Alan Fadling's Blog, page 16

Unmasking Anxiety (Part 1)

Blog by Alan Fadling

We’re living in anxious times. I don’t hear anyone saying otherwise. And many of us feel utterly overwhelmed and powerless against the flood of anxiety that fills our hearts, our minds, our news feeds, and our social media communities.

 

A couple of months ago, my latest book was released: A Non-Anxious Life. The more I talk with leaders about unhurried living, the more I realize that anxiety is a very common variety of soul hurry. I know anxiety has driven a lot of my own work over the years. That kind of busyness may look impressive, but it hasn’t borne good, lasting fruit.

 

In the first chapter of A Non-Anxious Life, I mention six faces of anxiety that have helped me right-size it in my imagination and in my way of living and working. Too often, I’ve assumed my anxiety was an inevitable part of how I functioned, rather than a way of living and working that could be transformed. Let me share three of those faces here:

(1) an operating system,

(2) a not-so-wonderful counselor, and

(3) an anxious squirrel. I’ll share the other three in a couple weeks. You can also read more about them in the book.

 

 

Operating System

When I was a freshman in high school, our math club was given a computer kit to literally solder together part by part. It was an Imsai 8080, one of the first microcomputers. Yes, I was one of those cool “math club” kids!

 

There was no keyboard. The computer was programmed using hexadecimal codes entered through a series of flipped switches. There wasn’t much you could do with it that was practical.

 

Today, our computers have robust, intricate operating systems that provide a foundation for amazing apps and other programs that we use every day. Those operating systems function under the radar for most of us, and few of us ever have to understand how they work.

 

What I realized as I was writing this book is that, from my earliest childhood memories, anxiety has often functioned like an operating system in my life. It was ever-present, providing a kind of underlying base on which I built my life. It drove my work as a student, my learning to play the guitar, and eventually my work as a pastor.

 

I don’t have to tell you how incongruent an anxiety operating system is for church leadership. As I’ve often said, Jesus is probably right about how ineffective and unproductive anxiety actually is. But that didn’t stop me from autopiloting a lot of my work on an anxiety base.

 

I’ve discovered that it is possible for peace to replace anxiety as our default operating system. We can learn to let the Prince of Peace be at the center of our assumptions, expectations, and beliefs rather than anxiety. It’s a worthy upgrade.

 

  

Not-So-Wonderful Counselor

Every time we come through Advent and Christmas, we read Isaiah 9:6 and are refreshed in our awareness that Jesus comes as Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, our Mighty God. But first in Isaiah’s list of names he will be called is Wonderful Counselor. No one is a better guide than Jesus. Walking with him and working with him is having the best possible counsel at hand in our every moment.

 

Anxiety, on the other hand, also wants to be my counselor. It urges me to let it give advice about my present and my future. It claims to have insight about what will happen down the road based on the unexpected or unpleasant circumstances in my present moment.

 

For all that I’ve listened to anxiety’s advice over the years, you would think that I considered it a primary mentor. But the counsel of anxiety is not all that wonderful. It assumes scarcity while the kingdom of God operates in abundance. Anxiety wants to hurry me. Peace slows me down.

 

I’ve been grateful to learn to downsize anxiety’s authority in my life and work and to refocus my attention on the truly Wonderful Counselor that Jesus is in my life. Instead of trusting the advice anxiety gives with such urgency, I learn that my Wonderful Counselor gives guidance that is much more spacious, gracious, and peaceful.

  

 

Anxious Squirrel

I love cycling in Orange County, California, where I live. The weather cooperates most of the year, but let me share one experience I don’t much enjoy on the bike trail.

 

I’ll be riding along, enjoying the scenery, when a squirrel will dart out in front of me and miss becoming a squirrel pancake by about twelve inches. I will then feel a jolt of adrenaline that feels like anxiety at full volume.

 

I have to wonder if these little guys have a death wish. I like to imagine them daring each other to jump in front of those big rolling things that race by. But I think I know what’s actually happening: They hear me coming and it sounds like danger. In reaction, their little squirrel brain urges them to find safety. “Go home!” it demands. Except home always seems to be on the other side of the bike trail.

 

The instinct to race home puts them in more danger than if they took a moment to see what is making the sound and decide on the best course of action—which, of course,   would be to stay put. But they never seem to understand that.

 

My anxiety is a lot like this squirrel instinct. Something shocks me or threatens me, and I go into self-protection mode. “Get safe!” is what my security-seeking brain cries out. But if I don’t take a moment to look around, I may put myself in the way of greater harm by operating in the tunnel of anxiety. I hope I’m smarter than an anxious squirrel.

 

For Reflection:

Does one of these faces of anxiety ring especially true to your own experience? How does this way of seeing anxiety affect your perspective?

 

 Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash

 

 

UL #287: The Art of Retreat (Alan)

 

In the summer of 2023, I finally got the opportunity to make a retreat at a place I’ve been wanting to visit for years. I drove up to the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California for an eight-day silent retreat. I’ve done week-long retreats before on the East Coast, but never here in California. 

 

I’ve been wanting to share the story of my experience of extended retreat here on the podcast. I’m glad to finally get that opportunity today. 

The Importance of Abiding

Blog by Gem Fadling

 

The year 1990 was a momentous and tragic one for me. Sadly, it was the year my dad passed away. His death was traumatic and life-altering. I was just 26 years old.

 

Unfortunately, my dad’s death was only the beginning of a five-year season of loss. So much to experience by one so young.

 

I’d like to share the bullet point version of our losses:

 

My dad was diagnosed with cancer and passed away.
I suffered my second miscarriage in the midst of an infertility journey.
When I finally got pregnant with our firstborn, I was put on bedrest due to severe complications.
Alan was unexpectedly laid off from his position at a church.
We lost our home to foreclosure due to the Northridge earthquake.
My mother passed away from complications of heart surgery.

 

Condensing these losses to a bulleted list in no way minimizes them. Each carried its own weight and suffering, and it would be too much to unpack each one in this brief email. Suffice it to say, this was a very difficult season. To lose parents, unborn children, livelihood, and home all in a short span felt very Job-like.

 

All of this occurred between the ages of 26 to 31. At the time, I didn’t realize how young I was. I was simply living it. But now, looking back 30 years later, my heart goes out to that version of me. And I am thankful that my younger self found a way to persevere.

 

But God gave me a rich gift at the very beginning of 1990. Before my dad was diagnosed and we moved into the second half of that horrible year, God met me in one of the most powerful ways of my entire life.

 

In late 1989, Alan had met a group of men who were on a mission to turn leaders’ hearts toward Jesus. They wanted to ensure ministry leaders understood that abiding in Jesus is the center of ministry and that lasting fruit emerges only from our connection to the Vine. (Sound familiar?)

 

That was when I was introduced to John 15 for the first time. I may have read it before, but it didn’t click until Chuck Miller read and taught from it.

 

The only way I can describe it is that a light bulb (or maybe a searchlight) went off inside me. My world shifted and a paradigm for life emerged.

 

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

 

My soul has been humming this song since the day I heard it. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Remain…remain…remain.

 

Ever since then, I’ve sought to orient my life around the teachings of Jesus. I’ve tried my best to follow the Jesus Way. Imperfectly, yes. Inconsistently, of course. But I have clung to these words for over 30 years.

 

Many years ago, as I was reflecting on those five years of loss, I realized that God gave me John 15, and profoundly met me in it, right before it all came crashing down. I’ve come to think of this gift as a pillow of sorts. A soft place to rest in the midst of yearly loss.

 

I know it would be easy to move to questioning:

 

Why did God allow all that suffering?
Why didn’t God fix anything?
How could God let all that happen to someone so young?

 

And I have spent some time hovering around those questions (after the fact). But here’s the thing: it was an early lesson in what abiding really means.

 

God is with me in all things.
I am in God in all things.
Christ is in me in all things.

 

We teach and preach this stuff, but it’s proven in the way we make our way through the circumstances of our lives.

 

Another important gift during that five-year season was that I sensed God’s presence through the community around us. People were constantly praying to keep us going in the midst of it all.

 

You’ve had your own seasons of trial and loss. You know what I mean.

 

Abiding (or remaining) in the Vine is one of the most central invitations we have as Christian leaders. Jesus said it: “Remain in me, as I also remain in you” (John 15:4).

 

This past summer Alan and I stayed at a monastery in Vina, California. In addition to praying around the clock, the monks there grow walnuts and grapes and create award-winning wine. I spent part of a morning walking among the grapevines, and I created a three-minute video describing the connection between the vine, the branches, and the fruit.

 

I invite you to CLICK HERE to watch the video. Take in the visual of the vine and the branch connecting…remaining. And take special note in the section on “thinning.”

 

Abiding doesn’t remove our problems. Abiding gives us a loving, solid place to stand, sit, or lie down in the midst of them.

 

Reflection 

What does abiding/remaining look like for you these days?
What do Jesus’ words “apart from me you can do nothing” mean to you?
What visual from the video meant the most to you?

 

 

 

UL #286: Practicing the Way of Jesus (Alan w/ John Mark Comer)

 

One of my mentors often liked to ask a couple of simple questions when we were together: first, “What is the Christian life?” and second, “What is the church?” At first glance, those feel like beginner questions. Of course we know what a Christian is and what church is about. 

 

But how many of our assumptions about our life in Christ together look more like being a twenty-first century North American more than an apprentice of Jesus in the here and now of our lives? To what degree are we letting the way of Jesus transform our expectations, our values and our pursuits into a very different way from the culture that surrounds us? 

 

John Mark is a teacher and writer from Topanga Canyon in Southern California. For nearly two decades, he was the founding pastor at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon where he spent many years working out discipleship to Jesus in the post-Christian West, organized their community around a simple idea: practicing the Way of Jesus together.

In 2021, after leading a five-year initiative around spiritual formation called “Practicing the Way,” John Mark stepped away from his pastoral role to create simple, beautiful formation resources for church communities around the world.

 

Today, John Mark is developing new practices, courses, and podcasts for Practicing the Way and serves as a teacher in residence at Vintage Church LA with his wife and their three kids. 

UL #285: Empowering Women in Leadership (Gem w/Kimberly Deckel)

 

Women have been important leaders throughout church history. There are multiple stories in the Old and New Testaments about the powerful and unique ways women lead. Think Deborah, Ruth, Esther, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Phoebe, Priscilla and more. There are the desert mothers, and women such as Julian of Norwich, Clare of Assisi and Teresa of Avila, who have given us wisdom for the ages. Sometimes out in front, sometimes behind the scenes, but always, women have contributed to the spiritual and relational life of the church.

 

Today my guest is Kimberly Deckel and we are going to dive into the important role of women and how she comes alongside women in ministry to encourage and empower.

 

Kimberly Deckel is the Executive Pastor at Church of the Cross in Austin, TX. Before transitioning into full time ministry, Kimberly worked in the field of social work for over a decade serving as therapist, hospice social worker, and working in foster care and adoptions. She completed her MA in Missional Theology through the Missional Training Center and served as a priest and church planter in Phoenix, as well as the director of operations for Surge Network. Kimberly’s husband is Steve and her daughter is Keenan.

Embracing the Yoke: Finding Soulful Rest in the Way of Jesus

Blog by Alan Fadling

Jesus invites us to learn from him the way of life we were made for. Jesus says his way is easy and his burden is light. The way of Jesus—the yoke of Jesus—is just the life we were created to live.

 

Taking on the way of Jesus is restful for our souls because it is a perfect fit for our design. The good life is not about how full our wallet or closet or garage is. It is about fullness and richness of soul. Jesus calls this being “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). And in the end, this is the most restful way to live our lives and do our work.

 

Let me make a suggestion. Take the words of Jesus from Matthew 11:28-30 and make them a regular place to visit. Try praying them in your own words as the desire of your heart. Ask Jesus to help you enter more fully into his wisdom. It could sound something like this:

 

“Lord Jesus, I’m coming to you. You know how tired and overwhelmed I feel. I feel weary in ways that a nap or a vacation doesn’t seem to touch. I need the kind of deep rest only you offer. Show me the shape of your yoke in my life these days. Teach me how to join you in the way you live and work. Help me see what it looks like to live my life close to you. In this way, may I find rest in my very depths. Show me the way to live that is as easy and light as the yoke you invite me into. Amen.”

 

To get more specific here, let me offer some thoughts on entering into the deep and abiding rest available in Jesus.

 

First, talk with God honestly about how tired you are. Acknowledge ways that you are sliding into escapist activities. Talk with him about tendencies to numb out that you’re aware of. Ask him to show you where you are settling for counterfeits of rest rather than finding true rest in his friendship.

 

Being this honest in prayer can be hard. We often hide our unhelpful habits out of embarrassment or shame. But it’s good to remind ourselves that Jesus already sees us exactly as we are and is fully committed to stay with us, work with us, guide us, teach us, even train us in his eternal way of living.

 

Next, think a little about what has helped you find refreshment or rest in the past. In my retreat and formation coaching work, I’ve often quoted a Jewish proverb usually attributed to Rabbi Abraham Heschel: “One who works with their mind will Sabbath with their hands, and one who works with their hands will Sabbath with their mind.”

 

While some of you reading these words may have jobs that primarily involve physical labor, most of us are likely in jobs that require a lot from our minds and even our souls. That’s why sitting in front of the television or scrolling an app on a smartphone may not be as restful as we think. It demands energy and attention from our minds rather than letting them rest.

 

I have found that, since so much of my work involves thinking, writing, and conversation with others, my best forms of rest and renewal tend to be physical in nature. This “Sabbathing” or resting with my physical body has taken a few forms:

 

I seek to have a less mentally taxing evening, maybe even leaving the television and my devices off and going to bed earlier. Getting good sleep doesn’t just impact our bodies. It is the time when God gives rest to our souls as well.

 

Later in the day or on the weekend, I like to get out and enjoy a bike ride. Living in Southern California, this is something I can do most days, though I know that’s not true for everyone. But some sort of physical activity can be a gift for our souls. Sometimes Gem and I take a walk in our neighborhood or kayak on a nearby lake or walk on the beach. Physical activity can refresh our souls.

 

I know this next idea will sound like a chore to some people, but I find my soul comes to rest when I’m working in the yard. Caring for our little lawn, keeping trees and shrubs trimmed, clearing leaves and other debris that has collected gives me a sense of joy in caring for our little piece of creation. My soul seems to enjoy this activity of creative care.

 

Often, I’ll just sit in our backyard and enjoy the beauty of what I can see in God’s creation. We keep bird feeders that attract many avian friends. Being outside and gazing at the simple beauty that surrounds me does something good in my soul.

 

As you think of your own life, to what degree would you say that your soul is weary? How does life feel like it is weighing you down? And how might you make a little more space in your daily and weekly schedule to receive God’s gift of rest?

 

In whatever way you feel drawn to God’s rest, I pray that God’s empowering presence, his measureless generosity, and his great goodness be with you, seeking you before ever you seek him. And may grace bear the fruit of deep well-being, freedom from anxious care, and a soul at rest in the presence of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

For Reflection:

Of the suggestions for finding rest mentioned above, is there one that sounds especially timely or inviting to you? When might you experiment with it in your own experience to see if it helps you?

UL #284: Befriending Peace (Alan)

 

Having written a book about anxiety, I’ve seen a lot of promises about how to solve it. A life hack here. Six easy steps there. But my own experience with anxiety has been anything but easy. Today, I want to share some of the more unexpected pathways to peace I’ve discovered in my journey.

284: Befriending Peace (Alan)

 

Having written a book about anxiety, I’ve seen a lot of promises about how to solve it. A life hack here. Six easy steps there. But my own experience with anxiety has been anything but easy. Today, I want to share some of the more unexpected pathways to peace I’ve discovered in my journey.

UL #283: From Information to Transformation: A Gracious Path to Growth (Gem)

 

Episode Notes

Hard. Crusty. Unyielding.

Rootless. Shallow. Burning out. Withering.

Thorny. Distracted. Choked. Pressed.

Good. Healthy. Vibrant. Thriving.

 

What is this list of (mostly disturbing) words I’ve just uttered? Especially when the title of this episode includes, “A Gracious Reflection.” Well, it’s a list that came to mind upon a recent encounter with the Parable of the Sower from Mark 4. I was struck by the inner dynamics described by Jesus. I’ve taken his four types of soil and created some reflection questions that you can use for a heart-check-in. 

 

283: From Information to Transformation: A Gracious Path to Growth (Gem)

 

Episode Notes

Hard. Crusty. Unyielding.

Rootless. Shallow. Burning out. Withering.

Thorny. Distracted. Choked. Pressed.

Good. Healthy. Vibrant. Thriving.

 

What is this list of (mostly disturbing) words I’ve just uttered? Especially when the title of this episode includes, “A Gracious Reflection.” Well, it’s a list that came to mind upon a recent encounter with the Parable of the Sower from Mark 4. I was struck by the inner dynamics described by Jesus. I’ve taken his four types of soil and created some reflection questions that you can use for a heart-check-in.