“You’re not good enough.” “You need to try harder.” “Everything’s fine!”
These are the sorts of voices that we all have in our heads, and they often push us to act in ways that are both unhelpful and unsustainable. How do we quiet these narratives? More importantly, amid the chatter, how do we hear the voice of God?
In this episode, Gina has a conversation with Gem Fadling, CLC about her new book Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads.
Gem is a founding partner of Unhurried Living, a non-profit that trains people to rest deeper, live fuller and lead better. She is a Certified Life Coach and a trained Spiritual Director who coaches women at the intersection of spiritual leadership and soul care. Gem is the host of the I Can Do That! Podcast as well as the co-author of What Does Your Soul Love? Eight Questions That Reveal God’s Work in You, and author of Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads.
Listen below to follow along:
Unhurried Living
Gina:
Well, Gem Fadling, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the podcast! There’s all sorts of things we could chat about. I know you have a book coming out, but I would love for you to share a little bit about who you are, and share your story. You and your husband have a ministry and nonprofit. So I would love for people to get a little bit of a taste of who you are and what brought you here.
Gem:
Well, thanks again for having me. The short version of your life is always difficult to figure out where to start, but why don’t we start with right here? We have an organization called Unhurried Living. We founded it about seven years ago.
We’re now in our late fifties, and it’s sort of the culmination of our life’s work. It’s all the things that God has done in and through us over the decades, and now we’re funneling it into this beautiful ministry together where we just encourage Christian leaders. The tagline of our ministry is: rest deeper, live fuller, and lead better.
So we just really believe in those phrases, and it starts with rest deeper because that’s a big huge gap normally in many leaders’ lives. It is that pause, that rest. How would you fill up to do what you do? So rest deeper, then live fuller, live your life and let there be an overflow, and then lead better. Leadership flows from that.
So that’s the heartbeat of our ministry. Within that, I have a focus on women just because I love a woman’s journey. I have loved my own journey. So I meet with women in various ways, individually, and in groups. So it’s a beautiful season of life and I’m loving all the things that I get to do.
Gina:
I love that! It’s so interesting because we have been seeing the collateral damage of leaders not resting. There’s just a unique epidemic in the western evangelical church, because of that absence of rest. I’m coming alongside a church right now and helping with their teaching team and stuff.
We’re starting a study of book of Nehemiah and it is really fascinating. I’m kind of mapping out the journey, and in the end when Israel reinstates the Covenant, there were three things that they were really called to reinstate. Those three things were: not to intermarry, to honor the Sabbath, and to tithe to the temple for worship.
Resting is so hard. Even then before cell phones and all the chaos, the first thing that they stopped doing was honoring the Sabbath. They just couldn’t stop. And yet there’s something so powerful and intentional and necessary in how we are made, even our DNA needs rest.
Rest is so significant. I think the enemy knows that, and certainly is going to do everything to disrupt that. I think we just don’t understand, or we underestimate the necessity for rest.
Gem:
Oh yeah, completely. A lot of times we talk with people and they think rest is nothing. It’s a “not doing.” but rest is a thing. It’s alive. Going back to the Old Testament, if you go all the way back to creation, God rested on the seventh day.
Then when you think about the Israelites coming out of 400 years, and being told that one day and seven would be a day of rest, it’s God’s gift. Because when you’re a slave, no one ever says to rest. What they do is they work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and don’t let up. God said, “Rest.”
Gina:
Start there. Start with the rest.
Gem:
That’s exactly right. Well, and that’s the other part of that whole, the Jewish Day began at Sunset.
Choosing Transformation
Gina:
I love that. I hope people go and check out your organization on your website, because Unhurried Living, the book is beautiful and powerful and it’s just a journey. I think we’re probably on a lifelong discovery of the depths of those things, and those invitations that we have. So you have a new book coming out, and I would love to hear about it.
How did you end up here? You know, obviously you’re meeting with women and you’re helping them in their journeys, and there’s some epidemics of our thought life and that’s wreaking havoc. So tell us a little bit about this book and where it came from and what you’re hoping will come out of people reading it?
Gem:
I’m not sure exactly where it got birthed. I got interested in my own thoughts and what was going on there. So I sort of was educating myself on what’s happening there. One of the phrases that really struck me, and this comes from Just Classic Spirituality, “You are not your thoughts.” Which means you are more than your thoughts.
So then what does that mean? So now I’m on this journey of, “I am not my thoughts. I thought I was my thoughts because my thoughts are in my head with my voice and my tone talking to me.” I thought it was me talking to me. We’ve come to find out that our brain is just quite busy.
It has a negativity bias trying to keep us safe. Our brain wants to problem solve, and I get that too. So the invitation really is to step outside of that process, with hopefully a discerning heart and look at what’s going on, and then make a decision about what you want to continue thinking, or what behavior you want to continue.
I felt trapped before, and even before I felt trapped, I was ignorant. You just don’t know what you don’t know. So I didn’t know that there was this process of being more objective. So along that journey, of course I ran into Romans 12, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” which I love that we are being transformed by God.
Be transformed. So what does it mean to cooperate with what God is doing? One place I can engage in this cooperation is by being aware of what I’m thinking. So I’m exploring that in this book very practically. It’s a very practical book. I share a lot of stories of other women and my own stories.
I’m trying to bring all this down to earth because it could get heady, you know, thinking about thoughts. I’m not going there. You are not your thoughts. The other quote that really informed me, is from Victor Frankel, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our power to choose. And in our choice lies our growth and our freedom.”
I feel like that quote sounds almost Biblical, right? It goes right alongside “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So I like to say that in this space that Frankel is talking about, we can do some inner work.
Discerning Your Thoughts
Gina:
Well, certainly the church, for so many years has been in this for a long time. It was in a season where, you come to Jesus, you are saved, and then you are asked, “Are you reading your Bible? Are you praying? Are you in the Word? If you are, then everything should be fine.”
In that time there was a rejection of anything that really taught mental or emotional health, or anything to do with psychology. Then you can get so far on the clinical side. But how do you link that with your faith? Because being transformed is also a spiritual process.
Some of the things that maybe trigger us and cause our thoughts to get chaotic, can be the enemy really trying to distract and pull us away. It can be the things that we’ve partnered with and things that we have aligned ourselves with. So I would love to hear your thoughts on bringing the two together. What does that look like? What was that journey for you?
Gem:
Well, certainly over the course of time, I’ve encountered all the things you were just talking about. I have read all the teachings and all the ways and all the temptations and all of that. The book, I wrote it from the standpoint of the day to day thoughts that we’re having. I’m assuming that we can at least pull together some version of the best part of who we are.
To take one step back and look at what’s going on. So I understand that there’s been some abuse in psychology. There’s also been some abuse in the church. There’s all kinds of ways in which human beings have messed up a lot of things.
Coming back to how practical I am, I think God is so gracious that I don’t think He’s making life that mysterious. I understand that God, Himself, is mysterious, but I like to think that He’s not so mean as to make this an impossible thing.
So I bring myself back to, “If I am not my thoughts, then I can take a step back and I can look at them.” We could discern some things, and I would like to think, if you’ve been walking with the Lord for any length of time, then there’s a version of wisdom inside of you by The Holy Spirit. He can help you to discern your thoughts. You’re gonna hear this word outta my mouth a lot today, the word “discern”. It’s an important word.
Especially in the culture these days, there’s so much going on. We have to be discerning people. I believe that The Holy Spirit teaches us. Jesus said, “I’m going to give you The Holy Spirit, and He will teach you and remind you of the things I have said.” I trust that. So I try to make that space where I don’t throw any babies out with bath waters, and I try to embrace the wisdom of my own Christian faith.
Also the wisdom of the best of what psychology offers. We are being helped by knowing there’s neuroplasticity and we can actually change the grooves in our brains, which actually aligns with what scripture says. I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind. That’s what that is. So I just embrace that goodness.
That’s where I’m coming from. We can simply notice what’s going on in our brains. What you said is the thought might be coming from any number of sources, but that’s part of the discernment process. The first thing we have to do is stop and take a look, and not be on autopilot.
Gina:
That is all so good. It is kind of like getting pulled by that rip current. You can’t see the forest or the trees, and then before you know it, you’re offshore and you can’t see the land.
Gem:
That’s exactly right. That’s why the movement starts with noticing.
The Unholy Trio
Gina:
So in the book, you introduced something called “The Unholy Trio”, can you talk a little bit about that? I just love that, even that title. What is that? Can you explain that?
Gem:
I opened the book actually with the storytelling on myself. In recent history, after all this beautiful talk about how I’m a Christian, and the life I’m living in my spiritual practices, I too suffered an anxiety attack because I’m a human woman living in this century, and I’m affected by things.
So as we were actually building our organization, my ambition was brought to the surface, my perfectionism, my drive. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with these things, but what was happening to me was that they were getting so inflamed that I was sort of having a mini burnout every year.
It was like a little mini anxiety moment where I was like, ‘Okay, something’s not right.” So I would wake up to that, pull myself back together with some help with some spiritual practices. By the fourth time, it happened four years in a row.
And finally the fourth time it happened, I was unable to turn off the feeling of anxiety. My heart was beating fast, my thoughts were racing. I couldn’t sleep. So I called my former therapist and got help. He helped me really quickly, because it was just about knowing how to shut off the flow of adrenaline.
So I’m telling that story because “the unholy trio” was a gift given to me by The Holy Spirit. When I came in desperation and said, “There has to be another way for me to live and work because what I’ve been doing has been leading to anxiety. I’m missing a piece here. Can you please help me?”
So fortunately right after that, my husband and I had planned for months to go away for our 34th anniversary, and we found ourselves in Italy, which was lovely. It was a pilgrimage for me. I took a prayer with me, I just said, “I need help, Lord. You’re going to have to show me a new way.” So over the course of the trip, I just stayed very open to anything that God wanted to offer me as far as help.
One of the phrases that came up very clearly was when I was sitting in a chapel in Florence, in front of a painting of the last supper. It was huge up on the wall. The bread for communion was in front of it on a table. So I hear the sentence I hear every week at communion, “This is my body given for you.” Jesus is speaking. On the tail end of that, I hear this phrase, “Stop pushing, stop trying, stop angsting.” That’s what I call the unholy trio.
That is exactly what I was doing. I was trying to push something. I was trying to make something happen, and I was definitely angsting. The Holy Spirit was just saying, “Stop.” So I received that, and that’s why I started the book with this. In another cathedral in Italy in St. Francis, I sensed, “You already have everything you need.” which of course is 2 Peter 1:3. “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.”
So I started piecing that together, pushing, trying, angsting, stop that. And by the way, you already have what you need. So I came home and now I was on a new journey, and I’ve been living that journey since then. I haven’t gone back to my old ways. I’m not going to lie and say it never happens, because I still get triggered like anyone else, but I feel like God gave me some new tools.
Gina:
I love just your journey. God is so intimately intentional with us. The Bible says, “Seek me, and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” You decided, Lord, “Lord, I need you.” It wasn’t just a moment of desperation, but you persisted with this seeking and this longing, and then the Lord speaks.
The other beautiful thing, is when we receive some healing, when we receive some revelation, when we receive some freedom, that’s never just about us. Now the freedom that you’re receiving, that revelation that you are receiving, it’s something that you can go give away. That’s what you’re doing.
It is such a beautiful way how the Lord met you in looking at a painting in Italy, just the two of you. Our God is a one-on-one God. He’s into having conversations with the woman at the well. The 5,000 is great, but He’s so intimately present and intentional. Then for you to not just take that for yourself, but now go, “Okay, I want to serve this, I want to offer this, I want to invite people to this table and let them discover and taste and see that it’s good.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Taking Thoughts Captive
Check out the Dwell Meditations
