Have you ever been listening to someone spew out their feelings and you immediately want to "fix" it? Have you felt the need to tell them everything is going to be okay and to look at the positives? Now imagine what it would feel like to simply sit with them in their feelings. To simply let them experience the depth of their emotions. On today's show we have an episode from The Glass House where Ben and Lynley are joined with Jennie Allen. The three of them discuss how to untangle the tension of sitting with others in their emotions, and also the tension in experiencing your own emotions.
Jennie Allen, Bible teacher, author, and the visionary behind IF:Gathering, leads a new chapter as the Founder & Visionary of Gather25, a 25-hour global prayer gathering. Driven by a deep love for God and an unyielding belief in the potential of this generation, Jennie's mission is to disciple a generation of Jesus followers to live what they believe. Jennie is a passionate leader following God's call on her life to catalyze a generation to live what they believe. Jennie is the New York Times' best-selling author of Untangle Your Emotions, Find Your People and Get Out of Your Head. Jennie has a masters in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Zac, and their four children.
Today, Jennie discusses her new book, 'Untangle Your Emotions,' and shares her personal journey of learning to embrace her emotions and the impact it has had on her relationships. Jennie emphasizes the value of being present with others in their pain and the healing power of connection. She also explores the concept of numbness as both a gift and a hindrance, and encourages listeners to give themselves grace in navigating their emotions.
Listen now to the five steps Jennie gives to identifying and dealing with emotions! Thanks for listening and sharing with a friend!
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Let It Shine with Angie Elkins
37. Untangling Your Emotions with Jennie Allen
Send us a textHave you ever been listening to someone spew out their feelings and you immediately want to "fix" it? Have you felt the need to tell them everything is going to be okay and to look at the positives? Now imagine what it would feel like to simply sit with them in their feelings. To simply let them experience the depth of their emotions. On today's show we have an episode from The Glass House where Ben and Lynley are joined with Jennie Allen. The three of them discuss how to untang...
- Duration:
- 45m
- Broadcast on:
- 13 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Hey everyone, I'm Kristi McClellan, and I want to invite you to join me for my new Bible study, Luke and the Land. Over seven sessions will journey through Israel, and teaching videos that take place in places like the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, the Mount of Olives, and even Jerusalem. As we study snapshots from Luke, and the places where the events took place, we'll learn the important historical and cultural context that reframes and enriches familiar accounts of Jesus' life. Join me as we walk together and encounter the living God who is better than we ever knew. Learn more at lifeway.com/lukintheland. Just a lot of times, I'm going to make a shine, make a shine, make a shine, make a shine. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Let It Shine. I am so glad you are here today. Guys, it's the first week of school around here in Orlando. I don't know where you are. Maybe if you're in the Northeast, you've probably got a few more weeks left, but back here in Central Florida, everybody's starting school back. It's interesting though, because I have two kids in college now, and one out on his own earning his own money. It's a crazy life. In fact, today, I pulled up a memory of one of those first day of school pictures of my kids in 5th grade, 7th grade, and 9th grade, and I was just like, "It's crazy. You never think this day that I am facing is going to come, but trust me, moms, it will. It will come." So, be encouraged. But all of you back to school warriors out there getting your first days ready, your kids ready to go back. I know how it is, and I am praying for you this week. I know there may be a lot of anxiety around the first day or the first week of school, and I just want you to know that I am praying for you and praying that you will specifically dial in to what God has to say to you this week and to your children. So, there's that. Also, I want to tell you that this is a great conversation you're going to hear today. You're really going to be inspired by it because I'm replaying an episode of The Glass House where they hosted Jenny Allen as their guest. Guys, you're going to love this because Jenny talks all about untangling our emotions, and I know because of this time of the year, there's a lot of feelings going on this week, not just with you, but also with your kids. And there's some really practical information in this episode and just tips on how to deal with the emotions of your kids, but not only that, your own emotions. So, I'm excited for you to hear everything that Jenny had to say, but also what Ben and Lily Mandrell had to say. If you're not following or listening to The Glass House on a regular basis, I encourage you to go over, find that show, and follow it. You guys know I'm the producer of that show, but Ben and Lily Mandrell are two of my really good friends, and they do a fantastic job on The Glass House. So, I think you'd love it. One more thing before we go to this episode. I want to let you know that season two of Let It Shine is coming very soon. I've already been in the studio recording with one of my new illuminators. We've got four brand new illuminators coming this season on Let It Shine dropping mid-September. So, guys, be praying for me as I record those episodes. I'm super, super excited to do a big reveal in the next few weeks right here on Let It Shine. So, thanks for joining me. Here is a fantastic conversation with Ben and Lily Mandrell and Jenny Allen. ♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪ Okay, on this episode today, we have someone that our daughter didn't believe we got on the show. I know. She might listen to this one. She was like, "No way, you didn't get Jenny Allen on the show." Like, "Yeah, we're that big of a deal." She's now coming on our show. She was like, "Well, how many had downloads do you have?" I was like, "That's none of your business." So, introduce yourself, Jenny Allen. Tell our listeners who you are. You need no introduction, but there might be somebody out there that doesn't know you. I'm quite certain there's a lot of people out there. My name is Jenny and I am in Dallas, Texas. My husband is in business, but we served in ministry. He was a pastor for 12 years and was a church planter. And that was our life. And then now I am a writer and speaker and I lead something called If Gathering and Gather 25, which are gatherings of the church, if gathering for women and gather 25 for the entire church, men, women, and children. And that's happening for the first time in 2025. So, you know, just a little on a podcast or two. Yeah. Just a little bit going on. Yep. There's a lot happening in your life. We have four kids. It's so fun. They're mostly grown. We're at the end of tail end of parenting full time and they're doing all right. Awesome. Well, Jenny, we had a chance to take a little trip to the beach last week and we read a large portion of Untangle Your Emotions. It's your new book. Talk a little bit about why you wrote this book. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes it's more fun when it's this way. But sometimes I'm writing books because I'm good at something and I'm teaching everyone about it. That's really rare. Yeah. It has happened. There have been those moments. So, this is not one of those books and this is more about something that I needed to grow in and was learning to grow and it was changing my life. I was in a small group of people that included a counselor. We were doing kind of a small group. It's called the confessional community where we got really real about what's going on in our lives. We support each other and process our lives together in a really deep way. And everyone in the group was a leader. And so we had that in common and the pressures that come with that in common. And I really did it because I love the women in it. I didn't do it necessarily. I mean, I knew I needed something. I knew I was not happy at work. I knew I needed to rethink something but I didn't know what. I didn't know what I needed. I knew that there was some numbness and I was kind of losing my passion for the work I was doing. And so, yeah, I needed that. But I also just really loved the girls. So I show up and yeah, it was pretty transformational what happened there. And I am not someone who's great with feeling my feelings. I don't, I would rather just have a good time and push it away. I have had thoughts and said them many times. What's the point when friends have said, why don't you talk about that? Or why don't you go back and share with us what happened? I will literally say why. I just genuinely don't know why because why relive something that's hard, push forward, think about heaven, do life, obey God. Why? Why would we do it? And I think I figured out the why. Yeah. Final also. I haven't spoken a lot about this on our show, but I kind of hit a wall late part of last year and decided to go into an intensive group experience for five days. I turned in my phone, nobody knew who I was, I can only tell you my first name. And for the first time in a long time, I had five days of saying out loud how I really feel without putting a filter on of what are they going to think about me or what are they going to do about life way. And so I came out of the experience, I came home, went to bed for two days. Lendly thought I was like, like going to even join the circus or something. And ever since then, Jenny, like I feel like I've been a different person in learning how to just name my feelings and say out loud how I'm feeling, whether it's true or not, like this is where I'm at. And that's been a journey for us. Like, Lendly maybe talked for a second about in the book, Jenny talks about how she didn't give people permission to feel. I know for years you felt that way with me, which I can't understand why because I am amazing at this. Yeah, you are amazing. Keep going. I mean, there's not a whole lot to add to that conversation. It is what you're saying. I mean, it's you talked about there's the fixer and the feeler. Yeah. And I'm not an overly feely person, but I do express my feelings pretty easily. I mean, I know what I'm feeling like hurt or lonely or whatever. I'm not as receptive to when other people tell me what I am. So it's not that I've got all of life figured out by any means, but he is more of a fixer. And so when I would be, when we moved here, it was very traumatizing for me. I lost. I felt like I gave up a lot. And so when I would cry, he would like, they say, you know, I need you to not, I need you to not cry. I need you, I need you to not do stuff because like it was bringing shame. Like if I was crying, it wasn't that I was just sad. It brought him shame because we moved here together. And so my feelings affected his feelings. And so I mean, talk about, you talked about that in your book a little bit. I mean, how did you get there? Was there some sort of family situation that you were like, wait, I'm not allowing people to feel? Oh, yeah. All my kids would say this was a problem for me that I did exactly what you're saying, Ben. Like I, I just didn't want them because I wasn't comfortable with my own feelings. I couldn't be comfortable with other people's feelings. Right. And so there was a sense of whenever a friend or a family member was upset, I was immediate, I would immediately move into like, let's, let's fix the problem. Let's, let's solve it. Not realizing that 90% of what was going on wasn't actually the circumstance. It was actually the bid for connection and that they felt alone in their pain and they didn't need me to rescue their circumstance. They needed me to be present with them in what they were feeling. And so I mean, the greatest story of this is when my son came home from, I was writing the book and my son came home from school and a girl had said no to his first dance at this new school. And he was a freshman. It was his first time to ask a girl to do anything like really. And I mean, I was, I was furious. I was, he was so down and I was like, we're going to ask another girl and we're going, you're going to look so good and shoot. I'm going to teach you to drive like I'm working to think of this problem. You're going to be the greatest date ever and she's going to miss out. And the reality was, was he just needed, like, there was no fixing this disappointment. I just needed to be in it with him and be disappointed with him and let him feel sad with me. So he didn't feel alone in the sadness because what we tend to do is when we're trying to fix someone, we're basically saying they're broken when the reality is that they're actually doing exactly what God, how God built their body to react to disappointment or fear or whatever is happening circumstantially in their life. And so they're actually not broken. They're actually experiencing life in the fullest way that God designed for them to experience it. And so they want what everyone wants, what I want when I'm sad is I want to not feel alone in that, and our brains were built in such a way to need each other's companionship in suffering, in fear, in any emotion that you're experiencing, even joy, because it is the place of deepest connection. It's where we actually form relationships. So when the Bible says, mourn with those who mourn, what God knows is that he built our brain to actually heal from trauma. When someone is just mourning with you, no circumstances fixed, nothing about your life changes necessarily on the outside, but someone is crying with you and sad with you. And now you are sad together and that sadness together is what begins to heal your brain. And that is just scientific. That's not just, it feels good. And that helped me. When I understood the science of it, it actually, it changed me because then I, and I understood the Bible. I mean, the Bible calls us to this, but I will call us to experience emotion together, to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and to mourn with those who mourning. Why? Because it's something that's happening. And Jesus knew he was going to heal his friend Lazarus. And if it were me, I would have been so uncomfortable when Martha's mad at him and yelling at him, and Mary's bawling her eyes out, and I can fix the problem, I would not sit there and entertain these conversations and be present with them in their feelings. I would actually come in and fix Lazarus because I could. But that's not what he did. He didn't even just, he wasn't even just present with Mary in her, in her disappointment and sadness. He cried with her. He's good. He mourned with her. So there's some value that Jesus understood that I obviously didn't, and in just being with people in their pain. And the more I did the scientific work, the more it helped my very pragmatic brain to understand this is actually living life in a way that brings healing to myself, that brings healing to other people. And it's not fixing them and the circumstances don't have to change because sometimes they can't, right? Sometimes you can't change. A lot of times you can't change. I told Angie before this episode started, I really love the space you're in right now in that you're taking a lot of the modern conversation in science and baptizing it. Like you're putting great scriptulas with it so that Christians don't have to be afraid of good stuff coming out of the scientific world as long as it coincides with what we believe about our faith. And it really does intersect. Well, the example you just gave is perfect. I know you're about to say something. I cut you off because I do that often, but what was- No, it's totally fine. I just think this conversation is so interesting the timing of it. So on a personal note last night, we were up much of the night with our 18-year-old son who broke up with a girl. He's been dating for 18 months. And it's his first experience with heart, brain, and love and he just was so tearful and so sad. I mean, it's just so hard. But in our personality, I'm so thankful honestly that we've both kind of been dealing in this world of feelings. We'd literally just read your book because the tendency is to do exactly what you said. Like, I'm going to fix this. Like you're going to be okay and you're going out to college and all these things. We both just sat there and held him and said we're so sorry. And it was one of those things where we had been texting a little bit earlier and I just said, hey, cry it out. Like God gave us tears like he gave us laughter. I think sometimes we feel like, oh, we can only laugh but we can't cry like we suppress our tears. And so I do think boys, it's really hard for them to feel that and to think it's okay to cry. So, I mean, what you're saying is so interesting. It's so beautiful timing right now. Well, you know, I was talking to a producer for a show that I was going to be on about this subject and he had read the book and he had a child that was acting out and he got the book. I don't think he was a believer, but he read it and he just said, I want you to know it shifted everything for me with my son who has just been so difficult for me to parent. Instead of trying to control him, I just started hearing him and I started listening and I started being sorry for when he was sad and disappointed but not, you know, again, we're not talking about patronizing our kids and we're not talking about giving into them, right? So just letting them feel what they need to feel and helping them know what to do with those feelings. And he said, it's unbelievable. It's changed his behavior almost immediately. And I can say as an adult that in the room, my group actually, where I learned this the most was when they did what I do to everybody, which was they tried to fix me. And I was saying some things that were frustrating about my work and my life and how I felt like God had abandoned me and just being really raw about my feelings. Again, theologically knowing he doesn't abandon us, right, but saying this is what it feels like and they all begin to fix my theology, God hasn't. And I felt misunderstood. I felt like judged. I felt all of these things. And so then my, the counselor in the room said, I want y'all to start responding instead of saying, I think, I want you to say, I feel. And immediately the room shifted. And I said, I feel misunderstood. I feel judged. I feel, I feel hurt. And then they all began to say words like, I feel proud of you for not walking away from God, even though you felt this way, I feel proud of you for doing hard work and not quitting. I feel empathetic that you felt alone in the work. And all of the sudden, my heart just totally softened. And so when I experienced it, when I was on the other side of myself, you know, doing this to my kids and to my friends, so gosh, that doesn't feel good. And so I think sometimes we just don't believe it really does help, but it really does help. And and what I think, I think one reason we don't believe it is we, we dismiss our need for connection in the way God built us. And so we don't understand that we cannot do anything alone. We can't do anything alone. And so when we're just not good at it, we weren't built to do it alone. We're finite creatures and, and so when we understand that we need each other, even just to go through, and, and I'm not talking about, we would all know and agree if, if we lost a child, we need each other to go through that. I mean a hard Tuesday, like, we need each other to go through a hard Tuesday. And we'll never be there for each other if we keep trying to fix each other. That's really good. I actually called a family meeting for tonight after the Tennessee wins the World Series. Yeah. Don't get texted. Oh my gosh, well, let's put that aside because otherwise we would be bitter enemies for the rest of the show. Your feelings are wrong there. But yeah, several of our kids are going through really hard things right now. And I'm like, we just need to sit down and everybody needs to just talk about what they're feeling inside. And I don't think when they know I have a single answer for them. But I feel like we prayed that this summer it's our last summer that I have all four kids under our roof probably forever. We prayed for connection that's been our heart and we didn't. We thought connection meant like, let's do lots of fun stuff together. I think this is a summer where we're going to like really mourn with each other over some things that are going on. And the thing about your book, Jenny, I really want you to speak to because it just so touched me is the idea that numbness is a gift. I was going to ask that. Well, you know, I think one thing I prayed as I wrote this book was just that there would be compassion on every page that people would feel not be themselves up. I mean, I didn't do this great with my kids, but I'm doing better now. And even though they're grown, we talk about it and I've made amends for the, you know, a lot of things I did when they were growing up, I just, I think we can be so hard on ourselves and try to get this right. This isn't something that you can perfectly strike right. This is just, this is living and in feeling is not easily managed in ourselves and other people. And so I think I wanted everyone to feel grace. And when I say numb as a gift is there are times that really serves us. It's actually a feature in our brain that God gave us to go through tragedy when like right now, if you thought to yourself, if my child died in a car wreck, like, what would I do? Well, the people I know that have lost children would say the first two days, three days, you're, you're not, you're not, you're doing dealing with what's in front of you. You're actually dealing with what needs to be done. That is because God built our brain in such a way that, that we can turn off our emotions when we need to survive. Maybe seals brain surgeons, like you, how does a, any surgeon operate on a three-year-old on their brain? Like how, how do you do that? Will you turn off a part of your brain that would feel devastated or overwhelmed or scared and you do the work? So I think there is a gift in that. But what, where it becomes a problem is when you quit using it as a feature and you begin to use it as a way to never have to face what's really going on. And then we just get into unhealth and what ends up happening in that story and all of us know in ourselves and other people times this has happened is you just get really agitated and irritated with everyone around you. And so if that's you, if you feel like, gosh, I come home from work and everything bugs me, everything, likely you've been suppressing other feelings that you haven't talked about, that you haven't wanted to admit to yourself or feel and it always, not always, but often often comes out as agitation or irritation towards other people. And so, you know, I just, and through lots of times just anger and specifically anger directed at wrong places. She's another way it comes out. I mean, that was how I started the book was just my daughter was getting married and she was talking, she and her future husband were talking about moving away and doing all these adventures together. And I mean, I was, I was having all but a panic attack at dinner, listening to her. And I knew this was psycho behavior, like I knew I could not say what I was thinking out loud, which is you can never move and you will always live here. And I was like, gosh, I don't want to be that mom, I actually really want my kids to follow God and their lives that he's written for them. So I talked to my counselor about it and just try to sort it out. And the feeling was very similar to a feeling I had felt a couple of years earlier where I was in the hospital and my husband's blood pressure was through the roof and he, I think it was COVID slash vaccine related and he was having what could have been a heart attack and they, you know, there are 10, 15 people in our room when the waiting room was completely full. And, and I'm standing there and thinking I could be losing my husband right now. And it was the same feeling, exact same feeling I would feel at dinner with my daughter just talking about moving. And so when I worked through that and I'm still processing all of that, and I realized, gosh, I, I'm just afraid I'm going to lose everybody and, and I could start to put words to that Oh, cry about this. But even recently, my daughter and I just had the sweetest conversations around that. And rather than push that feeling away, when we're in a conversation and she might be talking about something they'd love to go do or places they'd love to live someday. I will just say that is a part of me is so happy for you and I love it and I can't wait to watch it. And then part of me feels sad because I want to help raise your kids and I want to be with you in your life. And I'm able to articulate in a way that she tears up and we tear up together, but we both trust God with her life. And I just think that's the beauty of it is not that that we do it right or perfectly or there's some right way to do all this. It's that we're honest and that we're healthy and we're able to have relationships through our emotions rather than push people away because of our emotions. Really good. In your book, there's a section about the five steps to identifying emotions. Would you talk to our audience a little bit about that? Like how you got to those things? Sure. And before I do that, I just want to really quick say because you're talking to people that are so theologically astute, everybody listening right now knows their Bible pretty well I bet. But I would just say, you know, I know that there are a lot of times emotions have taken over and become the God in someone's life and it has caused such destruction. So I just want to be so clear that when I'm talking about feeling, I think all of us, all three of us, when we're talking about feeling emotions, we are not talking about putting them in the driver's seat of your life. They are not wise drivers, but they are very wise discernors of what's happening. They can show you things in your life that are happening, things that you might have gone through or need to process, but they are not good at making decisions all the time. So it's like take the information that the emotions give you, but at the end of the day, what I'll share in just a minute is we have to choose what to do with them, that they are not the governors. And what we've seen in the world is that they are the boss of most people's lives. They are how people are making decisions, they're leaving their marriage, they're deciding to do destructive things because their desires or their heart or their feelings are leading them. And so I would just say really clearly that is not what I'm talking about, that is not a biblical view of emotions, but neither is claiming that they are dangerous and saying that they are not from God because they are built from God. God feels all of these emotions. They are gifts to us to navigate a very broken world. So yeah, I just wanted to be clear on that. And I chime in on that real quick, yeah, there's a thing in our house where there has been a tendency to say both of us to say, well, I'm just telling you my honest feelings. And we've really had to change that language to say, I'm telling you my deepest feelings because I do want to be careful that sometimes our feelings are not the honest. So we've had to really change that language to say, hey, these are my authentic feelings. Help me identify if these are the truth. That's a humble thing too, because then you're allowing people to interact with that, right? Rather than saying, my feelings are God and you can't touch it, right? I actually love the phrase, I need to tell you where I'm at right now. Yeah. I may not be at a good place, maybe a dark place, but this is where I'm at. And like I had very similar feelings recently of feeling abandoned by God on a certain issue in my life, and I totally feel very abandoned by God, I've asked for help, I've told him I need help, I'm not getting an answer. And I just needed only to know that's where I'm at. I didn't want to know, theologically, the doctrine of sovereignty. But I did go there, it was helpful. I was like, hey, what if there are times where we've abandoned God too? Yeah, thank you for that. I totally did, but I wasn't supposed to do… Hey, let me say this, because when I'm writing this book, I'm pushing back against a wave of the church, being afraid of emotions, demonizing emotions, trying to squash emotions, right? So I want to say there is also a time for truth, and there is a time to just say, but again, it's most of our personalities, most of us in the church, learned to say what was true and to fix problems and all of that, but we didn't really get the class on emotional intelligence and health. So, I'm trying to raise that, knowing that to some degree, even with your kids, it's like tonight, you may give advice, and it may be exactly the right word in the right moment, right, seasoned with salt and a timely word. And so there is that too, but I think if we hold back the part of ourselves that's quick to do that, too quick to speak and not quick to listen, if we hold back that part of ourselves long enough, I think the word will be better received, the word will be more timely, it will be more seasoned with salt, because we have heard and felt what the people we love are feeling and saying, so I think, I do think there's a time for it for sure. Well, if you can, like, real quick, readers digest, give us those five ways to name your emotions, I think that might help us frame up this conversation a little bit about what do I do when I don't know what to do with all these tingled up emotions? Absolutely. So, yeah, I think the tangle is a great thing, you just pull out one string at a time, and the first thing you have to do is notice what you're feeling, and it sounds like lonely, that might be easier for you to do these first few steps, so you notice what you feel, and for some of us it's just not as easy, but lots of times you notice it in your body, you might feel your chest getting tight, that's how I notice it these days is my jaw will be tight or clenched, my chest gets tight, and I'll just have to start to ask myself questions, am I okay? Am I not okay? What's going on? The next thing is to name the feeling, so once you've noticed, you know what? I don't feel okay, I think something's probably bothering me, what am I feeling, and it might be worry, it might be grief, it might be that I feel lonely or disconnected, and so you just begin to put words to it, and then the next thing is to feel it and to not be afraid of it, and we're going through something really difficult right now in our home and family, and oh I just, I cry, I cried last night, I cried the day before that, I've cried a lot lately, and it's been so good for me to do that, and I've gotten so much more comfortable with that, and so, you know, what it looks like for me is just if I feel like I need to cry, I cry, if I feel like I need to be alone for a little while, I'll be alone and just feel what it is I'm feeling, the funny thing is you think, gosh, if I open this can it worms, I'm going to sink into the abyss, and I'm never going to come out, but the funny thing is it actually is now that I've really cried and cried over the situation that's not changing, I can cry for a little while last night, I was with some friends and shared about crying with them, and I feel better, and I'm able to sleep, and I'm able to go through my life, it's amazing, you can actually, you begin to regulate your emotions as you begin to feel them and share them, and so, the next step is to share them with somebody, and you cannot believe how healing this is, we've already shared a lot about that, and the next thing is to choose what to do with it, and for some people they're going to realize, oh gosh, when they start doing this, I have been angry for years, or I have been scared and worried and anxious for years, and you may need to talk to a counselor or to a doctor, and to really start to dig into how am I going to get out of this place. My husband, I share a lot about his depression in the book, and he needed help, he needed real help, and when he got that real help, he didn't need it forever, but he needed it to climb out of the pit, and to be able to even start to process his life and what was going on, so sometimes we need really big help, sometimes we just need to make a decision around this thing that, you know what, I've let my thoughts, I've had all these negative inputs, and I have let my thoughts go into this dark place for too long because of sin, or because of choices I've been making, so, you know, I think there's a big array of what gets us in these places, but it can be-- Can I say something on this? Chip Dodd's book, Voice of the Heart, I'm sure you probably-- So great. So good. He talks about the impaired side of anger, the healthy side of anger is passion, the impaired side of anger, it really surprised me. This was a game changer for me. I always thought it was rage, but when you're in a really bad place with anger, it's depression or apathy, I think. So I went through a really dark season of depression, and it was because I had so many unexpressed things on the service that I was angry about and never shared them with anybody. Or maybe I'd share them with Lendley, but I would never have the courage. Steve Coste told us, "The hardest thing for a man, particularly to say to another man, is you hurt me." And I'm learning recently at 48, about to be 48, gosh, that's depressing, we'll talk about that later. I recently wrote a letter to a guy who hurt me five years ago, and I said, "Look, I don't need an apology. I don't need you to do anything about it. I just needed to-- you didn't know, like this really hurt me five years ago when this happened." The moment I hit send to that email, I felt like 50% healed of the situation. I just needed to tell them. And I think particularly for pastors, for men, most times we get hurt by people in the church, and we never go back and say, "Okay, it's been a couple of years now, and I just want to sit down now that I'm healthier around this and say that really hurt." Well, can I chime in here real quick? Yeah. Okay. So I had two questions about the five things, but the second one was going to be-- I know you've done a ton of research for this book-- sharing tends to seem like women are better than men. I don't know if that's true, but I just wonder about there are so many pastors who are having health issues. We're actually recording a podcast with-- coming back after there's two pastors that have had major health issues, and so I just wondered if you found that to be true. How do we help our male pastors begin to learn how to share? Are there any baby steps that you've learned along the way? Do you even find this to be true? If we are not as the church, and specifically speaking to leaders, and I would say wives of leaders, who are also leaders in the church, if we are not in 9-1-1 emergency mode right now about the emotional state of leaders, we have a problem, because we've got carnage everywhere right now. And I believe that it begins on the inside. It begins at the heart. The choices these pastors are making is a complete, obvious result of burnout. You can't-- to me-- and I know it's sin, right? The fall, there's nothing new under the sun, but people choose evil, and there's no doubt. But why are these leaders so vulnerable to it besides just enemy attack, but how was the enemy doing it? It says that the enemy schemes against us, that he's building schemes. We need to take a hard look at the scheme he's building against leaders in the Western Church. What is the scheme he's building, because he keeps running the same play and we're not beating him. Now, a lot of friends we are, I mean, there are so many leaders that many, many who are listening. They're like, "We are fighting the good fight," and like, "We are staying faithful over here. Yes, you are." And I feel like I get to see that all the time in my work. I see so many leaders that are honest about their struggles and in counseling and working through their marriage issues. I see that all the time. But yes, this has to be top of mind. And I hope that pastors even in their fidelity and their good choices that every leader right now would be saying, "How can I be healthier? How can I be stronger? How can I be a better leader? How can I protect in a better way against the enemies attacks that are coming for me?" And I would say the biggest way is to be honest about what you're feeling, what you're struggling with. I mean, Ben, what an example you've been this whole show, and I'm sure in your podcast all the time, of a man who can say, "I struggle with anger. I've gotten help. I've done this work." I just think that that's got to become the norm in the church. And as it does, we will become more resilient. We will become leaders who can absorb more temptation, more struggle, more difficulty, and hopefully even just make better choices. But I look back over my life and go, "Gosh, what would I have done without help? What would I have done without a marriage counselor that five years in rebuilt and reformed and reshaped our marriage?" They were a believer and they just helped. And I don't know. But today, my husband and I are madly in love with each other. We have a marriage that people should aspire to. We are best friends and we have this marriage, but it's because we have done work to get there. And so, I would just encourage everyone to, it's time. This is an emergency. And if you're a wife, and you're listening, and you're going, "My husband won't get help," I would go get help yourself. I had to do that right at first, or I told him at year five, I said, "Listen, I'm going to start going to counseling, and I hope you'll come with me because I think we need it and I think you need it." But if you won't, I'm going to go. And specifically, what counseling does for pastors and leaders is it gives you a place where you can actually share things and it not be used against you. And there'll be the glass house, I get the name, I know why you named it, I don't have to ask you why you named it this way because I lived in it. And so, I think paying for a therapist is a great way to protect yourself and to feel like I can share. Not everybody needs a counselor that's paid, but I do think a lot of people in ministry do. I've said this a bunch of times. If God called me back to being a pastor again, or if I could go back and be a pastor again, I would require all of my full-time ministry staff to have six weeks of counseling every year for just checking out. Just checking with your feelings, how you're feeling. We need more preventative maintenance, rather than emergency, and a lot of the emotions we feel if we would just process them in real time, rather than let them stack up, we'd be such healthier creatures, but in ministry, every Sunday is always coming. There's always something you got to tackle. There's always something that's unorganized or in disarray, and we tend to put our own dysfunction and feelings and hurt aside for the sake of other people. And you can only do that so long before your life blows up. That's right. That is right. I loved emotionally healthy spirituality, I thought that book years and years ago was so compelling. Like we've got to get our emotional. We will only be as spiritually mature as we are emotionally mature, and gosh, he builds a great point. It's because Sarah, if you've never read it, I would encourage all to read that too. It's very convicting on this front. And not that. It was the moment when his wife said, "I'm no longer going to church with you that changes life." She quit, she quit the church. We haven't tried to fall that way. And so I think sometimes it is the wife that needs to hop off the sea star and let him fall flat on his butt and just say, "Look, I'm not going to continue to live this way." And you, like you, Lynnly, are really good at that? I have told him before, because we've had seasons here in these five years of like, "Man, should we go back to the church? We love the church." Like the local church, and the good news is we get to minister to lots of local churches here. So there's, we're not unhappy here, but sometimes he'll say, "I'm just going to go back to the local church." And I'm like, "I'm not going with you because you're not healthy enough right now to go back." And that is a good wife. Because that's a thing. And I think it's so good for people to hear that because we think and for so long I thought just keeping quiet, letting God pray and letting God change my husband, that was all I was supposed to do. And you're supposed to do that. Let me say that. Like, yes, pray. There's a thing with your husband. He's not going to change without prayer and without the Holy Spirit changing it. But also, be honest, I can't say what's true. And if it is not a safe place to do that, then you for sure need help when you for sure need a counselor. There's no question. That's a red light. So I think, you know, it's so great. Like my husband and I now are such safe, good friends that we can say anything to each other and we make each other better and still we don't listen to each other all the time, right? But I do believe his voice and my voice to him, it's the most likely to bring change outside of the Holy Spirit. That's great. I think that's so interesting you said that because we do get questions like how do you know when we should start doing counseling? I totally agree with what you just said. If you have fear of bringing up some of these conversations with the spouse, I mean, somebody needs counseling or you need it together. I mean, just for the listener who's listening because I mean, we hear people are like, how do you know when it's time? And we're almost out of time, you had something you wanted to mention about a gathering. Yeah. So, I mean, we're speaking to church leaders. So I want all to know about this in 2025 for the first time in history, only because it's never been possible technologically before, we are inviting the entire global church to come together for 25 hours and to worship God together to hear the stories of what God is doing on earth and through the local church. We are going to worship, it is all denominations, it is anyone that says, I love Jesus, we want you to come. And it is so fun right now, it's just in Rwanda. And getting to watch these leaders say yes, we want to be a part of this across different countries in Africa and they're rallying their continent together. And the stories we're going to tell just out of that is going to blow your mind. And so for 25 hours, we are going to livestream through television, radio, internet, everywhere. Everywhere we can go, we are going to be. And we just want you to gather your people in your town. It's March 1st, 2025. And we just want you to gather in your churches with your people and watch or whatever, however many hours you can, what God is doing on earth and to pray. We're going to pray, we're going to worship and we're going to commission the church to live out the call to reach the ends of the earth by 2033. This all began with a dream for me where I dreamed that Jesus is coming back, I don't know if he's coming back or not, but it made me more urgent than I've ever been and just what would we do if he were coming back in our lifetime. And I think we would clarify our mission, which is to make sure that the 5.5 billion people that don't know Jesus hear his name and have the opportunity to trust him. And so that's the goal, it'll be fun. And every single person is invited that loves Jesus. Wow. Well, by the time this episode airs, there's going to be a lot of really sad Texas A&M fans. So guys, just pray for A&M as they've lost the World Series, it's a puff call. We'll see. Well, I wish you all the best. We are really big A&M fans actually, Lindley's best friend here is that Aggie, so we hear about it almost daily. I mean, they do love Jesus here, you know? They wear the ring to show it. So best of luck to you all. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Bye bye. Let it shine is a production of the Life Way Podcast, executive produced by me, Angie Elkins, produced by Nikki Ogden. It's recorded at the Life Way Podcast Studios and engineered by Donnie Gordon, edited by Robert Elkins. An original theme song arranged by Robert Elkins, the Maestro himself, performed by Tiffany Casey, Abby Pierce, Ryan Walker, Jarian Felton, and Shawna Felton, art by Grace Morgan. And I'm your host, Angie Elkins, meet me back here next week. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]