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Question #4 What’s gone wrong? | Ep. 63
Don’t miss this one – what is the definition of Sin? What’s happening to our culture? Eternal life is NOT a gift from God, it’s the GIFT OF GOD!
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Message
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The Gift of Cancer
A Hope for the Helpers Blog
By Kep Crabb
On September 8th, 2020, our lives were changed when my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She was given a 20% chance of surviving beyond 5 years, since many of the new treatments had no long-term data to impact those statistics.
Talk about shattered dreams! I didn’t realize, at that time, how much our lives would change from that point on. I remember getting the news from our surgeon while sitting in the waiting room. I knew something wasn’t right since I got that call 45 minutes after the surgery began. The surgeon said that her tumor has metastasized to the lining of the lung, which now makes it stage 4. After many tears and some hard conversations with God, I realized He allowed this for a reason. My mind went to Psalm 100:5 “The LORD is good! There is no end to His faithful love. We can trust Him forever and ever.” What does it mean when we hear that God is always doing us good – no matter what is happening?
It’s been almost 4 years now since that day in the hospital when our lives were turned upside down. My wife has been on the brink of death at least twice since then and as of late the scans look good.
What happened to us during these past 4 years has been simply supernatural. Please don’t hear me downplaying the very real challenges of dealing with this horrific disease by the title I gave this post. This experience has been hard, and I have seen what my wife has been through as she has battled and endured very real hardships during this experience. BUT it has brought us together as we have grown in our faith and love for Christ and our love for each other.
The Bible talks about the narrow road (which is hard) that leads to LIFE! Up to this point in my life things have been easy, except for my own immature choices. The diagnosis of cancer has put everything into a new perspective for us. I realize how short our time is here. And putting Jesus on display to those around us makes all the difference as we relate. Cancer has been a gift for us (not easy), but a gift that has deepened our faith and our love for each other and for Him. The BEST is YET TO COME!!!
Blog
Everyday Losses
A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Jeanie Stirling
Both Rachael and I have experienced the recent anniversary dates of the deaths of Larry and Al. I think most people expect that it is the big anniversary dates that are the hardest for a grieving person to handle. But, I suggest that it’s not those big days, it’s all the little everyday moments that continue to creep up on us and knock us off our feet that remain difficult to handle.
One of mine is breakfast. We always ate breakfast together, talked about what was ahead of us for the day, prayed together. Unless I set up a breakfast date with someone, I eat alone now. Another one is driving home from someplace, any place and knowing that when I pull into the garage, there isn’t anyone there waiting for me. There isn’t anyone to share with about where I’ve been or what I’ve done.There’s no one to process with about what happened, to access wisdom or a different viewpoint or just join in the joy of a special time. Being in a department store and passing the men’s department will bring fleeting thoughts that I don’t need to stop off there anymore. But with that comes accompanying sadness that I can’t pick out something for him or look for a replacement for that sweater he wore all the time.
I think it’s this ebb and flow of grief that is unexpected. Grief is rarely predictable or linear as those who list the “stages” of grief purport. It’s not a sadness to push through and arrive on the other side. Knowing that it does continually ebb and flow is both good and bad. It’s good to know that it will become less intense with time and less frequent, but it’s difficult to realize that it will continue to arrive, often without warning, so you won’t feel completely untouched by it for the rest of your life. It simply becomes part of who you are. You and your world are forever changed. Molly Matlock wrote:
I am only just now understanding.
The difference between your death and your absence. Your death was a singular event.
But your absence will go on forever.”
So for those of you who are grieving, be gentle with yourself. Give yourself time and space. And for those of you walking alongside someone who is grieving, be patient. Your grieving friend is most definitely feeling cut off from the life they once knew. They are trying hard to adapt to a new reality. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to navigate this new life without
the very person who would have normally been there to help. The many secondary losses of friendships, identity, companionship, plans, finances, intimacy, health . . . can feel overwhelming. You don’t have to try to fix it. You don’t have to say a lot or do a lot. Tell them you care and then invite them to do something with you. If they say no, that’s okay. Don’t take it personally. But do ask them again later.
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Question 3 – WHO ARE WE – Saint and…
Listen to Kent Denlinger tackle “Who WE are”?
Blog
Losing My Daddy, Being Held by My Abba
A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Patti Smith
This month’s contributor to Becoming Me, Without You is Patti Smith. We’ve had widows, widowers, mothers, and now a child to share a grief experience. Each contributor has had similar, yet different processings of “Becoming Me” without a loved one. But I think I’m accurate in saying for all the contributors: Grief is the price of love.
Patti came into my life in a most unexpected but very pleasant way: Sonya, Diana, and I were working on writing Listen In when Patti, who had attended a School of Spiritual Direction, emailed and said that she was prompted to write and offer her editorial skills for anything we needed. We moved from that offer to the acknowledgments for Listen In, where we wrote, “Patti Smith, editor. It’s been a many-year journey! Thank you for really taking us across the finish line.”
Patti is a wife, mother, grandmother, a licensed professional counselor with a private practice in Athens, GA, and my very good friend. (The last three listed since editing Listen In.) I knew how extremely close Patti was with her daddy and asked her to tell me when she was ready to write about her grief experience and give a title. She said, “Now” for two reasons: her daddy’s 1st birthday with Jesus and the 3rd anniversary of Larry’s homegoing (two very influential men in her life).
Becoming Me, Without Larry,
Rachael Crabb
Seven months ago, a flag-draped coffin was lowered into the ground, taking the body of my Daddy, who had always been my earthly protector. As taps played, I said a silent goodbye to my anchor. My heart was broken into so many pieces that I doubted I would ever truly feel fully alive again.
But for Abba, I will not.
Daddy died on July 22, 2023 after battling a rare bone marrow disorder. He was 91. During the last months of his life, I spent as much time as I could with him and Mom. We talked, laughed, and reminisced. I did projects around the house that he could no longer do. We binge watched old westerns, which I still cannot watch. At one point, tiny cracks in my armored heart appeared. Maybe he wouldn’t beat this. My last conversation with him was on the Wednesday before the Saturday he died. I had planned to go up on Saturday for a normal weekend visit, and said: “I will see you soon.” His reply that day was: “I hope not too soon,” and the cracks in my heart got larger. He knew. I never heard his voice again.
For the first several months after his death, I functioned on autopilot. I did what was needed and expected from me, but many days I could not function, so I didn’t. As a mental health counselor, I am skilled at compartmentalizing, so I was able to meet people in my office, teach classes and help my private practice get off the ground, and say I was “fine” without missing a step and no one the wiser. My authentic self and my duty self were easily separated. Days of feeling truly happy were rare. Exhaustion, the kind you cannot sleep away, was my constant companion. My internal music was gone, and external music tended to make me angry, reminding me of loss.
But Abba….
God provided trusted friends who invited me to go off autopilot, affording healing tears from the core of my heart. Soft healing prayers and scriptures were offered, and “I am fine” was not accepted. One friend has studied scripture with me every day via text for several months, retraining my mind toward spiritual discipline. I knew very early in my grief process that I had to connect deeply with Abba, or I would not survive emotionally or spiritually. I trusted Jesus to be my Savior at the age of 5, but this was going to have to be a whole new level of connection.
But Abba….
God knew I would need more tangible proof of His love. Three months after the funeral, I flew to Washington State to visit my daughter. My husband would follow me several days later, but I deliberately flew out by myself, needing time alone with God and creation. Driving across Washington from Seattle, I drank in God’s love. Viewing majestic pines, rock formations that made me gasp, and a turquoise river that took my breath, God whispered to my broken heart: “I am here; I have you.” Trail rides into the mountains further confirmed, “I love you.” The cracks in my heart began to mend.
My daddy taught me so many things: to walk, ride a bike, jump in waves, and to love Jesus. He was laughter, deep conversations, adventures, crazy ideas, wisdom, advice, my confidant, my anchor. He was someone I could always trust. Toward the end of his journey, he said: “My ending is my new beginning.” I didn’t know how to have a new beginning at his ending, and it is still a painful process.
But for Abba….
I would have despaired unless I had believed I would see the goodness of God in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13-14). When my heart checks out, and my “duty self” must take over, I know I am loved and held by Abba. He promised me in His Word He would be close to the brokenhearted and save me when I am crushed in spirit. There were times that I did not think I would ever feel happy again, ever feel joy or peace again. There are many times even now, seven months later, I don’t.
But I am held by my Abba.
Blog
Hope Made Alive
A Hope for the Helpers Blog
By Rosanne Moore
Hope Made Alive
From the echoing joy and expansive love of the Triune God, man and woman were crafted to reflect together the community of perfect companionship and partnered purpose, swept into the divine dance of mutual giving. Fashioned to incarnate – express in human flesh – His likeness, every experience they’d shared was shot through with the glory of the Maker their lives revealed.
Hope – anticipation of more truth, beauty, justice, and goodness ahead – was the very air they breathed. Why wouldn’t it be so? Perfection and relational connection were the totality of their experience.
Until it all changed.
Deception. Rebellion and betrayal.
Abandonment and rejection. Isolation and dismissal.
Heartache and physical anguish. Violation and cruel brutality.
Incarnation of God’s relational glory was shattered, taunting all of our groaning creation with glimmers of what should have been. Burdening us with what is now beyond the reach of our human efforts.
And here in the rubble we struggle.
- The child we welcomed with joy is lost to us.
- An ever-latent ache instead of warm connection dogs our interactions with a parent or sibling.
- Friendships are fractured by insecurity, competition, and resentment.
- The love story turns to heartache.
- Disease runs rampant where health was once enjoyed.
- War stuns, decimates, uproots life as we had known it.
- Marginalization silences and dismisses.
- Poverty haunts.
The failed dream we’d been so sure we’d achieve, the ideal job that became a nightmare, the violent crime we think only happens to others – suddenly loss and even tragedy hit home. Our home. Or maybe we simply wake up to the darkness of accumulating disappointments that has been encroaching for years, making life small and empty.
In light of the new norm of our lived experiences, hope can seem an elusive and costly thing, a risk not worth taking. A heartbreak waiting to happen. Mere wishful thinking typically dances with denial. Hope misplaced is devastation waiting to unfold.
The Invitation of Hope
Moses spent forty years in the desert, on the run for his own crimes, and the people of Israel lived over 400 years exiled in Egypt and enslaved. That’s a long time for disappointed hope to fester.
In Exodus 3:14, we’re told that God re-introduced Himself to His people as “I AM THAT I AM.” Their lived experience of suffering and Heaven’s apparent silence were about to be replaced with seeing God’s power unleashed and His presence dwell with them, leading them to freedom.
As He gave Moses the parameters in Exodus 34 for what relating to Him would involve, He further explained what being “I AM” meant in relationship:
“The Lord — the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” [Exodus 34:6-7]
God reiterates this self-description multiple times throughout Scripture. [Num. 14:18, Neh. 9:17, Ps. 86:15, Ps. 103:8, Ps. 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2] Clearly, He wants us to correct our distortions about His nature.
- His love for us is tender, compassionate. His heart is moved by our suffering.
- We don’t earn His kindness. His generosity is not based on our efforts.
- He’s not looking for ways to be ticked off by us. He knows both our human limitations and deliberate rebellion. He’s patient both in tending us in our frailty and also in giving us opportunity to face and turn away from the destruction we wield.
- His commitment to us is rooted both in His own faithful character and He knows the truth of who we are. We aren’t tricking Him into loving us – He knows our light and our darkness, the ways we reflect what He intended in our creation and the ways we live in violation of it.
- God generously multiplies forgiveness, affection, and welcome to us and those whose lives we touch. He calls us to take ownership of our choices, for good or evil, realizing our engagement with Him matters.
- The LORD is just. He doesn’t minimize evil or magically erase its consequences. He enters it, redeems it, but He takes it seriously. He recognizes far more clearly than we do the long-range impacts sin has on our lives and on those around us. But neither does He allow those harsh ripple effects to go on unchecked forever. While He exponentially blesses what is good, and patiently offers time and opportunity for repentance, He doesn’t allow it to run rampant. Evil, in us or in others, doesn’t get the final say.
If this is the character of the One on whom we wait, the One who came to live among us – and now within us, then what changes as we face a still-broken world?
The Embodiment of Hope
Hope becomes an invitation to return face to face with the One Community in whom and for whom we were created. God Himself has entered human flesh and taken on our evil and pain. Anchored in the life Jesus shares with us, hope helps fuel a quiet transforming of what was lost and destroyed. [Hebrews 6:13-20]
Instead of being as natural as breathing, now genuine hope has become an intentional practice of courage and faith, a choice to remember and return to Who God is and how He interacts with us. Jesus entered our world as a baby and lived as a man encountering all of the struggles of being human in a world marred by sin. We celebrate His revelation of the love of the Father through His sinless life and death on our behalf, making way for our resurrected life to again display God’s glory.
Hope tells us that because of Jesus coming as one of us and giving us His life, we still have the opportunity to reflect the truth, beauty, justice, and goodness of life shared with God and His people as we relate to the world He’s created, even in the midst of all that is broken and, as yet, still waiting to be renewed.
And this is our calling and our encouragement as we face the unresolved pieces of our own lives. As we wait for justice, for restoration, for safe communities where what we offer is received in peace instead of consumed by fear, we hope for the day when all is made, at last, as it should be.
Blog
New Chapters
A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Jeanie Stirling
Although widowhood is often invisible, it is all around us. Widows are the fastest growing demographic in the United States. 70% of all married women will become widowed, experiencing the physical, mental, emotional, and social impact of such a huge loss. During the time Rachael and I have been producing this blog, we’ve talked about the many ways we and other contributors have been processing loss. It is our hope that the various articles have been informative, helping each of you gain more understanding about the many facets of grief.
Despite the fact that so many (in fact all of us) will experience loss and grief, as people of our culture, we know little about it, find it very uncomfortable to talk about, and are generally hesitant to enter into the grief of another. We, who are in the middle of it, are often met with platitudes, unsolicited advice about how to get over it, or avoidance.
As widows, we often feel very isolated while we grieve the loss of many things – big things and small, everyday things that once included someone else. These unwitnessed moments of grief that no one else thinks about can knock us off our feet. The other day I was listening to some
new music and realized that Al would never hear it or enjoy it with me. Bam! A new wave of grief came over me. Or the book I read that I would have told him all about, but will never have the opportunity to share it with him. Small things you say, but when all piled together with the major aspects of our loss, it can feel overwhelming.
It was several years after Al died before I found Modern Widows Club online. I immediately saw that the topics being discussed were addressing many of the things I was experiencing. As the months went by I continued to be encouraged by what I was reading and felt much less alone, knowing that my experience was actually shared by so many others who were also making their way through the maze of loss and grief. I attended one of their national events in 2022 and felt very seen. Each of us could look with admiration and respect at the other widows in the room knowing what it cost for each of us to be there. Knowing that every one of us was experiencing similar things produced an acceptance that I hadn’t felt before in my widowhood journey. I walked away from that event with hope, purpose, and several very good new friends.
Ashley Nelson has written that: “In grief we are constantly rewriting the story of our lives. The death of your person is having a main character die. The entire story changes, and the ending you planned, the one you believed to have known, is no longer a viable option. Pages of the life you knew were ripped out, and reimagining a new story isn’t easy.” But that’s where friends who have the courage to come close and organizations like Modern Widows Club can help us begin writing the new chapters of our story.
Modern Widows Club is an international, all faiths organization committed to helping widows transform their grief into a positive, purposeful future while embracing their strength and courage to move forward with life. Friends and even family members from those first chapters of our life tend to fall away as the weeks, months, and years of widowhood progress. Having opportunities to make new friends and experience new things is life-giving.
I commented after the national MWC event that others there in the hotel would never have thought to identify us as widows. There was a vibrancy and aliveness to the group, along with the average age being 52, that completely broke down the stereotypical image of a widow. Was it a false vibrancy and aliveness? No. It was there because we could relax in our common experience and realize that there was still much good ahead for us in the still-to-be-written chapters of our lives.
We have called this blog “Becoming Me, Without You.” It is a process. Never linear, as in “checking off the boxes and now we’re done with grief,” but a convoluted route of many ups and downs, ins and outs. We will never be done with it. It becomes part of who we are as we move forward. Both Al and Larry would be proud of who Rachael and I are becoming as we embrace new possibilities. With a little help from our friends, old and new, we can keep moving ahead and hopefully help you become more comfortable with grief.
Modern Widows Club is a valuable resource to share with others.
Blog
It’s a Serious Business
A Hope for the Helpers Blog
By Barry Pearman
It’s the day after Christmas Day as I write this, Boxing Day here in New Zealand. It’s warm, muggy, and later I will either drive to a local beach or jump in the swimming pool.
It’s summer, and the serious business for many is having a holiday.
When I was ten years old, I set up a very serious business. I had a small roadside stall where I would sell plums to holiday makers passing by our farm. It was a serious business. Well, I was serious about it.
Years later, I attended the School of Spiritual Direction at Glen Eyrie Colorado Springs. A time for the serious business of soul care, spiritual direction, and going deep.
Then one evening we went to an ice cream parlour in Colorado Springs for some serious ice cream.
The serious business
“Are you lonesome tonight?” was crooned out, Elvis Presley-style, and Larry invited a young lady to dance. I think Papa, Jesus, and Spirit swept a dance among us all.
It’s a serious business, this church thing. Meetings. agendas, liturgy, and form. Rules, roles, regulations keep the religion righteously routine.
I go to an Anglican place of worship, Episcopalian for those of you in North America.
Sometimes when my vicarious vicar holds up the host (wafer/ bread/body) and breaks it in two, I want either to shout “hallelujah” and run around the church in celebration or fall flat on my face in awe.
I said to my vicar one day, when we were doing some Soul Talk, that ‘Sacred cows make gourmet burgers.’
The serious business of sacred cows.
How many sacred cows are sitting on your longing to dance?
Are you carrying loads that only Jesus was ever meant to carry?
I want to spark joy.
I was with someone the other day. They had a heavy burden overwhelming their beauty.
I felt Spirit dance a few words into my soul to ask her: “Would you like something to drink?”
I offered it, and she declined, which was fine, but I interrupted her religion of consuming thoughts with the offering of a simple gift.
As I write this, Spirit reminds me of Jesus offering living water to a similarly burdened woman. John 4:1-38
Joy
C.S. Lewis tells us that “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
Larry, in Waiting for Heaven, quoted G. K. Chesterton saying that “the secret business of heaven is joy.”
In looking up the quote, I think it comes from this piece of writing.
“We sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear. Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
It’s both a serious and a secret business.
Secret in the sense that we don’t fully understand it and that we’re not there yet. We have whiffs of it now and then, like the scent of a rose wafting over the walls of a hidden garden. We long for it, and we can become addicts to false substitutes.
We become serious in our empire building and cistern digging when – all along – what Spirit wanted us to do was to offer a glass of cool water to a burdened soul. That simple, secret, and serious expression of joy.
I have a burden to give cool water to weary souls. People who want to dance but have been told to do it only in an “I’m in the Lord’s Army” military formation parade-style.
It’s so tiring, anxiety-promoting, and depressing when performance is measured, and we know we will fumble and fail.
The dance instructor says this.
“Dance with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” -Jesus, Matthew 11:29 (The Message)
Quote to consider
- “As G. K. Chesterton once remarked, ‘The secret business of heaven is joy.’ The secret is no longer hidden. Salvation is centered in sharing the joy the Son experiences in His relationship with the Father. That joy, I submit, will powerfully compete with the self-serving and self-managed pleasure that addictions provide. And note this: addictive pleasure blights our experience of divine joy.” Dr. Larry Crabb, Waiting for Heaven, pg 88.
Questions to answer
- What is the “business” you are serious about?
- How does this “serious business” dance with heaven’s “serious business”?
- What would a small act of “serious business joy” look like in a relationship you have?
Formation Exercise
- Play a piece of your favourite music. In the secret and in the seriousness of joy, allow yourself to dance. Be it slow, disco, or “Larry Crabb Elvis-style,” sense Spirit joining in the rhythm.
Barry lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and writes about Mental Health and Spiritual Formation. Learn more about him on his website Turning the Page.
Blog
The (Unexpected) Path to the Heart & Soul of…
A Hope for the Helpers Blog
By Paul & Debbie Pierson
While attending an AACC conference, we heard John Townsend say that many churches have a divorce care ministry and some offer premarital counseling. But according to his observation, there wasn’t anything generally offered to the couples in between those. Then he said it was like sending an ambulance to the bottom of the cliff but never putting a guardrail at the top. After that statement, we looked at each other and decided we wanted to be a guardrail.
As soon as we returned home, we submitted a request to be a 501c3 (nonprofit) that would coach marriages. We had been influenced by Larry Crabb in our own journey for years, so it seemed appropriate to call our ministry “Life on Life.” Since the life we had experienced with Larry proved transformative in our journey, we thought maybe we could impact others with our story. It has been one of regret, reflection, and redemption.
We believed in looking at what God was up to by sharing with others what was happening IN us. We shared our journey with addiction, anger, codependency, and loss of intimacy in our marriage. While we were attending a conference to learn more about how we love, we found class materials for Heart & Soul of a Real Marriage. When we picked up the workbook, we learned immediately it was based on the work of Larry Crabb, written by someone who studied under him. It was everything we were saying when we met with couples. But now we had the “picture” for how to fit together the “pieces of the puzzle”!
We began teaching from this book 10 years ago in a class setting. Initially, we thought we were “teaching” Heart & Soul but came to learn we actually were demonstrating it. Each week we brought our own stories with which the class participants could relate. We spoke honestly and vulnerably about our failure & our revelations. It has been our story that gives others hope that maybe their story can be different.
We had a couple come up to us after class once to tell us that they had already called their lawyer for a divorce. But they felt they didn’t have anything to lose if they tried one more thing for their family (four kids, ages 12 & under), so they signed up. She said, “When you guys told us that the first 20 years of your marriage were crap, we looked at each other and said that maybe we were giving up too soon.” They came to every class for 11 weeks and, by the end, took divorce off the table. They are still together. This is one example of WHY we do what we do to help families.
This work is done in community, not with knowledge alone. By sharing our stories of the ups and downs in our marriage, our vulnerability provides a safe place for others to be honest with their journey, which encourages us as well. It is like Larry always said – my spirit pours into yours, and yours pours into mine. We come away from those conversations enriched and enlightened in more ways than any agenda would satisfy.
When we are weary, we also reach out to our peers, and we share what we feel is pulling us into despair or regret. We admit we do not feel we have what it takes to be in any position to share. We know we need perspective outside ourselves when we feel unworthy. And we have experienced those times through tumultuous times with friends or family. This is when we humble ourselves and ask those we respect who also have had times and training with Larry Crabb to help us by listening to our suffering so they can offer their reflection on what God is up to.
When we think back to when we first started to teach, one of our fondest memories is when one of the couples who has experienced the class asked us if she could bring dinner over every Thursday before we taught. She ministered to us by nourishing our bodies and our souls before we poured out our spirit with the people attending the class.
What has helped us in serving others is the time we spend talking beforehand about what we will focus on for a lesson. Since we have always said we will keep it real, we don’t share the same “stories,” because God is up to new revelations in our lives. We have had the privilege of rowing right along with those we are meeting or teaching. We realize over and over we won’t arrive in this life.
Some couples want ways to manage one another rather than looking more deeply at what’s happening in their relationships, and when that’s not what they hear from us, they leave. At times we’ve felt overwhelmed by our own weaknesses. When things have been hard, God has met us in His Word and through trusted friends and couples whose lives were touched by our classes, and we can’t get away from the truth that there was a larger story happening in our journey.
“We can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit.” Romans 5:5, The Message
When we believe this – when we trust His TRUTH – we can continue to sit in our weakness , darkness, doubtfulness. God is more than enough!
“School of Spiritual Direction & Next Step alumni Paul & Debbie Pierson have been married for over 48 years and have 4 adult children, 3 “in-law kids,” and 8 grandchildren.” Certified marriage coaches, they lead Life On Life.
Message
Prayer’s Role in Moving through Relational Tension | Ep.…
What is prayers role in handling conflicts or tensions? Join us as we chat about this important topic
Bio: Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.
Show Note Links:
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Relational Spirituality. The podcast brought to you by Larger Story. I am joined today by a familiar voice. As you hear the intro to this podcast, you might recognize the voice, but now you get to see the face as well. Good friend of mine and a colleague, Mr. Duncan Sprague. Thanks for joining me today, man.
Duncan Sprague: Hey Kep, it’s great to be with you again. I love being with you and chatting through whatever important topic we’re going to talk about.
Kep Crabb: We’ve been talking about prayer and we’ve really been focusing on and looking at The Papa Prayer in respect to how that impacts our prayer lives and what is our prayer life about?
But today we’re going to go a little bit off of that. I think it still stays within the context of prayer, but it’s, how do we resolve some of the tensions or some of the conflicts that we run into? Those might be with friends, those might be with colleagues, those might be with spouses. Where do we start on some of that? I think that’s something that I think a lot of people are interested in and no one is immune from. We’ve all had tensions. We’ve all had struggles. We were just chatting through this. We’re doing this at the last minute.
Also, I apologize. I’ve got a head cold now, so if I start coughing or something, please bear with me. I’ve got some water over here, but I guess it is that cold and flu season coming up, but just a little head cold going on.
Dunc, I wanted to start off by saying you’ve been married now for how many years?
Duncan Sprague: 33 years coming up on 34.
Kep Crabb: You and Angie. I know your wife. I know both of you guys. We’ve been in a couple of different small groups together and are currently in one. You guys have never had an argument or a disagreement or anything like that?
Duncan Sprague: No. I love your dad’s famous line of, “When we get in conflict, she repents and then we’re okay.” I’ll put my lightning rod up right now.
Kep Crabb: Good thing she’s not sitting next to you. That was always Dad’s joke when he was talking about mom and some of that conflict.
Duncan Sprague: Yes. Everybody out there knows that it’s a joke and if you don’t, please don’t write letters. It is a joke.
Kep Crabb: No question. I know Duncan’s wife well, she’s one of the sweetest ladies on the planet. When you go through some of those kinds of things, we’ve talked about this whole conflict issue. And no one’s immune from it. We all are going to be subject to it at some time and some of us in some depth of ways that kind of scare me, with brothers who won’t speak to each other anymore, or people who used to be very close friends now can’t hardly be in the same room.
What do you do about that kind of stuff?
Duncan Sprague: I think one of the first things that I do is, it does drive me to prayer. I always have to ask God, “What of this is mine? Search my heart oh God, know my way. See if there’s any wicked way in me.” Because there’s plenty of it there that gets in the way of relationships. That’s the premise I always begin with. Conflict is neither right nor wrong. It’s inevitable. It’s coming whether you want it or not. It actually is the sign of a healthy relationship where two people come together and engage with one another. I know I’ve done lots of premarital counseling and I stole a line from your dad. I don’t know where he stole it from, but the common line is, getting married is like a tick on a dog relationship. The problem is that there’s two ticks and no dog. And that’s the reality. When you come into a marriage, when you come into a relationship, you have two people that are desperately needy.
What’s Pascal’s famous line? “Inside every person is a God shaped vacuum trying to suck life, a God shaped vacuum that only God can fill. And yet, we try to fill it with every person we come across, especially our spouses.” And that’s why conflicts inevitably show up, because I’m asking something of my wife that she was never intended to give. It’s at that point when the collision happens, the marital bliss turns into a marital battle. It’s at that point that you start to ask, so how do you work through conflict? And I think the important word is through.
Kep Crabb: I think the thing is, you start to talk about marital issues. I think of myself with Kimmie, we’ve been married now going on 30 years, we’ll be celebrating 30 years in a couple of months. We’ve got some experience under our belt a little bit. We’ve had our fair share of conflict for sure. It’s interesting how, when you first get married, you’re standing up there and it really is that tick on a dog kind of a mentality. You’re excited, what are you going to do for me? You make me feel in a certain way. And then as you go through it, I guess the next thing that happens is you get very disillusioned and discouraged. You just feel this is not what I signed up for. And then as you continue to move through that, because the one thing Kimmie and I know with you and Ange as well, we just said, there’s no backdoor here. We’re not ever going to shut this deal down. There’s nothing that can do that. So no matter what we go through, we’re in it till the end. Which was really interesting because she comes from…
A little bit of my wife’s background. Her mother’s been married a handful of times and and currently single. There’s a lot of that. So when she met my family, she thought, wow, this is interesting. You’ve got a mom and a dad who still love each other. It’s just a fairytale thing. I didn’t know anything different, but after 30 years, I think we look at each other now and say, we’ve been through some deep waters, but we’re really experiencing that oneness that I think scripture talks about in a way. That’s new in the last few years, even since her diagnosis. That’s just an interesting thing. We’ve moved through those conflicts and we’ll talk about how to do some of that, maybe some thoughts on it, but you really come out of that with a better understanding of what that friendship or what that relationship, what that marriage, whatever that may be, of the depth of that and how you really do start to care for someone more than yourself. That’s what I’ve seen. But as you’re going through it, the conflict can be hell and can be very painful. Yeah. What about some of that, Dunc?
Duncan Sprague: The hellish elements of it are the ones that you realize, it really isn’t hell, but it echoes it a lot because what is hell? It’s isolation away from the presence of God. And if God’s presence is not there, then that means it’s isolation from any presence. It means that you are utterly alone. So that is where I think every marriage goes through that, where you say, I feel abandoned. I feel alone. I feel like they’re not hearing, they’re not understanding. I think that’s the part that Satan really wants to get you lost in those scripts, where it will just replay in the theater of your mind, all the vengeful things and what does love do, but doesn’t keep track of wrongs done. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t remember them, but it doesn’t hold it up as part of the scorecard.
I think that’s the part that I go to in those hellish moments. It’s easy to grab the old violations and go, see doing it again. Instead, God says, no, put that card away and see how much I’ve forgiven you. I think that’s the part that always gets me, we can love because He first loved us. We can forgive because of how much He’s forgiven us. I think the difficulty, and I’ve seen this in multiple marriages that have ended, it’s when the person says, I will not look inside any longer. I will not self evaluate. I am not to blame. It’s the other person. That’s when our prayers even change at that point.
Here’s the one piece, and I love this part about the Apostle Peter. He’s the only apostle that we’re certain was married, because we know Matthew tells the story, and actually in Mark, actually it’s recorded, I think, in the synoptic gospels, the three that are the same, or that are similar. We find out that Jesus has healed the mother in law of Peter. So we know if there’s a mother in law, there must be a wife. So Peter then in his later writings gives us this anecdotal advice for living with a spouse. So I know he’s speaking from experience and this is what he says in he has a whole section in 1 Peter 3 on husbands and wives, but the verse that we really want to camp on because it gives us great advice of what it means to live with our wives. So it says, “Likewise, husband – so this is to you and me – live with your wives in an understanding way.” Now, we don’t know fully what he means by an understanding way. We have some ideas, but then we always get lost in this next phrase, “Showing honor to her – to the woman – as the weaker vessel.” We get lost, especially in today’s climate where women say, I’m not weak but we lose the whole context here and we get lost in that phrase. It’s like a speed bump now in the text and we don’t go on to see why. “Since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.” That’s what it means to honor. They’re equal heirs with you in the promise of God so that, and this is still talking to the husband, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
We missed the fact of why Peter’s saying this. He says, I don’t want your prayers to be hindered. We’re in a quarter that we’re talking about prayer. Here’s advice to husbands. You want to keep a good prayer life, live with your wife in an understanding way. I just want to unpack what that means.
I think the physical side is where most scholars land. They say, okay, they’re weaker in a physical sense. Not in labor pains and those kinds of things, but just in strength of bodies, bone structure and all that kind of biological makeup. But I think that it’s even more the fact that he calls us vessels and calls her the weaker vessel. We’re called vessels elsewhere. 2 Corinthians says that we’re all vessels. God has put His riches in vessels of clay, in earthen vessels. So it’s not that either one of us are strong vessels, neither one of us are. There’s weak and weaker. Why would God make weak vessels?
If you talk to any archaeologists, they would say when you go, if you find a pristine vase from antiquity, you found a really rare thing, because what you mostly find is shards of broken pieces, because every clay pot is intended to hold something, but at some point it breaks. It cracks. Our tendency is, let’s patch it up. But God says, no, I put the riches in you so that as you are broken, my riches will pour out. I think that part of what Peter’s after is saying they’re a weaker vessel. So when my wife prays, there is rarely a time that she doesn’t end up in tears because her prayers are so close to the feeling of what’s going on. We just said goodbye to our son, launched him officially to his first full time missionary job, and she was leaking everywhere. She set an example for me where I refuse to be broken. She is willing to be broken. So I live with my wife in an understanding way that when she is broken and the riches pour out, honor her. She’s setting an example for me so that my prayers are not hindered.
This is where I go that I think the best example is you can look at Genesis. Look at how Adam’s conversation changed with God before the fall and after the fall. Before the fall, “Oh, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Whoa, man, this is a woman. You can see that.” And then after the fall, he no longer lives in an understanding way of her, he lives mostly in an understanding way of himself. “It’s the woman you gave me, Lord.” His conversation changed. Prayer became a point for blame accusation. Don’t let me take any consequences.
I think Peter as the only married apostle gives us great advice to live in a world that will break us and then to let the riches pour out.
Kep Crabb: Yeah, I didn’t know we were going to go this direction at some level. That’s interesting. As you start to say some of this, even in respect to prayer, this has been my big thought for the last several weeks and months really. The only thing that we’re aware of that the Lord was asked by the disciples is teach us how to pray. I’m sure they asked Him other things too but the only thing that we’ve been told in scripture. There’s something really important about that. When you’re talking about understanding your spouse without having your prayers being hindered. That just brings chills to my neck.
What does it mean to have your prayers hindered where they aren’t doing what you’re asking of them? Praying in a way that allows you to have that connection with the Lord in a relational connection, that’s the whole notion of The Papa Prayer. How do we meet God? It’s so easy to come to God and say, I want this and I want this and I want this. And the whole notion of prayer from what I understand is really a legal term, it’s to petition. We’re redefining it as an opportunity to get to know the God of the universe.
How does that then impact when you’re in a conflict ? You’re having a fight with someone, whether it be Angie or someone else. How does that then impact that moment?
Duncan Sprague: One of the things that I think is, I have to know what my default mechanism is when I get in conflict. We often talk in terms of when conflict happens, we have one of two responses, fight or flight, but I actually think that there’s more. We don’t just flee conflict. We flee it. We fight it. Sometimes we do both. Both of those are when we are stuck in a battle. I think that Ephesians 5 or 4 when Paul talks about he’s given some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be these things so that we might grow up in our faith so we might mature.
Then he says, by speaking the truth in love, what maturity looks like. Truth. Not pretending to love, not pulling back. Those two things are always at play in any conflict. So in a conflict, I’m always saying, is this true? I’m going to fight you over the truth of the matter, or is there a value of relationship that’s in jeopardy?
You said at the very beginning, friends and brothers and siblings that no longer talk to each other, relationships that have gotten lost, and at some point, they’ve said the truth isn’t worth fighting for, and the relationship isn’t worth fighting for, so I flee. I run from it.
Kep Crabb: There’s other things too. I know we’ve talked about that, but I always wonder this. I talked to a friend of mine just the other day, who has a friend who just got divorced after 50 years of marriage, and I just never understood that. Of course, I don’t know the details, but I’m guessing that marriage has long been dissolved or dead or whatever we want to call it for years. They just finally decided to call it a day. But I’ve never understood how someone would put so much time into a relationship like that just to say, I’m done with it now.
That’s where I think the whole notion of the way you’re talking about when you feel the Spirit leading through you. I’ve seen this the last little bit when Kimmie and I’ve had some conflicts and some tensions. What does it mean to really put her first? It’s been interesting because the fights are different and we’ve had some in the past that I’m just not proud of in any way shape or form.
Just to be honest with you folks who are watching us today, I had initially talked with a couple of different people and said, if we talk about this subject, should we bring Kimmie? I asked Kimmie, would you like to join me? Of course she’s not into doing podcasts or anything like that. But she also said, do you really want to know how you and I fought back in the day and let all those people know? I thought, huh, maybe not, that’s a good point. I handled it very poorly and very immaturely, but I’m seeing us fight now in a different way now that allows us to get to the other side in some ways. I really do want her to know that I care about her more. That’s so important to me.
Duncan Sprague: You’re battling for something different. This is the thing that I’m realizing, even as you were just talking. Before I am a husband to my bride, I am a disciple of Jesus. Jesus says it himself. If you’re going to be my disciple, if you’re going to follow me, the first thing is to deny yourself. That’s the beginning. We oftentimes put that up as the pinnacle of real maturity. No, the mature disciples, they are the ones who deny themselves. And Jesus says, no, you can’t. That’s the doorway into being my disciple. You begin by saying, I am not the point. Deny yourself, pick up a cross. What for? I have a friend who used to preach this. He used to say, “Marriage is God’s clever way to get us all crucified.” Isn’t that true?
Kep Crabb: I saw a comedian the other night that Kimmie and I were watching and he’s a Christian comedian. He said, God says to the angels, “Hey, come on over here. Watch what I do. I’m going to put this guy together with this gal. Oh, this is going to be incredible. Let’s just see what happened.” But you said something the other day that really stuck with me. This was maybe a month or so ago, but we were talking about some things and you said you were, in the middle of doing some counseling with some people. You didn’t name any names, but you talked to Dad and said, Larry, how can I break through? How can I help these people? How can I help save this marriage? And then Dad said to you and help me if I’m wrong here, but the marriage is already dead. This marriage is dead. And that kind of caught you off balance. And then he went from there a little bit more, unpacked that a little bit.
Duncan Sprague: This actually goes back almost 30 years when I was actually studying under Larry. I was interning and I was counseling the wife. I found out he was counseling the husband. This was my first consultation with Larry and I’m thinking, we’re going in to save this marriage and we’re going to work together as a team. You can hear my assumption that the goal in counseling them is to fix this marriage. I said, so what do we do to help fix this marriage? That was the energy; we’re going to fix it. His response was, “Oh, this marriage has been gone for a long time. There is no resurrecting this one.”
I remember going, so what are we doing? What’s the purpose of counseling? And he said something really poignant. It’s stuck with me ever since. He said, do you think that God put these two people on this earth to be married to each other? Is that His number one calling on their life? The highest calling over there. I said it’s up there, isn’t it? He says, not even a close second. The number one goal for their lives is to glorify God and make them known. And I go, yeah. And he says, now your goal in counseling them is to help them become the most glorious divorced person possible, because that’s where they’re heading. Their identity isn’t being divorced. Their identity is still a child of God.
All of a sudden, my categories got blown out of the water. It just put that as the first priority: whatever circumstance you’re in, whether married or divorced, your primary calling in life is to glorify God by putting Him on display in the ways that you relate, think, and live. We’ve got some dear friends that we know well that are in the middle of that same process right now. That was the first thing I said to them. I said, I’m not going to choose sides with you guys. But I am going to come alongside and say, how do you glorify God and not continue to destroy each other in this process and not destroy the children that are part of this marriage. That’s the rippling effect; not just one marriage that is destroyed. It’s a whole community of connections.
Kep Crabb: That’s how we’re all linked. You said one time earlier, the whole notion of isolation is really where Satan wants to do his most impressive work by ourselves. We’re actually going to be doing a conference at the end of January in Tennessee. And we’ve titled it “Not Myself by Myself.” We’re meant to be in community. We’re meant to live in community. That’s where Satan doesn’t quite get quite the toehold that he wants to get as he’s coming at, as he’s coming at us.
So I guess as we’re thinking about conflict, even in the midst of prayer, how does prayer in the midst of community, as you’re going through conflict, allow you to get outside of yourself? I used to think, and this was always in retrospect until recently, in the middle of a fight, can I quit saying what I’m saying and get out of myself and say, Kep, you’re being really dumb here and you’re not thinking very well at all. You’re letting your emotions take over, take control, whatever. I always come to that conclusion a few hours after the fight’s over thinking, yeah, sure. Wish I would have handled it this way or that way. Now in the midst of that moment, I’m starting to think that way a little bit more. I think Kimmie’s responding to that in ways that are even to other people, if I have tension with them and conflict that I think feels better.
Duncan Sprague: I would guess that if we were a fly on the wall, watching you in the new ways that you’re thinking in the middle of a conflict, my guess is we get in there and listen to what’s going on in your head. There’s another conversation going on besides just the one with your wife. There’s a horizontal conversation going, “Father, if I keep in my ways, I’m going to keep messing things up. What’s really true right now? What should I camp on? Because I want to bury and this is my way of relating with my wife.”
We’ve identified our normal ways of relating when we are our typical conflict strategies when we get it in the middle of a fight. I bury her with words. I just start to reason. I get real rational and I concentrate on the truth. But here’s what I do. I debase the truth because I make the truth something other than a person. What did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth. So the truth ultimately is not propositional. It’s personal. I get in this fight with her that avoids love and wants to only fight about what’s mostly true and my truth. So she will tend to flee things. I will tend to fight them. If she stops fleeing, her tendency then is to go to the opposite pendulum. So I’ll honor the truth and I want to value honesty and she’ll value relationship.
Larry used to always talk in terms of, we oftentimes say that I’m a rationalist, I’m a reasonable person, or another person will say, I’m a romantic. I’m a feeler through life, but the reality is we must be both. We don’t get to say I’m one or the other, it’s science or faith. It really is. You have to live in both worlds, so it’s truth and love, and that’s where she lives only in that love side of things and denies truth. I’m not going to think about it. It’s too complicated. She’ll end up faking love in order to control love. If that makes sense. She’ll ignore the truth and really debase love. She’ll make it something cheaper than it is. It means I’ll just give in. And it’s the proverbial doormat who says, I’ll just let you walk all over me. But those are the extremes. So my extreme is I’ll fight it. She’ll fake it. But then at some point we start to come together. We say, okay, I’m going to stop fighting. So this is some of what may go on in your mind. I’m going to stop fighting God. And if it will help, if I force it a little bit, I’ll force a little bit of relationship, I’ll feel, I’ll try to use some sympathetic and empathetic words. I’ll force it. But she feels it every time. She goes, that’s not authentic. What she’ll do is she’ll say, if this will fix the relationship, that energy of fixing.
The flesh has its operating instructions during conflict to flee it, fight it, fake it, force it, or fix it. That’s our way of dealing with it in the flesh. What God says is no honor, a hundred percent of the truth, honor, a hundred percent of the relationship and face it. I love what your dad used to say. Your dad used to say, I refuse to pretend about anything. I don’t want to get lost in honesty and start pretending. I love what Paul says in Hebrews, or the writer of Hebrews says, he says, we are not those who shrink back. So in love, we don’t shrink back. We stay present. And in truth, we continue to refuse to pretend. This is going to be ugly. The truth has come out, but it’s my ugly truth. It’s not just her ugly truth. And here’s the big thing: the only thing that’s going to bring us together when conflict happens, the only way to connect in connecting, is confession. Me confessing my sin, not hers. That’s the blame game. When I start confessing hurt for her, one of the folks in our small group says confession is just telling on myself. I think in conflict, if you don’t begin with self denial and telling yourself confession, you’ll never move on to connection.
Kep Crabb: I love that because those are some real practical things to think about in the midst of conflict, which is the most challenging time to get practical. It’s easy to do it before the conflict happens. Maybe you can apply some that are after saying, I wish I would’ve applied some of that. But one of the things that I hear you saying too and that really has been helpful to me is, how do you allow the Spirit to lead you in those moments when you’re having this conversation, not so much this, while at the same time having this conversation. What I’ve really tried to focus on in the midst of those moments is this conversation.
That’s the one going on in here, which only I’m privy to and Him, no one else is privy to that. It also allows me to keep this closed because man, this thing gets me in trouble. So much. I’ve had too sharp of a tongue in too many ways with too many people that cut very deeply. Those are things that I’ve had to apologize for.
Duncan Sprague: I’m guessing it’s not until you’ve seen the effect of your anger. I think that’s where my wife has been the best mirror for me. I remember one time. We have four children and our second one was always the one that was testing things. He was pushing the buttons all the time. I remember one time he had just set me off and I was going after him. This is a picture of biblical submission. My wife steps in front of me as I was going after him. And she says, there are better parts of you than what you are about to give him right now. I just remember sitting there going, wait, she is not fighting for herself. She’s fighting for our son so that I don’t trounce on him. And she’s fighting for me. She’s submitting to God’s vision for who I can be so that I will give him the best parts of me rather than, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind.
When that same son was young, he was going after our youngest son. Josh and Ben. Josh was going after Ben, he’s two years older, and you know both of my boys. Josh was going after him, I said, if you touch your brother one more time, a spankin’s coming. He didn’t say anything, he looked at me and he started lowering his hand towards his brother. I’m going, don’t you touch him. He just kept lowering it and lowering it. And finally he puts it down and he gives me this little snide look and I just lost. I said, that’s it. A spank is coming. Get up to the bedroom right now. I don’t know why we sent them to the bedroom other than it gave me a moment to cool down. As we’re walking up, the waterworks begin, he starts crying and stuff. As I’m walking up, here’s my prayer. Dear Lord, if I spank him with all that’s inside of me, the anger that’s going on, Lord, I’ll kill him. Lord, help me not to kill my son. And so when we get up to the bedroom, I’m pacing back and forth trying to figure out how I’m going to handle this. This is where you were just asking, how does the Spirit, how do you invite the Spirit in? I think the Spirit will step in and just give opportunities for me not to get lost in myself. As I’m sitting there, I’m trying some of the old tried and true things. I tried the old line that every parent at least one time tries: it hurts me more than it hurts you. Son, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
We all know it’s a lie. I know that when I spank him, his bottom is going to hurt more than my hand. But it was as if the Spirit at that moment said, it should hurt you more. It just stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t an audible voice. But the phrase that came into my mind was, take the spanking for him. I’m having this internal conversation. What do you mean? Take the spanking for himself? Take the spanking. Lean over. So I said, okay, son, if I spank you with everything I’ve got, I’m going to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. So I’m taking the spanking. I lean over the bed and he says what do you do? He doesn’t get it. This is where real conflict management will not look as much like management as it will look like surrender. I’m surrendering to something more powerful. It’s what your dad used to say to you, Kep, you can hurt me, but you cannot destroy me. That’s essentially what I was saying to my son is, if I spank you, I’ll hurt you. If you spank me, oh, it might hurt a little, but not much. So he gets back and he swats me on the bum and I said, oh no. I’m more angry than that. And he backs up and he tries again. I said, Josh, if you don’t understand how angry I am, you have to put everything you have in it. And then all of a sudden he comes with all of his might pow. And he says, Oh, it hurt my hand. And I said it’s enough. You’re forgiven, Josh. We will never remember this again, except for when I tell it in a message or on a podcast,
Kep Crabb: I’d love to chat with Josh about that because I bet that was an impacting moment in his life and impact.
Duncan Sprague: He calls it his story. His story. That’s exactly what it becomes. Yeah, it’s my story of forgiveness. My story when grace was given to me because when he went downstairs, he says to Angie, leans into whispers, I just gave Daddy a spanking. My wife says, why? And his response then was, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s the piece where we always end with the grace of God. I don’t know why He loves us. So I don’t know why He died for me, but He did. He took the spanking for me. That’s when conflict isn’t managed any longer. That’s when conflict is surrendered to grace.
Kep Crabb: What a great story. I think that leads into the next thing that we’ll chat about sometime is parenting. You’ve got four kids. I’ve got two kids. They’re adults. Now my oldest is fixing to have her first child here in a couple months. So we’re excited about that. The whole notion of parenting. That story reminds me of so much of the way that Dad thought about how to raise kids because he wanted to get you to go, huh? What Josh said. I don’t know why I did that, but boy, it felt good and I feel good. That’s right. It did something to me that even now, 20 years later in this kid’s life, it’s his story.
Dunc, this has been great chatting with you, bro. It’s so fun to unpack this kind of stuff. We all have a story. Each of our stories can be part of God’s larger story. That’s what we want to be. How do we live a life that fits into God’s larger story in the way that He wants us to?
Duncan, I really appreciate you meeting this time. Folks, thanks for joining us on Relational Spirituality today. Join us every Tuesday as we roll out some different thoughts and different things. We’re going to be changing things around in the beginning of the year, but we sure do appreciate you guys joining us. If you like what you’ve seen, please subscribe and have a great evening.