What Is Maturity?

What does true maturity actually look like? Is it age? Experience? Having the right answers?

Many of us grew up assuming we would recognize maturity when we saw it. We looked to parents, pastors, leaders, and institutions to show us what it meant to be wise, trustworthy, and faithful. Yet over time, some of those assumptions have been challenged. People we admired have disappointed us. Systems we trusted have fallen short. And if we’re honest, we’ve disappointed ourselves too.

So where does that leave us?

This week, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen wrestle with a different vision of maturity—one shaped less by certainty and control and more by truth-telling, curiosity, humility, and a growing orientation toward the heart of God.

Drawing from Jeremiah’s lament, Micah 6:8, and their own stories, they explore why maturity is often forged in the midst of struggle rather than certainty. 

They also reflect on the gift of trustworthy companions. These are people who help us ask better questions, tell the truth about our lives, and remind us that growth was never meant to happen alone.

After all, one of the clearest signs of maturity may be knowing when it’s time to reach out to others.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here.

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

Episode Transcript

Dan: Rachael, as we jump into this topic, I’m going to ask you a number of questions. So consider yourself being interviewed. Okay. What are you doing with regard to disillusionment, with regard to what I’m going to call the deep shift in the community of God’s understanding of maturity? There was a time where character was crucial for the notion of any leadership, secular so-called politics to doing Sunday school. We don’t seem to be in that era. And recently I read a report, name Is unimportant, where there was a critique of Trump’s language, annihilation of an entire culture and civilization and a notable evangelical pastor said, look, if Trump were teaching third grade Sunday school in our church, his language and mentality would be of concern, but it’s not because he’s the president. And I think for many of us who remember the critique of evangelicals with regard to Clinton and other figures, character was at some point central, central to the conversation of leadership. And obviously we live in a radically different, highly polarized, highly skeptical day in which if I can just put it this bluntly, cruelty is considered strength, empathy is considered being woke. I feel like I’ve been thrown down the rabbit hole into the realm where the red queen looks like the heightened maturity that is needed to be able to operate. So as we have this conversation, maturity is I’m confused. I feel in so many ways disoriented with the sense that I’m looking at mirrors that not only give me a sense of distortion, but the world around me. So what do you think?

Rachael: I’m just thinking of our listeners and I know some people hearing this are going, are you talking about me? And feeling defensive. And I think we are in very distorted waters on what is good and noble and what is strength, what is actually the fruit of the Spirit and why it should matter. And if we’ve gone so far in our desperation to maintain power, to defend, to hold on that we actually think the fruit of the Spirits are a liability, fruit of the Spirit is a liability, we’re in some really troubling waters. And so yeah, I mean, there was a time a decade ago that I wrote a blog post for the Allender Center. It was an advent and it was like fear not an advent call. It was kind of the title and it was right before the trprimary. And at that time, there was something in me that thought if people were just called to the truth to the light that reminded that our identity is not built on the exploitation of fear or the hunger for power, like we have a baptismal identity, a different identity. And there really was something that I can bless in my naivete to think that what people said they cared about with regard to character was true. And I actually think what we’re seeing is that was maybe a little bit of a smokescreen that people actually cared about power, people actually cared about maintaining dominance and control, that fear actually had more in the driver’s seat and that someone’s moral failures was kind of a convenient scapegoat as opposed to something that really people said, this is the highest value to know someone’s trustworthy. And so I actually feel a lot of despair and a lot of futility.

Dan: Yeah. Well, as we begin to step into this for me, it has to have a kind of Telos. The confusion and the fragmentation, the polarization, the cruelty on many levels, every side toward the other side, toward whatever side, toward the moment you speak in a way that is not in accord with the particular tribe you are associated with, you’re already written off. All that to be able to go, I need to have a conversation about maturity. What does it look like to be mature? And in some ways I was having a conversation with another friend about this and he said, look, we’ve been 2000 years defining the gospel and we’re still in the middle of defining the gospel. And in that process, you would think we would be infinitely clear as to what is the gospel and how does it shape and affect. So I think there is in the same venue, a sense of, don’t we all really know what maturity is? And I think for me, it’s like I have to come back to this to gain a better sense of what do I want to move toward. In the midst of the fracus, the upheaval, even if it’s too individualistic, what does it mean for me to mature? What does maturity look like? So as I said, what does it mean for you?

Rachael: Oh, it’s funny because I’m laughing. I used to think maturity meant getting older, right? Somehow just the virtue of aging would make you more mature.

Dan: Well, I would be proof that’s not the case, but let’s go on.

Rachael: I mean, at its most basic, and I know we could get into more of this when I think about what’s the maturity we’re called to as followers of Jesus, I do think about Micah 6:8. I think about having a posture, a heart that wants to do right and make things right, like this pursuit of justice, a heart that loves mercy and walks in humility. There’s something of when I think about maturity, I think about wisdom. And so I don’t want to move us too far ahead, but I do think about that capacity to hold complexity and not just in the world like, oh, the world is complex, therefore we don’t do anything, but that sense of joy and sorrow being sisters in the same home, that justice and mercy aren’t at odds with each other. They’re held intention, that there’s mystery, therefore humility that … Yeah, if you’re saying we’ve spent 2,000 years trying to come to a consensus on what the gospel is, I think I’ve said this on the podcast before… I remember when one of my college professors would basically give us a very controversial text in Hebrews around losing your salvation and blasting the spirit and gave us 15 different possible ways to interpret that. And we were 100% convinced after those 15, he was going to be like, and this is the right way to interpret this, that would resolve the tension that we were feeling. And I remember he said, “If you want to grow immaturity in your faith, you need to understand that most of our faith is held in tension and we stand firmly on the promises of God and we take serious the warnings.” And I remember that it was one of those moments where it was like the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom because it was like, okay, yeah, there’s something here that’s inviting me to a kind of humility that I’m not going to have the answer here, therefore to walk in the right path, so to speak, is to walk differently. It’s not to walk perfectly and it’s not going to be walking with certainty. And so I think about some of the people I know who are of the age that I think they should be mature, but they feel so young, so childish and are still trying to wield power in the world and childish like the way a child does to throw out an ultimatum that somehow just by virtue of throwing out this ultimatum, all things will fall into place instead of understanding this world is very complex.

Dan: And I love the way you put it. It isn’t just the world is complex, that you’re complex

Rachael: Yes.

Dan: And, that there is within us and the ability to hold tension when something within us feels that level of tension as a need to resolve, a need to, in one sense, come to a kind of containment that gets rid of the ambiguity or the ambivalence, that notion of ambiguity, world itself bears a gray reality. It’s not black and white and ambivalence being the internal stance of I am both moving forward and backwards simultaneously, that there is both joy and at one level despair, that there is love, but also hatred, the complexity of the internal world. That’s where most of us think of what ambivalence is. But the fact of being able to hold tension, let me go back to that question of you have known, you have said this many times, you’ve had a long and hard history with anxiety. And in that, I would come back to that question of how have you held that in a way in which neither of us are offering ourselves as the epitome of maturity, but I do look at you as that you have a maturity about holding some of the neurological, some of the narrative complexities of your life with maturity.

Rachael: I’m laughing because I’m very much in this season based on just some circumstances that are like where I’m so anxious and I do not feel mature in any way shape or form because anyone who’s struggled with anxiety knows that so much of when your nervous system is under assault is you feel very young and reactive because you just don’t have a lot of margin and you’ve got a lot of cortisol, which usually leads to more like agitation and anger and being amped up than a, “I’m so afraid.” It doesn’t come out like fragile. It comes out more hostile. So I’m just laughing that you’re asking this right now because I feel like I’m doing a lot of repair work in this season because of the nervous system overwhelm, parenting with nervous system overwhelm, being a partner with nervous system overwhelmed, being a colleague and an employee, it’s like, I don’t feel like my best self right now. And I think in some ways that’s part of the complexity and the humility to know that I bear stories that have wired my body in a certain way and part of my pursuit of justice in my own life is to make sense of who and what are the people and the entities that really bear the responsibility for this being a part of how I experience the world, to take some of that shame off of myself. But then the mercy that just knowing that and doing a lot of healing work, there’s so much and getting medicine and like I’ve talked about it in the podcast on trauma and understanding my own trauma, like a very holistic sense of offering my body mercy and kindness in a healing journey that I actually have tasted relief and more regulation and this will be lifelong healing work for me. And so what does it mean to bless in many ways my broken body, to bless that it’s good and I’m good and I’m troubled. And so I’m just thinking of Micah 6:8. I think those categories do feel a lot of what it’s meant for me to hold the tension of being someone who bears the scars of terror in my body, who is healing and has tasted great kind of taste of freedom, tasted deeper freedom, tastes some more integration, tastes some more regulation and still has seasons where it feels like I’m back at ground zero, even though I have so many more resources and so much more awareness and much easier access to health if I let myself be human sized and not have a demand that somehow I’m failing if this is where I’m back to struggling. So again, some of that humility to know I live in a body and it’s a good body and it is a body in the process of healing that bears beauty and brokenness. And I think that’s another place of complexity you have often brought to our categories at the Allender Center.

Dan: Well, I don’t like the word, so let me try it and then see if I can reshape it. We need measures, measures to be … The fruits of the spirit are sweet, deep, beautiful categories to talk about maturity, but you brought another frame, Micah 6:8. So that notion of act justly, love mercy, walk humbly, that’s a triparthetic category that allows me to go, how am I engaging injustice in my own life, in my own family, in my own community in the world? How am I, in one sense, not becoming an advocate in a way that oozes the love of mercy? Because if I’m an advocate, I need to be advocating for where I’m failing in the very same area. So the presumption that I advocate because I’m already there already denies the reality of mercy, but it’s then held together by humility. So we’ve got three categories, acting, loving, walking in three categories, but I also need to some degree a sense of a person. So when you think of looking for models of maturity, who captures you? Who has captured you? Alive, dead, past, present, fictional, biblical, we need models. I need a model.

Rachael: I’m going to have to think about that one for a second. So I’d love to hear who you think about because people are coming to mind, but I’m like, it’s such a good question and I need a minute. So I would love to hear who you would say comes to mind for you.

Dan: Well, I think of Jeremiah. There’s something about the Book of Jeremiah, about the Book of Lamentations. I’m certainly not comparing myself, but let’s just start with a very fundamental sense. But if you look at the story, God comes to him, he’s a na’ar, Hebrew, meaning he’s a child, a young boy, probably 13 to 18. And he’s given this calling of speaking justice. He’s calling the people of God back to mercy and to walk humbly in so many ways. Jeremiah’s being called to the very same task that virtually every prophet does. And yeah, I do tend to see myself a little bit more in the prophetic, shall we say, domain. But I’ve often gone to this passage as the basis of finding grounding for myself in the midst of a war. And it’s a long passage. I’m just warning people if you want to go get a sandwich, do so. But it’s Jeremiah chapter 20, verse 7-15, but it helps me have a sense of, okay, Jeremiah’s been told by God to go do this. And then he’s been told by God, “I’ll protect you.” And if you know much about the book of Jeremiah, if that’s protection, oh boy, what do we mean by that? Because he’s hung in the pitadan. He’s hated, he’s run out of his family, out of his city He is a alien and stranger and literally to some degree, trying to live to keep his life. So he says this beginning part, “You deceived me” in Jeremiah 20:7. “You have deceived me, Lord. I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed and I am ridiculed all day long. Everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak and cry out for claiming violence and destruction, the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long.” All right, if I were trying to put this into clear categories, I think one of the things about the mature people I know is that they have an honesty that is disruptive and where they feel caught by the goodness of God, they are able to praise where they are in the middle of deep confusion. They know how to lament and complain, but they also know when rescue does come, how to sing Thanksgiving. So there is that richness of Psalmic life. So that honesty is very disruptive to me because as I came to understand through my dear friend Tremper, the language of deceived and been deceived overpowered is the language of sexual assault. It’s the language of seduction and sexual violence. And it is so close to the work that I feel I’ve been called to and how many victims of abuse, how many times in my own life I felt like you screwed me and here we are, I’m out on the limb and somehow you have me holding a saw cutting the limb off and it just feels ridiculous. So that, but then you see him move almost immediately into the reality of, “But you are like a fire shot up in my bones and I’m weary of holding it in and I cannot.” So that sense of honesty but inescapable passion and the passion of, “To whom shall I go? ” I’ve looked, but there’s nobody else who has the words of life. And so I’m bound in this strange bind of, I love you, Jesus, and you deceit me. And the ability to hold that. So just before I go any further in the passage, where does that take you my friend?

Rachael: This is a passage that has often I have often felt a kinship with and then instantly hated that I feel a kinship with it. If you resonate with this, there’s no like yay, I’m glad to resonate with Jeremiah in this moment. If you know this feeling in your bones, right, that sense of, yeah, where else can you go? These words of life not just compel you, but are also shut up inside of you and need to come out and facing the cultural resistance, right? Because for Jeremiah and his day, he was more of a prophet who’s not being heated. So there’s something of like, I don’t know if until this past decade I would have related as much with him. So just holding his agony a little bit, that there’s a willingness to wrestle, right? There’s something of wrestling to me that feels more like maturity.

Dan: Well, he goes on and essentially says, and the cost is relational. I have friends who are calling out denounce him. All my friends are waiting for me to slip saying perhaps he will be deceived and then we will prevail over him and take our revenge on him. These aren’t enemies, these are friends who want to see your destruction. But then verse 11, he makes this shift, “but the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced their dishonor will ever be forgotten. Lord Almighty, you examine the righteous. Probe the heart and the mind. Let me see your vengeance on them for to you I’ve committed my cause. Sing to the Lord, give praise to the Lord. He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.” So again, if I were putting this into categories, like he’s honest, but he’s passionate, but he’s also confident that there is justice and that those who wish him harm will be in their own commitment to denounce and their own deception in their creation of harm will fall into their own pit. It’s like, okay, good. Okay, I get this now. We’ve got it. Be honest, admit with passion, but come back to the confidence of God. And you kind of go, okay, that’s verse 13. He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. And verse 14, cursed, be the day I was born. May the day my mother bore me not be blessed, curse it be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad saying, a child is born to you a son. And I want to go, okay, I’ve worked with a number of people who are bipolar and there’s no humor in my comment. This feels to some degree like a manic episode and despair and mania. But on the other hand, is this Jesus in Gethsemane saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And essentially it is not my will, but your will be done. Can you let this cup pass? Not my will, but yours. So I’m in some sense with you in this very simple phrase, I’m not comforted by this. If anything, it makes me angry and I want to go, just think I will cut this part of the Bible out yet then I’m asked, at least as I hear the Spirit engaging me over the last number of weeks, months, years, is this indeed what it means to trust me, that you can be fully honest but equally know that there’s a fire you can’t put out? And yes, you can call me dread champion and on who has preserved, protected, honored and given you life and yet there are moments where it feels like it would be better to depart. So all that, again, I want to come back to how do you hold that?

Rachael: Not well and maybe sometimes better than I’d like because there is some part of me. It’s like if I just throw enough of a fit or if I just threaten to give up enough times there will be … Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot actually and I’ll share this and this is not like I’m tooting my own horn. This was a moment in spiritual direction that actually felt very holy and a reframing, like a moment where my disordered imagination was being invited to be reframed in a way towards health. But it was, again, it felt like this moment where it did actually feel comforting in the sense that I was being invited deeper I think into the kingdom of God, but it did not feel comforting in the way I was anticipating and wanting it to. So I was talking with my spiritual director in some ways about that desperation. I wasn’t necessarily, I wish I was dead, but it was the, I just feel so much despair. As much as I look around and think it can’t get worse, especially in the realm of like spiritual abusive powers at the helm, it keeps getting worse. And this was bumping up against so many things for me because in many ways I’ve done enough, I think maturing in my faith to actually understand the triumphalism I might have had when I was younger because I had a lot of privilege and it appeared as if God was victorious in kind of maintaining cultural prowess and power, has actually been dismantled. I have a lot more humility around what does it look like when God is actually at work. It looks different than the powers of this world, but I was feeling so much despair and then I was feeling a lot of shame for feeling despair like, what right do I have to feel despair when there have been people like Jeremiah, people like Abraham, people, like all the people talked about in Hebrews who were faithful and never saw come to pass in their time these promises of God when Black folks have been so faithful at every step of the way when they’ve yet to taste the fullness of the freedom that is due in our country with regard to like reparations and repair, it’s like I did feel this like, what right do I have to feel despair? I need to pull it together. I need to find some strength and some resolve. And I can’t say there’s desperation. I can’t say, you have deceived me. And so we were doing some listening prayer and she was like what does the spirit want to speak to you? And if you’ve ever done spiritual direction, you’re really just trying to make space for contemplation and for listening. And all I was hearing was the beatitudes being spoken over me. This is my rendering of them. It’s kind of a mixture of the First Nations translation. But Blessed are the poor, the ones with broken spirits, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn. For God will collect your tears and comfort you. Blessed are the tender and humble for the earth, land, sky will welcome you and always be your home. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for wrongs to be made right again, for you will be filled. Blessed are those who are merciful and kind, for your kindness will find its way back to you full circle. Blessed are the pure and heart, for you will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for you will be known as children of God. Blessed are those who are violated and mistreated for doing what is right, for yours is the kingdom of God’s shalom. And it was a very, again, I would not say it wasn’t a triumphant like, so you’re going to come and be a triumphant victor in this moment and turn everything around and put the right people in power and punish the wicked and reveal what’s true. It very much felt like, welcome, welcome child to my kingdom. Your despair is not a sign that you’re immature in many ways. Your despair at what is worth despairing over your brokenness, your broken spirit is actually a sign of you being a child of God. And again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have hope or confidence that God is a champion, a warrior, one who will come and ultimately make things right, but it was a moment of being reoriented to the heart of God and how that will come to be. And so I don’t know if that actually makes me more mature. It just was a moment of feeling a deeper invitation into this tension, this complexity, this ambiguity and mystery of saying, I wish this was not the way, because the reality is looking at a collective picture, many will suffer. Many vulnerable people will suffer greatly. So it’s not a glorification of suffering. It did not feel like a, oh, because you’re suffering, you’re more like God. It felt like your despair is actually the appropriate emotion to have right now and is a part of your inheritance in the kingdom of God and look for signs of me working. What followed that was kind of like a, if you could almost like a, let me remind you the great cloud of witnesses who’ve come before you, who will come after you and who are in your midst in your day, who are, I think, bearing the maturity of Christ. And in some ways your question, it’s like very few of them I would say are living the high life. I think they are living the true life. I think they are more human. Very few of them are in seats of that kind of power where you’re like, they’re going to live to be a hundred. Many of them are dead because of the ways in which they embodied this. But it was a very, I think for me, a very empowering but very honoring moment of this tension that you’re naming so well in Jeremiah.

Dan: Well, and for me on your behalf, I get to see you and the ability to hold this complexity and yet you keep moving backward and forward. But I think that for me becomes then more of a category maturity of being able to say, I don’t have a complex world like you do. And we won’t go into all the details, but the reality of I see the realm of struggle that is not then resolved by giving into the left, the right or any version, but the ability to still have hope when you’re hopeless, which I know sounds absolutely contradictory. And if anybody were, I’m sure they could easily critique this particular podcast as a certain greater lack of linearity than some of our others, but that’s to me part of that to be with people who are not just moving forward because they’re moving away from the past, not that people are moving toward the past and not able to move. The ability again to hold this sense of ambiguity with this is the kingdom of God, to be able to hold it all. And there may be moments and there are moments for me where I’m way more confident than wishing to depart. And certainly there are moments where I know the fire burns within me way more than the sense of I feel deceived, but it’s the ability to know all four of at least the categories that I think Jeremiah is pointing us toward is part of the reality of what it means to be mature. When you cut any of that out, there’s an absence of maturity. If you can’t be honest, if you can’t be passionate, if you can’t in some sense be deeply confident while also desperate, then something’s not well with you. And I think in this day where I feel and you feel, we all feel confused in some sense overwhelmed, angry, anxious, to be able to hold that as, no, that’s maturity, not alone, but with that growing sense of, and I want the kingdom to be ritually part of how I choose to live, standing against injustice, delighting and loving mercy and asking for more and more humility. So how are you as we have this conversation?

Rachael: I think in many ways I probably feel because I think part of maturity in these things is also knowing we were never meant to go it alone. It’s part of what’s hard about Jeremiah. It’s like it’s part of his desperation, right? Even my friends are wishing my destruction because of what I’m exposing and because of the cost of what I’m inviting, what would have to be let go of or prepared to actually come back in to the covenant with God, to come back into life with God. And so I actually feel less alone in this conversation and I feel probably resolute, maybe a little more settled in my complexity.

Dan: Well, I think that isn’t just the denouement of I feel better, but there is something in this to be able to go, this is what it means to be a saint. That so often what we ascribe to people whom represent what it means to look and to be mature. And I just happen to be, gosh, so I think infinitely blessed to have a pastor of the church we’ve been in for 28 years that we’ve been living where we live, who tells the truth, who’s not afraid to be confused, who doesn’t provide our congregation with simple answers and yet bears in so many ways in his body… Again, what I’ve said countless times, 2 Corinthians 4:10, “I live in my body every day the death of Jesus so that I might live in my body the life of Jesus.” So to have somebody you receive the word of God from, that you love, that you learn from, and that you can actually have coffee with. I’m very fond of Jeremiah, even though I don’t think I’d like to go have coffee with him. On the other hand, I might drink heavily with him at certain points, but having somebody in your life who holds you with love and respect, but you can hold with that sense and obviously you have that with your spiritual director, you have that with your husband, you have that with people when you’re a congregation. So I think that’s one of the things that I do want to underscore. I need dead people in my life like Jeremiah. For me, Augustine, I’ve been reading much more about Augustine and his life. So I need dead people, but I need occasional live presence who I can look to and join in being able to sing well, probably not with my voice, but recite Jeremiah 20. Thoughts on that?

Rachael: Well, I mean, absolutely. I think maturity is certainly knowing that there’s so much to glean from those who have gone before us or those who go alongside of us, or even those who are behind us, there’s that capacity to in some ways ask for help. I think about, I say this to my daughter all the time when she’ll be like, I can do it by myself, but she’s really struggling. You’re going to need your strength and your courage and your willpower and you’re going to need to be able to ask for help and all are good. And so it’s okay to say, “Mom, I need some help. I tried and I can’t do it and I need some help. This is going to be a very good skill.” You don’t because she’ll be trying to lift a 50 pound bag and like, I can try. And so I do think when we can actually see that we don’t have to do it alone, we don’t have to figure it out alone, we don’t have to grow alone and we can be in process with others who are in process. We can kind of put ourselves in the way of grace, so to speak, in community, in mentorship, in pastoral care, in friendship and in growing and being transformed.

Dan: Well, I got an email yesterday from somebody who had been part of what we call our Narrative Focused Trauma Care. And one of the things they said was, I don’t agree with everything you teach and I differ on this and differ on that. And it was one of those emails where you just go, okay, I hope I don’t even agree with a lot of what I say. But toward the very end, it was a very simple statement. With all the things I’ve sort of told you I’m with and whatever the group I was in has meant the world to me because nobody has held the complexity of my brokenness, but also my desire for Jesus like this has. And I was like, again, we’re going to end in a moment. This isn’t about advertising. This is we need a community, community, we need a person. We need a handful of people that we can live out Jeremiah 20 and other complaint and Lament songs and also the beatitudes and also the fruits of the spirit and even Micah 6:8. And I will say as we end, you’re a good friend and I feel better for whatever that’s worth at the end of this time going, no, we are inviting people to a kind of maturity that may not be seen as balanced and in control and effusively positive, but I think we’re inviting people to something of life. So thank you.

Rachael: Yeah, I’m grateful for you.