[DAWN GABRIEL]
Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes Podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado, not only where I love to live, but I also work as the owner of a counseling center in the historic downtown. This podcast is a place to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. For those desiring deeper connection with God and engaging their spirituality in new ways, this will be a safe place to allow doubt, questions and curiosity, without judgment. We will be creating intentional space to listen in on other’s faith journeys, whether that is deconstruction or reconstruction, with the hope of traveling alongside you on your own spiritual path. If you’re interested in getting even more out of this podcast, grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my websitefaithfringes.com. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello and welcome back to the Faith Fringes podcast. This is Dawn Gabriel, your host. Today is going to be a fun episode where, those of you who know I love working with therapists. Therapists are my people, and I know you guys hear me bring in a lot of therapists sometimes into my podcast and I bring in some skills and some stories of my past 15 years as a therapist. And today I have the privilege of bringing on two other therapists who I have quite enjoyed getting to know outside of the podcast and also interviewing them in the podcast. We talk about how to, like what comes up for people and how to integrate spirituality and faith into the therapy room. And for those of you who have been following me I own a counseling center where all, I have nine therapists and all of us can integrate the Christian faith into the therapy room and into therapeutic process.

The same goes for these two therapist that I interview today. We kind of get deep into that subject of how do clients come in and when they want to integrate spirituality and faith, but yet they’ve been hurt by maybe their faith journey, they’ve been hurt during that and they’re not really sure if they want to talk about faith and if they want to talk about Christianity. And actually a lot of us love talking about that because we love creating space and just allowing that process to take place. We think it’s so important and you’ll get to hear more about that today. So let me introduce the two therapists that are going to be talking today. Aaron Potraz is a licensed professional counselor in Oregon, the owner of Discover Counseling and co-owner of Life Discovery Counseling Services with his business partner, Nathan Hawkins. Aaron maintains his own client caseload while also managing and supervising his counseling staff. Aaron also does private practice consulting for therapist business owners and is the co-host of the Shrink Think Podcast, where he and Nathan discuss being therapist, business owners, and everyday people.

Second therapist I’d like to introduce is Nathan Hawkins. Nathan is the owner of Life Encounter Counseling and co-owner of Life Discovery Counseling Services, two private group counseling practices. He is also a licensed professional counselor in Oregon. Nathan maintains his own client caseload while managing and supervising his counseling staff. He started out as a solo practitioner in 2004, expanded to a group practice in 2015 and started his second practice with his business partner, Aaron Potraz in 2016. Between businesses, he has 15 clinicians and two support staff.
[DAWN]
Welcome to the podcast, Nathan and Aaron.
[NATHAN HAWKINS]
Hey, how are you doing?
[AARON POTRAZ]
Hey, thanks for having us.
[DAWN]
Yes, I’m excited to have you both on. So start by telling us a little bit a about yourself and the practice you guys run. I know you have quite a bit going on together and individually, so whatever you feel like sharing, we’d love to hear a little bit about you.
[AARON]
Yes. Thank you. It’s a little bit of a yours, mine and ours situation, I guess. It’s always confusing to explain to people, but I find that helpful. So I’ll talk about the mine and the hours and Nathan can share the yours and his, I don’t know, I’m making it more confusing. The mine is, I’ve got my practice. It’s called Discover Counseling and we’re here in the Portland Metro area of Oregon on the west coast. And I’ve go, I started out as a solo practitioner and transitioned to a group practice about six years ago or so and became a supervisor, hired people. I think right now I’ve got about six other clinicians working for me and I also see my own clients. I’ve got right now one support staff and hiring a couple of others.

So that’s mine. I met Nathan actually in grad school and we kind of stayed in touch through a consultation group. I had an opportunity to move out of the space, I was in this, like they were building condos right outside my door, the door of my office and I was like, “Nope, I’m not going to do that.” So I needed some space. He had some space and we kind of aligned together going in parallel directions. But then we decided to start our own practice together. So I’ll turn over to Nathan. He can share about his practice and kind of the ours portion.
[NATHAN]
Okay. So Nathan Hawkins and I’ve been practicing since probably 2003 or so and Aaron and I started the group practice about the same time. It was a total competition.
[DAWN]
Was it really?
[AARON]
No, but not at all.
[NATHAN]
No.
[DAWN]
I was going to say, I don’t remember hearing that part.
[NATHAN]
No. But we were a little bit competitive. So it’s kind of a joke. Like, “What are you doing now? Oh yes, I’m doing that too.”
[AARON]
I started doing that yesterday, before you.
[NATHAN]
I’ve been doing that for a year and never told you.
[DAWN]
Well I did it a year and a day before you?
[NATHAN]
Yes. So I have also six employees and then we actually share the same support staff. So if you were sitting with us right now in the same space, as far as room, we basically share a large suite in which Life Encounter Counseling, that I run carries half of that burden and has off that space and Discover Counseling that Aaron runs carries another half of that. So as we’re together for a while, backing up to about six years ago, everything starts going really well and then we start thinking, man, we kind of are, we really are very similar. I mean, darn near close to the same. We should just do, because we also have a skillset and a mindset that’s complimentary, so we thought, what if we just did this together just to see if we could, you know? And so Life Encounter Counseling, Discover Counseling together became Life Discovery Counseling.
[AARON]
It’s like they had a baby.
[DAWN]
I love it.
[NATHAN]
A little, cutie, but yes. So with that we have blossomed into two locations and just hired two more people, if I remember right. Off the top, I’m not sure how many —
[AARON]
It’s eight or nine now, eight, nine clinicians that we have working for us and a support staff with this life discovery shared business.
[DAWN]
I love it. I mean, as a business owner, myself, it would be so nice to have someone super like-minded on the same page and sharing everything with. I mean, that just sounds wonderful. It’s hard to find that combination and that unity though. So you guys have done a great job at that. I’ve followed you on one of the groups you’re in and on your podcast. So I think you guys do a fabulous job working together, but it is unusual though. I’ve not heard it work so well with everybody else.
[AARON]
It is. Yes, we’ve talked with a few other practice owners across the country and it’s kind of like a little niche because most of the time in business they say don’t go into business with somebody else. But we’re therapists and we’re a unique breed. We know how to communicate and emotionally, intelligently help each other. So maybe that puts us at an advantage.
[NATHAN]
Well, the other thing too, is I don’t even know that I actually would recommend it, like not because of my own experience but —
[AARON]
The first I’m hearing about it, by the way.
[NATHAN]
Well, every time I’ve tried to explain how to do it, I’m realizing like, hmm there’s so much life inside of that. I don’t know how, you can’t just go do it. It kind of either clicks or it doesn’t.
[DAWN]
Yes. It’s almost like this organic thing that happened and it’s not for, it’s not going to happen like that for everyone. Well, and you guys I’d love to hear a little bit, if you could tell us about your podcast because that’s what kind of connected us and we said, “Hey, let’s interview each other on the podcast.” You guys do the Shrink Think Podcast.
[AARON]
Yes we do. So we went to, I think this might have even been where I met you or ran into you somewhere at Killin’It Camp through Joe Sanok’s Practice of the Practice a couple of years ago. He was talking to people about podcasts and Nathan and I were like, “That sounds like a lot of fun. We just have a lot of fun together. We actually work side by side, but we don’t actually get to interact a whole ton. We have to set aside time outside of our clinical hours to connect and to really chat, whether it’s about business or personal.” So the podcast was an opportunity for us to put together some ideas that we have to spend time together, enjoying what we do. And also there’s a need, I think, for people to know and understand a lot of things that we talk about on everyday basis that we wanted to put out there for people.

We figured we’re pretty good communicators and it’s kind of unusual, I think, in the therapy community to have a couple of male counselors who are emotionally intelligent and I think pretty good communicators. So anyway, our Shrink Think Podcast is, I would say it’s for our current clients, for people out there who are going through therapy. It’s for other therapists to learn about maybe some other tools or ways of doing things. And we like this term, it’s also for the psychologically curious people who maybe are just kind of like self-help gurus. They just browse that section of the bookstore or on Amazon, I guess, as work —
[NATHAN]
You’re so old. Everyone out there used to have things called bookstores and cassette.
[DAWN]
I love bookstores. I’m sorry, I still love them.
[NATHAN]
Yes, brick and mortar.
[AARON]
So yes, we’ve been doing that for probably the last nine months or so, talking just about various mental health topics, about running a business, owning a business and I guess just kind of how to be healthy on your own a person.
[NATHAN]
Yes. I think one of the things that was not the buy in, but I’ve realized it’s a kind of a bigger deal than I thought it would be is the idea of being able to tell one of your clients. You know, as a clinician, one of the things that ends up happening is you run into the same stuff and then you start repeating yourself and it’s kind of lame. So when you do, and sometimes in the same day, we’re like back, I’m just talking to the person before you about this [crosstalk]
[DAWN]
Totally.
[NATHAN]
Okay, so here’s the thing. There’s this thing, then you look like what? You’re like, why do you seem so tired of talking about this? We just started.
[DAWN]
You like try to truth bomb them in the first five minutes of their session. It doesn’t usually work well
[NATHAN]
I know what I’m going to say.
[AARON]
But so we thought, we started recording some stuff that we could tell other people can you just go listen to this episode. And it’s actually been really how, because, and I think it’s a win-win because then folks can, they don’t have to pay for listening to that. And then it move, it speeds stuff along a lot quicker.
[AARON]
Although you can, if you go to a website.
[NATHAN]
You can do a donation too.
[DAWN]
Yes. Well, the thing I really liked and that drew me to your podcast is you are also trying to be authentic as therapists and humans as men. Like we still are human. I think sometimes like in my community, people sometimes, like I’ve had people come up to me and assume, because I’m a therapist I have perfect kids, perfect marriage. And I’m like, “No, I just know that I’m a mess. I just can acknowledge and like talk about it more.” But I think it’s just helpful. I think clients and people who aren’t in therapy want to know, like what does a therapist really think when they’re not in session? So I think that’s a great part of your podcast as well.
[AARON]
Thank you. Yes, that was actually a challenge. Something that we wanted to do as well is just to put ourselves out there and to be authentic, like, all right, here’s some of the behind-the-scenes. We don’t know exactly where this is going to go, but we kind of want to pull that fail back and for people to see what that is like. Also I think that it just brings a level of honesty and normalization to the subject of mental health that I think is going around right now and people are looking for it.
[NATHAN]
Yes, and to be honest, it was, in the moment it’s one of those things where you do it and it’s not super. I mean, it’s vulnerable. It’s not super scary. I mean, I’m really talking to Aaron, so that’s not scary to me. But then when somebody comes in, like three weeks later, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, my wife totally said the same thing.” You’re like, “What’s going on? I don’t really know you dude but you’re acting like you totally know me right now.”
[DAWN]
Yes. That is weird. I’ve experienced that as well. Because my podcast also, I value authenticity and authentic communication and community. So, I mean, that’s why I wanted to have you guys here to talk about what are you seeing with spirituality and maybe hurt from the church or kind of like your population that you work with. I think we have similar counseling centers in how we are not overtly saying, “Hey, we are Christian counselors, but we value it and we can work with people who want to do that.” But we also can work with people who are spiritual explorers, who are curious, and so I’m imagining we have similar clientele. So I’d love to kind of jump into that and hear, like, tell us a little bit about what you’re seeing as therapists with your population in regards to spirituality and God.
[AARON]
That’s a great question. And I love how you kind of presented sort of the variety of people and experiences that can come in. I think Nathan said this years ago to me and it really stuck. It was another one of those things that was like, “Man, really I’m so glad we’re together. We really need to keep working together here side by side.” And it’s that, I think we tend to see a lot of people that have been hurt by the church or by people in the church and so they have like a distaste, would be probably to put it mildly for anything that’s religious or faith-based or anything about God, because they’ve been hurt. They’ve been wounded, they’ve been disillusioned by God or any sort of like formal religion church, anything like that.

So that’s one part of it of people that maybe grew up that way or had a bunch of like really negative experiences. I think also people that on the other side really maybe never had had any experiences with God or church or faith of any kind and they just kind of hear what is out there in the culture. They have some ideas about what God or faith is like and they really just don’t know but they start, they get to a place in their lives where I think they’re beginning to ask some those questions and not just take those things at faith value. So they’re really having to wrestle with a lot of, it’s interesting, like long held beliefs, even though they’re not like strong ones from direct experiences, just more of like things that they’ve known and heard and believed they’ve just accepted, like this is true. So there’s just a lot of like dealing with really big, heavy systems, belief systems and experiences that we have to kind of deconstruct and unpack and explore.
[NATHAN]
Yes, I think on my side, I mean, I obviously agree with everything that you were saying, Aaron. The other piece of the pie is that folks come in and they are layered. So the one place that you should be able to find good moral people, but as you’re growing up, you think, oh yes, the church, there’s people there that are good and God is good and all these things are good. And then you go there and you get totally screwed and betrayed and people talk behind your back and weird stuff happens. And that doesn’t seem to align with, I don’t even know why anyone would do that. Like just take Christianity off the table. Like, why are you just an ass?
[DAWN]
Right. Like what about kindness?
[AARON]
No, that’s not part of the church.
[NATHAN]
Well, that in the same context, back in the Hebrew, you recognize that, anyway, so, but so people come in, what I end up seeing and working with is what I try to help people to do is to kind of peel the layer back, layers back and go, okay. Because what’s happened is maybe they’re in the church and they had some viewpoint about God and what goodness was and then the people, the next layer have somehow disoriented them and treated them like crap. And then they went back over to the church, the church layer and were like, well, it’s the church’s problem. And the people there, this whole thing stinks. And also that must be who got it. So everything gets blurred together. And so if the opportunity arises, meaning like if a person, if a client, or whatever’s interested in kind of exploring it after a while, what I do is I’ll try to help them just get back into the space where they’re just standing there essentially with God and that’s it.

And they can make their own determination of how that needs to work. But rather than being, having all these other layers that they’re trying to filter everything through and essentially the old statement of saying the baby being thrown out with the bath water, just trying to say, “Wait, do you know there’s a baby in the tub before you throw that out?”
[AARON]
Yes. And I think that’s, one more thing I’d like to add to that’s really poignant and important is that when people come in and they’re talking about these experiences, they’re usually a little apprehensive because of those experiences with people, with like Christian people or people in the church, not validating those experiences. So one of the things that I do that’s so important to is when somebody’s been hurt by somebody in the church or by the church or by even by God, like if they have an experience where they pray for some healing or some saving, and then it doesn’t happen and they’re hurt by God is where I want to validate that. Like, yes, that did happen and that hurt a lot and that should not have happened. Yes, something like that. And I think people are always surprised by that because like, wait, what? Like, you can acknowledge that? Yes. People should not be treating you that way or yes, that is a bad thing that happened and that must have been really painful. Can we to start with the reality that that did happen and that hurt you?
[DAWN]
Yes. And I feel like, I love what you both said. First of all, going back to the layer analogy, I do think there’s so many layers. And what I notice is the unique layer of when you have been brought up more conservative Christian evangelical church or home, even, there’s multiple layers there, even on top of all the layers we’re going to deal with counseling anyway. And Nathan, I love what you said, just peeling back those layers so they can stand just between them and God and find out what He really does think of them, not what they think the church has said of about him. But like really a spiritual place that’s safe to say it’s okay. And then bringing in what you said, Aaron, even just creating space to say, it’s okay to be mad at God for that.

Like where else can somebody be honest about their anger and their disappointment about God? I feel like, I wish it was the church, but a lot of times, it’s very uncomfortable to bring that up in like a church setting, whether it’s a Bible study or a group. So I do feel like I see that as well in our therapy sessions where I can just kind of gently challenge that. Like yes, it’s okay to be mad. He can handle it. Like let’s, I mean, I talk about that a lot on my podcast. Let’s just be real and we’re not going to hurt God. He is God. He can handle any feelings we have about Him.
[AARON]
Yes. As you were sharing, I thought one other layer in Portland, the Portland Metro area, that’s interesting, but I’m not, I’m not a hundred percent sure if this would be true across the United States, because Portland’s very super, I mean, we’re called the left coast for reasons. Part of that leftness is this huge openness to all things spiritual, whatever that is. And kind of the value is you need to be open. So if you are raised in the Portland Metro area in a more conservative Christian scenario you are not just inside of that church. Those are the only people that you identify with. I mean, you are, if you walk away from like, if you try to play with that theology or play with your understanding of God and be honest with yourself, it’s a huge which potential cost that you have because you don’t probably agree with, in the Portland Metro with how open the spiritual stuff is necessarily, but you might not totally agree with where you’re at conservatively, but you could get totally thrown out of your group, essentially and totally lose everything and then just be blowing around in the wind on your own. And that’s it. And what do you got?

You know, and some of the folks that come in to see me are, they’re kind of intuiting because I’m not. I mean, so on my website lifeencounter.com, you can see that like, okay, he’s probably a Christian, but we don’t come out on this stuff. So people will come in and they’ll say, they know that I’m a Christian, so therefore they wanted to see me, but they don’t want to talk about Christianity. They just want to know that I do get probably where they’re coming from because they don’t want to deal with even the whole conversation about what Christianity, they just want to take that off the table, assume that we have a baseline, and now we’re going to talk about X, Y, Z.
[DAWN]
Yes. And I think, as you were talking you were kind of describing like what I’ve been going through, even with my podcast, because I’ve been like, I know my own theology, my own beliefs, but as I’m branching out, I didn’t want people to think I was going too far where I was like throwing, like everything is spiritual. And I mean, I do believe you can experience spirituality everywhere, but I didn’t want to lose. I still have a found of faith that would be identified as Christian, but I feel like that Christian religion term has been so misguided or mis-constructed that I, yes, I’ve just been going through my own process even of, oh, I kind of need to define a few more things for people and for myself, because people are wondering like, what’s going on? Where does she land? And it’s been hard for me to like yes, just to what you were talking about. Like you want to, you don’t want to go too far on either side. At least I don’t. So it’s been an interesting journey, but I hear that’s what people in Portland area are kind of, if you are a Christian, it’s kind of hard to also define that.
[AARON]
Well, yes. The authenticity of taking a stand, especially in our current culture is extremely difficult because you’re opening yourself up, especially in the more public it is to the whole cancel thing. I mean, you say something out there and somebody doesn’t really know you and they hear something, they don’t like it and then they’re offended, and then what do you do with it? Like all of a sudden you’re like, “Well, I didn’t even mean that. Like, whatever you’re saying is not what I was saying. Can you please let me have a phone call?”
[DAWN]
I know. And that’s where I’ve been, honestly, it’s been really growing me spiritually. Like I’ve been praying a lot about it because I’m going to be doing a series on the LGTBQ community and the church. And as I’m trying to get people to interview, I keep talking to them like on a Zoom call and a lot of them don’t want to go public on it. And I want to interview the whole spectrum of beliefs and they’re very hesitant. So I’ve just been praying like, okay, God, no matter what people say about me, may I remember who I am in you? Because I’m a little nervous to open up some things, but I also feel like we need to, and it’s so important and that’s one of my desires for this podcast, a safe place to talk about things respectfully and think through things and go deeper. So I appreciate you saying that.
[AARON]
Yes. I can appreciate your point on that one. Yes, I’ve gone there a little bit with folks, because that’s one of the things that happens in Portland in quite a bit actually, because we have a very large LGBTQ community. A lot of those folks will come in from a Christian perspective and then really want to play with that. Like, okay, let’s just be honest. This is where I’m at. This is who I am. I really don’t know what I think about that when it comes to the Bible and God and all that kind of stuff. I’ve had many conversations about that. If you want Dawn, I mean, I’d be willing to talk about that, not on this episode, but I’d put myself out there a little bit with it.
[DAWN]
Okay. Yes, we can talk about that later. I think the main thing though, is I’m just super passionate about creating space to have conversations about this without it being so heated. Like people need to talk. I mean we’re therapists. Of course, we’re going to say that, but it’s so needed.
[AARON]
I found it’s so interesting. People get so afraid of a particular outcome. Like you need to arrive at this conclusion and somehow it’s like my job to make you and if you don’t, like if you make your own free choice about what you think about God or what your relationship is going to be with God, somehow that reflects on me and I’m responsible and I have to like control you and keep you from going in a certain direction. And I’m like, no, just give people the freedom to make, that’s between them and God. I mean, even, I talk to people all the time about teaching and learning. It’s your job to teach and it’s their job to learn. So if you’ve done your job of opening up conversation and talking about God or representing him to people, it’s their job to decide what they’re going to do with that.

And that is completely their free choice. So from that vantage point, I love to have tons of conversations with people about all kinds of things related to spirituality and faith and religion and God. And it’s like the more honest we can be, the more freedom I’m giving them to explore things, to open up things they might not have even known that were there, to wrestle with themselves, to see themselves differently, to see God differently. And from there, to me, they’re able to make a better decision about who God is, but I’m ultimately trying to give them the freedom to make that choice. And when I let go of that control, and I don’t need to be in charge of where people are going to land, it’s so much safer. I’m like, “Oh, like that’s not up to me.”
[DAWN]
I love that you said that because I think that is also my goal. It’s not who are we to say, this is what you should believe. We have to get out of our own way and let that person connect with God and what is, that’s between them and God. So I think that’s just so important. And I’m curious if either of you have like an example or a story you can share where you were in the counseling chair, the therapist chair, and there was a moment where you realized this is a spiritual moment and I need to get out of the way. I know I’ve experienced some of that personally, when I’ve been doing EMDR and trauma and realized I have to just kind of let go. Also from deconstruction of faith type of things, but yes, I feel like it’s different. It’s a different place as a therapist to kind of integrate what’s working on a spiritual level here. I feel like we didn’t get trained as much in that. I don’t know about you guys, but that was not my training.
[AARON]
Right. No, it’s definitely something that I think Nathan and I have personally pursued and then tried to integrate for ourselves and then just built a community where we want to help people to be able to do that well for their clients as well. I don’t necessarily have a story where it’s getting out the way, but, so, maybe I’m a little bit different. I’m Enneagram three so I tend to get into it, instead of like the way. But I would say this happens all the time where people are talking about maybe something bad that happened and as they’re unpacking it, I can see that they’re describing things. Like we’ve, let’s say we’ve created an environment of openness of safety about it’s okay to talk about these things. And even like you said, Dawn, it’s okay to be angry at God. So we’ve established some of these things and like something just happens in them.

It’s like, okay, we can go there. I’m going to go there. They just start unpacking all these hurts that they have and describing God in a particular way that I can see it’s like all these projections, all these hurts and injuries that they’re putting on God or religion or the church or whatever. And it’s so profoundly clear that that’s what they’re doing, but also at the same time, profoundly clear that they’re so wounded that it’s not the time to correct in theology. It’s not the time to say, “Well, no, that’s not true. God is like this. You’re wrong.” It’s really, to me when that happens, I try to understand and validate those injuries and then to gently kind of clear away, like, yes, I can see how that would feel that way. And I can see why you would want a God who is this way and not that way and then just kind of through some of that, like slow relational kind of walking through the, the wounds of injuries clearing some of that air.

Like, could it be possible that God wasn’t trying to hurt you, but He might have been trying to protect you with some of this or do you think it’s possible that God has a different kind of love that you’re expecting? Can we explore that? Can we see what that might look like? Because it’s messy. It’s not what church wants to, tends to want to portray to people where God is clean and He just has good people over here and bad people over there and good things happen to good people and bad things … No, it’s like bad things happen to all of us all the time that we don’t understand. So can we get into the complexity and see that God might just be a God that is still loving and kind, even though all kinds of awful bad things are happening? And that tends to blow people’s minds. And I think it relates because people are like, yes, in a way I want a God that’s complex like that, but it also needs to make sense. Like it needs, I need to see that it’s also good.
[DAWN]
Yes. I love that because I mean, there are times even myself, like I’ve been in church and if I’ve been going through a really difficult crisis or something, I can’t sing the worship songs because I don’t agree with like a line in there. At that moment I cannot sing about how awesome God is if I’m feeling hurt by Him. And so I think just giving the freedom, I love that you can just give that to people and allow them, yes, you’re not going to go in and be like, well actually the theology behind this is that God is good. It doesn’t matter if He hurt you. He’s still good. But no one wants hear that in the midst of their pain. They need space to unpack that for a while. So I love that you said that.
[NATHAN]
I was thinking you were asking about a situation, there’s been a few times and I guess I want to qualify this to say what I’m going to say really only can happen therapeutically with a client that I feel like there’s a good connection, that’s really solid and quite frankly, we know each other really well and probably there’s been a lot of time passed, maybe six months or more; and we’ve already talked about some of their spirituality and things and then we’ve gone into some of the depth of the family of origin, like what was like for them to grow up with their parents and siblings and how somehow, how tragic that is. And I’ve got one person in mind. So we had been there with her in particular, her dad. It was her dad who was just not there for her. So fast forward, that’s kind of in the past at that point and she’s talking about, so she’s complaining about something going on in Christianity like this is why she doesn’t like this. And it was kind of one of those things where I think even herself as an observer, if she was observing her own words and thoughts at that point, she might have even said the same thing that I did, which was, I mean, she was saying the church is never there for you and I said that, “You know that God is not your dad.” That’s why I qualified this because it could be really weird if I —
[DAWN]
No, no, but six months in, they trust you to be honest and they want you, they’re coming back because they want you to be honest in a loving way.
[NATHAN]
Right. And it really, for it landed with her at that point, she didn’t, it was like she kind of woke up to the fact that she didn’t realize that she had tied all of it together. So that was a change point for her to kind of look at things more for just how they were and to at least differentiate, okay, these feelings go here and I’m not sure then what I feel all over there about God. But like I know that I can’t put the same things on Him that I’m putting for my dad or well, that way in particular, her dad. So that would be one story that —
[DAWN]
I think that’s helpful. Yes, once you have that relationship, you can say it, but I think what happens is so many times whether it’s social media or a friend or a family member says like a one liner or, I was talking with someone the other day, they’re like, “I’m not a yeller about my beliefs.” Like when you yell it people don’t really listen or when you try to correct the theology, I feel like that’s what we have to get away from. So that’s a great example. So I’m wondering, I know we’re getting close to the end of our time, is there’s anything you could say to the listeners about maybe the pain and the hurt and spirituality, like any advice or, advice sounds so shallow, but I mean more like how do they approach it if they do want to dive in? I guess I’m being kind of vague, but something around that. I was just curious because you guys work with it a lot.
[AARON]
No, actually it’s okay to be vague. I think it’s a great subject matter. And what came to my mind, initially I think it, and this is probably one of the key points for me with people is that God is with us and he wants to be with you in the process. I think so much of the time in the church people have this idea that we need to like be at an outcome. We need to be perfect. We need to be righteous. We need to be like Jesus. And that’s just not going to happen in this life. We’re not going to be perfect. We’re going to make lots of mistakes. It’s messy. There’s lots of sin and brokenness and wounding in this world. So like how do you reconcile that? And I think a lot of people come out of all that wreckage and they don’t understand how God can really be good or be worth having a relationship with, or even be real when there’s all this wreckage going on.

And I guess where I come from and what I want to encourage your audience to think about and to explore is it’s actually better to have somebody to walk through stuff with you than for everything to just be good and clean and tidy and perfect. It’s incredible to have pain and struggles, to have somebody to cry with, to have somebody to be there with you through it, understanding, listening so that you don’t feel alone; somebody who maybe has had some similar experiences that you can share that with, to draw closer together and you can connect over those things. That’s the kind of stuff that like a lifelong, deep, meaningful friendship is all about and that’s who God is and that’s the kind of relationship He wants to have. Unfortunately that means having to go through some difficult things sometimes to be able to have that, but it’s always worth it.

So I guess just, I would want to encourage people to not look at like an outcome of like, well this happened and that’s a bad thing. Yes, of course it’s a bad thing. And also at the same time inside of that, God is looking for you and wanting to be with you inside of it if you’ll let Him.
[DAWN]
Yes. Wow, thank you for that.
[NATHAN]
I think the big picture when I have that conservative mindset in our Christian mind, if you just simply look at all of the, well, maybe not all, but many of the characters throughout the Bible, the folks that are in there, they all, David’s a good one. I mean, that dude was really honest —
[DAWN]
I love David.
[NATHAN]
He came right and, dang, bro. So and God didn’t go like, “I can’t believe he stuck at me like that.” But there was this, God chose to emotionally be with us. He made a creation and he wants to be in it and with us. And it’s interesting, I was reading this book, too long of a story, but the author was pointing out that when David asked God if Saul is going to be where he was going, because he was running from him God goes, “Yes, he’ll be there.” And that’s it. God just answered his question and David’s like, “Well, so if I go there is he going to kill us?” And God goes, “Yes, that’s what’s going to happen.” So, and then, it’s an interesting emotional place to be that God is sitting there. Now, if you know the longer version of that story is that God takes, Jesus comes out of the line of David.

That’s a whole thing. But the crazy thing is that you would think that God would be like, okay, don’t go there because he’s going to kill you. But like, Nope, He stays with, the question, He stays with the entire thing and takes the emotional risk of having this whole thing go sideways. Anyway, my point is that you can, like what you’re saying, Aaron, if you just simply went off of what you, on a baseline know from the characters in the Bible, you can be really honest and you can be, He already knows. But on the other hand, He actually wants to experience that time with you, which I think a lot of people don’t actually understand. Like they feel like, oh God is doing this to me. No, He’s not doing that to you. He sees what happens —
[DAWN]
That’s part of the fallen world we live in.
[NATHAN]
That’s right. And He sees what’s happening and He wants to help you and be with you, but He’s not going to force Himself into your life abusively and insert Himself there in that way. He’s going to wait for you to come to him and then He’s got love on him.
[DAWN]
Yes. I love that. I love David. He’s one of my favorite characters in the Bible. At times I’m like, he might have been bipolar. At one minute he’s dancing in the streets in his underwear, praising God and then the next he’s like super angry at God and depressed and won’t get out of bed. So I’m like, um but he always —
[AARON]
He’s in the Faith Fringes podcast and Dawn —
[DAWN]
I know.
[NATHAN]
He’d have a few more concubines.
[DAWN]
I know. Seriously, and all his actions are all over the place. So I just love David because I’m like it’s okay. It’s okay to feel these things, bring them before God. The other guy I like is Peter, because he’s pretty intense as well. But at the same time, those people, like God referred to them as, Peter is the rock of my church and David, I love him and I’m going to have my lineage come from him, Jesus just coming from the line. So, I mean, that’s what I’m saying. God is not sitting here judging our behavior. He is looking at our hearts, looking at how he can connect with us intimately on our personalities that He gave us. I mean, it’s just so powerful to really, really understand those characters. So thank you for bringing that up.
[AARON]
Yes. I’ll just say I find a lot of comfort myself and even with my clients, referencing David as a man who was super messy, had committed adultery, murdered the guy, did all kinds of things, had all kinds of like family problems with his own kids and yet he’s described as a man after God’s own heart.
[DAWN]
I know. That’s so powerful.
[AARON]
That’s incredible to me, who’s somebody who can be so messy and yet at the same time, God overlooks all that stuff. Not overlooks. He sees it, He knows it, but He’s like, but I care about what you do with it. I care that you turn your heart back toward me continually.
[DAWN]
I know. I love it. It’s a great picture. Okay, well you guys, this has been great, just talking all things spiritual, even theology. I just so appreciate it. One thing I forgot to mention, so this might, it’s not going to be a deep question, but I love to have my listeners talk about trail transformation. We talk about that a lot as, any favorite hiking trails that you feel are really could be a spiritual experience around the Portland area. I like to kind of shout out a few trails for people. Because for me that is one of my most spiritual things; it’s hiking. So I love to kind to end on a fun note.
[AARON]
Yes, I’ll throw out Eagle Creek, which is kind of in the Gorge on the way toward, well, if you’re going east from Portland it’s toward Hood River. It’s called Eagle Creek. It’s beautiful. There’s a little spot that you can, if you go off the trail just a little bit, you’ll get down to this freezing cold water place that’s called Punchbowl Falls and you can actually jump in off of alleged into this literally ice cold water. The hike is beautiful.
[NATHAN]
I am not a huge hiker to be honest. My hiking idea is not even in this state because I had a very super transformative height actually like kind of what you’re saying over hiking to the green sand beach in the big island of Hawaii. So if you ever go to the big island, you need to do that and you need to walk along the coastline because, from the power of God’s standpoint, the waves over there is a whole different story. It is a very overwhelming type of experience. And if you’re in Oregon, a lot of my clients love to hike the Gorge. There’s about 15 million hiking trails in the Gorge, and that can be really powerful too.
[DAWN]
Okay. Thank you. I love it. I love hearing different places to go in different states and for listeners to kind of be able to jump on a trail. So thank you guys so much. I so appreciate your time and just your honesty and talking about things, all things spiritual.
[AARON]
Thanks for having us on.
[NATHAN]
Thank you so much.
[DAWN]
Thank you for listening today at Faith Fringes Podcast. If you want to explore more of your own faith journey, I offer my free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections, where you take a deeper dive into your own story included as a journaling workbook that has guided exercises. So if you want to explore more of what you were brought up to believe, or even look at where you may have been disillusioned or hurt, but yet still deep down you desire to authentically connect with God, then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up.

Also, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can reach me at dawn@faithfringes.com. .

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