Living a Relational Life

What Is Deconstruction?

Deconstruction is the method of taking what you’ve learned, pulling it apart, asking yourself and God what’s real, then reconstructing a new structure from which to conduct your relationships.

It’s the process of figuring out who you are, where you stand, what’s important to you, why it’s important, and owning that truth without offering apologies.

Richard Rohr says this about deconstruction: “In general, deconstructionist attitudes are only helpful for initial clarity and focus. Of themselves, they provide no positive or creative foundation upon which to build for the long term,” and “Truth is never actualized until it becomes my truth—suffered, owned, and internalized.”

Deconstruction and the Evangelical Church

When you grow up in the Evangelical Christian church, you’re not told or shown what faith is, but rather what it isn’t. It isn’t being sexually impure, it isn’t being a Democrat or Liberal, it isn’t dancing…I’m sure each of us has an example to pull from.

Deconstruction is all about asking questions. Is Jesus real? Is the Bible true? Do I feel the Bible is true for me, or is that just what I was told? Can I do my research? Does God care about my pain? Does God still love me if I’m gay? Will God still heal me if I'm not a virgin anymore? 

Some of the questions I always wanted to ask was: “If Jesus is the Man we follow, and we’re supposed to act like Him, treat others the way He would, why do we make His love look a specific way? Especially when that specific way does a better job alienating people than it does beckoning them in?”

Using Deconstruction to Heal Trauma

With age came life experience. Suddenly the faith we built up, and the dependence on the church as our representative, our guard, is shattered because on top of an already painful situation, we’re made to believe that our circumstances were earned.

In the name of upholding the perfect image of Jesus, the church has made it clear that deconstruction is something to fear rather than something to embrace.

Reconstruction and Compassion 

As I sat down to record this episode, I wanted to make something clear. Deconstruction is valuable, but reconstruction is what we’re chasing.

Every single person is on some part of the structure, deconstruction, reconstruction journey. Richard Rohr calls these stages Order, Disorder, and Reorder. But the key component in all of this is compassion.

To deconstruct is a fearful endeavor. To take your faith, your religion, your childhood—things you hold in your heart as sacred and largely untouchable—and start figuring out if it’s true is scary.

We must have compassion for ourselves and others, regardless of the mile marker at which they find themselves.

Of the reconstruction leg of the journey, Richard Rohr says this: “Remember, the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better,” and “We go through the deconstructive stage without the reconstructive gift of vision and hope.”

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There are parts of my story I’m not proud of. These parts held me back and kept me from stepping into my purpose and living a healed and wholehearted life. But as soon as I embarked on the journey toward owning my story and took my first step, I knew it would be worth it regardless of level of difficulty. Do you want this too? Let me lead you on this journey of OWNING YOUR STORY! Download your FREE 5 Steps to Own Your Story TODAY!

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Helpful Links:

“The Wisdom Pattern” by Richard Rohr

“A Contemplative Look at the Bible” podcast episode by The Bible for Normal People

 

*Note of empowerment: If you enjoyed this episode, a full-length blog article extending this topic (and many more) will b...

The Messy Middle Between Politics and Religion

You and I are tackling politics and religion and the messy middle—the gray area—that exists in between. There is an obvious overlap of the two separate camps, and we need to find the middle ground.

While there is a clear middle, the two should never be so merged with the other that they become too difficult to separate again. This fusion is what has characterized these topics, and it’s to separate them to restore the middle.

In this episode, I’m going to make my argument that there is too much of a convoluted view of politics and religion and how the majority of Christians right now, in my humble opinion, are failing in serving as examples of who Jesus is.

COVID has been an opportunity to serve the world around us through an example of peace, compassion, and kindness, but so many have gone the exact opposite direction, choosing to neglect loving their neighbor in favor of fighting for their comfort zones.

You and I have the ability to move toward the messy middle between politics and religion. We can workto always be aware of the middle that already exists and practice compassion and peace toward those who feel differently.

It’s hard to hold space in the middle, it’s challenging to allow what makes you uncomfortable exist in your world. Yet it’s all part of this journey of self-awareness.

Join me for this episode and remember to always be kind on this journey!

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Resource:

There are parts of my story I’m not proud of. These parts held me back and kept me from stepping into my purpose and living a healed and wholehearted life. But as soon as I embarked on the journey toward owning my story and took my first step, I knew it would be worth it regardless of level of difficulty. Do you want this too? Let me lead you on this journey of OWNING YOUR STORY! Download your FREE 5 Steps to Own Your Story TODAY!

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Helpful links:

“Jesus Christ, Superspreader?”

“Sean Feucht protest worries Los Angeles homeless advocates”

“Well, Sean Feucht Is Now Selling ‘Jesus Christ: Super Spreader’ T-Shirts, Apparently”

“The Wisdom Pattern” (highly recommend this book if you grew up in the Church and have questions about whether conservative political views are truly in line with the Bible or not)

Therapy Is Like a Deep Tissue Massage for Your Emotions

What is therapy like? Like a deep tissue massage for your emotions. In other words, it’s helpful, but painful. The constant working of the muscles is meant to stimulate blood flow, help recovery time, keep muscles elastic, and prevent pain in the future.

Therapy does the same thing for your emotions.

Today on the Living a Relational Life podcast, I am changing things up a bit! Take an emotional deep dive with me into the reality of therapy! This episode will begin a new series called “My Therapist Says”…and I’m excited! And nervous!

Taken from snippets of conversations I have with my therapist, and drawn from actual questions she asks me, I will take you through the helpful and the painful parts of therapy. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned with a mind to normalize this and empower you on your own healing journey. Should you choose to sign yourself up for this deep tissue work, it will be uncomfortable and painful at times, but it will also help you grow and become the whole person you’re meant to be!

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There are parts of my story I’m not proud of. These parts held me back and kept me from stepping into my purpose and living a healed and wholehearted life. But as soon as I embarked on the journey toward owning my story and took my first step, I knew it would be worth it regardless of level of difficulty. Do you want this too? Let me lead you on this journey of OWNING YOUR STORY! Download your FREE 5 Steps to Own Your Story TODAY!

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Helpful links:

“10 Myths Keeping Christians from the Counseling They Need”

“Therapy & Theology: Why Therapy & Theology”

“Should I start therapy? 10 signs you could benefit from working with a therapist or counselor”

“5 Signs It's Time to Seek Therapy—Most people can benefit from therapy at some point in their lives”

We're Different. Now What?

So you think you’re too different to be in a successful relationship with someone you love? Well, you’re not the first! The Enneagram helps with this.

Today on the Living a Relational Life podcast, it is the second installment of the 2-part Enneagram episode I recorded with a special guest—my older and very-different-from-me sister.

In last week’s episode, we disclosed our journey with the Enneagram. We shared about how we heard of it, disclosed our numbers, and just barely started scratching the surface of our differences. Enneagram 8s and 2s have few similarities. They approach life in opposite manners. More often than not, our differences have challenged us rather than gave us a warm, fuzzy feeling—as you get when you feel seen and known by someone in spite of massive differences, right?

In this second installment, we delve deeper into our differences. Specifically, we wanted to take you on the journey we ourselves went on. In the beginning, our differences were dividing lines. Now, they are points of respect and appreciation. And we throw in a few funny stories along the way!

Enjoy!

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There are parts of my story I’m not proud of. These parts held me back and kept me from stepping into my purpose and living a healed and wholehearted life. But as soon as I embarked on the journey toward owning my story and took my first step, I knew it would be worth it regardless of difficulty. Do you want this too? Let me lead you on this journey of OWNING YOUR STORY! Download your FREE 5 Steps to Own Your Story TODAY!

~~~~~

Helpful links:

Enneagram Institute <- Read about the nine types! Discover yours!

“The Road Back to You” <- Great introductory book about the Enneagram from Ian Morgan Cron, an Enneagram expert! Highly recommend.

“The Path Between Us” <- The Enneagram and relationships. Learn how to apply this tool in your relationships and find out how your number instinctually interacts with the other types. Enough said!

The Enneagram and Relationships

What role should the Enneagram play in your relationships? What do you do when you realize you’re just not the same as someone you love? When your differences become so looming and large and the similarities aren’t there to bridge the gap?

Today on the Living a Relational Life podcast, I sat down with my opposite—my sister—and had an honest conversation about our relationship. And we explored our relationship through the lens of the Enneagram and our individual numbers.

Hint: Our numbers are NOT the same!

In this first part of a two-part series on the Enneagram—what it is and why you should use it in your relationships—my sister and I give you our experiences with this tool and how it has reinforced our connection in spite of being so different. We tell you how we discovered it, how it’s helped us, and only served to strengthen our relationship.

Enjoy!

~~~~~

There are parts of my story I’m not proud of. These parts held me back and kept me from stepping into my purpose and living a healed and wholehearted life. But as soon as I embarked on the journey toward owning my story and took my first step, I knew it would be worth it regardless of level of difficulty. Do you want this too? Let me lead you on this journey of OWNING YOUR STORY! Download your FREE 5 Steps to Own Your Story TODAY!

~~~~~

Helpful Links

Enneagram Institute <-- Read about the nine types! Discover yours!

“The Road Back to You” <-- Great introductory book about the Enneagram from Ian Morgan Cron, an Enneagram expert! Highly recommend.

“The Path Between Us” <-- The Enneagram and relationships. Learn how to apply this tool in your relationships and find out how your number instinctually interacts with the other types. Enough said!

NOTE: I recorded an entire podcast episode on this topic. In it, I dove a lot deeper into the reality of pain and what I’ve been evaluating. This is the first episode I’ve published since taking an unintentional and unrelated break from recording, and while I’m hesitant and scared to talk about this, I’m also proud of the words I honestly and vulnerably am putting out into the world. If you want to hear my thoughts, listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or right here on this post.

Racial inequality is not a skin-deep issue.

It is simply the overarching umbrella we are standing under right now as humans as we attempt to find ways to talk about pain, identity, abuse, generations of dysfunction, and the far-reaching impact of it all.

The time is now for healing racial pain.

The Unfortunate Tipping Point

In early June, George Floyd was killed. For him, that day probably began as every other before it. No reason to suspect his life would end. Certainly, no reason to believe his death would cause the amount of movement it has.

His death was just like all the others. At least, that’s what I took it as. I believe that’s how most of America took it. Just another black person dying as the victim of police brutality or really any senseless act.

But that sentence, the one you just read, does in fact make the responses, reactions and collective outcry worth it—not only in the United States, but around the world.

However, I don’t think there’s another country where the response and the resultant conversations and discomfort are more needed than right here.

For centuries, one people group was the target of every form of hate. Taking on many forms throughout the 1700s and 1800s and creating new forms of hate at the turn of the 20th century, racism against black Americans went unnoticed for far too long.

The entire country reached its unfortunate tipping point when one man’s death suddenly made a difference.

There Is No Language

When it all happened, I didn’t know what to think or say or do.

One thing I can say with honesty is that I didn’t feel angry. I know a lot of people did for whatever reason they had, but I remember just feeling profoundly sad. As stories started being told and everyone’s ears tuned to listen, fully, for the first time, I couldn’t muster anything else but sadness.

Sadness for the lives senselessly taken and the pain never processed, grieved or healed.

Grief for the families who have buried loved ones.

Sadness for the way an entire people group has come to be only a small part of the huge tapestry of this country, even though they’ve contributed just as much as anyone else.

All because no one knew how to talk about race.

The Civil War ended in 1865. Slavery was abolished the same year. Yet people groups are still divided in huge ways. Still…after 150 years.

There was no time allotted for healing racial pain. Too many years. So much pain. What’s worse, there’s been no collective grieving, processing, acknowledging of the pain, or healing.

It’s Time to Empathize

On a personal level, most people know that pain must be processed. Emotional pain threatens the fabric of our identities, and when it goes so long without being checked—or worse, without us really knowing about it—the damage becomes extensive.

I was tempted to say the damage becomes “hard to come back from,” but I don’t think pain is something we come back from. Period. I think it’s something we get through, learn from and use to find greater purpose in life.

Pain is the primary visible thread in this whole movement right now. An entire people group was failed, not even by their own doing.

It stands to reason that self-awareness is the beginning of the relationship you form with yourself. Whether or not your relationships with others are healthy will correlate with how well you know yourself. You must become self-aware.

It’s a Journey of Growth…

Knowing yourself…it’s exactly as it sounds. Think of someone you love, someone you spend a good amount of time with, someone you know and who knows you. Your relationship with them has gone from stranger to essential because you got to know one another.

You asked questions, you shared meals, you opened your homes and hearts. At some point, you began to understand one another’s behaviors and beliefs, how they differ from your own. If it’s a close friendship or a dating relationship, you may have even argued with them, encountered some conflict.

Bottom line: your relationship progressed because you discovered the other person. You uncovered who they are.

The same process takes place within yourself, in your own relationship with you, and the popular word to use for this relationship is self-awareness. The good news is, you can become self-aware.

For You…

If you want solid relationships with others, you have to form a solid relationship with you. Thus begins your self-awareness journey. You can’t have solid relationships with others and know them well if you don’t know yourself well, too.

I say “too” because a relationship with yourself (self-awareness) can happen in tandem with other relationships. It’s not necessarily a pre-requisite; more like one of those duel classes you had to take during the same semester in college. It’s possible to have growing and flourishing relationships with others while still walking your journey as an individual.

I feel the need to pull back right here for just a second and say this: Be warned.

The simple fact is self-awareness is a lifelong pursuit. Once you decide to embark, you can choose to stop or keep going; you set the pace; you figure your way through growth. Or you stagnate and stay the same.

Any relationship worth having requires persistent work. It’s not always easy to sit alone with yourself to learn how to understand your own emotions, gain perspective on your own struggles. No one likes to be left alone with their thoughts when those thoughts are powerful and dark, painful. But leaning into those strong emotions, being honest with yourself about how you feel, actively working to not justify your own emotions and behaviors…all exercise the same relationship muscles you will flex in connection with other people.

Regardless of whether you want to keep pursuing self-awareness and continue growing in understanding of your personality and individuality or not, your relationships with other people will be directly impacted by how self-aware you are. You decide if your relationships will grow healthier along with you as you become self-aware, or face the same recurring problems and cycles.

For Them…

Right now, you and I live in a time where self-awareness is almost a sport. To become self-aware and grow as individuals, then taking care of our emotions and mental states are worthy pursuits. They’re regular conversation topics among Millennials and Gen Z because so many want to understand themselves. They pursue knowledge of self because they believe deep down if they understand who they are, they’ll know where they stand in the world.

Self-awareness has become the key to our own happiness, especially in our relationships, and only we hold it.

Like I mentioned above, it takes time and energy and effort to get to know yourself.

The relationship you thought about in the beginning of this post…think about it again.

How many times did you feel like it wouldn’t be worth it in the end (not believed it,

Do you desire to be supported or approved of? Have you ever found yourself yearning for support and got approval instead?

In your relationships, is support or approval more prevalent? If you want support but don’t have it, how can you move toward it?

Sometimes a desire for support is so real it’s a feeling. Or really, the lack of support is more a feeling than support itself. You know what it is when you don’t have it.

Support is what should be a normal exchange in a relationship.

But it has a less healthy counterpart, and the counterpart does a good job of looking a lot like it.

The counterpart is approval.

The Fine Line Between Support and Approval

Approval is the shadow of support. Support is what you want in your relationships—it’s what everyone wants from their inner circle of people—but approval can often be what you get instead.

Because they look so much alike, I started wondering one day what the differences are between support and approval. I saw the two as existing with a fine line between them and I wanted to understand why.

So, I started asking myself questions. I needed to understand the relationship between support and approval, how the two are different, how to tell them apart and how to shift my relationships toward support and away from approval.

Because relationships require consistent effort and discernment, a willingness to learn and a whole ton of other things, it’s important to ponder the characteristics we see in our connections with others. Not every relationship will be healthy. Not every connection will last forever. Some are meant to end long before we have the strength to move forward.

All of this, in my opinion, means everyone has to be willing to evaluate and change course if need be.

What Support Feels Like

As I thought and pondered the differences between support and approval, I wanted to describe what they both feel like when you have them, and consequently when they’re lacking. Both support and approval have profound effects on our relationships. This is because both effect our emotions in big ways.

We can’t neglect the power we hold in our approval and our support.

Support feels like three things: safety, security and peace.

All three of these characteristics I find hard to describe to those who have never gone without, and also for those who never experienced them (whilst deeply desiring them). However, in my experience, I find that you know you possess these characteristics in your relationships because you can feel them—even if you can’t describe them.

To have safety is to have the knowledge that everything about you is safe with another person. There is no judgment passed. No ridicule rendered. And no unguided words dropped on your heart to cause long-term damage.

Security is the equivalent of maintaining the belief that there is nothing you or the other person could do to upend your relationship. The ground you both stand on is steady. It’s rock solid. When it’s solid, there’s a sense that the relationship will stay intact even as both of you grow and change, and when disagreements happen, and when emotions are all over the place. There’s a contract of duty signed by both of you to keep one another secure.

Which leads to peace. Or rest. You only know what peace feels like if you know what it doesn’t feel like. Peace is something not fabricated. It’s real. It’s as if the striving is done. You’re no longer working double time to gain the approval that you know will never come.

What Approval Feels Like

If support feels safe, secure and peaceful, then what is everyone feeling the majority of the time? What physical feelings and emotions does approval evoke?

In my own experience,

You have the opportunity in front of you to create a new normal after so much normal was ripped away not long ago.

I believe and think humans long for safety and security. When something big and catastrophic happens, it causes trauma, and the only thing you and I want is to feel normal again.

Quarantine and coronavirus are merely the lens through which I am going to examine the concept of a new normal, why they are important and why it’s vital to establish them.

Normal Falls Away

Normal is subjective. Surely it is defined differently depending on the person describing it. However, normal is something you and I rely on. It gives us peace. There’s a certain comfort in the predictability in knowing the sun will rise in the morning, we’ll go to work or school, come home, work out, eat, then go to sleep to wake up and do it again.

Maybe it sounds monotonous; it kind of is. But it’s also normal.

This was the routine almost everyone in the world followed up until a couple months ago. Without doubt, there were varying degrees of what normal was like for everyone.

Normal moves from subjective to concrete when things shift so rapidly, and we can’t keep up. Our normal helps stabilize us and keep us sane.

To be clear, though, this experience of having something normal and sacred stripped away isn’t unique to the coronavirus pandemic. It happens in all areas of life, especially in our relationships. And when those life-stopping, normal-interrupting moments happen, we will always come to a point on the journey where we realize the next stage will be difficult.

Because we have to rebuild. We have to create a new normal. The normal that was lost won’t work anymore. It didn’t adapt and it had to be done away with. What was once a point of comfort—the normal you and I created for ourselves prior to trauma or change—doesn’t exist with the same reverence and power it once did.

The Shift

As normal is so important to have, it becomes a mission to establish it as soon as possible after a huge shift.

When quarantine started for California a couple months ago, and likewise for the whole country—and the whole world even earlier—we willingly complied because the knowledge was there in everyone’s thoughts:

This wasn’t going to last forever.

However, people were struggling. You and I were struggling. What was once our normal routine and everyday life had turned into uncertain sand beneath our feet. I distinctly remember thinking at one point only one week in: There’s no way things will go back to normal after this. The trauma was too severe, the change was too steep, the result was too shocking. Nothing would be the same.

The natural human inclination is to make it through these moments as quick as possible. No one wants to be uncomfortable and uncertain for longer than they need to be, so we work to establish a new routine and a new normal. Fast.

However, in quarantine, the new normal would have to be temporary. And you and I adapted. We created a semblance of normal for ourselves so we could dedicate as much energy as we could to surviving, keeping sanity intact, processing grief and panic and sadness.

Then another shift. I woke up one day feeling sad. At this point, quarantine was seven weeks deep and my emotions and body had adapted quite well. You could even say I was happy in my own little cocoon at home, working from the comfort of my room and spending every second with my dog by my side.

The Rebirth

In addition to having the privilege of working from home and having my dog keeping me company, I was keeping my emotions and reactions and processing in check. I needed to be able to give myself grace in how I was handling this sudden and grievous change. And seven weeks in,

How 1 Paragraph Changed Everything

I read a story once when I was 20 years old. It became an example of just how important community and friendships should be, and it left an indelible mark on my heart. Though I couldn’t have begun to understand the root that had dug itself into my heart that day.

Well, let’s rewind. It was more a paragraph than a story.

While doing a prayer walk in Tokyo, Japan, I read through prayer requests from the missionaries in country. For the amount of Japanese people, there was an astoundingly small number of missionaries. There was at least one in each prefecture, or province, though.

Separated From Community

One prayer request stood out from the rest. In one prefecture where thousands resided, only one missionary lived among them. A young woman. She was the only believer in the entire prefecture. None with whom she was faithfully building relationships had accepted Christ yet. There weren’t any other missionaries either.

Her prayer request confided her loneliness. Though she loved the people she was serving, there was a deep longing for her faith family—her community. Everyone was geographically far from her, and most days were hard. At the end of the day, she had no one there with her to talk about the day, to drop everything to pray with, to laugh with.

My team and I finished our prayer walk after a couple of hours then made our way back to our hostel. When we debriefed at the end of the day, we talked about that one missionary. Our emotions were close to the surface, but as we talked about her, we reread her prayer request.

The second time reading it revealed a spirit of strength. She understood the gravity of her situation and wanted it to change, but she believed her community—though far geographically—could and would make the difference for her. She knew that God would meet her needs with the community He already established, even though she was technically alone in that prefecture.

Community Makes the Difference

I remember thinking about my family and my friends during debrief. I thought of what it would feel like if I were to go to the foreign mission field—which was my dream—to serve alone and be physically cut off from the people I relied on.

The first thing my heart latched onto was pity. I pitied that missionary. She had to serve alone, and she was choosing to stay rather than go home.

It disappoints me to say this, but I didn’t see her courage.

Regardless, this one paragraph was going to send me on a journey, and I didn’t even notice I had taken my first step down the path until after it happened. But the journey has gotten me to where I am right now:

Doing life with my community and pursuing connection will make the difference every time.

One paragraph…one…convinced me.

This wasn’t an easy lesson. It cemented itself in a season when I had pushed my community away. It was pure justification on their part to leave me behind. The number of people in my community had dwindled, and I wanted that number to rise again.

Cultivating Friendships, Deepening Community

Which brings me to the person I want to talk about: My best friend. Her name is Harley. We’ve known each other since we were kids in Sunday school, but we didn’t become friends until our teen years. I was 16 the first time I hung out with Harley outside of church. Our friendship took off after my extreme introversion was challenged…because she spent the night at my house.

I didn’t have many friends up until this point. I recall having at least one around the time I was 13, and then I was a loner for the most part.

Relationally speaking, I wish I could tell you I understood friendship and community and relationships back then. I don’t think I did.