HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE A SPIRITUAL EXPLORER

[DAWN GABRIEL]
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 thank you so much for joining me here today. My name is Don Gabriel and I am so excited for this to be the first episode of Faith Fringes Podcast. I’m going to tell you a little bit about me, so you know who you’re listening to. And then I will also explain why I wanted to do this podcast, why I named it Faith Fringes and what you can expect as you listen to the podcast. A little background about me. I am from Castle Rock, Colorado, where I’m recording live and I’m a mom of two boys. My husband and I have been married for 11 years. I am also a group practice owner for counseling practice in castle rock, which means I’m a therapist for the past 15 years, and I also love hiking. I love reading, I’m a wine enthusiast and a chai-connoisseur. So that’s a little bit about me.

My background is, I actually grew up in a Christian home in the Midwest and I grew up going to youth group and I even went to a Christian college and a Christian grad school. But after I graduated college, I had decided that there were some things that really weren’t sitting well with me. I went through some major life transitions and events that really made me question if I was a good enough Christian. And maybe that’s something you have been questioning or wondering yourself based on how people have responded to you or even how maybe you were brought up or the church had responded to you. And so I started questioning my faith. I started questioning myself. I didn’t really question like who God was so much or my faith in God. It was more, I was questioning what I believed about Him, if that makes sense. I definitely wrestled and doubted. And what I came away with was different than what I had learned in the church.

And I went to a few different churches, so it wasn’t one particular church. It was a few different churches growing up. We moved a lot. I went to three different high schools and so I definitely experienced some different church culture. So in my twenties, I would say that’s when my new faith journey began and I actually, yes, I actually moved after, in my thirties. I moved to Colorado with a bunch of friends and that’s also where my faith journey kind of exploded in a different way. I felt like I was out of, kind of the Midwest church culture and I felt like Colorado was more open to you know, kind of matching some of my beliefs. And I’m sure I will share more stories about that, but I wanted to kind of start with like why I’m doing this podcast. I kind of alluded to it with my journey, is a little different than what I experienced in church of what was expected of me. So I realized, even though I was different than what the culture was telling me around me, I wanted to still connect with God on such a deep level. And I still had that longing and I realized, but other people do too.

So let’s fast forward to about, let’s see, six years ago. My mom had just died from cancer and I actually flew back from her funeral and the next day I was running a half marathon. I know that sounds crazy, but I just, I had trained and actually running helped me kind of deal with her decline with cancer. And it just helped me in my grieving process. So I thought, “You know what, I’m not running to win this half marathon. I’m not running to get my best time. I just need to complete it.” My mom was always supportive of me running even in high school and I just thought, “I think she’d really want me to do this.” So I had two friends that I was meeting to run with and I told them, “Don’t wait for me. I know we trained together, but just go ahead.” So they went ahead and I just started running my usual pace and then I would slow down and walk a little bit, because, yes, obviously there was a lot going on and I was about, I think it was about eight or 10 miles in near the end and I was just feeling so sad.

I don’t know if you know this, but when you’re running or hiking or walking, there’s some bilateral stimulation going on in your brain. So the left and the right part of your brain are moving around and processing things. It’s actually a really great way to process things that you’re stuck or feelings or anything. And a little side note, as a therapist, I do EMDR, which also is a treatment for trauma and stuck places that people have and it’s because it bilaterally stimulates the brain. So I knew that running would help me process my mom’s funeral, the grief, and just begin that process. So, and it did. As I was running around mile eight or 10, getting back to my story I was just feeling overwhelmed with sadness. I even had to slow down a little bit because I started crying. And it was good. I needed to cry and I just was feeling like this deep gut sorrow. We were in a part of Denver, Colorado where we were running and it was, we had gotten to more of a place where it had some trees and beautiful, like older houses. And I looked over and there was these trees in this light shining down in the middle of these trees.

I looked over and I saw my mom. I saw her standing there clapping, sorry, I’m getting a little emotional. I didn’t expect that. I saw her clapping and cheering me on and seeing that she was with me still. And that just really impacted me and I cried obviously, but I still kept going and it was so helpful. And it was just like, I saw her cheering me on like when I was running track in school and in high school and everything. It was just so comforting to me and so beautiful. The thing though is after I was done with the marathon and was kind of reflecting on that, I started questioning myself like, “Can I talk to anyone about this? Should I tell anyone? Will they believe me? Will they judge me? And then do I even care if they do?” And I realized like we didn’t really talk about stuff like this in the church when I was brought up.

We didn’t talk about visions or seeing people or hearing from God. We were only taught that prophets are like really special people, heard from God and saw visions, but in our life it wasn’t really, I mean, maybe it could happen, but we just, I just don’t remember learning about it. I even, I don’t know if I said this, but I even have a degree in counseling and theology. So it was something I had studied through grad school. And I don’t remember talking about this spiritual realm, this connection that we can have with God. And so I really do feel like my mom was standing there and I knew she was in the afterlife. I believe she was in heaven and I felt it was a very spiritual experience that God gave that to me. But I was so afraid to talk to someone about it because I didn’t want them to, first of all, take that away from me by judging whether I believed it or not. I just didn’t want anyone in that space with me.

So I didn’t really, I think I told only my husband and maybe my best friend, but I didn’t really talk about it for a long time because it was just precious. And that started me realizing, wait a minute, I feel like there is more of a spiritual realm and a spiritual connection out there. And I feel like as I studied that there was more of it and we didn’t talk about it a lot. So that kind of started my journey of outside the realm, outside the realm of the religious to-do list, the shoulds and the should nots and how I was raised in that culture. And let me just stop right there and say my parents started their faith journey when I was probably four or five years old. And so it was, but so they grew along with me. They are not the judging type. My parents were very loving and they showed that plenty of times in my life that they were loving no matter what, but there was still the churches and the culture and not just one church or a few churches. There are some great churches. I’m not trying to bash churches here. I’m just trying to share my experience and hope that maybe your experience, maybe this’ll help you kind of question and look at things and help you to figure out what it really means to have spirituality and to connect.

So anyway, that’s where I’m going; is I really want to talk about that deeper relationship, the deeper connection we can have with God and really jump into our spirituality. But it is, it’s kind of on the fringes, which is why I call this podcast Faith Fringes. When I think of fringes of faith, I actually, the word that comes up is edges or edge work. If you think of a fringe just think, what does that bring up to you? What do you think of when you think of the word fringe? For me, edge work came up. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with that term, but I used to work in wilderness therapy and I used to do a lot of adventure things with ropes courses and backpacking trips and hiking for like 10 days in the mountains with a group of teens or a group of college students and edge work is where we would talk about it a lot. It’s where you have like, imagine a circle and that is, inside the circle is your comfortability level and that’s all and that’s where you’re comfortable.

You don’t really grow though until you get to the edge and you push yourself over the edge. And that’s edge work. Those are the things you don’t know, you can’t learn until you get to the edge. And so you have to push yourself and do edge work, meaning I want to grow. I want to learn. I want more. I long for more. And so that’s what I think of when I think of this podcast. This is for people who are spiritual explorers, they have been comfortable or not comfortable, and they want to do more. They know there’s more connection and they long for more. And so that is what edge work is to me. So I have an example. Edge work, for example, when I took teens, I worked in a residential home. It was a private residential home for teens in Colorado and these were teens who their families had chose to send kids from all over the nation to this home because it was a school. We did counseling. We did group counseling, individual counseling, family counseling, but one of the main things we did was wilderness therapy.

We did two big trips, two or more big trips a year while they were there and I was the one of the counselors there. These were not kids who the state mandated to come. These were kids who had loving families and their parents decided to send their kids here because they were out of options. This was before they would go to maybe get in more trouble with the law, and that was just a really good program. I loved that place. So what I’m trying to say though, is that these were privileged teenage girls that I took on this trip. It was very different for them to go on this wilderness trip. We were going, I’m trying to remember, I think it was a seven-day backpacking trip in like the high mountains of Colorado. So these girls were not used to that. It was major edge work. First of all, no cell phones, no distractions. Everything you need is on your back in the backpack. We had to pack all our food, all our sleeping, and we were going to go out there and there were myself and other counselor. And then somebody who was wilderness, like what’s the word, where they a woofer wilderness first aid responder, is what we called them. And so he was more of the tech guy who helped us. And he was great at working with us in a group too, but he was more, knew all the wilderness stuff and we did more, the other counselor and I did more of the therapy and the talking, but it was really intense.

So it was actually at work for us too, as the adults there, but the teens, we would go out there and within like the first few minutes that we were there, one of the teens ran away. And so we had to like figure out real quick what was happening. So we had to like divide and conquer. They were just so scared and they had to do it to pass the course or to pass this program we were doing. And they even, we, I mean, we had so many different edge work, but they had, we had to climb a thirteener, which is, sorry, in Colorado, we call fourteeners. There’s a ton of mountains in there, 14,000 feet above sea level but there was a thirteener we climbed with the kids. I just watched them that day, as they were scared. It was hard. We climb to the top and they, on the way down, they were so proud of themselves and they were so excited that they could do it. So that’s an example of edge work. They did it anyway. And let me tell you, one of my pillars of this podcast is going to be talking about nature and adventure in nature, or just communing with nature. And that is more spiritual to me sometimes than anything else. I’ve connected with God out in nature.

All that to say is this trip was so instrumental in changing these girls’ lives and they still, to this day, it’s been probably what, 15 years, maybe 12 years since I’ve worked there and I still have them text me or call me, or tell me about things. And they still refer back to this life-changing experience. So that’s what I think of when I think of edge work. For those of you who want a more technical definition, look up edge work. It talks about the behavior at the edge of what is normally allowed or accepted. And that really resonates with me. It’s like a voluntary risk or a temporary escape from social boundaries. And you search for mental or physical, almost borderline experiences. That’s the theory of edge work and so that’s what I want to invite you guys into today; is what is the edge work of your faith? What is the fringes? Can we go there? I personally have thrown a lot of questions at God. I’ve wrestled with Him, I’ve been mad at Him, I have cursed at him and that was not the way I was brought up.

You do not do that. That is disrespectful. You don’t let your Bible touch the floor. You dress up for church, you check off the list of to-do, so you can be a good Christian girl. And I did that for years until after college and I was in my mid twenties going through some personal tragedies, which I’m sure I will share later on in our podcasts’ episodes. And it made me really redefined my faith. That’s when I started to see a difference as to what I felt God was telling and connecting to me versus what the culture, the Christian culture was telling me I’m supposed to do or supposed to feel. So my journey has been different. It has been, it’s been slow, it’s been fast, it’s been all over. It hasn’t been the same. So I am not expecting my listeners to have a similar journey. I’m just hoping to provide some hope and to provide what I think could be some edge work for you.

Another thing, the reason I named it Faith Fringes is I do want to share the story. I’m sure for those of you who have read this story, it might be familiar. But if you remember in actually Matthew 9, Matthew chapter 9 in the Bible, the woman who was hemorrhaging for about 12 years or so, and she was so sick and she knew that Jesus was coming and He was going to be in her town. Back then it was not okay for a woman who was hemorrhaging to be out in public. She was supposed to be at home hiding. It was unclean for her to be out and she didn’t care. She knew, she was so desperate to see Jesus, because she believed that He could heal her and so she went against societal norms and she went out into the crowd and she went up and she touched the fringe of His garment.

You probably remember this. He turned to her and He said, “Daughter, take courage. Your faith has made you well.” And I just love that. I kind of researched and looked up what was so important about the fringe or the tassels that Jesus wore? And so the fringes that he wore was like a four cornered garment that rabbis wore or the Jewish people wore. And the purpose of these tassels was very specific. This was to remind Israel that they were inseparable connection to God. And so it was a very important fringe. So that’s what she grabbed and touched and I loved that because she knew that she shouldn’t even have touched Him, but she knew there was healing there. And I love that God responds to her faith and her faithfulness and that He was just saying, “Your faith has made you whole. Your faith has, it is real. It has nothing to do with what society says or what other say. This is real to you and it’s about me and you,” is what He was saying.

And that’s what I love and that’s what I am hoping for on this journey. I look at myself as not having all the answers. I want to be like a sojourner with you, a journey person to walk alongside you as we explore this spiritual journey. So a few of the things I really want to focus on, I feel like the overarching theme to this podcast would be spiritual explorers, people who are wanting to explore. Another pillar would be people who have been hurt or have experienced pain in their walk, whether it’s with church or somebody else, a Christian or maybe in their own minds, they’ve just have a lot of doubts. I really want to talk to those people. I really want to have those people just really be able to come alive when they listen to this and maybe connect with other people’s stories. And also because I am a therapist, I sit with people in their darkest moments and their deepest pain, and I just really have a passion for that. And I have seen so much healing when therapy intersects with spirituality, true spirituality, fringe, spirituality and that’s, I’d love to talk about that more in the upcoming episodes.

The third pillar I love as you probably already from me talking so much about it is, I actually call it trail therapy. Like being on the trail is so therapeutic for me. So I’ll expand it also to nature and beauty and just getting out there. Of course I’ve been talking a lot about trails. That’s why I moved to Colorado; is to hike. So that’s going to be a third pillar.

A fourth pillar I have is community and just really the importance of people who are safe to talk about the deep things that you need to talk about, like soul conversations. I just think it’s so important. So we’ll be having a lot of guests on here that are talking about how community has impacted their life, like spiritual community, soul community.

Then the fifth one is stories and journeys. That is a huge pillar. I think when you hear somebody’s story, it changes a lot of your preconceptions, of your expectations, of your notions and your story and journey is so important. And I just want to create a space for people to be able to tell their stories and understand it and interact with it. I think it’s so important.

So those are my five pillars that I am going to be focusing on. The spiritual explorers, we’re going to explore different tools that will help you explore the fringes of your faith. People who are doubting and hurting, I’m hoping that you hear people’s stories in that it will help you feel not alone and connected. We’ll talk about nature and trails and connecting there and soul community and stories weaved throughout all of these. So if you’re trying to say, “Well, am I a spiritual explorer? What does that mean?” I want you to just kind of, I’m going to ask a few questions I want you to think. “Is that me?” I would say you’re a spiritual explorer if you’re dissatisfied with what you learned or what you thought, and you want to kind of deconstruct that and you know there’s more. You’re kind of questioning what you’ve grown up or even haven’t really questioned before, but you want to start questioning it.

Maybe you’re curious, and sometimes you feel guilty about that, but you still can’t help it. You’re curious and you want to like question that. You’re welcome here as well. Or you get gut feelings. Like you want to connect on a spiritual level or maybe you have connected on a spiritual level, but you don’t have words to describe it, because sometimes some judgments or self gets in the way, like what you tell yourself or the culture you’re living in right now gets in the way like I’ve been sharing and then or maybe some bad experiences you’ve had or disappointment specifically from God, things didn’t go your way. And I will be sharing some of my stories of that too.

So if any of that resonates with you, I feel like this podcast is for you. So I’m so excited that you joined today. I really hope to get your feedback. I’d love for you to not miss an episode, feel free to subscribe to Faith Fringes on whatever podcast you listen to. And yes, I’d love to just invite you back and I’d love to hear from you. I have an email course you can sign up for, if you want to know more. That’ll be in the show notes and you can just sign up for that at faithfringes.com. Thanks so much. I enjoyed our time.

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.

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.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.