a narcissistic way. It's I I I would say it's probably not very hard to see how someone could take, like, hey, being so self-absorbed in my own story and not focused on others could be a way of leading me away from Jesus. But we're not advocating for that. And anybody who's listened to our conversation uh on this topic, um, you know, I think could vouch for the fact that like we're not advocating for that. We're advocating for just what what you're talking about, that we can't possibly we can't possibly grow from things that we don't uh understand or or aren't aware of. And so increasing our awareness around what happened and what impact it had on us only gives us more tools to to press into a maturity and a growth in Jesus.

Mac 16:05

Yeah. So I hear you acknowledging that, hey, maybe there is a selfish, self-absorbed way someone could engage this work. Um I would probably say that could happen with any kind of work though.

Josiah 16:17

Yeah.

Mac 16:18

Right. So the problem isn't inherent in the work itself, it's how the person is engaging it. Yes. Right. People who are selfish can turn anything into a selfish enterprise. Right. And you're saying, hey, that's not what we're advocating here. Um we're we're wanting to do something a little bit different. And what I would say is more often is as people who like avoid their first formation are unwilling to like reckon with it or attend to it. Um, I actually think that is that can be a form of selfishness in itself. And the reason why is because, and we've said this numerous times, is you can't take off what you can't name or unwilling to name. And so when you don't attend to patterns in your life that are still operative, that originated in your past, those just become your default way of operating in ways that are negatively impacting the relationships around you. Yes. And so, in a in a sort of, this isn't like a gotcha, but it is kind of a gotcha because it's like your unwillingness to attend to your first formation and how it has bearing on the way you're showing up and interacting with other people is negative. And the fact that you're not willing to exercise the courage to reflect and to take those things off is somewhat then selfish. Right.

Josiah 17:40

Yeah. It's like it's like, uh, it's like, well, why would I bother? Like my life's fine, like everything's fine the way it is. It's like, well, it's probably fine for you. Right. But there's probably some people close to you in your life that are like, boy, it'd be really nice if he wasn't this, or if she didn't always do this thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, so there's like other people are probably paying for it.

Mac 18:00

Right. And so I would just share maybe a humble observation that most people who use this objection that it's sort of selfish and so on. I I don't I haven't observed that it's actually because they're concerned with being selfish, but rather because it's uncomfortable and requires courage to look at your first formation. And yet the shadow side of not dealing with your first formation is that it continues to dominate your life. And you not dealing with this actually has significant impact on the people around you, negative impact on the people around you. So my my first sort of response would be that actually attending to your first formation in a non-narcissistic way is part of you loving God, loving yourself and loving other people. Otherwise, you're just sort of letting your first formation rule your life and resisting transformation that God probably wants to bring for your sake and for the sake of others.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah.

Mac 19:05

Right?

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Okay, okay.

New Creation Versus Sanctification

Mac 19:08

So here's another objection that I encounter. And it goes like this when it comes to first formation, I don't need to do that because I'm a new creation in Christ. The old is gone and the new has come.

SPEAKER_04 19:22

Yes.

Josiah 19:23

Sounds great.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Yeah. Sounds great.

Josiah 19:25

I mean, why why have a podcast at all? Sounds like it's all fixed. Right?

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Well, there is a part of, I mean, I would affirm that. We are a new creation, and that's to be celebrated and affirmed. I think what needs filling out is what does that mean? Right? Like the Bible talks a lot about this concept of sanctification. Right. Paul says, for what I want to do, I don't do. I'm uh I don't want to do, I do. Right? So there's this whole idea that we all we all know that we're a new creation in Christ, but yet we continue to struggle. Like that's that's obvious from the gospel. The gospel talks about that all the time. So so just because we are a believer, we're following Jesus, we're saved, does not mean that we are we snap our fingers and we're perfect and holy and we're never gonna mess up again. So to me, I see this work as part of our sanctification. It's part of our continuing to grow and to learn to live like Jesus.

Josiah 20:24

Yeah. Yeah. And and we're also not we're not advocating that you do this on your own. We're advocating you do this along with the Holy Spirit who's guiding the process, right? We've talked about that. So we're not asking you to go in and try to fix stuff that God says is already fixed. Like we're we're inviting you to go with the Holy Spirit through a journey into some formative experiences in your past that actually are malf have m malformed you, and God wants to bring healing to that. He's not leaving you there, and you're not there to experience it and heal yourself. So I would say that um, you know, the the old has gone, the new has come from that scripture point. Yes, it's also you know, it's kind of on us to continue pressing into the work of sanctification as we become more and more Christ-like. I don't know one single person who has prayed a prayer at an altar and walked away and been fully sanctified and been fully Christ-like. Not a single person I know. Not to mention we'd have lots of scripture reference to say that that's not how it works.

Mac 21:35

Right. Right. You don't pray a prayer and then are instantly transformed to be perfectly like Jesus. Like we know that. Um Katie, you use the word sanctification uh a handful of times, and I think that's important. I think at the heart of this um objection is a conflation between justification and sanctification. Um justification is The idea that we've been declared right with God by putting our faith in Christ, whereas sanctification is the ongoing work in cooperation and surrender to the Holy Spirit to become more Christ-like. And that process is never done this side of heaven. And so there's this real sense in which we have this identity in Christ that we've received by grace. And yet, again, surrendering through the Holy Spirit, we're to be growing in our ability to live into that, right? By surrendering to the Holy Spirit's work in our lives by way of love. And the Gospels and the New Testament continually point to that reality. In fact, even in Paul's letters, and we teach this in our leadership intensives, many of his letters are actually structured around that reality. For the first several chapters, he'll basically outline the gospel. This is what God has done for you. In Romans, it's the first 11 chapters. In Ephesians, it's the first three chapters. And then, and in Colossians, same thing. First three chapters, uh, two chapters are all about this is the gospel. This is what God has done for you by way of grace. And then there's this pivot where it's like, in light of that, now live your life in a worthy, in a manner worthy of the gospel. Yeah. And it shifts to an imperative. And that imperative takes time, right? I'm not done. I have a long ways to go when it comes to my own sanctification, learning how to be like Christ. And um, part of that learning to live like Christ involves going back to those moments in my childhood that malformed me, that work against my trust in Jesus, or um prompted me to put on a fig leaf that still is there to some degree, right? I find this critique more often with people who are new to faith because um oftentimes, especially if they came to faith as an adult, there was probably upon trusting Jesus, a pretty rapid transformation around big and obvious things that were problematic in their life, whether it's drinking, drugs, alcohol, relationships with the opposite sex or whatever it might be. And they're like a year later, like, I am totally different than where I was a year ago. Look at all the things that I was doing, and now my life is majorly cleaned up, and that's awesome.

Josiah 24:25

Yeah. Yeah. I would never, I would never doubt any of that transformation in that sense.

Mac 24:30

Yes. Yeah. And yet there's like a lot more uh cleaning up to do or transformation that goes beyond just removing the big and obvious things in our life. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So that's the second objection. Just kind of like, hey, I'm a new creation in Christ. The old is gone, the new has come. This isn't necessary for me.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

I'm good.

Mac 24:52

I'm good. I want to name one final objection that I've heard before.

When You Think Your Childhood Was Perfect

Mac 24:57

And it's I had a great upbringing and can't really think of any negative experiences. I had just an awesome upbringing, grew up in a great family, great home. My parents were awesome. So when you talk about first formation stuff, I don't really find any pathways or applications for me because it was all good. What would you guys say?

Josiah 25:20

I mean, both of you had a perfect upbringing, so I well, I would just say, first of all, let's be really careful to not name something as perfect because nothing is perfect. We live in a broken, fallen world. And even our parents, if they did their absolute best to um work with the tools they had to do everything they could to love us and show us the love of God, are still gonna fall short. So let let's be careful to not throw the word perfect around.

Mac 25:53

I mean, I'm a pretty close to perfect parent and I'm still messing up my boys.

Josiah 25:57

Yeah. Yeah. So I that would be the first thing I would say is like, well, I let's not throw around the word perfect because there is no home that is not that does not have some impact of sin and the brokenness of this world in it.

SPEAKER_03 26:10

Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yep. So I would agree with that and just say, yeah, I don't really buy that.

Josiah 26:17

Yeah. Um what do you mean by I don't I don't I don't really buy that?

SPEAKER_04 26:22

No, I I buy what you're saying. I don't buy what Mac is saying, like the objection of, oh, my my upbring is perfect, there's nothing to look at. I just say, I don't really buy that.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

It could be that you're that you think that and you're just really forgetful, or that you don't want to look at it. One might one thing I might offer is if someone said that to me, I might say, Well, okay, why don't we take the word negative out of it? You're I you say I don't have any negative childhood experiences. Okay, we'll take that word negative out of it. One starting point might be let's let's just talk about some of the ways your childhood shapes how you show up today. Like positive, negative, whatever. There's no there's no denying the fact that all of us are shaped in some sense by our childhood. And frankly, I think a lot of a lot of what happened in our childhood might have like positive and negative repercussions today. You know, like I can point to things, I'm like, well, that actually helped me really well in this sense, but then it kind of made it harder in this sense. So that's just one thought. Yeah. And how you might address that.

Mac 27:16

Well, I hear you saying a couple things, Katie. One, there's some skepticism that nothing negative happened in your childhood that impacted you. Right. You're going, hey, actually, we live in a sinful and broken world. No one's insulated from that, even if you had reasonably great parents. And so there's probably some negative stuff in your upbringing that you experienced that shaped you. And if that's still too much for you to swallow, then let's just remove the remove the word negative. First formation, the idea that you were formed early on in life is a universal experience. Everybody was formed to some degree when they were growing up. And so broadly we're just attending to that. And I think that's a great word because I I've noticed a lot of people do fixate on that word negative, and then they assume well, unless I was significantly mistreated, unless I experienced abuse of some kind or endured endured some kind of trauma, that this really doesn't apply to me. Right. I might add to that to say that even positive experiences that you had while growing up had a profoundly shaping influence on all of us. And that shaping influence, just because it was positive, didn't always have a positive shaping influence. Okay. So let me give you a couple examples of this just to kind of go, hey, even if you had a great upbringing, here's um I grew up with three sisters and was the only boy. And my dad clearly wanted a son at some point. And so if my three sisters were on this podcast with us and we've talked about this as kids, they'd be like, You got more attention than we did. You were sort of like the golden child in some ways. You got all of dad's time and attention and affection, right? For me growing up, as I experienced that, like I had a pretty great relationship with my dad. Like that's positive, right? And yet the time and attention I got from my dad also came with a lot of pressure, expectations, right? Because he was investing in so much in me, that came with like some added pressure about outcomes, right? So there's something really positive. Like I had a very present dad, not an uh a dad who is a workaholic and didn't pay attention to me. Everybody would say that's positive. And yet, as I've attended to that, I'm like, oh, there's some other repercussions that came with that time and attention I received.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Mac 29:55

Right. I was doing a coaching call recently, and there was a woman narrating that she grew up in a family with Christian parents who truly embodied the character of Christ. Like she just not perfectly, but modeled so much that she admired to this day, she admires how her parents follow Jesus and followed Jesus the entire time. Um, they were some of the things she noted is that they always had an open door to people who were like in need and were very generous and um served uh other people who were less fortunate, just like some obvious like Christ-like characteristics. But one thing she internalized is that's what it means to be a good Christian, to like have your door open, to serve people and so on and so forth, which are good things. But one of the primary things she struggled with in adulthood is having boundaries.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Yeah.

Mac 30:53

Right. So there's an example of like, here's a profoundly positive modeling of what it looks like to follow Jesus, but the way she downloaded that is good in some respects, and it has the shadow side of like, I don't know how to say no. Yeah. Uh to some people who are in need.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

Yeah. Because because I equate having a boundary with not helping others or not being a good Christian. Yeah.

Josiah 31:14

Yeah. Yeah. I also think, I mean, what is our definition of, oh, my parents were good, right? Like you we have we have a preconceived idea of what good parents do. We have a preconceived idea of of what is um appropriate behavior in a home and what is not. I mean, even just think of something as small as like conflict styles, right? If you grew up in a home and you're like, my parents never fought.

Mac 31:40

Right.

Josiah 31:40

It's like that, okay, that's good in one sense. Yes. I'm glad that your parents did not openly argue and make a and and make your home um volatile. But that doesn't mean they modeled um conflict in a healthy way. Right. Right. So you may not have grown up knowing like what does it look like to disagree with someone openly and not lose, you know, lose your sauce, as you'd say, Mick. Yeah. Um, right. So anyway, I just think of there there's lots of examples where you can like, hey, I think that we do a really good job of reframing our childhood sometimes in a way that uh keeps us from having to actually unpack some things that probably had a that we're that we're advocating that had a pretty formative uh way of operating on you.

Mac 32:26

Yeah. So I there might be other objections that people have, but as I was thinking about stepping into this conversation, those were the ones that I feel like I encounter most frequently and have tried to think through like, yeah, but there's a response to that that um I think continues to help us push into this with a different, different categories or a different mental model, right?

Josiah 32:48

Yeah.

Mac 32:49

So with those in mind, we're naming this is essential work to attend to our own transformation. Attending to our first formation is essential for our ongoing transformation. Um, Adam, could you tweet that? I felt like that came out really nice. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Do we have an account now? I don't know.

Mac 33:07

But it's time to create one. Attending to your first formation is essential for your ongoing transformation. That's what we're saying.

SPEAKER_04 33:12

What is the verb for tweet now that it's called X? Can you X that? Do people say that?

Mac 33:18

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 33:19

I feel like we shouldn't use the word tweet anymore if it's not Twitter.

Mac 33:21

Well, I think people are ignoring the rebranding.

SPEAKER_04 33:25

Yeah. Okay.

Mac 33:26

Kind of got it. Kind of.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

All right, we'll tweet it.

Mac 33:28

All right. Okay.

Step One Identify A Shaping Moment

Mac 33:30

So what what what we want to do is outline how, so we're saying it's essential, but how do you do it? Right? Like how do you even begin to attend to your first formation? That's the question. And I want to give credit where credit is due because this is something that I've learned how to do myself and coach others through through my relationship with the leader journey. So we're going to outline some steps that they developed for you all so that you can begin this work on your own. Um, and so there's several steps to attending to your first formation. And I'm just gonna name the first one and then we'll kind of work through them. The first one is to identify a formable moment, a life-shaping moment that you experienced while growing up, right? And again, sometimes we think of these as being like huge and catastrophic or these giant moments. But I probably want to reframe that a bit. Yes, it could be a big moment, like some huge moment you remember or growing up, but it also could be a really small one. Um, so it could be big or small, and it could be negative, like we talked about before, but it's not restricted to that. It also could be positive. What's more is that it might be a moment, but it might also be a pattern that as you reflect, you're like, oh, I experienced that repeatedly growing up. And that pattern is what's significant. See how we're kind of expanding the categories to go, it's not just like this huge moment, it could be almost anything. And so it could be big or small, positive or negative, a pattern or a single event. Now, I want to give you some examples to our listeners. Um, I was reach recently doing a group call with uh for coaching, and they were doing some of this work. So I'm just gonna share you, share some examples that people shared of big or small, positive or negative patterns or single events that they said this had a shaping influence on me. Okay. One said, My dad had a short temper, and I learned how not to set him off. Another said, Um, I spilled ketchup in the backseat of my uncle's car and he yelled at me. And there's more to that story. Uh, he grew up in a family where the parents didn't yell or raise their voice. And so this felt like a significant moment. Um my older brother uh was bigger than me and would often beat me up when I beat him at something, but then convinced me to tell everybody was I was okay. Um my house was full of aggressive conflict, and I remember absolutely hating it. My parents always had our house in perfect order, especially when people came over. Uh I bombed at a speech in school and felt totally embarrassed and humiliated. So just notice, these are just a handful of examples that people shared. And the key to identifying these, what makes them significant, is they had a shaping influence on those individuals. Yeah. Right. So they they formed them, and that formation has continued with them in the present in some way. Like it continues to mark or influence how they show up today, even if it's minor or feels insignificant.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Yeah.

Mac 36:55

So the first step I'm saying is to sort of identify some of those significant patterns, moments, or whatever, so that when we say, hey, attend to your first formation, you know what you're attending to. What would you say has helped you all identify some of those moments or patterns? How have you done that?

SPEAKER_04 37:15

Well, it's hard work for one. Um, I was gonna say I really like that you shared small moments because kind of tying into one of the objections we talked about earlier, people who think like, well, I don't have any like major trauma or big moments that really stick out as like life changing, like this at this moment, this the direction of my life kind of changed. Like you might not have any of those and therefore think you don't have any work to do. But the ones that you mentioned were like, we all have those. We all have moments.

Mac 37:44

They're relatable. Yeah, they're relatable examples, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

Um so it just goes to show it it it's it's sometimes a a moment, sometimes more of a pattern, but something happened that you made meaning of in your mind, and you're saying, let's try to go back to that. I don't know about you guys. Sometimes I struggle just to remember a lot from my childhood. Like because I've tried to do this work, I've but sat there for what feels like a long time, just sometimes struggling to bring up um memories. So it can be difficult to identify those moments, but I think the longer you sit with it and think about it, yeah, they're there.

Josiah 38:20

Yeah, it can be difficult. It depends on on the context too. I I I think the context of, hey, I'm I'm here to do formative work and like let's just say the context of like therapy, if you see a therapist, um, you're identifying maybe an issue or a problem, a repeating problem in your life. You know, one one of the things you're going to end up doing is backtracking to like, where did this start? And often if you that's sometimes where you might identify something, oh, there is something actually in my childhood that I just like totally normalized that actually has had a pretty major impact on how I see the world today. And that's now impacted things now. So you you can to me, you you can start on either end. Hey, I can if I'm just thinking back and I have a good, like more of like a photographic type of chronological memory. I I know when I talk to my wife too, and she remembers things, they're very detailed, very specific, this happened first, then that. My brain does not work like that. So it can almost be easier for me to identify an issue and then backtrack. Like, oh, I I wonder where this started. And then some sometimes then something will come up.

Mac 39:33

Yeah. I mean, as far as a percentage goes, my therapist would say that when you have a big reaction to something, probably 70% of that reaction is rooted in the past and only 30% is the present. So if we kind of go back to that, hey, I don't really need to do this work. Actually, according to like someone who's a professional in this area, they would say that like 70% of the way you're showing up is directly connected to the past. The question is whether you're aware of it so you can have agency in terms of how you're showing up. And so when it comes to identifying these, these moments that shaped us, there are a few things I would name as far as like, okay, it is hard work to figure out what those moments or patterns were. And here are a few things that have helped me. One is community. When you talk to other people who didn't have your same upbringing, you recognize things about your upbringing and their, you know what I mean, that are different. And you go, Oh, that's not just how it is. That that's something specific to me.

Josiah 40:33

Yeah. I'm laughing because I remember I I just remember having probably multiple of these experiences, especially going through a like a discipleship group with you where you taught you say something from like, Oh, yeah, my dad always said this, or and then someone looks at you like, What? What did he say?

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Yeah.

Josiah 40:52

Like, wait, that yeah, that is kind of like, yeah, I I guess that isn't like totally normal.

Mac 40:58

Right. Right. And so being in community with other people, if you have a healthy relationship with siblings, it can be helpful to reflect on this together a little bit. Um, but I've just noticed being, I mean, this is why in in premarital counseling, this is standard work, right? So even those who resist first formation because they think it's selfish, the reality is you didn't resist it when you were doing counseling to get married because you recognize two people are coming together. Their pasts are likely very different. And unless you identify those differences, they're going to create conflict. Right. Um, and so marriage is an accelerant to self-awareness. Like you get married and you realize all these assumptions about this is just the way it is is not shared by the other person. Seriously. Right. Um another one I think that has been really helpful for me is prayer. And I'm not just trying to spiritualize it, but Jesus was present for everything you experienced and remembers all the things that I that you don't. And I'll just share that there have been numerous times where I've been sitting um still and trying to listen, and I've remembered something that I didn't know was there under the Holy Spirit that is shaping how I'm relating to whatever's going on in my life in the present. And so, and there's scriptural precedent for this. Like in the Psalms, the psalmist praise, search me and know me, examine me, see if there's any offensive way in me, right? Like there's a sense of, hey, when we bring ourselves into God's presence and with the raw data of what's happening in our lives, don't be surprised if the Holy Spirit reveals something uh through your memory that is very much impacting how you're understanding, interpreting, or relating to the present because he wants to not only expose it, but heal it and set you on a new trajectory, right? Uh finally, I'm gonna name a book that was really helpful for me. It's a workbook. It's not like, hey, you just read this. It's like full of exercises. It's called a family genogram workbook. And I remember for probably two years on my day off when the kids were at school and Josie was at work, I would spend an hour or two engaging this workbook. And that was really helpful to have a guide sort of pacing me and helping direct me a little bit in terms of what to note and pay attention to. So when it comes to um sort of capturing or identifying these significant moments, be patient with yourself. It's a lifelong process, and yet there are some handles that I hope we've given you to get a start.

Josiah 43:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Step Two Name The Downloaded Message

Josiah 43:45

So once you've identified a formidable that's probably not the right word, is it?

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Formable, right?

Josiah 43:51

Formidable. Formidable. That's a little that's a different meaning.

SPEAKER_04 43:54

Yeah, you added a formidable.

Josiah 43:57

A formative moment. Once we've identified Identified the moment, then we need to consider the message that you downloaded from the moment. I so I I want to reference back to the objection in which going over and reflecting on your first formation is just narcissistic uh navel gazing. And I think that the reason why have you ever stared at your navel?

Mac 44:21

I have never done that. And it seems like you'd have to be very flexible. Yeah. Or a mirror. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:28

Yeah, that's true.

Josiah 44:30

All right. Sorry. It is quite the image, isn't it? Right. Um So I think that this step is the difference between doing it in a formative way and doing it in a narcissistic way. Because considering the message that you downloaded from the thing moves away from blaming your experiences for how you are and taking responsibility for the work that is required of you to move on from it. Right. So it's instead of simply blaming the person who said or did this thing to me, let's just say it was something really negative. Um, I can sit here and wallow in that all day. And I can have it, it can be excuses for why I'm my malformed and I'll never be something else like this. And I can't do that because I was this, right? Um, I think that there's a there's a sense of like when we shift from pointing to the event itself as the problem to considering what impact that had on me and then the message I I received, it puts then the burden of responsibility to deal with the situation on me instead of on someone else. So blame ends up just keeping the burden of responsibility on the other person or the event that did something to me. Right. Instead of like, I can't believe they would say this, they ruined my life, or something like that. Um, I can then I can shift that to now when they said that or did this thing, what I actually heard was blank. And I took on the belief that I was this because of it.

unknown 46:12

Yeah.

Josiah 46:13

Right. So I think there's um like working to reflect on the meaning you made from uh from the event ends up putting you back in the driver's seat of your own formation.

Mac 46:23

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 46:23

Yeah.

Mac 46:24

I don't want to push back on what you're saying. No, that's fine. Um no, no, no. I I don't want to push back, but uh, what I would want to do is maybe reframe it because I think sometimes, especially if it was like a really uh like an abusive situation or something catastrophic, um, I think it's impossible not to download some message as a direct result from what I experienced. What I hear you naming and highlighting responsibility, I might want to shift to like you can reclaim agency.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Yeah.

Mac 46:55

Like positively. There's no doubt. I don't know how if you experienced abuse, for instance, that you didn't download or come to believe some really negative messages about yourself and God and other people. Like that's impossible not to. And I think at this step, you're you're actually creating some positive space to go in terms of responsibility. You actually have some agency to reclaim. Yes. Rather than just passively receiving it.

Josiah 47:21

Is that fair? Yes, I would say that. And I think that's helpful because there's plenty of people who are uh are abused and go through severely horrific situations and walk away blaming themselves and feeling responsible as if I did something wrong. Right. And that is not at all what I'm advocating for. Right.

Mac 47:41

It isn't shame on you for downloading that message. No. You the what you received carried a message that you don't need to believe.

Josiah 47:49

Yeah. Yeah. And and ultimately that's that's what the point of all this work is for. Is like we've named this before, that in our discipleship curriculum, that we have this saying that every behavior issue is ultimately an identity issue. Which goes back to the whole fig leaf thing that like who I really am is made in God's image and unmarred from anything the world can try to say, I say I am. But it but things that happen to us end up making us believe that we aren't that. So if we're gonna go through the work, it is required for us to be able to understand the messages that were downloaded and being able to shift away the responsibility from did I deserve this thing to happen to me? Well, of course not. But at the end of the day, when we're left with our formation, the other person who did this thing to me isn't responsible for that. They're they're responsible for that, to take responsibility for the actions they had for me, but I'm still left with my own life. And I think that that's what I'm advocating for, is like the agency, taking back the agency that might have been robbed from me to say I can be formed into something new and and doing the work to consider what what messages I might have downloaded in that process of maybe something something horrific or something maybe something that we might dismiss really easily is um is sort of the requirement for being formed.

Mac 49:20

Yeah. Yeah, and it's an empowering step because when you use the phrase downloaded messages, we're actually we're we're just I hear you saying, What did you come to believe? What did you come to believe about God because of this pattern or incident? What did you come to believe about yourself or other people? And in highlighting the story in Genesis three with Adam and Eve, all of those are present. I mean, the serpent starts by attacking their view of God. Did God really say, almost depicts God as sort of like withholding good from them? So there's this distortion of who God is, God is withholding something good from me. Then it distorts who they are and and how they're perceiving each other. And so this is the once you've identified a pattern or a moment that formed you, it's asking the question, okay, what was I believing about God? Or what did I come to believe about God in light of that? What did I believe about myself? What did I believe about other people? So going back to that group that I was leading, let me like kind of take it one step further as they did this work. Um, for the person whose dad had a short temper, the message they downloaded is I need to be careful to not make him or other people upset. Uh, for the person who uh spilled the ketchup in the backseat of the car, angry men aren't safe to be around. Um for the one who had the older brother who would was like a little bit overly physical, um, I can't tell the truth about how I'm actually doing. Um for the person whose house was full of conflict, conflict is bad and it's to be avoided. Um for the the person whose house always was in order, um, I always need to be put together, right? For the person who bombed the speech in in in school, failing is awful. Right? These are the messages that they downloaded about these, about how they have to show up that they still carry with them. Um that makes sense?

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Yeah.

Mac 51:26

And and and one of the things I would want to just say is that multiple meanings can be made about any pattern or incident. So think about it this way. If let's say you set up a coffee with a friend and that friend, you're you're you you go to the coffee shop and you're sitting there and they don't show up, what meanings, plural, could you make about them not showing up? What comes to mind?

Josiah 51:58

All kinds of them. Like what? I mean like I'm not that important to them. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

It's funny when you say that. I my mind goes back to a time when I forgot to show up for coffee with someone. Yeah, it was probably I think it was in college, maybe like late teens, early twenties. And I had just slept in.

Mac 52:18

Do you remember who that was? I do. That you stood up. Who was it?

SPEAKER_04 52:22

I don't want to talk about no. Um I remember I just slept in. Like I for I was home for college, we went to different colleges. Um let me back up so I can put the context in. I do remember that. Um, there was a friend from high school, and we were both in college at different places, and we were back home on break and meeting to me for coffee. And I just either forgot to set an alarm or slept through my alarm. I don't know what exactly happened. But um, I felt really bad about it. And the friend interpreted as like, you don't care. Um, and I remember the relationship kind of took a turn at that point. So in that in that case, it was the reverse. The other person was making meaning that I knew wasn't true. And even though I sort of tried to clarify it, I can see why it was taken that way, but that wasn't the meaning I had intended.

Mac 53:12

Yeah. Um there's all kinds of meanings you could make about sitting at a coffee shop and the other person doesn't show up. Um, maybe they have uh an emergency that they're having to attend to. Right. Um maybe their kid got sick.

Josiah 53:27

Um like we could keep going. I could be I could just be judging their ability to handle their life, you know, like oh, clearly they got they got a lot going on. They must be frazzled.

Mac 53:36

Right. Yeah. The point is is that there's multiple meanings that could be made. And the question is, what are we most tempted to download? There are messages that are negative about the other person and ourselves. In your example, can you guys hear that?

SPEAKER_04 53:53

That's you.

Mac 53:54

Okay. Sorry. Because of my sub-arachnoid brain hemorrhage, a lot of people are reaching out to check on me on a regular basis. Um spider brain. Yes, I'm just gonna call it spider brain. Um so the point is is that like as simple something as simple as being stood up at a coffee shop. There are so many different meanings you could make about why the other person didn't show up. And oftentimes the ones we reach for are the ones that reflect most negatively upon ourselves and the other person. They're negative, right? Very rarely are we giving the other person the benefit of the doubt or even ourselves the benefit of the doubt. And it's just helpful to notice that. So when you go back to these first formation episodes or incidences, you're like, I think we have a bent towards filling it in with negative things rather than positive ones, giving ourselves or other people the benefit of the doubt.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yeah, I see that.

SPEAKER_04 54:50

Yeah. So, Mac, you name the first step as identifying a formable moment. And Josiah, I hear you saying a shaping moment.

Mac 54:56

That might be easier to say. You nailed it.

SPEAKER_04 54:59

And then Josiah, I hear you saying, and then consider the message you downloaded from that or the a the meaning you made of it. Even if the thing that happened to you wasn't your fault, you still have some agency in what you do with it now and how it's going to impact you. So consider the meaning that you made about it. What did you come to believe about God, yourself, others, etc.? The third

Step Three The Vow You Made

SPEAKER_04 55:21

step I would outline is just think about the way that meaning you made influences how you show up. Right. So what like vows or commitments did you make to yourself about how to show up in the future to make sure you feel safe or significant or whatever. So you know, taking the example of um the person whose older brother, you know, would beat them up and tell him you have to, you, you know, you have to pretend like you're okay. The meaning that person made was, I can't say how I'm really feeling. I have to always pretend like I'm okay. I'm guessing that person also has then other examples in their life of times that they weren't okay, but presented as if they weren't okay. So I see it as this step is kind of like pulling the thread on those, on those shaping moments to go, and this is how it impacted me or showed up the rest of my um, the rest of my life. So another example might be let's say you had like parents that didn't care for your basic needs, like didn't make sure you had like food or clothing or school supplies or whatever. I could imagine someone with that, that childhood might internalize like, no one's watching out for me, no one cares for me, I need to take care of myself. Maybe they become like hyper conscientious. And then in the future, maybe they're the one, maybe it's hard for them to accept help. Maybe they're um, maybe they're resentful. You know, there are all different ways that this can show up. But I think this third step I would just say is figuring out the meaning that you've made, and then what work did that do internally? And how did it impact how you showed up? And this is we talk about the full self. This is where that false self begins to take shape.

Mac 56:57

Yeah. And for our listeners, this third step, I would want to highlight a word that you used, um, which is a vow. Um a vow is sort of a commitment you make regarding how you need to show up in order to get your needs met, um, feel safe or significant. So this step, um, we're primarily interested in what commitment, what conviction did I begin to pivot out of in that moment and moving forward? What commitment did I make to myself around how I need to show up and be present in order to get my needs met? So again, going back to some of those examples I shared from this group I was leading, for the individual whose dad had a short temper, the vow was I need to take responsibility for other people's emotions. Like if I don't want to negatively experience rage or wrath, then I need to get out ahead of it and make sure that I'm sort of controlling that other person's emotions so I don't experience something negatively. For the person who spilled ketchup, I am going to avoid men with a short fuse. I made a vow, I'm not going to be around men who have a short fuse. For the older brother who kind of beat up on his younger sibling, um, I need to submit to other people. Right? I made a vow, I'm gonna submit to other people. My house was the for the person who said my house is full of conflict, I'm gonna avoid conflict and function as a peacemaker. I need to be a peacemaker. Um for the parents who was all their house was always kind of in order and nice and neat, um, I need to be perfect and not show people weaknesses. Or the person who bombed at a speech, I need to overprepare and never fail. Right? So you can see how at this stage we're really thinking about what commitment did I make to myself so as not to repeat so that other that that that thing doesn't repeat itself. What vow did I make about how I need to show up and be in order to prevent this pattern or this thing from happening again?

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Yeah.

Mac 59:12

That makes sense? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:14

Yeah, and there's something to affirm in that because you probably did have to do that to feel safe and secure at that time in your life.

Mac 59:20

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

That is how you protected yourself.

Mac 59:22

That's right. Right. Like that, a lot of these vows and commitments were completely legitimate at the time to protect yourself, to get your needs met, et cetera. But there comes a point in time where they're no longer helpful for you.

SPEAKER_03 59:38

Right.

Mac 59:38

So you could think of these vows or commitments as actually like decent coping strategies at the time.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

Right, right.

Mac 59:45

But over the long run become became deeply malformative.

SPEAKER_04 59:48

Right. Like if you're in a childhood home where everyone has explosive tantrums and there's lots of yelling and like aggressive conflict, being a peacemaker probably did help you avoid some of that experience and bring peace in your home. And so that coping strategy worked. But then later in life, let's say you're in a safe relationship, but that isn't at play. Well, now you have a legitimate conflict or some, you know, some topic that needs to be brought up that might bring some tension with it. And you are likely to avoid that because you're pivoting out of that, that um that vow from your childhood. I need to avoid conflict. Otherwise, it blows up and gets really scary.

Mac 1:00:27

Yeah. So think about the younger sibling with like the power imbalance. If if his older brother can continue to beat him up, and then he goes and tells someone in charge and gets his older brother in trouble. Well, what's gonna happen next time they're together? He's gonna get beat up again. He's gonna get beat up again, and this time it's gonna become with you tell anybody, it's I'm gonna pummel you. Right? So submitting to his brother in that moment, he really has no other choice, and that's a good coping strategy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

Yeah.

Mac 1:00:59

Right? Um, or if you have parents who are perfectionists and everything are in order, learning how to keep yourself in order um probably safeguards you against pressure or their anger or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:12

Disapproval.

Mac 1:01:13

Right? So in this third step, we're really going out of this experience pattern, et cetera, what commitment or vow did you make in that moment that was probably a legitimate coping strategy at the time, but is limited in its usefulness over the long term. And that leads to the fourth step, which is then to outline how does this show up and impact how I relate to God, myself, and others in the present.

Step Four How It Shows Up Now

Mac 1:01:46

Sometimes noticing how you're relating to someone, this is why it's not always starting with going back to your past and then kind of paving the way forward. Sometimes what can happen is you can have an interaction with someone, like Josiah, you and I could be talking and I show up in a certain way, and I'm like, man, what was that about? And then that brings me back to a moment, a pattern in the past, and I begin to catch up, right? Um, but if you have one of these identified, well, now you can begin to kind of connect the dots about how this conviction or vow still shows up in the way you operate today. So again, I'm just gonna keep using these examples because you can see how they build. For the person whose dad had a bad temper, they downloaded the belief that I need to take responsibility for other people's emotions. And now that vow, the way it shows up and and and plays out relationally, is uh I don't say what I need to say so as not to rock the boat. I'm not honest in my relationships.

unknown 1:02:50

Right.

Mac 1:02:50

So this individual is now noticing in all these different environments, I often don't say what I need to say uh for the sake of managing other people's emotions and sort of keeping the relational equilibrium, right? So um the individual who um um spilled ketchup in the backseat of the car downloaded this message um that this person isn't safe, which led to this vow, I'm gonna avoid uh men who have short fuses. And he narrated how this created significant tension and relational problems as he took his first pastoral position leading alongside a his senior pastor. Like there was all sorts of relational friction and tension there because he didn't know how to relate to this lead pastor. For the person whose older brother continued to beat him up, again, the message or commitment is I need to submit to others or I'm not safe. And now the problem is I I don't know how to be attuned to how I'm actually doing because I've outsourced that most of my life. Um, for the person whose house was full of conflict, um, not surprisingly, they avoid conflict. They don't say what they need to say, and there's all this distance in in their relationships with other people. For the parents who always had the clean house, right? Um, I need to be perfect, I need to hide weaknesses. Well, they're now exhausted in trying to always be perfect in the way they relate to God and other people. They're they're fatigued all the time. And for the person who bombed a speech, um, it's led to a lifestyle of overpreparing. Anything that needs to be done publicly, it's like hours and hours of preparation so as to avoid any public failure. So you can see how like this little thing way back here downloaded a message about God's self and others, then led to a vower commitment. I need to do this in order to prevent that from happening again. And now it shows up in all kinds of ways in the present.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:00

Yeah, and again, a lot of those original moments were small.

Mac 1:05:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:04

I mean, if we would look at it, it doesn't feel huge.

Mac 1:05:06

It doesn't necessarily feel huge.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:08

But the impact.

Mac 1:05:09

But the impact is huge.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:10

Yeah.

Josiah 1:05:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:11

Yeah.

Josiah 1:05:12

Yeah. No, it is interesting to know to to note how impactful one small thing can be. And I'm also noting as I'm reflecting on my own life, uh how quick I am to dismiss those small things as not having an an impact. Um it's easy to sort of abandon it. They're like, oh, that was just like being a kid. It's like, well, maybe it was. And so it can it can be easy to dismiss and sort of cut it off before you even get to this point um because it doesn't feel as significant. But when you start w when you start to out outline the impact, you realize Sort of everything is worth at least um a little bit of attention.

Mac 1:06:04

Yeah. Now, up until this point, if you're actually doing this work, the work we're like following these steps and maybe tracing an example from your own life, you might be sitting there like, Well, this stinks at this point. I've identified a pattern or a moment. I've gotten underneath what I believe about God's self and others. I noticed the vower commitment I made, and I can see how it's negatively impacting the way I relate to God's self and others now. But what next? Like now I'm just aware of all the garbage. What do I

Step Five Replace Bad News

Mac 1:06:34

do now? And this next step is sort of like the first one where we begin to turn a corner and lean into the transformation and grace that God wants to give us.

Josiah 1:06:43

Yeah. Yeah. So the next step is to replace bad news with good news. Again, bad news and good news, we're using some of our language in our di in our discipleship curriculum.

Mac 1:06:56

But it's connected to Jesus, right? Because he said, I mean, the epicenter of his message was um, hey, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news. And good news um involves replacing bad news.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:09

Repent from your bad news, believe your good news. Yeah.

Josiah 1:07:11

Yeah. And I found it eye-opening too, because growing up in a Christian home, my dad was a pastor, the word good news and gospel, like I understood what that that meant to an extent. Um and that was you was used a lot. But good news almost directly implies that there's bad news as well. There's something that the good news is dispelling like a like light in darkness. Like in in a dark in a dark room, if you lit a match, it would you would see the the darkness around it like scurry. And I like to picture that when God's repl like when God speaks good news to you, when we receive good news in that way, it's it's driving out something that that was already there. And so um do finding out finding the way to listen to the Holy Spirit and have God re have God replace that bad news with good news is like you said, Mac, some of the more probably one of the most important parts of this process. Um and I think that uh there's a couple of ways to do this. Um and I don't know, we can talk more about it, but practically one of the things we do in our um, I know we're referencing our uh our leadership in intensives quite a bit, but we we teach people to actually go away and journal and receive what what what what what good news God wants to download. Um and and we teach them to write it as if it's like a small letter to yourself from God. And we do that not isolated, but we we bring that back in community with each other and we can affirm, yeah, that what that's what God's saying to you to weed out some some maybe some more bad news that we're trying to replace bad news with or you should try harder.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:04

Yeah, that's probably not the good news.

Josiah 1:09:06

Yeah, yeah. So God wants to speak directly to who we are to replace the the bad news, not not just for what what we're doing.

Mac 1:09:15

And ultimately the say that again, because I think that's really important for our listeners to hear in a highlighted way.

Josiah 1:09:24

Yeah. God wants to replace God wants to inform us of who we really are. And and he does that by by replacing the bad news with good news, and that good news is going to speak directly to who we are, not just to what we're doing.

Mac 1:09:38

Yeah, if you create space to pray and discern what God wants to say, to replace the bad news with the good news, and it ends up just being something you need to do or should be doing better. If any three of us were like sitting with you, we'd say time out. Um that's probably the actually the exact opposite of the way God wants to speak, like just piling on try harder and do better. Yeah, I can do that myself. Right. I don't need God to tell me that. Um and oftentimes that is ourself, just assuming God is speaking. And so some of the markers we use, you named one of them, Josiah. The other one is that God will often speak a word about who he really is, yeah, and a word about who you really are before he asks you to do anything. Because again, going back to that Genesis 3 narrative, remember it started with a distortion of here's who God is, and in light of that, here's who you are. And so, in my experience in my own life and you know, tending to other people's formation, the the bad news we've believed, God wants to counter with a message about here's who I am as your loving father, and here's who you are as my beloved son or daughter, before he's asking you to do anything. And oftentimes, this is again just my experience, and I encourage you to be open to it, because your first formation does involve wounding moments where you experience something that doesn't reflect God's heart for you. Don't be surprised if God reveals to you while you're praying his sadness over what you experienced, in some ways kind of pulls back the curtain and reveals his heart towards you as a vulnerable child experiencing that negative thing.

Josiah 1:11:28

Yeah.

Mac 1:11:29

Right? And this is way before he tells you to try harder or do anything, right? Yes.

unknown 1:11:34

Yeah.

Mac 1:11:35

No, it is so important. So important.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:37

Yeah. So identity, identity first.

Mac 1:11:40

Right. So for instance, again, I won't go through all of them this time, but like for the for the person in the group whose parents were perfectionists, and now they downloaded this message, I need to be perfect and never show weakness. It might be the father saying to you, I am your perfect father, and you are my beloved daughter or son. And I don't expect you to be perfect. I I invite you to bring my your weaknesses and flaws into my loving presence as you are. That might be something I could imagine the person coming back with. Yeah.

Josiah 1:12:11

Yeah. And it's interesting, and maybe this is another step, but we also in the group, we're also training each other on how to sense and speak good news over other people. Right. So like being able to declare something that is good news over someone else's life is a super, it's like a you're gospeling. Yeah, it's like it's like another step beyond just receiving it. Like I can actually be a part of someone else receiving it.

Mac 1:12:37

I probably drive people nuts. In fact, I know I drive people nuts. I do this, I've done this to you, Katie, before, but like as I've gotten to know people, you get attuned with their the messages they've downloaded, sort of the bad news that they have on repeat. And sometimes when something happens that triggers that, I will just name the bad news in like the most obnoxious way ever, as a way of like lovingly exposing it, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:59

How ridiculous it is.

Mac 1:13:00

And how ridiculous it is. Um, just this morning, so our son Griffin, he has Down syndrome, and he had a recent doctor's appointment, and they noticed like he is underweight, and yet he's eating like a ton every day. And so they did some blood work and discovered he has Graves' disease, which is pretty common with kiddos with Down syndrome. It's how their thyroid is functioning. So he's in overdrive. His body is using up all the resources and not like it's not metabolizing the way it should. So we got him on a new medication to sort of like even out how his body is digesting food and metabolizing it. Well, over the past week, he had some hives, which we've we we noticed right away and contacted his physician. It's a side effect of the medication he's on. And we gave him Zertec and so on. And and yet it's continued. And this morning was the worst. Like right before I came here, he had hives on his face, on his torso, and Josie, my wife, is sort of in overdrive, trying to figure it out. And I could tell there's like bad news she believes that she's pivoting out of. Like, I should have caught this, I should have prevented this. And I just began to try like intuit, she needs good news right now. God's got this, he's with us, he's gonna be okay. You didn't miss anything. You noticed it right away. You reached out exactly when you should have, like, because I know her well enough to interpret, she's gonna download I didn't do what I should have as a parent.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:30

Yeah.

Mac 1:14:31

And so the more you get to know other people and the bad news they believe, the more you're able to gospel on a continual or regular basis.

Josiah 1:14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Yeah.

Josiah 1:14:41

Yeah. So I mentioned journaling as a and journaling in the practice of doing it in the presence of the Holy Spirit and asking God, what do you want to say to me? And then writing it in directly to you from God is like a very formative way to receive good news and then do it alongside other people who know you well enough to be able to speak and then add to it. Um, another way, maybe it's like uh level two, is um, and this is usually best done with someone like a therapist, but being being able to replay those formative memories in God's presence and allow God to help rewrite them. Um that can sound maybe a little foreign to someone who has never done it, but it's simply just remembering those things in a in a more specific way and then waiting, allowing, and then and it especially helps if you have someone guiding you through it. At least I have found that it's easier when someone's guiding me, um, to then re-picture what's happening as if God is present in the moment. Because part of the message we download, or I should say part of the reason we download those messages is because we truly believe either God wasn't there or that he didn't care. And we come up with these beliefs and assumptions about God that really aren't true. And so being able to replay those in a way that uh that God can reshape them and you can relive them with uh with your childhood self uh is very, very formative. Um I've had a couple of these experiences with my therapist that has been um that have been quite quite eye-opening and um super helpful.

Mac 1:16:22

In my experience with some of those moments that you can't force, you have to receive them, right? It it very much is dependent on God showing up and revealing his heart to you in that moment. And have you experienced, Josiah, that as you've done that work, it's almost like you don't remember it as it was, but you now remember it in light of that God's grace?

Josiah 1:16:43

Yeah. Yeah, it's um I had one specifically, I won't say what it was, but please don't. When I had to remember that memory, which I didn't like to, um, I pictured myself. I couldn't picture myself very accurately. Um, and it was so like the biggest shift was how much blame I put on myself for certain things. And when I was asked to picture, like picture myself in that in that instance, I was able to picture myself as the actual age I was, which was a middle schooler. And so when I'm looking at at myself, it's like sub subconsciously I'm assuming that I was like fully aware and present and like like an adult, um, having to go through this and realizing, oh, I was just a kid, yeah, having to go through something that was embarrassing. Yeah and and being able to see myself accurately allowed me to view my prior self as a kid through God's eyes, saying, like, I don't like that was a very difficult experience for you. You were just a kid. And it allowed God to like shape how that moment felt, or at least be able to re-experience the moment as if it was accurate and not something I was I was misremembering. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:03

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So you guys are talking about the process of like, okay, once you've identified that bad news that stems from that shaping moment, learn to replace it with good news and let that good news come from God. Like based on what we know about God and how He sees us and who we are as people in God, be able to claim that good news and even to extent let that people declare declare good news over you. The last step I would name is like now that you've got your good news, learn to live into that good news. Like you've taken your bad news script

Step Six Practice The Good News

SPEAKER_04 1:18:37

in our leadership intensives, I literally have people write out their bad news, like on a piece of paper, then write out the good news because they can see then how the good news contrasts with the bad news, and then we make a plan to go, okay, now how are you gonna live into this good news? What does it actually look like when your bad news is triggered? You're find yourself tempting to live out of that place. How do you kind of try try out new ways of being in the world, new ways of relating to people, new ways of relating to conflict, new ways of relating to yourself and God and others? Um and this can be where it gets really hard because up until this point, it's mostly kind of you know, reflective reflective work or internal work, but now all of a sudden it's putting it into praxis.

Mac 1:19:20

Oh, I like how you did that.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:21

I actually didn't mean to do that. Um so yeah, this last stop I would say just try out new ways of showing up and being in the world. You know? So if you've now I've identified, okay, this is how I'm acting out of my bad news. Now it's time to say, okay, if this is my good news, how can I act out of my good news? How can I begin to behave, relate, um, act, act differently in the world?

Mac 1:19:46

Yeah, and it's obviously really important not to jump to this step before the previous step, because then it's just you trying harder rather than responding to God's grace and good news. So make sure that step five is so important. And again, this is where you're just trying to, with the Holy Spirit's help, live into the good news and the freedom God wants to give you. So, for example, you know, with the individual whose older brother, you know, was kind of beating up on him. Um, and then that led to a vow of like, I need to submit, and then led to a pattern of I'm not really attuned to what I need. Well, it might be that, hey, here's the good news. God sees you and knows exactly what you need, and you don't need to be defined by other people. Well, maybe the practice is having some space each day to name what I want, what I need, and how I'm actually doing. Right? That would be a response to start living into good news. Yeah. That's just one example.

Josiah 1:20:46

I like the sorry, I I like the I like the way you you I I like the way it's phrased to say try on new ways of showing up because I do think that having led people through some of this process, um, it's very easy to see people get discouraged when they have this good news and they feel like it's this this big formative moment and then they have a plan and they try it and it doesn't go as well as they thought. It's like, well, you've been you've been living um identifying with fig leaves for most of your life. This is a pattern that's probably not going to change overnight just just because, you know, just because of one uh like reforming of the experience. Like it's gonna take practice to try to practice your way into the identity in which you really are. Right.

Mac 1:21:31

And it's not all on you. Sometimes we have this idea that we're saved by grace, but then we're like sanctified by effort. And it's like, yes, effort is required, but it's cooperative effort. It's participatory effort. God doesn't leave you by yourself on your own to do this work. God is with you and supplying you with what you need to try on some new things.

Our Stories Perfection Hustle Emotions

Mac 1:21:53

Maybe it would help to give our listeners some examples from our own life. I know I've shared some examples from the groups, kind of a I wanted to give several different kinds of examples so people could see how broad this is. But maybe we could, uh, by way of self-disclosure, just share a little bit of our own stories. And I have lots of examples because I've been doing this work for a long time, but I I want to identify a fun one. Um, I grew up in Minnesota. Um, my dad played hockey for Notre Dame. All of his brothers played hockey, his his dad played hockey and coached him growing up. So when I was born, there was literally a picture. There's a picture of me in the crib at the hospital with a hockey stick. Like it was chosen for me. You know what I mean? Um, and to be fair, I loved it. I had so much fun. Um, but I probably from the moment I learned how to walk, it was like, okay, how can we put skates on? So I don't, I mean, I learned to skate pretty much in proximity to when I learned to walk. Wow. And just like most sports, um, you know, the first few years you're just kind of like having fun, like rec league and stuff like that. And I remember the first year uh my dad was coaching our hockey team, and we were probably like four and five years old. It was at the point where they divided the long rink in half and you played like horizontally. Okay. And we didn't have referees um because we were so young and they weren't really needed. So the coaches just kind of like reffed the games. And one of the rules was um because we were so little and just figuring things out, learning how to skate or whatever, there were no penalties. There was no penalty box, like that wasn't a thing. And so nobody got penalized for anything. Well, there was one kid who got penalized that year in the entire league, and it was me. And the person who called the penalty was my dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:52

Oh no.

Mac 1:23:52

Yes. Um and to be honest, I still remember the moment. Uh, I tripped a kid and totally meant to do it. And my dad saw it and sat me out like I had to sit in a little box for a little bit and wasn't allowed to rejoin uh for a few minutes. Um, now again, this is just like a silly example, you know, but there was so much packed into that moment that reveals like how I was raised. So some things that I would note or highlight is I've been my kids have been on teams where the coach's son is on the team and they get to like bat first or like they get all these little like perks. For me, it was the exact opposite. My dad was so acutely aware of not showing favoritism to me that like the standard was higher for me with everything. And that moment revealed that standard. Nobody else would get called for a penalty, but you would, because your dad doesn't want to be perceived as showing you favoritism and so on and so forth. So from a very young age, and my dad coached me for several years, I always felt like I was held to a higher standard. And over time, I downloaded that message that I need to function at a higher standard than everybody else. Right?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Mac 1:25:17

And I need to lead by example. I can't make mistakes that other people are allowed to make, and so on and so forth. You can kind of see that thread. Um couple years ago, I well, six years ago now, I was given my first sabbatical. And we broke up the sabbatical into three phases. We hired a sabbatical coach because we had never done it here before. And there was like pre-work work that I had to do with my spiritual director during the sabbatical and then like afterwards. Well, during the pre-work, the spiritual director picked up very quickly that because this had never been like granted to a staff member before, this was something new. And some of this way that I was wired, and that I was approaching the sabbatical as I need to prove that this is important, that this is worthwhile for the pastoral staff. I need to like nail the sabbatical for future generations of pastors by holding myself, like I have to perform well in receiving the sabbatical. Um, and that's just one example of like about a thousand that you all probably could name, where you see this pattern showing up in my life, influencing how I relate to God, myself, and other people. And part of my own transformation has been collecting these moments where I'm holding myself to a standard of perfectionism or thinking I need to model something rather than just being human-sized, like being a human being. And so, in dozens of ways, I've had God say to me in different contexts, um, I'm I'm the one who's perfect. I'm the one who holds you to the standard that I want to hold you to. I'm not gonna randomly penalize you. I don't hold you to a standard different from someone else. I don't have that expectation of you. Um, but rather I see, I see your imperfections and I I I enjoy those parts of you. Like I see, I see you for who you are, and those aren't obstacles for me. They're pathways for you for a deeper embrace and a deeper surrender to me. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:31

Yeah.

Mac 1:27:32

And it's only as I continue to hear those good good words spoken over what I perceive to be faults, failures, or vulnerabilities that I learn that these aren't things to avoid, but they're actually pathways to deeper intimacy with Jesus. And then I learn how to not try to hustle out of them, but to simply acknowledge them and then move forward in light of them. I mean, we're in First Corinthians right now as a church, and this is like a huge theme for Paul. He didn't Come with rock star performance. He will he didn't come with like this pizzazz. Rather, he came in weakness and humility, knowing that is the pathway to exposing Christ's character. And I feel like a lot of my life has been learning that lesson again and again because at an early age, I downloaded a message that when you're less imperfect, you're held to a higher standard, and when you don't meet that standard, you're gonna end up in the penalty box.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:28

Yeah.

Josiah 1:28:31

To hear you narrate that. Um, and maybe this can be an affirmation, but as someone who has worked with you and, you know, in a in multiple contexts for many years, um, you have clearly done work to try to not reproduce that as a um as like a uh what's the word I'm thinking of? As like the culture of our staff. So I've never felt um I've never felt the pressure to try to like achieve these otherworldly standards in order to to meet approval. Um so maybe it can just be an affirmation to know that like uh your leadership within this context, like I can tell you've done the work to not reproduce that with the people you're leading.

Mac 1:29:19

Yeah, I would um confess though that it is work because there's times when I'm not in a good space. We all like have a range of health and unhealth, and when I'm not in the healthiest spot, um the expectation I put on myself, like I find myself impatient and irritable with the people around me because they're not meeting the standard I have for myself. Does that make sense? Yeah. And even to connect those dots to go, this is how that shows up for other people. When we think about how does this impact my relationship with God, myself, and others, the way that impacts others is I'm holding them to a standard that goes back to four-year-old when you're playing hockey. Like you should be penalized, or you should like, you know what I mean? That perfectionism can leak out sideways with the people closest to me rather than operating with grace and kindness and patience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:16

I love that.

Mac 1:30:18

Are you going next?

SPEAKER_04 1:30:19

Yeah, I can go next.

Mac 1:30:21

Um you have to be careful because your family like listens to this podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. Um we okay. So one example that sticks out to me is my mom is all about activity.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:36

Oh, yeah, she is.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:37

Having fun. And so when I was a kid, she would sign me up for lots of activities. Like, this looks fun. You're going, I was even really consulted at the time. It was like, this it was the camps, camp, you're going to this camp, that camp, this camp. Like, I was going to camps for a week at a very young age where I didn't know anybody. And it just like, here we go.

Mac 1:30:54

It's like Oprah, you get a camp. You get a camp.

unknown 1:30:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:57

I was constantly doing stuff. And my because she wanted me to be independent. She wanted me to like be able to go and like be adaptable, like adapt to new environments and know how to relate to people. And just like she, it was really important to her that I develop a sense of independence. And so, um, and so I did. It was just like, okay, this is what you do. You just go here and you figure it out. And I have like one memory of being at a camp um where I was like sick and like throwing up and um my parents didn't come get me right away. I'm sure if I would have taken a turn for the worse, like they would have. It's not like they didn't care, but I just hung out in the health room and I was kind of sick. And eventually I got better. And you learn, like, yeah, okay, I was kind of homesick, but like I got through it.

Mac 1:31:38

Um, I have another 25 years later, I'm driving to work, about to pass out because I'm throwing up and right? Yes, that did happen recently.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:47

Um another example, also kind of around being sick. I remember being gone, it's probably early high school age, gone at a young life camp for a whole week. The bus, the coach bus got back late, late, late, late at night, but I had been signed up for another camp at UW camp, uh UW Madison's campus that had started like a day or two before. And so my grandparents picked me up from the late night coach bus that dropped me off in Heartland at the Young Life office and then drove me late at night to Madison. And I wasn't feeling well when I got home from the Young Life camp, like, oh, I feel like I'm starting to get sick. Um, I don't know if I even thought to say anything, but I got in their car and they drove me to Madison and I showed up on campus late at night and then was there for this other camp. But then within a couple, within a day or two, I was actually very sick. I got a fever, and so they ended up coming to pick me up and take me home early. Um, but thinking back on that, it's like, why did I do that? I guess, you know, and and the the good, again, the good in it, because we're talking about how a lot of these shaping um moments have maybe good and bad, positive and negative. I did learn how to like how to how to become maybe resilient. Like even if I'm not feeling the best, like I just you can do this, you know, you gotta just keep going and push through it. Yeah, you push through stuff and you don't spend too much time worrying about like what could go wrong, or um you just kind of keep going. Like I learned how to keep going and and do a lot of things and be in a lot of new environments. But then I can also see where, as I then grew up and went into adulthood, I had a hard time learning when I was overcommitted, when I wasn't feeling well, well, when I needed to stop and rest. And and even being able just to say no to something. Like I have this internal view like, if someone asks me to do something and I don't have a conflict on my calendar, well, then of course you should say yes. And honestly, half the time, even if I do have a conflict, it's like, okay, I gotta figure out how to do both of these things. Um, and it took kind of being myriad for Alex to be like, no, what? No, no, we don't. We don't have to do both of these things. And so I just I I think I internalize this message around you just go, you just do. Doesn't really, I mean, if you're tired, you'll get over it.

Mac 1:33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:00

And there's probably just some um yeah, some like some aspect of like being overcommitted and people pleasing. And so sitting with God in that has has taught me to say, you don't have to do it all, you don't have to run at a ragged pace, you don't have to always hustle, you do have needs, you do have limitations, you do get sick, you do get tired, and learning how to just sort of acknowledge those limitations and learning for God to meet me there and say it's okay to stop, it's okay to rest, it's okay to say no. And that's something that's still very much in process for me.

Mac 1:34:32

But and Jesus modeled that so profoundly in ways that inspire me. He's like, I only do what I see my father doing. I'm only about my father's work, right? And what does it look like to live into the freedom of that? That, like, hey, I'm only gonna do what I sense God asking me to do. Josiah affirmed me, I'll affirm you, Katie. You had some pretty demanding and high stress jobs before you came to our church. And there are certainly times when this job can be pretty demanding and high stress. Um, but that's one of the primary things I've seen you grow into is not being on this constant, like, I almost imagine like a radar, an alert system where like at any point I could be needed or there could be a problem that I need to spring into action to like fix or solve or whatever. I've seen you over the past several years gradually become a person who truly rests in God's presence, rests in everyday life out of a deep place of surrender rather than like striving and scurrying and hustling to hold everything at once.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:40

Thanks for saying that.

Mac 1:35:41

Yeah. Way to go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:45

It is good to hear that from other people because you don't always see difficulty in yourself. But I do feel like I've grown into that. What about you, Josiah?

Josiah 1:35:52

Yeah, I think for me in my home, um, I often related to myself in the home as very being very different from other people. Um, and one of the ways that that really came out is that I sensed that I had a lot more emotions than other people did in my home. Um, I realize now that that's that was a lens I was using that wasn't necessarily them putting that on me. I just had a very deep emotional world and often found myself very um uh well what's the word, very impeded from doing very normal things because things felt too overwhelming. Or I would often feel sad but didn't know why. And my parents could tell to to their credit, like they they wanted to help. And um often it'd be like, What's wrong? I'd be like, I don't know. And uh now that I've done enough work on my own, I I I actually realized that I think I did struggle with to with depression for most of my life. And I don't think it was, I think it was probably like chemical type of depression. And um but uh a formative a couple of formative moments were when I think my my parents were trying to help me feel better. Um is my dad is um he's he's very driven and he's very idealistic and tends to relate to his emotions very differently than me. And um, I remember him saying to me something very specific, he just said, Hey son, your feelings aren't real and you can overcome them. Um viewing them as something that you make up in your head and realizing that like if you push through, you're gonna be just fine. Um he meant well. I think he meant well because he wanted to see me empowered to not be stuck in my emotions. But I can also look back understanding my dad's upbringing now and knowing nor um knowing more about what he in his first formation, his mom, uh his dad died at a young age, I think when he was like 17 and had cancer many years be before that. And his mom struggled with the with depression too. My dad would come home and she'd have all the all the blinds shut and she'd be sitting there watching her soap opera or something and being all depressed. And my dad would come in and throw up, oh, throw open the blinds and be like, no, we're put some good music on or something. Like, we gotta like lift the place up here. Um, and so he felt, and then my hit my mom's sister ended up living with her for most of her life. Depression was a major issue. So he realized that for my dad's first formation stuff, um negative emotions were a threat. They weren't, they, they weren't something to just be able to sit with, and and definitely were something that if I don't overcome them, they are gonna overcome me. And so the way that he related to that was like trying to pass that on to me, which is more first formation stuff. But um the meaning I made from that is that because my my emotions were a really big part of who I was, it it was very apparent to me that if I was gonna connect, especially with my dad or with other people around me, that my emotions were gonna be a liability. That they were gonna be a liability in my ability to connect with people. And so anytime I was struggling with something, anything emotionally, it was hide on my own, don't let people know that, and try to relate to people on other stuff. And and that shaped how I view myself, it shaped how I viewed God because anytime I like would feel strongly, and especially as we would categorize negative emotions, it came out like to me, it was interpreted as like this this bad part of me. It's like this is the flesh, this is like this evil part of me. And so when I would struggle with things, it was often hide. Um, don't don't talk to people about it. And yeah, I think that the way that that ended up re um impacting my relationship with God is that I also hid from him. So anytime I was struggling with something or sad or anything, it was like that I I I felt gross and like that's not the part of me God wants to see. Um but replacing good news with bad news probably it's been lifelong. But I think one of the biggest things that God has shown me and tried to keep revealing to me is that like that God likes me and and he likes being around me and he's not afraid of my emotional turbulence sometimes and and all those things. And I think that that that good news that God wants to connect to me with me on every level and that he genuinely likes me has been a part of my like um even asking God to remind me that sometimes. Remind me that you like me, because I don't even like myself right now. Um and I have I I have found that the the journey of showing up in new ways has just been realizing that this part of me that I thought was this liability is actually it's actually probably part of a gift to be able to connect with people. It's not a liability in connecting with them, it actually is the way people probably connect with me most.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:11

Yeah.

Josiah 1:41:12

And um that's easier said than done. It's been a continual journey to be able to trust that that part of me that seems like a a liability actually could be a way of um connection.

Mac 1:41:23

Yeah. Yeah, both with God and others, right? Um sometimes your emotional reactions um reveal what's actually going on internally, and God has access to be able to like talk to you about that. Yeah. Our emotions aren't an obstacle to our formation, they're often the doorway into it. And um, and I can see how that showed up in your relationship with God through distance and seeing it as reliability relationally cause you to distance from other people. And yet over the past, we've worked together for over 10 years, Josiah. And uh for the first handful of years, this really wasn't a safe environment uh for you to share or have reactions. And I've seen you increasingly um exercise the courage to not only sit with your own emotions, but share those with other people in a way that often leads to deeper relationship and gives us as a staff important insight to whatever's happening conversationally around the room. And the interesting thing that what's interesting to me is the very thing that perhaps you experienced as at a young age is like you don't have to be dominated by your emotions. Um, I've seen you become less and less owned by your emotions simply by being present to them and then sharing them with other people. Yeah. I actually look forward to it. I think it's hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:48

Yeah.

Mac 1:42:48

Um, some of the most funny moments I've had is when you just react to something, not um like out of impulse, but just like, hey, I need to share this. And it just it's just it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:58

Well, and everything we're talking about in this episode, just like you and I have both led a number of leadership intensives. And I think one of the gifts you bring to those spaces is you make it really safe for people to do the work that we're talking about here. Like diving into your bad news is not fun, right? And the last thing I want to do is go into my bad news with someone who feels like, oh, are they gonna judge me? What are they gonna think of me, whatever? And you have such an ability of creating such a safe place for people to do this type of work because of how you're wired. Not because of how you're wired and because of the work that you've done yourself. So I would affirm that.

Mac 1:43:33

I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I feel like this is a a podcast catastrophe. The buttons aren't working, so I can't push the praxis.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:41

Praxis podcast.

Mac 1:43:42

There you go. Thank you, Katie.

Three Simple Practices To Begin

Mac 1:43:44

Uh this has been a long episode, and the practices we're gonna give people are pretty straightforward. So let's just kind of like rifle through them.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:51

Okay, we'll do that. Um, practice number one would be do these steps that we just talked through with a painful experience. You know, we all have painful experiences in our lives or negative experiences, and they don't have to be big and traumatic. And um, they can be like the ones Mac you talked about in your examples. Pick something though, which would be much easier to ignore, but just pick it and and sit with God and begin to just like look at it. It's kind of like I would describe it as like popping the, we've talked about this before, popping the hood of your car. Like if there's smoke coming out, you might be scared to look because it's like, I don't even know what's wrong. Well, you can't fix it if you don't know what's wrong. So just pick something and look at it, even if it's ugly, even if it's hard, even if it's painful. Um just sit, God's great, let God's grace cover it. God's grace will cover it and and kind of go through these steps and um allow God to beat you there.

Mac 1:44:46

Yeah. So um practice one is to do this with a negative or painful experience. Practice two is to do this with a positive um or good experience. Um, again, even our positive experiences can potentially be malformative. Uh, so for example, I've been thinking a lot, I had to move around a lot as a kid, um, transitioned into different schools or whatever, and that gave me some relational resilience and so on. Well, my boys have been in the Oconawak area school district their entire life, which is a good thing. They've had stability and so on and so forth. But lately I've been thinking about our oldest is gonna go to college in a few years. How is he gonna do with that transition? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, is the stability a good thing? Yes. And are there some ways that might be working against his social resilience too? Probably. Right. So maybe take something positive from your upbringing and look at the shadow side of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:40

Yeah.

Josiah 1:45:41

Yeah. And then the third, the third thing to do is um try this with a patterned experience. So identify a pattern or something that was repeated maybe over and over. I would say sometimes these can often be the most formative because they happened really slowly without you realizing it. Um it can be good or bad things. Um, maybe the way certain subjects were talked about in your home, uh, how your parents treated each other, patterns of conflict like like we named earlier.

Mac 1:46:08

So going to 15 camps in three weeks. Yeah, that's a pattern.

Josiah 1:46:13

Yeah, yeah.

Mac 1:46:13

Yeah. Yeah. So do this with a painful experience, do it with a positive experience and try to identify a pattern that shaped

What’s Next And How To Connect

Mac 1:46:21

you. Uh, we want to thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. During our next episode, we're going to discuss a couple tools that can help us move toward greater authenticity with God, ourselves, and one another. So we'll see you then.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:36

Praxis is recorded and produced at Crosspoint Community Church. You can find out more about the show and our church at crosspoint WI.com. If you have any questions, comments, or have any suggestions for future topics, feel free to send us an email. Also, if you would enjoy the show, consider leaving a review. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast.