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Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Connecting Your Struggle to Your Story and Your Story to Jesus
Could it be that the path to true healing lies not in struggle but in embracing beauty and rest? Join us as we challenge the conventional wisdom of hard work in the healing process with our special guest, Andrea Smithberger. Andrea takes us through the transformative journey of the Sacred By Design retreat at REGEN, a sanctuary designed specifically for women. We uncover how engaging with beauty can serve as a powerful form of healing, helping to overcome shame and brokenness. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith's "Sacred Rest," we explore how redefining beauty and embracing rest can lead to profound spiritual and emotional transformation.
Awaken Mens' Retreat - Are you ready to take your recovery to the next level? Regeneration is Excited to announce our First-Ever Awaken Men’s Retreat. We have crafted a two-day retreat at the beautiful Bon Secours Retreat and Conference Center in Marriottsville, Maryland from Saturday, September 28 to Sunday, September 29. Secure your spot today! We are currently offering an early-bird sale price and this event is open to just 20 attendees. For more information and to register click here.
Wives Betrayal Basics Webinar - For more information and to register.
Sacred By Design Women's Retreat - Are you a woman who loves Jesus & and you're doing the hard work to break free from unwanted sexual behaviors?
We would be honored for you to join us for our first Sacred by Design Retreat to be held on Saturday, November 2, 2024. This special time has been crafted for you to receive and relax, to create and connect. We pray you’ll join us as we slow down long enough to be caught up by our Creator.
Only 10 spots are available. For more information and to register click here.
Hi everyone. I'm James Craig, spiritual coach and awakening coordinator here at REGEN For the month of August. On Becoming Whole, I'm talking with some of my incredible colleagues about some of the topics we're going to cover at our fall retreats. So today I'm honored to be joined by Andrea Smith-Berger, who's the host of our Sacred Biodesign podcast for women. So if you haven't realized, we have a second podcast. Now's your time to check it out for you or for the women in your life. You can find it wherever you get podcasts, just like Becoming Whole. But she's also a spiritual coach and she's one of our group leaders for the women's groups that we do throughout the year. Andrea, thanks so much for being on Becoming Whole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a switch, this is fun.
Speaker 1:You're not in the host seat for once.
Speaker 2:No, it's a little bit of a change, so here we go, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I spoke last week with Aaron, one of our coaches, on the Awaken Retreat which him and I will be facilitating along with Josh Glaser in September, and the theme of that retreat really is cultivating curiosity toward our story. And the theme of that retreat really is cultivating curiosity toward our story, connecting our story to Jesus. It's going to be a lot of hard work for two days Now you're hosting the first ever Sacred by Design retreat this fall. What's your theme? What are you guys?
Speaker 2:trying to get after. It is not hard work. It's not, but we are cultivating, which is similar in theme. So we're doing the first ever Sacred by Design retreat, and the word sacred, even when we were dreaming up the podcast, was so intentional and so special and we really put a lot of weight on that word. And so, even in thinking about the retreat, there's a lot of weight and importance and intentionality when it comes to it. So we are not doing hard work. This is so different for the women that we're inviting to this. It is come with open hands, open heart. You don't need to bring anything. No notebook, there will be no note taking. Rather, we are cultivating beauty. We're cultivating connection. So often I hear in sessions how women think that they don't get the chance or the right to have community until they're healed. Right. But this is like, no matter where you are in your healing journey, come and let's sit down and have a feast for the senses. We have a lot of great things planned, so I'm really excited.
Speaker 1:You know, at our Tuesday night Awaken 360 groups, which I have the privilege of leading, we were just talking about rest actually. So we're at the point in our year of curriculum where we're focusing on rest and we were looking at someone named Dr Sandra Dalton Smith. She has a book called Sacred Rest and I'm really struck that one of the seven forms of rest she says we need is creative rest and she says the way that we cultivate creative rest is actually engaging beauty. So there's something inherent with beauty when it comes to the kinds of rest that we need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, wow. You would think that I'd read that book. I have to think you just said, but I have not. I love the validation, though. I think that creating and beauty were so fundamental and basic and like step one of God that we know of right. He creates this beautiful garden, these beautiful animals. He pushes up mountains, spreads color across the sky. Beauty is another name for God and for us to be true image bearers. Why not cultivate that aspect of God in our own lives, especially when something like battling an unwanted sexual behavior feels so dark and covered and hidden in layers? Let's just bust through all that and create something new and do what we're called to do.
Speaker 1:So you really believe that beauty is a part of healing, and I think that for the men and women who listen to this podcast, that's not going to sound very intuitive. Can you explain more of how you see beauty as a part of healing?
Speaker 2:I think I know I have felt that beauty is an act of defiance. Know I have felt that beauty is an act of defiance so many times. I feel like the reflex that we have when facing our brokenness is I need more discipline, I need punishment. There should be some sort of like equal reaction for what I've brought onto myself. And so to shift in a completely different direction and be like let me incorporate color, texture, comfort, rest, music, food and faces, feels defiant, feels contradictory for sure. There's a verse in Psalm 34.5. It says Psalm 34.5,. Those who look to him will be radiant with joy. No shadow of shame will darken their faces. And I think that that's. It doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel like the right reflex to look to him and be radiant, and not even a shadow of shame to darken my face. That's beautiful, that's God. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's something about the reality that we often don't believe we deserve beauty, and yet God, his beauty itself, god created all the beautiful things in nature. So there's something about overcoming that voice of shame which would say continue to look at false forms of beauty, continue to look at kind of the best you can grasp at, maybe pornographic beauty, and not engage me in my more pure form of beauty, or beauty of nature or beauty of art.
Speaker 2:Even beauty can be objectified and vilified, and so this again feels like defiant, and I'm all about defiant. I think that that is a key move in this. This act, this move towards healing is to be able to embrace a new definition and ask God, ask the Holy Spirit, ask Jesus, to redefine beauty. So it's not this thing that you no longer, that you're disqualified from that it'd be. It's inherent to who you are.
Speaker 1:You mentioned rest in there too, and that's another word that probably doesn't sound like it goes with, you know, freedom from unwanted sexual sin, rest but it makes me think about how you know Isaiah 30, 15 talks about in. Rest is our salvation. Makes me think about Exodus 14, 14 that says God will fight for you. You need only to be still. There's a lot of actual verses about stillness or rest, and actually that being an act of defiance, trusting that God's the one who fights your battles.
Speaker 2:And that trusting requires slowing down, and that trusting requires slowing down. I have the privilege of working with so many women who are doing so much work and who are working so hard to listen to the podcast, to read the books, to take the notes, to incorporate practices. But one of the verses that for sure became foundational to this retreat that we're putting together for women, for the Sacred by Design retreat, is Psalm 23. But the message version that says his love and beauty chase after me every day of my life, and so how else can I be caught up by his love and beauty unless I'm still, unless I slow down, unless I give myself an opportunity to take a breath, to process, to move through all the things that I've learned, but also just to hear his voice and to see what he wants to offer me. And to see what he wants to offer me.
Speaker 1:You know, as we were praying before this episode, before we started recording, the word care was really coming to mind and it just strikes me that many of us who struggle with unwanted sexual behaviors don't know how to receive care without kind of grasping at it. We don't know how to rest instead of striving. We don't know how to receive beauty instead of settling for kind of a fiction or a false form of beauty how better to learn a new language than sitting side by side, side by side with other women, with other men?
Speaker 2:um to one, recognize you're not alone, this is not unique about you, but to learn a new language side by side is much more fun. I think it settles deeper into us when we're together. So what a gift to be with other people.
Speaker 1:I think so much of that care that we long for from God also does come through his body, through other people, being that, you know, incarnational form of care. Well, last week I spoke with Aaron about engaging your fantasy on the porch, and so for some of our listeners that might be somewhat familiar. We kind of pull that from Unwanted by Jay Stringer. What's your posture when you're talking to the women you coach and maybe even some of the women who might be considering coming to the Secret by Design retreat? Whenever you're doing this kind of fantasy work of coming onto the porch to try to engage your fantasy, what's your posture there?
Speaker 2:Well, I've witnessed two different postures for sure. One is armed, armed and ready. You know, the temptation or lust comes knocking and I got a rifle in hand and I'm coming to get you. You know, it's aggressive, it's pointed and it's confident for sure. But then there's another posture which I mean did you even notice how my voice changed? Like there's another posture, and that's the rocking chair posture. So, instead of being armed and ready and it's, you know you imagine that porch and lust comes knocking. But you're sitting on a rocking chair and you tap the one next to you that's empty and say sit down, what do you have for me today? What are you doing here today? And even just your voice is different when you're sitting in a rocking chair than when your feet are two feet apart and you're standing tall. It's a different energy that you bring.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you didn't listen to last week's, I encourage you to listen if you're kind of curious what we're talking about with engaging the fantasy on the porch. But I just love that the rifle versus the rocking chair and I can get why men and women come into our office and are even thinking about okay. First of all, talking about fantasies is one of the most vulnerable and difficult things that we do with clients. We do it because there's reasons, there's things that our fantasies are trying to tell us. But I get why someone would want to come out with a rifle ready to kind of shoot their fantasies, to battle their fantasy. But you're actually saying we need to have more of a rocking chair front porch posture as we're engaging our fantasies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's slower, it's more curious and there's a disarming energy that we give to ourselves and to the lesson, temptation to give it an opportunity to breathe out and give us, you know, questions, the lesson or tracing it back where it wants to take us.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I like that posture so when we're getting out of that kind of battle posture and we're getting more into this restful posture that you're describing, that the sacred by design retreat is going to be all about, what do you notice happens, especially in the women that you work with?
Speaker 2:Isn't it supposed to be? I feel like that phrase, but isn't it supposed to be hard? What introduced fantasy in the first place was probably aggressive or painful or hard. So maybe to combat it it needs to be painful or aggressive or hard. And so it feels funky, it feels weird, it doesn't feel right to be so laid back. So that phrase comes up a lot like are you sure this is supposed to be this way? But then when we practice it and that's the thing is, a lot of times you know we'll do that Like, okay, let's just sit back and elevate your voice, keep it up a little bit higher and see how different your questions are and just creates a more open pathway, I think, to being able to receive a little bit more.
Speaker 1:I think it also shows the kindness of God. You know the Romans I think we talked about last week with Aaron. The kindness of God is what leads us to repentance, so it leads us to an actual turning of our minds, turning of our entire posture toward God and toward our sin, and so there's something about actually appropriating the kindness of God. Another thing I talk to my guys in Awaken a lot about is what's your sense of what God is like?
Speaker 1:And actually a couple of weeks ago we read through 1 Corinthians 13, the love passage, and I filled in love with Jesus or God, and it's kind of shocking to think God is slowed to anger. God is patient with us, he always protects, he always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and likewise we did that with the fruit of the spirit, and one of the key fruits that I love to highlight with the men I walk with is gentleness. And so if there's something about the approach to our sexual sin, the approach to our walk with God, that doesn't actually have the fruit of the spirit of gentleness, the fruit of the Holy Spirit who is God of gentleness, it might not actually be God driving us forward, it might be something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it might be that striving.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. I'm going to do that. That's a really great idea. I love that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think a lot of the matrix of our sexual struggles are a mixture of, you know, the wounds of our past, but also, especially if you grew up, christian homes, the, the ways our parents or our priests or pastors showed the character of god, inadvertently, you know, but the impatience, the anger, the lack of gentleness can actually create this grid of like. Well, not only am I, you know, a sinner in the worst way, which a lot, lot of us believe. You know sexual sins like the worst sin, whether that was said overtly or not. But not only that, but I can't approach the one antidote, the one source of healing God himself, because he's really angry and he is not patient with me, he's not joyful to be with me, he's not gentle.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, and that's Psalm 18 that we prayed through once a couple weeks ago here at work during one of our prayer calls. Just the fact that God not only created the heavens but would bend the heavens to rescue us, would bend his own creation to lift us up out of the worst sin that we think that we're in and then set us in a broad and spacious place, and that he would delight in us in that broad and spacious place. That's the God who's inviting us to sit on the porch and have that conversation with us too. That's the God who wants to do the hard work of cultivating curiosity, but also, you know, doing yoga or taking a walk.
Speaker 2:And one of my favorite things is creating an element of safety. Slows down the pace of everything, of the work that we're doing, and creates this opportunity for safety, which can feel uncomfortable too when we're so used to being in the danger zone or the aggressive zone or whatever it is. And the fact that God would create birds that sing when their little nervous systems feel safe when there's no predators around, that's when they're singing, and that it has been shown that when we sit and listen to, their little nervous systems feel safe when there's no predators around. That's when they're singing and that it has been shown that when we sit and listen to their little nervous systems singing out in praise that that calms all our nervous system. That is a god of gentleness and intentionality and wanting to reach us in any way he can so, instead of it being an approach of our pain is going to be met with more pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the thing that we probably fear the most and that's probably part of why we're taking our pain to, you know, our sexual sin we can actually realize that god is going to meet our pain with gentleness and care. So it's an interesting sort of juxtaposition between, again, the awakening retreat this year, going after our fantasies, our wounds, connecting to jesus you know it's going to be intensive and the one day sacred by design retreat. That's all about rest and beauty. But, as we're talking, in some ways that juxtaposition isn't as strong as I would have expected. There's actually this kind of I I don't know. I don't know if it's the rhythm, and sometimes we do need to push a little bit into really hard places and sometimes we get to rest, or if it's actually sometimes also a both and, where the way we do engage, the way we do move toward God and away from our sin, is through rest, resting in his beauty, let's say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's not much of a juxtaposition. Both are defiant in profoundly gentle but direct ways.
Speaker 1:It's exciting, I'm excited for this retreat.
Speaker 2:Yes, like, do you even know? Do you even know?
Speaker 1:It makes me think too, of you are a fan, or I don't know how to describe your relation to Kintsugi, but you've talked about it a lot with our team this Japanese art form. Can you explain that a little bit?
Speaker 2:this Japanese art form? Can you explain that a little bit? So, kintsugi is this beautiful Japanese form of art where you take a ceramic bowl and you break it intentionally and then you use a glue that has been infused with gold and you repair, you fix, you pull together this bowl ceramic and you repair it, and the cracks are highlighted by this gold glue. And so I know in my own life the way that my body, my heart, my mind were broken in so many different ways from the time I was little, different ways from the time I was little. This act of doing this work, by cultivating curiosity, by approaching beauty, by inviting the gentleness of God to be redefined for me, or defined for me, has been collecting these pieces, collecting the broken pieces of my story story and then inviting him to pull them together in a new way that does not hide or ignore or look away from the parts of me that have been broken, but in fact highlights them, and it becomes a new creation.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a new I was gonna say it sounds like redemption in an art form yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's one of our activities that I'm really looking forward to, because it feels good to break things sometimes then. To really be looking at these pieces and name them to represent different parts of us, and then pull them together and see the new redemptive piece is spectacular.
Speaker 1:The new creation. The new vase created out of the broken pieces is in many ways now more beautiful than the original vase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because so many times like I can think about my own story that I would have wanted to hide it or shove it down, but instead it's. No, but this is part of the story and connecting the story to the struggle with God creates this new piece. And then I get to do this and bring my own broken pieces into this work now and help other women identify those pieces, and we invite God in. Yeah, yes, God is so good to me.
Speaker 1:A lot of people wonder why has God not taken away my struggle? I believe that he's a God who heals or redeems. I've prayed and prayed, and prayed and prayed and I still am addicted, I still am struggling, I still am going after this. That and the third and you know, I think part of what you're describing is God doesn't just want to get after and you know, stop our sexual sin. He wants to do a deeper heart work in us. He wants to actually there's something more and I think usually our vision is pretty limited.
Speaker 1:Like as a 15 year old, I couldn't imagine why god would not have been answering my daily prayer god take away my pornography struggle. But now, years later, I can see that there was actually deeper stuff he wanted to do, not just so that I can be in this position to help others. I think sometimes we think the only way that God could redeem this is if I help others. He does call some people to help others and I'm really grateful for you and the rest of our team and that being part of my story but I think there's actually deeper places that he wants to show us that we are loved, delighted in places that he wants. Maybe that are weaknesses that he wants to make places of resilience. And if it weren't for at least in my case I can say if it weren't for the struggle that led me to get help at regeneration, there's ways in which I would not have gotten after a more wholehearted life with God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because just to take away a struggle is that's not all of who you are and that denies so much of the wholeness of who you are. And God wants the whole of you and he calls us to be like the Heavenly Father, to be whole heart, mind, body to reflect him, and yet to kind of release those me-sized dreams and me-sized goals and put them in his hands and make them God-sized dreams and God-sized goals is the victory of this work that we all get to do goals is the victory of this work that we all get to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Bible Project is going through a Sermon on the Mount this year in podcasts and videos and I've been really loving that series. They talk about when Jesus says become perfect, be perfect like my heavenly Father's perfect. They describe how the Greek word actually better could be described as become whole, which happens to be our tagline for however many years We've been around for I think 45 years, I don't know if it was there from the start but there's something deeper that God's trying to do. He's not just trying to get you to stop sinning in this particular area to excavate the beautiful things that the enemy has sought to steal, kill and destroy, that were you know sort of that, were twisted up, that we're trying to medicate and protect.
Speaker 1:But there's actual beauty there and it makes me think of one of our favorite verses we were talking about is zephaniah 317, that god delights in us, he exaltsalts over us, he sings over us. It's kind of a shocking statement if we didn't have maybe a father or a priestly or pastoral figure who would sing over us. I mean, what a crazy, amazing thought. But God delights in us, he sings over us even now, even while we're imperfect, even while we're not yet whole, and so, instead of just wanting to do kind of a external work, a facelift, like he wants to actually get after the the core parts of who we are and show us that we're loved even in those places tell us whole yes yeah, whole.
Speaker 2:Isn't it wonderful that he just doesn't want an addiction to be erased from us. But he wants our smile, he wants our intelligence, he wants our strength, he wants all of us, and I love that verse that Satan comes to seek, seeks to kill, steal and destroy. He seeks to, but he doesn't always get to. And so he doesn't always get to when we slow down to rest. He doesn't always get to when we cultivate curiosity. He doesn't always get to when we're creating beauty. So he can seek to, but that's one of the amazing things about being in community with other people is that that gets cemented into us, that inherit, confidence and goal of just knowing that he might come for me this way to kill my joy, to destroy my peace, to steal my confidence. But he doesn't always get to. And I'm learning that side by side with people and that just makes it foundational, which he doesn't always get to. And I'm learning that side by side with people and that, just like makes it foundational, which is the beauty of a retreat so excited.
Speaker 1:The beauty of a retreat focused on beauty.
Speaker 2:Yes, there you have it.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful. Well, andrea, I want to give you the last word before I close out with some, some things, that are, some details for the retreats.
Speaker 2:Prayerfully consider saying yes, Saying yes to something that feels opposed to what you think healing should feel like and look like. Say yes to this broader, bigger, abundant invitation that is set before you to heal in a different way, to learn in a different way and to know in a different way.
Speaker 1:Andrea, thanks so much. I want to share that the early bird for the awakening retreat is this Friday, ends this Friday, so register today. Sacred Biodesign Retreat is also open and both of those links will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us on Becoming Whole and take care, We'll see you next week.
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