“Healing What’s Within” with Chuck DeGroat

by on October 11, 2024

Licensed therapist, professor, and author Chuck DeGroat returns to discuss his latest book, Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.

In this deeply personal and insightful conversation, Chuck explores the profound journey of healing from trauma, especially when it’s caused by circumstances beyond our control.

After the release of his previous book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck was flooded with messages from people dealing with wounds that weren’t their fault. This prompted him to ask: How do we move from being defined by what happens to us, to understanding the transformation that happens within us? In “Healing What’s Within,” Chuck invites readers to encounter God as a compassionate witness to their trauma, offering unconditional kindness and presence in whatever state they find themselves.

Listener Resources:

About Our Guest:

Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. He is a licensed therapist, spiritual director, author, retreat leader speaker, and faculty member with the Soul Care Institute. As a therapist, he specializes in navigating issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He trains clergy in handling issues of abuse and trauma, conducts pastor and planter assessments, and facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse. Before transitioning to training and forming pastors, Chuck served as a pastor in Orlando and San Francisco. He and his wife, Sara, have been married for 30 years and have two adult daughters.

Episode Transcript:

Dan: It’s such a great gift to be able to have conversations with dear friends. And so for Rachael and I to step into a conversation with Dr. Chuck DeGroat. Chuck, it’s been so long since you have been with us and just an absolute honor and delight to have you with us. So welcome and I’ll tell people and you can add whatever you wish you are an utterly remarkable interplay of theological, psychological, and deep honesty and humility. Is that not true of you? You’re a rare, troubled, brilliant, beautiful man who has written a new book that’s now three days old. I mean, this child’s not even out of the hospital yet. Yet yet it’s the birth of this book. Healing What’s Within, I just think is one of those gifts to the kingdom. And so to invite you as professor of Western Seminary and as just a thoughtful, deep writer and therapist, let’s just start with how’s it feel to have this new birth?

Chuck: Yeah, well you might relate to this, but it’s not as anxiety producing as it used to be. And you hold these things a little bit more lightly. The last one, the narcissism book that came out, in fact, we had a conversation, COVID was happening when it came up and Amazon stopped selling books when the narcissism book came. And you have to just sort of open your hands and relax, trust that it’s all going to be well. And that’s sort of the way this goes nowadays. So I feel very grateful. As you know, it comes with a lot of work on the front end. So I’ll be grateful for the weeks and months after to sort of relax and not have to post on social media as much stuff like that. So

Dan: Well, may the birth and this great gift indeed invite many people to both what we know to be the reality of death, but also the reality of resurrection. So let me just start with this. You begin the book by describing being fired, which I have some familiarity with. And in that I love this phrase as you talk about you were fired from a church where you had established a remarkable counseling program where your children were baptized, where there were deep friendships. And then this lovely phrase, and that is, and I’m sure you’re wondering what was the situation, the consequences, et cetera. But that’s not this book because the framework is, it’s not so much what happens to us, but what happens within us. And that sets the tonality that indeed the things around us are very important. But what we have to actually begin with is not merely what has occurred, but what’s happening within. And in some ways the trajectory of the book invites us into the to’s: what happens to us, but far more what happens within. What set that for you as the parameter of what you wanted to accomplish.

Chuck: Yeah, that was the stunning revelation years ago that trauma in one sense is not the same thing as abuse, but it’s the imprint, right? And I think part of what set the trajectory was doing this writing on narcissism and spiritual abuse and seeing that conversation grow. And of course Rachael has done really incredible work in this area, and I’ve been a learner at her feet when it comes to this stuff. But people have been talking about this and tweeting about this, and you see it all over social media and there are lots of stories that come with these tweets, with these posts and things like that. And there are often situations that I’ve found, I’ve been doing work in this area for 25 years, but in particular with the writing of the narcissism books, situations where people couldn’t quite control the outcome. There was an injustice. They weren’t entirely sure what to do. They felt out of control. And it seemed to me that at least in the work that I was doing, the movement was to shift from what happened to you to what happens within the lasting imprint of trauma, which as you know, we know is different in each and every person. People can go through the exact same experience. And because we’re very different human beings, we experience it subjectively in a very different way. So that was the pivot point for me over the last few years as I thought about this particular book.

Dan: Well, again, it’s so important to open the door to many of the categories. And I know we chatted briefly and I have so many questions and I feel like I need to defer rightfully to you, dear friend, Rachael.

Rachael: No, I think I just, it’s so interesting because honestly in your introduction, Dan, I was making connections internally to why I’ve been so stirred of this season and your work, Chuck. And I just feel like it’s such a labor of love. And I know as writer, I don’t know personally as a writer because I’ve yet to take on that endeavor for very valid reasons.

Chuck: Please do.

Rachael: I know it’s vulnerable work no matter what you’re doing, but I think when we write from the vulnerability of our hard earned wisdom, it is a different kind of labor. And so I just want to say thank you because the ways in which you have brought the wounds of trauma and exposed even more deeply that our trauma is not, they aren’t singular stories. They’re not just emotional or psychological, they’re personal, they’re collective, they’re generational, and they’re deeply spiritual. So one of my just deep gratitudes to you is the framing of the genesis story as such a, it is our story and it is a story that helps us make sense of these wounds within and just really grateful.

Chuck: I mean, it’s a very different reading of that story. I mean, I grew up with, by the time you get to Genesis three, well actually you start with Genesis three, but by the time you get to Genesis chapter three, it’s like this great tragedy and arrogant Adam and Eve take the fruit and it’s just such a different reading to notice that they were targeted, they were deceived, they were gaslit, they were harmed by a slithering serpent. And it sends him spiraling with the question, did God really say? And can you imagine God showing up with compassion in the midst of that? There’s a very different reading. I think I’ve checked it out with some of my colleagues who are theologians and I think I’m okay, but they may pull the eject button at any push, the eject button at any point.

Dan: Oh, it’s just again, part of the beginning to underscore rather than read this with an assault against, but actually compassion with and for, yes, there’s rebellion and sin, but there is the context to which again, they are being violated by and there is harm in this intersection of entering entire own harm and yet the harm we do, is generous. But frankly, if I can begin, I think it’s just way more biblical than often what gets read as the bad. Here’s the bad object that indeed is the cause of all of our suffering. So even that alone is one of those where you go, yes, there is righteousness in this. And to underscore, when I read you, you one of the, what I would say, few, rare and few who intersect like Curt Thompson, the intersection of the brokenness of humanity, but a deep love of scripture and a theological wisdom that interplays. And I think for many reasons, it’s one of those things that every time you give us a new gift, it’s an exciting day. So with all that, I have a bunch of questions, but Rachael, any direction that you’re wishing to…

Rachael: Dan, I open the door for you to bring your curiosity.

Dan: I love how you talk about Hezekiah and Isaiah 30, it’s a passage I have been very drawn to over many seasons in my life. And I want you to begin with that whole category of Hezekiah’s got a very small story, and yet it’s where you begin to build the language of we have voices that are intersecting and interacting within us and without, so take us on a walk for Isaiah 30.

Chuck: Yeah, for me too, it’s been a passage for probably 20 years that has lived in me and with me in one way or another. The first book I ever wrote was called Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places. And this is a reversal of the Exodus story. And what’s so stunning is that Hezekiah is like the best of the kings. You wouldn’t expect it from Hezekiah, but a series coming down from the north, I mean imagine, well this isn’t, doesn’t quite fit, but imagine Canada invading from the north.

Dan: And that actually might be a good thing. But let’s put that aside.

Chuck: That might be helpful at this point. But as series coming down from the north and they’re anxious and as we would be, they’re trying to figure out what are we going to do and their autonomic survival systems kick in. We need help. There’s not this immediate sense of let’s trust God. God has come through for us time and time again, but there’s this panic that sets in and Hezekiah and his team send the ambassadors back to Egypt. And of course the rest of the passage unfolds with what folly that is to reverse the Exodus story and what calamity it will bring and how in the end it will leave them even more alone. And so that part of it is so important. I think that verse that grabs me is in returning and rest is your salvation and quietness and trust is your strength. It’s like that verse that in the middle of it, God shows up with this kindness, but then there’s the verse after there’s that verse that we put on our mirrors, we memorize, and then the verse after is, but you would have none of it. And that just feels like my story and probably your story and this. But I think part of it for me as we get to story is that it calls upon an ancient story, the Exodus story, and it’s saying in a sense, we live within that story and we all have propensity to reverse that story in our own lives and to live out of these smaller stories. And that’s what Hezekiah and his community were doing at that time. They had chosen a smaller story, an understandable one, because they were in survival mode. They wanted to fight and flight, but one that nonetheless had calamitous consequences.

Dan: The phrase, and Egypt shade will be your shame. And it’s such a brutal reality that the reversal of the grand, glorious story of the exodus and our personal exodus will always bring you back to the very thing that you were redeemed and rescued from. So what is the propensity to return to Egypt that you have put words to in this book? And also what are the voices of shame that you know you’ve had to address as you not just wrote this book but lived this book before you wrote it?

Chuck: Yeah, I mean I talk about this and there’s so much to talk about, but I talk about this in the context of attachment wounds and these stories that are ours that again, are so subjective and personal to each and every one of us. I know for me a story of anxious attachment with my mom and avoidant attachment with my dad that I live out of that as we know, these stories take up residence in our bodies in real ways, physiological neurobiological kinds of ways. These become the highways and byways that we live by. And frankly, it becomes really confusing for the people that you’re in relationship with when Chuck goes into anxious mode or avoidant mode for the people who think the world of me and think me to be a kind person in a generous person when I go into these modes that don’t look so kind and generous. But these are in me as a byproduct of my own story, my own upbringing. And part of the work as you’ve taught us to do for years, Dan, is to attend to our stories, pay attention to the patterns, to understand our stories so well that we can almost predict the patterns that we’ll live out of. And I think you even said in Leading With a Limp years ago, to repent beforehand, before you even fail. And so there is this sense that as we live out these stories, we we’re much more aware of our propensity of where we’ll go relationally, and we can choose new directions of course too. And we know that there are neural correlates to that we can retrain our brains to live in new ways and healthier ways and ways of flourishing.

Dan: Well, as you put words to that, again, lemme take you back to that category of the voice of shame and the voices you’ve heard. One of the very, and there are many but very poignant moments, you described being on a beach at your 50th birthday. And in those moments you would think it would be, I mean, I remember my 50th is not particularly one of the sweetest moments of my life, but nonetheless, you would expect it to be a good moment. You’ve reached full fledged post midlife adulthood.

Rachael: Wait 50 is post midlife? I thought it was just kind of like you’re easing into midlife. Sorry.

Dan: Well, are you planning to live to a hundred? Rachael, maybe you but…

Rachael: Yes, I’m hanging out.

Dan: Not me, baby. Anyway, back to that Chuck.

Chuck: Yeah, yeah, that story. Well, I had thought, I did a counseling program when I was 27 years old, and so I was one of the, I mean, feel so privileged to have been able to do that at such a young age. And Dan, I remember you coming and speaking down in Orlando, that was a significant time for a lot of us. And so I expected that at least by the time I turned 40, I would have arrived and I’d be over some of those old stories that were restoring in my body. But certainly by the time I turned 50, and I think there was some discouragement as I was with my family over the course of a few days, my mom and dad divorced living in separate homes. I think we were probably right after COVID lockdowns. And so life was kind of tough anyway. And I remember it just being feeling really down. This was not the day I expected. This was not, I thought I’d walk out of the hotel to the water with my arms open. I have arrived world. And I think that there was a little part of me and you both know this well, sometimes when you give up at some level, when you say I’m done, something remarkable happens. And there was something of that that happened that morning as I was sitting and there was this sense that it’s not a magical moment. It’s not a Hollywood moment, but the sun breaks through and you have some sense that God is there and present and kind, and it exposes the myth of control how I wanted to, I thought if I just worked hard enough, I would’ve arrived by the time I was 40 if not 50. And yet God is always there, whispering, kind, present, pursuing most often when we let go, when we give up, when we surrender.

Dan: Yeah. Well go back to that category of the voices, particularly of shame because at one level you’re saying on the beach, I haven’t done, I haven’t achieved, haven’t become what I want and what I thought I would be, how do you talk about the voices in your head?

Chuck: So I’ve worked with a way of talking about the image of God as an image that bestows on us worth, belonging and purpose. I used to be a biblical studies guy, so there are some reasons behind all three of those. We’re designed for dignity, we’re made for relationship, we’re made to be ambassadors of God’s shalom. But I think that first voice in Genesis chapter three and the voices that we hear within erode worth, belonging and purpose. And so I think there’s an invitation to pay attention in particular ways to your own story and how those voices have been eroded. What’s your particular story of a loss of worth or dignity in your own life? Where did you lose a sense of belonging? Where were you not affirmed in your sense of authenticity or purpose where you weren’t told that you mattered by someone important in your life? And I think on that day, I was reflecting in particular on some of the losses in my life, the absence of voices. And I’ll just say one more thing. I’d always expected that there would be someone that would swoop in, and I wonder if some listeners can relate to this. There would be a father figure, a mother. I just wanted someone to swoop in and make it all okay to mentor me to come alongside because I had been that person for so many years. And that was that day where I said, oh, I’m not looking for it anymore. In particular as I sense God saying, you don’t have to look any further. I’ve been here, I’ve always been here. I’m your father and I love you. And sort of like Henri Nouwen says, in return of the prodigal son, it’s time for you to become the Father. You get to play that role. And so it was a really beautiful season, kind of unexpected as it often goes when you give up control at some level.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, the picture again of those surprising moments where we don’t anticipate, again, I’ve walked on many beaches and had nothing but sand on my feet and other moments where you turn the corner and it’s like my whole life has come to visit me and all I did was I opened a door to go from one room to another and it hits. So I think there is that surprising element of the living presence of God and the questions, voices, that we’re meant to engage, open up such a rich realm. So again, I find it both confirming but also what beach, what door, what room might be on God’s schedule today. But the key word of you’re willing to actually enter into hard dialogue.

Rachael: One of the things you keep coming back to in your very vulnerable sharing of these moments is that sense of we really do start to believe no matter how much work we’ve done that someday we are just going to arrive and these wounds will be silenced or eradicated or healed where they just no longer exist, which as Christians or people who are Christ followers, logically we know even the resurrected one bears wounds that holds mystery and truth and all the things. And I feel like you just very… one of the things I appreciate is you’re inviting people to encounter a compassionate God who says, Hey, you can’t keep running away from the time does not heal all wounds. Your addictions or avoidance is not going to heal all wounds. I’m here. But you offer really practical exercises to people to practice what it looks like to slow down and see and be curious about what is within and to even practice, because I think a lot of our Christian formation, we don’t often hear that God is with us in the wounds. Even if people could say that’s the truth, what’s implied often is your wounds are a weakness. They actually are a bad testimony to who God is. You need to protect God, avoid the wounds.

Chuck: Yeah, that’s right. And I think that there was a sense that I had early on as a therapist and as a pastor, if we work hard enough, we’ll figure it out what our wound is and we’ll figure out the exact story that it’s tied to and we’ll button all that up.

Rachael: That’s right.

Chuck: And that’s not the way it works, I don’t think. As I think about wounds, I think about the kinds of wounds that we have experienced in our lives, the kinds of wounds that we talk about with our clients and we work with every day. But there are wounds that are larger and wider than that. Wounds simply living in the world that we live in. But I think as we’re learning more about generational trauma, the transmission of wounds, you might say the mystery there as well. And so I have this one practice, you mind if I share a quick practice that it’s a simple one, a candle right over the air with three wicks. And there will be times that as folks are kind of looking at their stories and wondering, when will I ever know? When will I ever find out? When will I come to that place where I know exactly what happened to me so that I can button this all up, that we’ll light the first one representing the things that we know and the second candle representing the things that we may know we may soon know, and then the third candle representing what we will likely never know. And that’s okay. There’s a mystery there, and we can hold that mystery and know that there are simply wounds in our lives that we can invite God to tend to, that we might not have particular words for.

Dan: Well, you speak about that in the context of a phrase that has been deeply meaningful for centuries and centuries. That is the dark night of the soul.

Chuck: Yeah.

Rachael: That’s right.

Dan: Again, there’s so much in your book that was arresting, that was delicious. But when I came to this one sentence, which is again, well written, well thought, but it’s like on page 178 and essentially says that the dark night of the soul that opens the door to the reality of the loss of our fundamental ways of trying to cope. It’s like, okay, so this is, again, not a matter of how do we resolve the dark night, but how do we allow the dark night to shape us? So talk a little bit about what the dark night of the Soul is, particularly in terms of what you’ve encountered and how it’s in one sense opened up a reversal of heading back to Egypt.

Chuck: Yeah. Well, can I tell a quick story behind that? Before I started this counseling program years ago, I was in England studying, and I took a Christian spirituality class with Alston McGrath who was going through a midlife crisis. And so of course he’s going to site the mystics, right? He’s going to decide people who can put words to these experiences. And so I was introduced to Hildegard of Pingan and Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila, who I now say is my favorite 16th century reformer and Saint John of the Cross. And I had no idea what I was reading. I was 27, I hadn’t lived enough life yet, but it was clear that this Alistair McGrath, he was going through something and it turned out what we were reading in part was about this dark night phenomenon where the lights go out and it feels like God leaves the room. But the reality is our small “g” gods begin to be eviscerated. We lose a sense of control because those smaller idolatrous gods don’t seem to work for us anymore. So when people talk about the dark night, oftentimes they about God left the building, God’s not here. And the reality is that God is stripping everything that isn’t God so that you can have more of God. But with that, lots of coping strategies, lots of things like the song that you used to sing in your youth group when you’re on the worship team and the book that you go back to that you thought was the book that Jesus showed up through and it no longer works, and you go back to the camp that you went, all the things that you’ve used, including your good religiosity, all of it seems to go away in the dark night. And so you do feel stripped of ways of coping, ways of showing up. In fact, you all know this, but when you work with folks like this, it’ll feel like they’ve lost their sense of identity at some level. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t even know how to show up. I don’t even know how to be a Christian anymore. And I’m sort of like, okay, that’s good. That’s probably going to be helpful for you in the long run. Although right now it feels kind of miserable.

Rachael: I think what’s so powerful about how you weave in the dark night of the soul is sometimes that religiosity can almost become, so the goal of the dark night of the soul is like self-annihilation and total dependence on God. And I think what’s, when I was reading that section, it reminded me of, I just talked about this on the podcast when I was sharing stories of my own trauma recovery, my first significant dark night of the soul happened in the midst of college. What some of the outcome of that loss of self and stripping down of these things I could kind of cope with that actually looked really good, similar to what you name in your book, they looked very religious, very spiritual. And the truth is they actually were very real to me. It wasn’t like I was putting on a front. They were very real. What came out of that dark down the soul was actually getting on anxiety meds and a deeper healing journey where God was saying, I don’t need you to spiritually bypass neurological systems in your body that have been really harmed. I am inviting you to a different kind of deeper medicine. It didn’t just stop with anxiety medicine. But it’s like sometimes I think we even have to shake up ways in which we think, oh, so then the outcome will be like, I’m so dependent on God in that kind of religious way that I don’t need people. I don’t need care. And it’s like, no often, and I think you’ve done this brilliantly and your book, it’s actually going to lead you to a deeper vulnerability, realizing how much connection and reconnection you need with God, with yourself, with others. And that to me, I just think is so brilliant and so needed in our kind of current spiritual framework and imagination.

Chuck: Yeah, it feels like new birth, right? I mean, there’s a you that emerges, that has been in there. And this goes back to our stories too. Maybe you’ve been a little bit buttoned up. Maybe you were told this was the kind of self that you needed to put on to look right in this Christian world that we live in. And as you let go of that, the you that emerges is even more beautiful and authentic and has so much more to offer from a core. And I think this is the you, this is the me that loves God and loves neighbor and does justice and mercy and walks humbly. This is not, I think sometimes when we talk this, people are like, well, you’re talking about some authentic you that just gets to do whatever you want now. And I think it’s you that knows how to love more deeply, more beautifully, more generously than ever before.

Dan: Well, the only problem I have with the phrase the dark night is that night generally is eight to 12 hours depending on where you’re and what season. But as we’re entering into the fall, and at this moment, it’s not what I would call significant, but living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s real. That’s real. It’s real when it’s dark by 4:30 in the afternoon. So it feels like, would it be just a night? I can endure a bad night? We’re talking about a season for some of us in terms of that loss of connection, loss of joy. But if you go back to those three crucial categories you bring worth, the dark night seems to obscure that I have value, that connection, belonging, that feels like even worse because nobody seems to know how to engage other than trite Hallmark card-isms or just leave me alone. Because we both know nothing will help in that moment. And so if all that feels obscured and eviciated then purpose, I mean, in one sense, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, wandering through the house feels like I don’t even know if I can get that done. So as you have experienced, as you have worked with people in this season, what enables you to be able to hold death and resurrection for yourself and for others?

Chuck: I think that there’s an unfolding that happens that takes time. It’s a dying and a rising doesn’t happen in a counseling session or I do these five day–a number of us are doing more intensive work nowadays, five days, three hours. It doesn’t happen in a five day intensive, and it’s a slow process. And I think one of the reasons I love to do the work that I do is we get to sort of walk alongside and to some extent steward that process. And what’s humbling about it, awe inspiring about it. I mean, I was working with a guy, I won’t say too many details, but a pastor who is sort of going through his own dark night death experience and something new, someone new is emerging, and yet he’s got a day job to go back to and a life to go back to. And it’s sort of like, so what now do I do? And I said, well, we keep walking together and we keep inviting him out more and more. And he says, well, what if people don’t like him? What if they don’t like me, the me that’s emerging this death to resurrection me, this new me? Because he’s more authentic and he’s more free, and there’s more, by the way, laughter and play and more of a capacity to rest and all these really beautiful things. And what if they like the guy that’s driven and who says, we need to go bigger, better, stronger, faster? What if they want him back? Okay, we’ll figure that out. And so there is this stewardship in our work that I find really humbling and awe inspiring as I do it.

Dan: Yeah. Well, you’re implying that so much of the becoming we can’t control, we have to lose control to enter the dark night. And sometimes it comes circumstantially, sometimes biologically, but the essence of it is we cannot make our dreams or desires come to fruition. But in that the becoming of who we’re going to be, even if we have a vision or a desire, the process, let alone the actual becoming, is a real mystery. And I think that notion that we have to attend to the voices that would keep us, that would allure us back to Egypt, that would undermine with the power and presence of shame, that quiet voice back to that image, I think it’s Isaiah 30:17, the quiet voice inviting you to repentance in rest and everything about it, I like the poetry. I just barely can comprehend what that implies with regard to…

Chuck: The poetry is nice, the process is kind of miserable.

Rachael: Well, and I think so much of what you talk about of those coping mechanisms that get exposed and are so deeply tied to our shame are the ways that addiction and addictive processes kind of serve as a really a false medicine. But they keep us going a lot of times. And I think you do a really good job of showcasing that. When we hear the word addiction, we certainly think of more obvious things like pornography or substances, but how addiction, both of you have self-disclosed that workaholism are just, yeah, if I could just work harder, do more. That can kind of bring a kind of soothing. And yet you engage addictions, Dan, I’ve experienced you engaging addictions in this way, with a kind of compassion and curiosity that says these can actually be revelatory. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the end of engaging them, but there’s something really important if we can even attend to what’s underneath the surface. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Chuck: I think this may be one of the reasons I was fired 20 plus years ago. I think when you don’t address addiction as the core problem, but maybe as a signpost to the deeper problem, and when you approach addiction compassionately, I think you take someone on a different kind of journey. And I think back to many, many years ago, and I was just fumbling through what it meant to be a young therapist and a pastor, but someone has an affair. It’s sort of the typical church situation. Someone working for the church has an affair with someone else working for the church. And in the immediate aftermath, I can’t believe you’ve done that. You should be ashamed. You’re going to lose… all the things from the leadership. And I sit down and this person’s head is down. And just what you’d imagine, all the shame. And I just had one question, and this wasn’t planned, what didn’t come out of some deep theological… this was just sort of in me in the moment, and it was, what did you want? What were you looking for? What were you longing for? And what was beautiful about that was this person began to open up about feeling seen in a way that they hadn’t felt seen in years and years. And I mean, then you know how we’re off to the races in our work, right? 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes and a long conversation emerges about loss and abandonment from the past going all the way back to the childhood story. Now that with that, did I say, well, with all of that in mind, it’s totally fine if you have an affair. Not at all. But it was an opportunity to approach this person with compassion to say, oh, it makes sense. I can understand and can we together imagine a different way? And I think that’s the approach is to look at the story beneath the symptoms, to explore the wounds beneath. And that’s the work we get to do. And that’s what makes so glorious and challenging at the same time.

Dan: Well, particularly in your book, you connect the dark night with the addictive process. And that in that phrase of the dark night, is that it dulls the enjoyment of our coping mechanisms and change the word coping mechanisms to our return to Egypt. The word dulls, I just think was a brilliant verb. It doesn’t eradicate it, it doesn’t take it away, but it almost makes our return to Egypt, not just shameful, not just like, oh, I’m wrong, but it just makes it dull. I don’t want this smaller story. So that notion of dulling, the desire for that which will keep us from getting to the actually even deeper desires, that’s so heart-giving.

Chuck: In her own unique voice. So St. Teresa of Avila was a contemporary of St. John of the Cross, and she was really sort of like a mentor to him in some respects. And she writes very differently. She writes the interior castle as these seven seasons of a spiritual journey. And she does this, she says something very similar. She says, the consolations that were there for me no longer consoled me. The song, the book, the thing. And she has this beautiful metaphor. You can imagine this woman who is walking the countryside of Spain, and she comes upon these aqueducts that used to carry water in the Roman era, and she says, that’s my life. I’ve been constructing my life like an aqueduct. Supposed to carry the water that I need and it’s not working for me anymore. And she discovers in that moment that the water is within. And I think this is what happens. This is where our deepest thirst is quenched amidst addiction. When we recognize that I didn’t have to chase after it–after worth and belonging and purpose, it was mine already. It’s what the father says to the older son in Luke 15. I’m always with you, and everything I have is yours. And so this is what St. Teresa discovers in her own midlife moment. By the way, this is why I love her developmental spirituality in the interior castle, because it’s like, oh, I’ve been chasing after it like that aqueduct that is a conveyor of water. And it was within all the while. And I think when people discovered it’s a really beautiful moment, and there’s an awakening and desire grows that we’re not a people who cut off desire. We’re a people who invite deeper desire. And so it’s really beautiful. And it’s not just me, you or Rachael saying it, Dan. I mean, it’s deep in the Christian tradition of Christian spirituality, which I think is so wonderful.

Dan: Well, again, it gives hope for engaging our wounds, not for a resolve, but for a relationship and that relationship not only with Jesus, but Jesus and his communion and community that we get to participate to. In one sense, as I’m reading about your 50th on the beach, I get to suffer with you. Yet I also get to celebrate that you a remarkable man and remarkable friend. You are inviting an older man to the realities that the dark night, the addressing addictions, the relinquishing of control. It doesn’t matter what age, your twenties, your eighties. These are the realities that we don’t circumvent, but we enter into, come in and through. And there are moments again of bright morning, but there are also seasons where it’s dark at 4:30 and doesn’t get light again until 8:15 in the morning. Can we bless those? Not plan and make them, but bless that when they come. There is the framing and reframing of indeed who we are and who we’re meant to be. So what a pleasure, my friend. What a pleasure. And may this great gift not only be received, but utilized well for those who are seeking the kingdom of God.

Rachael: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Rachael: Amen.

Chuck: Thanks Dan. Thanks Racheal.

Rachael: Yeah, so good to be with you.

Dan: Thank you, Chuck.