Impossible Beauty

Jo Saxton is an author, speaker, International Justice Mission Ambassador, podcast host, leadership coach, and a fellow Minnesotan. Jo invests in women leaders in a number of ways, including an initiative called the Ezer Collective, an event held to invest in and catalyze attendees’ leadership. Jo is especially passionate about helping women realize and live into their God-given identity.

In today’s conversation, Jo talks about her own struggles with beauty growing up and the impact of not seeing women that looked like her in media. She also names that the influence of beauty culture is a gentle seduction in the world and in the church. Jo also reminds and challenges us in the church to offer a counter cultural narrative for beauty, turning away from the objectification of women. And with powerful conviction, Jo inspires us to engage our true identity and purpose, as that is what produces true beauty in the world.

What if the truest thing about us is that we are loved beyond what we can imagine? In her work and in our time today, that is the reality Elizabeth Peterson invites us into. Elizabeth Peterson is a certified spiritual director and yoga instructor, with fifteen years of experience working in retreat ministry. Elizabeth seeks to create safe and sacred spaces for individuals and groups to reflect on their own lives, become more aware of God’s presence, and live from their truest identity as Beloved.

In today’s conversation, Elizabeth explains how engaging God through yoga helped get her through a very difficult season, why she engages spiritual direction and yoga in her work and how they complement each other, and she highlights the importance of connecting with our bodies in our spirituality and overall wellbeing. My hope is that this conversation and Elizabeth’s insights might open us all up more fully to endless love, the foundation on which our soul stands.

Dr. Dale Gentry wants you to know that faith and science are not enemies. More specifically, he believes you can be a Christian and deeply care for creation and connect with God in the study and experience of the natural world. Dr. Dale Gentry is the Conservation Manager at Audubon Minnesota and the founder and director of Disciple Science, a podcast and video series helping people connect with God through creation. He has a M.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Atmosphere, Environment and Water Resources and teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Northwestern in Saint Paul, MN.

In today’s episode, Dr. Gentry details his own story of wading through deep questioning on his way to reconciling faith and science and, as a result, developed a passion for helping others do the same. He also talks about why he’s so passionate about birds and why we should care about them as well, how to connect with God through creation, and the role imagination plays in our interactions with nature. This episode opened me up to the wonder of the natural world. My hope is that you might join me in seeing that life is everywhere, and so are the fingerprints of the author of life.

On today’s episode, Pastor Mike Kelsey speaks to two distinctives of the true beauty reality that God invites us into, a life of joy and justice. Mike Kelsey is a Campus Pastor, and a member of the Teaching Team at the McLean Bible Church near Washington D.C. Mike is a third-generation pastor in the D.C. area.

In our time together, Mike explains how witnessing true joy changed the trajectory of his life, the challenges and gifts of leading a multi-ethnic congregation, how justice is central to God’s vision for humanity, and why he believes women’s struggle with beauty is a significant pastoral and discipleship issue in the church. Today’s episode is so powerful, in that it helps us start to see just how expansive true beauty is. A reality that blows cultural beauty out of the water. Mike also gives us deep encouragement, reminding us that we are conduits of God’s beauty, invited to contribute to the world in ways that reflect the nature and character of God.

In today’s episode, I talk with physical therapist, Lisa DeKam. Lisa has worked as a physical therapist for twenty years and in an eating disorder treatment setting for 12 years. As Lisa describes it, she loves “exploring meaningful movement, embodiment, and the incredible ways that our bodies work.” Lisa also co-founded the Axia Project, alongside Jacquie Danz, which we talk all about back in episode 73.

In this conversation, Lisa helps us see the joy and helpfulness of moving our bodies, beyond the common scripts of diet culture. She also highlights unhelpful messages she sees at work in our culture, indicators of a dysfunctional or unhelpful relationship with exercise, and how we can be intentional about directing our relationship with moving our bodies toward balance and wellbeing.

Megan Hadley is a registered dietitian nutritionist with her Masters in Nutrition. She is also the owner and founder of Simple Nutrition, where she and two other clinicians provide in-person or virtual, one on one, nutrition therapy and coaching using Health At Every Size® and Intuitive Eating informed practices. Megan is passionate about helping clients find freedom in eating and acceptance of their bodies so that they can turn more attention towards living.

In today’s conversation, we talk about Megan’s new webinar, “How To Raise Kids Who Have A Healthy Relationship with Food and Their Body.” We also discuss what diet and wellness culture are and how they might be getting in the way of our relationship with food or our bodies. Megan also gives us some indicators to help us determine if we could benefit from more support in either of these relationships. When it comes to cultural messages about food and our bodies, we are swimming in tainted waters. In her work and in our conversation, Megan helps us shed these unhelpful beliefs and behaviors, so we might live more freely and fully.

In today’s episode, Pastor Scott Sauls helps us conceive of beauty in such a refreshing, counter-cultural way. Author and pastor, Scott Sauls, currently serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Previously, Scott was a lead and preaching pastor for Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, where he worked alongside Dr. Timothy Keller. He has also planted and pastored churches in Kansas City and St. Louis.

In his new book, Beautiful People Don't Just Happen: How God Redeems Regret, Hurt, and Fear in the Making of Better Humans, Scott helps us see how true beauty is forged and formed within us over years. In our conversation today, Scott tells us all about his book, how his own experiences of depression, anxiety, and struggle have shaped his views on beauty, and how his experience of God’s goodness has deepened amid his trials. This conversation also so beautifully illustrates that, as Paul David Tripp puts it, “…because of God’s grace, hurt and fear don’t win-beauty wins.”

I am thrilled to have therapist, New York Times bestselling author, and the president and founder of Wild at Heart Ministries, John Eldredge, on the show today. It was John who first helped me see the Bible, or the story of God, not as dry history, but as a dynamic and unfolding adventure that we are invited into. John continues to be a voice of encouragement and inspiration, reminding me and so many others, that the life of our hearts deeply matters, that God tirelessly pursues us, and is deeply in love with humanity.

In today’s show, John shares all about his new book, Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times. In light of the pandemic, polarization in our country and around the world, the onslaught of technology, and so much else, John notes the prevalence of struggle and burnout he is seeing. He discusses trends he’s noticing in the wake of the pandemic, provides specific tools to restore our souls, and describes how, as he puts it, beauty heals. I have been waiting to talk with John Eldredge about beauty for some time now. After listening to today’s episode, I think you’ll understand why.

Nicole Baumann is a sophomore and the Chief of Staff of Student Government at the University of Notre Dame. This past February, Nicole shared an original poem she wrote on social media, entitled “May Our Daughters Break the Curse.” In powerful words and images, Nicole addresses the prevalence and dangers of the normalization of disordered eating.

In her poem and in our conversation, she discusses how disordered eating thrives on the widespread acceptance of the notion that a woman’s worth is intrinsically tied up in her size. She also discusses the surprising response to her poem, shares about her own experience of disordered eating, and identifies some of the major influences she sees impacting Gen Z, when it comes to struggles with food and body image. This is such an important conversation, naming the dangers of normalizing disordered eating. My hope is that conversations like this one might wake us all up to this cultural trend, so we can “break the curse,” as Nicole puts it, for the next generation.

Amy Julia Becker is an award-winning writer and speaker on personal, spiritual, and social healing. She has authored four books and her writing has appeared in outlets such as USA Today, Christianity Today, and Washington Post. Amy Julia’s most recent book is To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope. Becker is a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv). She also holds a bi-vocational license with the Evangelical Covenant Church. Amy Julia hosts the Love Is Stronger Than Fear podcast and lives with her husband and their three children in western Connecticut.

Today, Amy Julia challenges us to look at healing, wholeness, and health in a new way; a way that helps us see ourselves as multidimensional, interrelated beings. She talks about what operating in the world of disability has taught her about beauty, invites us to see others and ourselves through the lens of belovedness, and shows us how being a specimen of physical flawlessness is not the highest form of health and wholeness. Instead, Amy Julia invites us to disconnect from distractions so we can tune into the inner voice of Love. It’s from that place of belovedness, we can participate in the larger healing work of Love in the world.