Trauma, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps – Part 1 with Ian Morgan Cron
Underneath every addiction is a deeper ache—and a surprising path to healing.
Bestselling author, therapist, and Episcopal priest Ian Morgan Cron joins Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to share insights from his newest book, The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between.
Ian invites us to reconsider the Twelve Steps—not just as a recovery tool for addicts, but as a grace-filled path of spiritual awakening for anyone longing for freedom, connection, and intimacy with God.
This conversation is for everyone—not just those who identify as alcoholics or addicts. As Ian says, these steps offer healing to people who struggle with all kinds of attachments and compulsions: workaholism, people-pleasing, tech and porn addiction, codependency, control, food, spending, approval, sports betting… the list goes on. Ian points out that most of us are poly-addicted, caught in multiple patterns that disconnect us from God, ourselves, and each other.
So this isn’t about comparing struggles or measuring severity. It’s about asking: Do I want to be free? Do I want to live with more honesty, grace, and surrender?
Whether or not you think you “need” the Steps, this conversation is a compassionate, humorous, and deeply spiritual invitation to let go of self-reliance and move toward the healing you were made for.
Listen to Part 1 now, and be sure to come back next week for Part 2!
Please Note: This episode contains some mature language; listener discretion is advised.
About Our Guest:
Ian Morgan Cron is a bestselling author, speaker, trained psychotherapist, songwriter, and Episcopal priest, but he may be best known for popularizing the Enneagram.
The Enneagram is a personality typing system identifying nine types of people and how they relate to one another and the world. His popular Enneagram primer, The Road Back to You gave fresh language and interest in this uncannily accurate tool. His book, The Story of You, helps readers go a step further, using Enneagram wisdom to uncover and rewrite their own false narratives so they can live more fully. Ian enjoys sharing about the Enneagram with audiences of all sizes because of its power for igniting personal growth, and how it can enrich their personal and professional lives. Ian and his wife, Anne, live in Nashville, Tennessee.
Be sure to pick up a copy of Ian’s latest book, The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between.
Episode Transcript:
Dan: Rachael, there are just times I know I get to go to this special meal where almost everything, particularly the dessert, is just stunning. This is one of those times of being with the presence of a human being that is just a feast, just a plain freaking feast to be with. And so delighted to say to you, Ian Morgan Cron, welcome to our, I don’t know, to the Wild West, given that we’re somewhat in the West, or at least I am.
Ian: I am delighted to be here, Dan. Rachael, I’ve been looking forward to this.
Dan: It was after doing a podcast with you not long ago, we had, we’re in church and this person comes up and goes, I didn’t know you were famous. And I’m like, what do you mean? He said, well, I know you do something somewhere in Seattle or somewhere, but I didn’t think someone like Ian Cron would have you on his podcast.
Ian: Hold on, I’m going to get my bullshit meter here. Be careful. Watch out.
Dan: I loved it. I loved it. It was so, so sweet. So for the few people who do not know you, let’s just say that you are a proficient author, therapist, spiritual director, Episcopal priest, but the Enneagram show Typology. It’s a rich, rich gift. But I think the thing that I would say as I speak about you to others is that not only just a wild, sweet, but deeply kind man, and so to have you talking about your new book, The Fix, again, we’re thrilled, just thrilled to have you with us.
Ian: Thank you.
Dan: Let’s just say there’s a lot that you bring to this book.
Rachael: In reading it and spending time, just, you’ve written so many books and you’ve never shied away from vulnerability and letting your story kind of be in the mix, almost as like, let me go before you as I talk about these things. But this one felt even more true of that. So I’m wondering if you could just share with us a little bit more why this book, why this labor of love?
Ian: Thank you, Rachael. Well, I mean, I guess in part, it’s like the old mantra, right? Your mess is the message. And in my life that has always been the case. I sort of see in a very meta way that my life, the purpose of my life is to introduce people to experiences and ideas that deepen and improve their experience of humanity, their experience of personhood. And I don’t know how else to do that except to say, look, this is my life. And without it being self-absorbed and overly self-interested and goopy in an inappropriate way, I’m not trying to work out my junk through my readership. It’s almost like I found this thing, you guys want to hear about it? It’s really helped me, and here’s how it transformed my messy life in some positive ways. And so I don’t know how to do it in a way that’s substantiated from the ideas that it has to include my biography or it just doesn’t seem real to me. So yeah, it’s a deeply personal vulnerable book. It is a book about addictions and attachments, and I shared very deeply about my struggle with those over the last, I dunno, too many decades.
Dan: This book is an invitation into the 12 steps, but infinitely more it’s an invitation into what’s required to grow. And the 12 steps are for any who have chosen to engage or read. It’s a brilliant practice-oriented way of engaging the human heart. But you’ve had a lot of, shall we say, a lot of engagement with addiction. We talked decades ago about your initial engagement with addictions like alcohol, but this is a more recent, shall we say, reflection on the 12 steps. Is that a fair way of putting it?
Ian: Yeah. I mean, as you know, I first went into the rooms of recovery for alcoholism decades ago. I was a young man, it was actually just before I met you, maybe four years before I met you. And I was a very lost kid. My dad had just recently died of alcoholism and drug addiction, and I was facing my own struggles. They were impact on my marriage and my work, and I had hit a rugged rough bottom, thank goodness. I like to say sometimes, and I don’t want to throw too much blame my way, but because there were circumstances that explained this, but the first time around in the 12 Steps, I look back and I realized I was just auditing the class. You know what I’m saying? I wasn’t quite taking it for credit yet, but I got enough from it that it expelled my desire for drinking, and I was substance free for decades. It just didn’t even occur to me. Now, in 2020, I had a relapse and I spent 30 days in treatment. And what happened to me was now I was taking the 12 steps for credit. You know what I mean? I was really humbled and it was like, you probably ought to really do these things for real, dude. And what I discovered is they were so transformative, so helpful. And then I realized these would help anybody, even a self-identified addict or alcoholic. But it could be for somebody who’s a workaholic, a compulsive people pleaser, technology addict, porn addict, approval addict, codependent control addict, food addict, I mean, on and on and on, right? Spending addicts, sport betting, addicts, I mean, you name it. And it’s just really…
Rachael: I can’t relate to any of those. Can’t relate. Maybe like seven of the 12.
Ian: Yeah. Excuse me. While I have a chocolate donut. Anyway, the point is that these are, I oftentimes tell people, okay, just forget addictions for a moment. Just don’t even get into the argument with yourself about do I have an addiction? Do I have the fact of the matter is the early church mothers and fathers would’ve said, absolutely, yes, you have attachments coming out the wazoo.
Dan: Yes.
Ian: Now, that said, I just tell people, look, if you just want to have a really much better life organized around spiritual principles, forget about your addictions for a minute, just work the steps and you will have a better, higher quality of life and an intimacy with God, yourself and others that you previously didn’t know existed.
Dan: Yeah. Now, I cannot remember my own subtitles. I barely remember titles of my own books, but I just want to read so people get a feel for this. The subtitle of the fix is: How the 12 steps offer a surprising path of transformation for the well adjusted, the down and out and everyone in between, and that, where you begin to go, I think one of the struggles I’ve always had with regard to AA 12 steps is that, I mean all of us, how can we in any way say that we do not have false gods? And a passage that you bring into the book is Jeremiah 2:12, and that points us to the fact that we dig our own cisterns, we attempt to drink from cisterns that actually are broken and cannot satisfy. So the scriptures are so painfully clear that all forms of idolatry is a form of addiction. And I think from that standpoint, this is an invitation to that group of people who would just go, well, I’m not addicted because I don’t have capital “A” addiction in a way in which I might’ve had, but I still want to address the reality that I’ve got wars within me. So to be able to then step a little further, I mean to what degree you would wish what happened for you in that second round of taking this class for credit?
Ian: Yeah. I mean, it’s very hard to say, Dan. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and in fact, I got to be honest and say there’s a piece of it that’s still a mystery to me, and may always be because it’s actually probably so close to me. That said, I think addiction stem from a deep longing for love and connection, which we try to satisfy with created things instead of with our Creator. They are a compulsive, unhealthy relationship with a person, a substance, or a behavior that has mood altering, soothing, numbing effect and negative consequences spiritually, relationally, emotionally at every level. And I was under a great, I think, honestly, I think there was unaddressed trauma in my life. There was pain coming from multiple sort of locations in my heart and opportunity arose. I did not have a program of recovery in place to support me at that time. Covid was raging all kinds of, so it was a confluence, it was a perfect storm of different things. And to be honest, the experience of embarrassment, humiliation, and shame in the middle of it, pretty profound. Here I am, I’m a bestselling author, I’m a priest, I’m a therapist. And then I kind of got over that because I’m a little bit like, you know what? Of course you did. It’s like I just applied the same thing to myself that I try to apply with my clients and my people I work with. It’s like, dude, of course you did.
Dan: Indeed, indeed.
Ian: You were looking to an external solution to solve an internal problem. And then the external solution became a bigger problem than the internal problem. And now you had two problems. And then I began to realize, well, what if this addiction is actually a beautiful invitation from God to a depth of intimacy with him I previously didn’t know was available to me? And then I began to see that you actually used this phrase with me once. Then I began to see the magic of addiction, that there was a kind of, and again, I don’t want to make this sound like I’m spinning and reframing in ways that are unhealthy. I don’t want to be toxically positive here about everything, but I want to say, oh my gosh, what if this is God’s way of getting my attention and saying, at this stage of your life, perhaps there’s a depth of relationship with me that you didn’t know you could have, and this is the best avenue for me to get your attention.
Dan: Yeah. Well, you use the phrase, and it is a beautiful one, that God comes through the wound, and you talk about this moment of having a seizure in Los Angeles.
Ian: Oh, golly, yes.
Dan: And again, the reality of we need to be awakened. And I make many times the presumption I’m quite awake until something, and again, not just physical pain, but the deep, deep, deep interplay of our mortality, our capacity and fragility. And you had a moment like that, obviously you describe in the book. Take us through a little bit about what happened.
Ian: I mean, I made the mistake, the medical mistake of trying to quit using an anti-anxiety agent called Xanax that I was using pretty badly at that point. I tried to go off at cold-turkey, which is I came to learn a very bad idea, and I had a seizure in a hotel room in California, and it was quite an unhappy moment. And I was just also thinking all addictions are kind of a misguided search for union with God.
Dan: Yes.
Ian: And I was thinking about, have you read Carl Jung’s letters to Bill W. who wrote the 12 steps?
Dan: Never. No. That’s fascinating.
Ian: Oh my gosh. Oh boy, you got to read. There’s not many of ’em, but they are really amazing because Carl Jung, actually, this is about 1962, he finally comes out and has a very personal conversation with Bill W. and he says, listen, the only thing that’s going to help an addict is a profound spiritual awakening, number one. Number two, that is because they are looking for spiritus through spiritum. And so he goes to say that all addicts are frustrated mystics. Isn’t that amazing?
Dan: That’s a glorious phrase. Yeah.
Ian: And I honestly feel like that was part of what was happening in my life. I was overwhelmed. I was searching for God. I did what humans often do as I looked in the wrong place and I suffered the consequences. But I’m here to say that the end results in my life, and this is not always the case, as we tragically know, where I now enjoy this life in a way that I previously was unable to as a result of that misadventure. And I just tell people all the time, if I periodically run into a Christian who goes, oh, Ian, I’m so surprised at what you did. I’m like, are you reading the same book I’m reading? Are you reading the same Bible I’m reading? If you are, you should not be surprised.
Dan: Let’s talk about the father of faith. Let’s talk about, shall we say the next patriarch. Look, if you can’t engage the reality of the profound upheaval of the human heart in our own flight and fight with God, that I think the one component that is so important to underline is that you’re inviting people to a life that’s not linear. Yet there is something about the steps that allow for a non-linear linearity, a kind of like, look, yes, no, these steps aren’t going to save you because the reality is the savior nonetheless still works in a kind of… let’s walk on this path. Let’s go from point A to point B. So how you hold mystery in the midst of linearity with both incredible honesty, but also, I mean, there are just points in times where Becky was like, give me the book, give me the book. What are you laughing at? And I’m like, no, I’m going to finish the chapter before I hand you this. And so we had our own little tensions over the number of times. I’m just laughing and to interplay again, this intersection of, it is heartbreaking what you and others and myself have endured with regard to addiction, while at the same time the presence of a resurrection, the comedic invitation to laugh with God just feels like that’s part of the glory of this book is you’re going to cry and you’re going to laugh and you’re going to learn things that give you that chance of being able to go, well, I’m not an addict. Okay, fine. You’re just an idolater and this will help you address the cisterns that you keep drinking from. So we’re not going to be able to go through all the steps, but I just sort of want you to walk us through, at least the first three to say what obviously with regard to that moment and seizure in LA, you’re entering into step one.
Ian: Right? We admitted we were powerless over, let’s say blank. You fill in your fix of choice. And in my case, drugs at that time, prescription medications, and that our lives have become unmanageable. And of course, there’s the great gospel paradox that when we admit powerlessness, then we are suffused with a new kind of power that is infinitely greater than the one that you can generate with your own unaided willpower. And I can remember can saying to God in that hotel room, I’m out of ammo. I know. I’m out of ammo here. And in that moment, I felt my chest dilate and this kind of weight fell off my shoulders. And there was this kind of, I give up, I’m done. I give up. And that was the beginning. So as you know, this is the you catastrophe, right? This is the moment where we say, or as our friend Chris Wyman would call it, the bright abyss. It’s this moment when you say, you know what? I am done here. And God says, good, now we can start. Now we can get working. And so people hear powerless and they just think it’s resignation or they think it’s not. It’s this very beautiful place where you finally say, I am not the creator. I am a creation. I have now been relieved. I have now taken that star I put on my chest, that pin, that little sheriff’s pin I put on my chest. I’m taking it off. I’m no longer in charge. I am powerless. Do as you want with me because from this point forward, I got nothing left. And that’s the moment at which you realize, ah, another conversion.
Rachael: It feels so much. I have a two and a half year old, and there’ll be moments where she’s, it’s like this is such a simple, more innocent, but it’s like she’s trying to do something and it’s really sad. It’s a really big form of sabotage. And I’m watching her, but I also am like, you’re a person. I have to honor your personhood, but then I’m keeping her safe. But when she cries out, I need help that sets up. I need help. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t know how to do this. There is something that just feels like such a hallelujah, a very paradoxical thank you for you’re crying out for something and there is help for you.
Ian: Absolutely. And remember, we should be in this situation. We’re in this situation across so many places in our lives. Help, I cannot fix this relationship. I can’t or help. I can’t stop waking up at two o’clock in the morning and eating my anxiety into the floor help. I can’t stop 70 hour work weeks because my whole self-worth is predicated on success and prestige and productivity or help, whatever the case may be. Right? And by the way, nobody’s got one addiction. People are poly-addicted. Now, granted, we know there’s a continuum of addiction from severe to mild, right? That’s clinically, at least the terminology we use. But regardless of where you are on the continuum, every attachment or addiction diminishes your relationship with God and with yourself and with others. And that’s what we have to keep in mind. Do we want to really get into a, well, I only do this, but you do that. You need this more than I do. It’s like, no, we all need it, right? We all need something like the 12 steps as a pattern for living as a kind of spiritual technology that would help us. Is it perfect? Gosh, no. I mean, when do we have that conversation? I mean, it’s just a really wonderful way of, so as you were saying, the first three steps, okay, here’s how I can summarize those for you, Dan. Step one, I can’t. Step two, He can. Step three, I think I’ll let him.
Dan: That’s beautiful. Before we go too far into two and three, I want to come back to the reality that at the moment I don’t see a lot of, shall we say glory and goodness in the Trump administration. But one of the benefits for me is my retirement account is sinking. And just a conversation yesterday with our financial advisor, and after we finished, Becky looked at me and she goes, you’re talking to Ian tomorrow. It was literally a phrase, you are feeling the weight of uncertainty, of loss, of confusion, of anger. In other words, the moment you begin to experience the fallenness of the world around you, and in many ways your own, that’s really step one. You don’t have to be at the proverbial bottom, but you really are, if you can begin to admit.
Ian: Yeah, I mean, let’s face it, you and I are bipeds on a spinning ball of gray goo that moves through the universe at 67,000 miles per hour. And we think we’re in control. You and I can’t sneeze without peeing our pants. We have the audacity to think, oh, I’m so powerful. Oh, I’m so in control of the markets and of my life and of all this, we are not in control. That is step one. And the moment you can surrender to God and say, you are in control here, I am not in control over what this current administration does. I have some influence, small, albeit small. I have influence, but I have no control and I have no control over what my ding dang children do. I have no control over so many things. And the moment I can live in that reality, the more able I am to, I find, to forge a relationship with Spirit, to lean into Spirit in such a way that I can move through the world with serenity and with kindness and with graciousness and with a kind of really beautiful, blessed humility that says, I have a very, very small circle of influence here, and the rest is really up to you.
Dan: And in that, as we move into step two, there is this interplay of when I stop believing in myself, I am meant to trust. And if the trust is within me and the substances I use, then in that, shall we say, facing that fallacy, it opens up, I still believe I cannot escape trusting someone something. So move us into step two.
Ian: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And I like the word sanity. Some people go, I’m not insane. People read the steps, man, it’s amazing to me how fast their ego rears up. Unmanageable they say, I dare think not. They go, restore me to sanity? I’m not insane. And I’m like, of course you are. Your batty is a loon. I mean, seriously. And if you don’t like the word sanity, I just say it could restore us to wholeness, right?
Rachael: I mean, this is a very hard time to be sober because to be sober when so much of the world is not just uncertain, but feels like an assault on your dignity and your capacity to thrive and flourish or for people you love and care about who may be more vulnerable, especially if you’re a healer and a helper and you’re holding people’s personal pain and the collective anxieties, how can you not be somewhat insane if you’re actually in reality?
Ian: No, you should be afraid going to the grocery store. I mean, seriously. I think when you think about it, I’ve never heard a sermon on this subject, by golly, I should give one except I don’t like preaching very much… is on the topic of equanimity, which is the ability to move, to have emotional balance in the face of whatever life throws at you. And this is a gift of the steps. We live in a crazy world. It’s insane. But how do we maintain emotional balance in the middle of it, right? Where we are not just crazy gaggles of reactivity running. I mean, I often say that it seems to me that the whole world feels like it’s trapped inside a phone box with a murder hornet. It’s just reacting. It’s just in reactivity and sphere. And what the steps do is I think give us this ability to stand back from our moment to moment experience and to have equanimity when practiced well, and give us the tools for what to do when we lose it.
Dan: Huge. Well, the notion, and you underscore how the 12 steps have invited us to face the reality that we keep doing the very thing that actually has brought us even more levels of heartache and trauma. That’s the nature of what shall we say insanity is. You keep thinking this will work when you know it won’t. But along with that, I found myself, and again, I thought I knew the steps well, but you underlined in a way that I had not owned this notion of coming to believe.
Ian: Yes. Yeah. Aren’t you always coming to believe, I mean, seriously, I love how kind the steps are.They really set such a low dang bar for friendship with God, which by the way is what I think Jesus did. He just lowered the bar, man. It’s like, you know what? I love you people. I love you so much. I’m going to lower the bar. So that friendship with me is actually not as difficult as others have been making it. I love that the steps say, look, okay, maybe you’re an atheist. Maybe you’re an agnostic. Or maybe you’re a deconstructing Christian that doesn’t know what they believe anymore. Or maybe you’re this, you’re maybe that. Would you just be open and willing to believe? Just be open. That’s all. Step two is saying, would you just be open and willing to believe that there is a power greater than yourself? And for me, that would be the triune God, and that has your best interest in mind, longs for a deep friendship with you and could actually make you whole. And I like that it doesn’t.. for Christians… you know who has the hardest time with steps, Christians have the hardest time with steps because they just presume that steps one to three have been buttoned up at some point when they were eight years old and they walked the sawdust trail. It’s like I gave my life to Jesus at eight years old. And so I did steps one through three already, and I’m like, okay, good. And here you are. Here you are in a mess.
Dan: The phrase that I’ve always held, but again, I didn’t apply it to the second step is I believe help my unbelief. And what you’re inviting us to be able to engage is no one believes that much, and yet there’s something within us that gets crazy and we forget, or we are in a highly traumatized state. For example. I just want to hear a little bit about the road rage situation, the notion of you… Again, you’re not what I would call a gigantic, I mean, as soul, you’re a gigantic human being, but just a word on the insanity that you found.
Ian: Oh, golly whiz, that’s an embarrassing story. But I loved writing it. So I was on a busy street in Nashville, and I am Irish Catholic. And so I do have this, even though I’m 5’8″ and 143 pounds, I do have this belief at times that I am infinitely larger than I think I am. And so this guy behind me, he’s got a big F350 with big tires and a cowboy hat on. I live in Nashville, and the light turns green. He doesn’t give me even a second to get my foot onto the gas pedal before he hawks the horn. And I had a moment. I was in a mood, I guess, and I just went flying into reactivity. I put the car in park, I got out of the car, I started charging the truck behind me, yelling and screaming. And this guy looks at me. And by the way, as you know, I have arms. My upper arms are the size of that cardboard roll inside your paper towel dispenser. Do you know what I’m saying? They are very small, and he looks at me.
Rachael: Which should have made him more scared. I actually think.
Ian: No. Well, actually, you should always be scared of the small Irish Catholic guys are not the guys you want to get into a fight with because they keep getting up. That’s the problem. They keep getting up no matter what. But anyway, he just smirked at me and just drove around me as if to say, buddy, this is not going to end well for you or for me. Let me just go around you. But I then went to a meeting afterwards, I say in the book where I get to go in the room and I get to say, I did this stuff and everybody laughs. And this is why, I mean, look, you might be thinking to yourself, why is there humor in a book about addiction? Well, our mutual friend, Curt Thompson once said to me, the laughter in the rooms of recovery are proof that God not addictions gets the last word. The word humility and humor derived from the same word. And so the capacity to laugh at your foibles and your lunacy and your insanity is part of the healing that takes place. Right? And of course, we know that the evil one, the thing that hates more than anything is to be laughed at.
Dan: Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. Well, I just have to ask because your wife Anne, who I’ve never had the privilege of meeting, but nonetheless, she strikes me as a rich, deep, wise human being. How did she respond to this, shall we say, moment that needed a step two sanity.
Ian: By the way, she said something the other day that was so great. I came in the kitchen and I was just bitching about something stupid. I just was being critical and everything else. And she’s doing the dishes, and she turns around to me and she says, thanks for sharing, keep coming back. As if she was in an AlAnon meeting, just like, thanks for sharing. Keep coming back. She looks at me, I get back in the car, and she said, you know that here in Tennessee, most people carry a Glock in their glove compartment for moments such as these. And I agreed that I could have handled this with more a plum, but I didn’t. And listen, the journey of healing, the journey of recovery is about progress, not perfection. That’s what Bill W. says. It’s about progress, not perfection. It is a grace-filled journey. It is a journey filled with joy. It is one that should invite our laughter. And though for many, they feel like the spiritual life should just be this perpetually glum sort of slog slog. And though it feels like that some days, I hope we don’t stay there too long, but that we recover the kind of hilarity, as the Jesuits would say, the Jesuits had such a literally a high value placed on hilarity is the word they used, right? Halaran, we should have more halaran in our life as part of the journey is so attractive, and it’s also, so… I pray for more of it in my own life.
Dan: Well, before we end, I want to capture just a few words on the third step, because in so many ways, the image of your near drowning is for me, again, one of those…
Ian: You’re pulling all the stories, man.
Dan: Well, I’ve been in those moments, and I just want you to capture for us what does the third step call us into through that story.
Ian: So the third step is made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And I was in Newport Beach, California. This is years ago. My kids were little and we were there on vacation, and I decided to go swimming “sans au faunt” in the ocean. I’m not a great swimmer, and I’m just hauling butt through the water. I’m just doing a back doing the backstroke. And I’m like, I’m Michael Phelps, this is amazing. And then I’m like, I should have tried out for my high school swim team. This is amazing. You know what I’m saying? This is amazing. So I’m swimming. And then I realized that the reason I’m moving so quickly is because I’m trapped in a rip current.
Rachael: Oh gosh.
Ian: Alright. Now I am being dragged sideways down the beach, right and out, and I’m waving my arms in the water and I’m yelling, but nobody’s paying attention. And I’m now picking hymns for my funeral. And I look out and there’s a lifeguard running parallel down the beach running parallel to me down the beach. And he’s yelling something to the effect of, don’t fight the current. Let it carry you, let it carry you. And then he is saying, and then eventually it’ll die out and you can swim it. He said, but don’t fight. He’s yelling at me and I’m thinking to myself, this is very esoteric and advice. This is like I am about to drown, and I’ve got Deepak Chopra as the lifeguard here. Like, let go. Let the current carry you let go. And yet this is the spiritual life let go. In fact, I do believe that if you, in some ways the gospel could be summarized, let go,
Dan: Let go.
Ian: Just let go.
Dan: Yeah.
Ian: And let go of your imperious ego. Let go of your plan. Let go of your control. Let go of your wild, insane, self-referential, egotistical, the whole thing. Just let go, man. And sure enough, obviously I’m still here. So I took his advice and I extricated myself from that episode of Baywatch, and here we are. But I do think that is step three, right? You turn your will and your life over to the care of God, which by the way, I will do seven or eight times today.
Dan: Yes. Yes. Shall we say, as we come to an end, there’s something in the process just of those first three steps that feel like now we’ve got a ground to address the larger traumas. It isn’t that you do this and then deal with trauma, it’s that oftentimes the realities of the loss of your retirement income or your marriage is crumbling, or your child’s moving in directions. It’s this sole opportunity to, in one sense, be recaptured by your first love and to open your heart to the fact that frankly, you got a lot of other loves that proceed, that first love. And holding that without, in one sense, the fighting of the current in a way in which it isn’t resignation, but actually is the paradox and mystery of how the gospel plays itself out in this counter-intuitive, crazy, is it humanly possible that the living father is going to pursue me and offer life? So what we’ll say is this is a book that truly, I mean as simply as this, it can change the trajectory, it can change the heart. So we commend it, want you to get it, want you to read it. And we also have the privilege of having you back next week as we address the question of, okay, as you address the realities of your own heartache and your own inner wars, there are people in your life that you love who you know, are struggling with the very same reality. How will this labor of love this book, The Fix, invite others? How do you invite others? So thank you, Ian, for joining us next week.
Ian: Dan, Rachael. Thanks for having me.
Rachael: Yeah, good be with you.