Godly Rhythms to Help You Live Life to the Full (Part 2 of 2)

Soul care is birthed out of the six rhythms that Jesus Himself practiced to fill up during His time here on earth.

And if Jesus Himself understood that He had human capacity and He had to honor that human capacity, though He was fully God, He was fully man, how much more do we have to have the humility to say, I have a human capacity and I need to honor that. Wow, that is an important reminder for us today. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daley, and we're so glad that Deborah Faleta is back with us to continue the conversation, offering thoughts like you just heard. We're looking forward to hearing more from her about self-care and how to do that well as a believer. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daley, and I'm John Fuller. John, last time Deborah began describing some life-giving habits that we as Christians particularly should engage in their outline from Scripture, I was really enthralled with it.

I mean, thinking about how Jesus modeled the things that we should be doing, including nourishing our bodies, making sure we get the right amount of sleep, filling our own well so we could fill the well of others, right? That is a deeply spiritual message. And I'm looking forward to getting back to today, and we're going to cover the next three out of her great book, Soul Care. It's a terrific resource, and the full title of the book is Soul Care.

Find life-giving rhythms, live restored, avoid burnout, and discover unspeakable joy. It's a terrific resource. Call us for details, 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes.

And we started this conversation last time, so if you missed it, get ahold of us. We can get an audio copy to you, or you can go to the website, download it that way, or the app. The mobile app is terrific. Which is a good way to do it. Yeah, it's got the whole library there.

So that's what I typically listen is through the app. Deborah, welcome back. Good to have you here. Good to be back, as always.

It's so fun. I got to brag on your beautiful family, because they came with you this time. And I think it's the first time you've been here several times. Yeah, I've been here a lot. This is their first time in Colorado Springs, and especially at Focus on the Family. Well, give them a shout out. Give them their first names and say hi to them, because that's fun. Yes. I have with me Ella, my oldest, then Elijah, Ezra, and Ethan, and of course my husband's here with us, too.

That is so good that you guys came out together. All right, we talked about some of the rhythms last time. You identified six rhythms or lifestyle choices in your book, and how Jesus modeled these for us.

Quickly, what are the six rhythms? And we'll jump into number, what I think will be four. Number three. Or number three.

Yeah. The first is nourish. Nourish our bodies and how we can honor our bodies with a proper nutrition, hydration, and movement, just like Jesus did, taking care of our temples. The second one is about rest and making sure that we trust God when we lay down and sleep and realize that we can only do what we can do, and our body needs to be energized by rest and how important that is in being a healthy person. The third one is protect, and it talks about setting healthy boundaries like Jesus did.

Sometimes we think of Jesus as someone who always said yes, but that's not actually the case. The fourth one is connect, to make sure that we are engaging in life-giving relationships. The fifth one, which I'm excited to talk about, is savor, and it's about enjoying life and being present in it.

And then the sixth one is tune in. Be aware of what's going on underneath the surface of your life emotionally. I'm going to go back to something from last time, because you sparked a thought for me when it comes to rest.

The level of anxiety and depression in the country right now, especially in North America, all of us, is so high, particularly in young people. The idea that we need to be okay with what happened today and trust God is so critical. I mean, to trust God, to say, okay, Lord, I'm going to lay my head on the pillow tonight, and whatever is, is, and I believe in you, I trust in you fully.

That should give you a good night's sleep. Yeah. I think the higher our level of trust, the easier it is for us to rest. And if that's not the case, like we talked about earlier, struggling with insomnia, that means there must be something going on underneath the surface that I need to identify and deal with.

Let's move to protect, which is that next one. You did some research for the book that caught you by surprise, how people viewed boundaries as a bad thing. Yeah. I mean, there is no literature psychologically. I'm thinking of the book boundaries by our good friends. Boundaries are a good thing.

Why do we say or think they're bad things? I think we have an unhealthy definition, a wrong definition of boundaries. We just assume that boundaries just means saying no to people in need. And we assume that Jesus didn't have boundaries because he always said yes. And good Christians should always say yes. We shouldn't say no.

But that's not actually the case, first and foremost. And that's not how Jesus lived. When I look through the gospel, through the lens of soul care, I was shocked at how frequently Jesus said things like, no, and not yet. It's not my time. No, I'm not going to do it this way. I'm actually going to do it this way. No, I'm not going to go to that town.

I'm going to go to the next town. He wasn't under the obligation of man. His number one priority was to do what God has called him to do. And when I think of boundaries, I think of the word protect, because it's the way that we protect our calling, what God has called us to do. So it's a really important part of being healthy.

Let me make sure we have this in a practical way. I can remember Jane, when she was at UC Davis, she was doing a chemistry degree pre vet and you know, had a load that she was carrying and she was going to a church there and the pastor had asked her if she could run the children's ministry. And when she looks back on it, she felt like she couldn't say no.

And she was young and she said, you know, today I could, but I took on so much and it almost destroyed, you know, her ability to do well in school, which was the main thing. And I guess the question there in that example is how do we develop that backbone to be able to say no? Yeah, I think it's important to address the underlying belief system that we talked about in the last conversation. Why do you feel like you can't say no?

What is the underlying belief system there? Maybe I feel like it's wrong. Maybe I believe that it's my job to fix the problem and that if I don't do it, nobody else will because that underlying belief system will keep you saying yes to so many things until your plate gets so heavy that it breaks. We have to realize that every time we say yes to something, we are automatically saying no to something else because we have human capacity. So it's not just about saying yes to everything and everyone. It's about prayerfully considering what God and God alone wants us to say yes to. Let me ask you this question. When you place that boundary around your heart, it's a positive.

I think so many of us, I put myself right there with Jean, I'm not pointing that out. I think we all learn over time to not simply be people pleasers, but to put those boundaries, I think it comes with maturity and sanity. But speak to that idea of protecting your own heart so that you have more for other people. I have to sneak this quote in from a friend of mine who's a counselor. She said, behind every people pleaser was usually once a parent pleaser, where we grew up in a situation where we had to just constantly make sure our parents were okay, because there was addictions, there was chaos, there was unhealthy expectations put on us. And you kind of start living out of that cycle of pleasing people saying yes to more and more.

What happens though, is you run out of energy. I worked with a woman in counseling just recently who said yes to everything and everyone at work. But then when she walked through the doors of her home, she was so depleted that she had nothing left to give to her husband and children. And she was feeling bad about it.

Like I want to give them more, but I can't. And the reality is she had to start prioritizing and realize that all the things she said yes to were her saying no to her family in different ways, because we have limited human capacity. No one of us is a superhero that can go above and beyond. Jesus himself, who was fully God, yet fully man, honored his human capacity and said no, so that he could reserve his energy for what God had called him to do. I think that's hard for many of us as believers to even comprehend that the Lord, he knew there were sick people in the next town over, what have you. But he couldn't do it all.

I mean, I guess that's the conflict. He could have, but chose to protect that time and to make decisions that he needed to make for his own soul care. I mean, it's weird to talk about God and his own soul care. It feels uncomfortable actually, but he did say no.

He did say no. And he did pass by people. And you know, it's hard to even imagine why would God do that? He was limited by choice in his human body and his human capacity. And I think he wanted to model to us what it looks like to live fully as human beings. He was fully God yet fully man.

And he modeled for us so well what it looks like to care for our souls and stay filled up. Moving to the next rhythm, being connected. That can mean a lot of things. How do you define being connected biblically?

What does that look like? Being intentional with life giving relationships. One of the most exciting things about studying the gospels as I was writing soul care was watching Jesus be a really good friend. Before he chose the disciples, the friends that he would say yes to.

Think of all the people that wanted to rub elbows with Jesus, right? But he decided to focus in on the 12. And before he chose the 12, he spent the night in prayer.

How often do we pray about our friends and the type of people that we should bring in close to our lives, the type of people that God wants us to invest in. But Jesus was a really good friend. He was intentional with his friendships. He was intentional about giving and also receiving. Remember in the garden when he said to his disciples, here's what I need you to do for me.

Stay awake and pray. Not only did he give to his friends, but he also allowed himself to receive from his friends. So we can learn a lot from Jesus and how he engaged in life giving relationships.

You know, you mentioned in soul care, Genesis 2 18, where God says it's not good for man to be alone and creates woman. I've never really stepped back to think about the tenderness of that. You know, there is an act of tenderness there. He sees man is not doing well alone. You know, so let's remedy that.

Let's create woman made in our image, you know, man and woman. And it's such a more beautiful, poetic way to think of God's heart for us. I know that he saw that and he remedied that he sees our needs sometimes before we see them.

Oh, yeah. And he offers us ways healthy ways to fill those needs. I think the next step is for us to be able to see our needs, and then have the humility to receive what he's offered us to meet those needs in healthy ways. You know, so often today we think of independence, especially again, in North America, you know, we are heritages we forge through the forest and we, you know, manifest destiny and all those things.

And it's kind of ingrained in the culture. But that pioneering spirit and the loneliness of it being out there at the edge of the spear, you might say, isn't a great place for a human being because God created us for a relationship. And in your research, you found some evidence that being alone is not a healthy place to be. It was almost scary to look at some of the research that showed that feeling lonely on a regular basis was almost as dangerous to your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Because ultimately, the high levels of cortisol, the stress lead to different types of disease. And so it was really fascinating to realize the effect that loneliness has on our physical body. And I think it goes back to the fact that God sees our needs. He knows it is not good for man to be alone.

He knows that two are better than one. But I think it's easy for us, especially when we've been hurt, to push people away, to put up a wall and armor up instead of softening our hearts and realizing that how we protect ourselves is with boundaries, not with a wall to keep ourselves safe. So I ask you to really consider who are those life-giving relationships in your life.

And if you don't have them, prayerfully consider what it might look like to invite some people into your inner circle so that you can engage in life-giving relationships because God knows you need them and they're healthy for your soul. Deborah, you describe your mom as a servant-hearted person. I think we all know people like that.

Maybe we perceive ourselves to be that kind of person, servant-hearted. But you admitted that you weren't kind of wired that way and you had to learn to do that. One, describe that affirmation of maybe having a deficit and then overcoming it. How did you process that?

Seeing your mom, maybe wanting to be more like your mom, or what was it? Yeah. Yeah.

It is interesting. I've kind of concluded that when you grow up being served to that level, I have a middle Eastern mom. She loves to serve. You kind of get used to being served.

And then when you're asked to serve others, it's like, I don't have that muscle quite yet because it's atrophied over the years. But I've realized that in maintaining relationships, healthy relationships, you have to give and receive. And so for me, I love to give in the ways of emotional connection, helping people emotionally through advice, through counsel, through prayer. But sometimes there's a physical need.

Hey, can you drive me to the airport? And as much as I don't love to do those things, I have realized that you have to meet your friends where they're at and you have to meet them with their needs. Whether or not it's something that you're good at, gifted at, or something you want to do, life-giving relationships require a level of sacrifice. You know, Deborah, this is a delicate question and I'm not sure you covered in the book, but I'm feeling it, observing women particularly and some of the challenge 30, 40 something women are having today to try to be everything. I mean, you're a psychologist, your husband's a doctor, you have beautiful kids, you're doing, it seems like you're doing it all. And I have a heart for women who are trying to be kind of the traditional wife and mother, yet in an era where professional development is so valued. How does a healthy Christian woman balance all these things? Not lean into worldly feminism and be the person that God needs her to be or wants her to be.

I love that you asked that question because that's something that I'm passionate about and have had to learn along the way. And I think it starts with tweaking the belief system that you have to do it all because that is not a reality. Number one, you cannot do it all. Number two, you can only do what God has called you to do.

And you know, even looking at my life from the outside in you would think, oh, she does all this and kids and life and homeschool and travel. But I have set up so many boundaries because I know my human capacity. I know my limits. And what's been amazing is as I have pulled back from different things, as I have said, I can't do this. I could only do this much.

I'm unable to do this. I have watched God take the small loaves and fish that I have and multiply it in ways that I could have never on my own. And it builds your faith because you know when you focus on the things that he's called you to do and you focus on staying healthy and honoring him in that way, he's like, I got the rest. I will take care of the rest. You just do what I've called you to do and don't believe the lie that you have to do it all. And so I feel like I'm living proof that God takes the little that you have and he multiplies it. So that servant hearted connected attitude.

Let's move to the next one. This tuning in to your inner world. Describe what that means. There's so much of life that's happening underneath the surface. You know, human beings are like a volcano and we have all of this pressure building underneath the surface of our life. All of this stress, these expectations, these feelings, and our tendency is to ignore them and shove them away and just keep living our life.

But when we do that, this pressure, just like a volcano has to find the point of least resistance and it will come out if we don't deal with it. And usually it comes out in an unhealthy way because the point of least resistance is usually something like rage, anger, relationship conflict, addictions, depression, anxiety. And so we have to tune in to what we're feeling and be able to respond to those feelings in a healthy way. In soul care, I talk a lot about how Jesus had so many different feelings that he addressed in scripture. He not only felt the feelings, he responded to them. So it's not that feelings are bad or good, healthy or unhealthy as we sometimes think. All feelings are a signal and we're responsible for recognizing them and responding in healthy ways. This sounds a little more complicated perhaps than the others.

And that's why we need to spend a few minutes on this. You had an example in soul care about a man who believed he was a burden to others. Describe that story and how is that belief impacting his life and how do we apply that to our own lives and identify, whoops, we might be in that same spot. Yeah, sometimes we think that sharing our feelings with others is going to weigh them down rather than realizing this is a point of intimacy. When you connect with people on that level, you're inviting them into your life in a unique way. But here's what it starts with. It starts with us being aware of our own emotions. I think step two is finding people to share what's going on inside of us, people that are going to help us. But we can't do that if we're not aware of what we're feeling to begin with. I can't tell you how many people in the counseling office come in and I say, okay, let's talk about what are some feelings that are coming up in that situation? And so many people will right away say, I don't know, because they haven't had the time, the effort, the language, they might not even have the language to begin really thinking through that. And to know that Jesus himself felt all of these different feelings.

He felt sorrow, he felt anger, he felt gratitude, he felt compassion, he felt agony, he felt so many different things and he stopped to recognize the feeling, and then express it and do something about it. And it's so good. And it takes effort. It seems that's the battle in life. Yeah, it's in our marriages, it's in our parenting. Just give these things some thought, especially through a scriptural lens, right? If we can do that, I think the answers from the Lord are very plain to see. It's just our ability to see them. Proverbs 20, verse five tells us that the purposes of a person's heart, what's going on underneath the surface of our life are like deep waters, but a person of insight draws them out.

It takes work to draw out the waters underneath the surface of your life, but a person of insight, they can see what's going on inside. And it takes practice, it takes work. It's like a muscle. We have to develop it. Otherwise, when you don't use it, you lose it. Right. I know that. Let's go to the last one in our last few minutes here, savor.

That's my favorite one. I'm going to say, yeah, that sounds good. It sounds tasty. I know. Savor. What does that mean in the context of soul care? Savor life. Be present in this life that God has given us. We're often so distracted by what's coming up ahead, or so burdened by what's happened in the past, that we don't take the time to really appreciate and be present in the moment that God has given us. This moment is a gift, and Jesus practiced savoring. You know, one of my favorite verses as I was writing soul care was in Matthew 13, and it says, Jesus left the house and went and sat by the lake. And I've never seen that verse before, but to think that Jesus just wanted to sit by the lake, to enjoy the moment, to connect with God and this world that he had given him. I think sometimes we're so distracted, even by devices in our pocket, right?

Our phones dinging, text messages, that we miss the gift of the present and the people that God has given us here and now. Well, and I think what's so good in the book, you describe it as a process. It's not like you're born with this, like athletic ability or something, right? But you learn to appreciate, you learn to savor. It's more attitudinal than some genetic thing, right?

100,000%. It's a muscle that we have to develop and something that we have to learn to do. One thing that you can do to practice savoring is starting a gratitude journal and don't just write vague things. I'm thankful for my family.

Be very specific. What is it about your family? Who's specifically in your family and what are you thankful for? It's easy to focus on what we don't have, what happened in the past, what we're worried about in the future. But if we can stop for a few moments and be specifically grateful for what we have today, it tethers us to the present. Well, and you say in the book, developing gratitude and praise is so critical to the stodgy person.

I mean, it just happens. You know, things happen in your life. You become crusty.

Speak to that person at the end here. How does that crusty Christian, let's put it in that context, become more of a person of gratitude and praise. That crusty Christian is most likely someone who has been through a lot of pain because pain has a tendency to do that to us. It has a tendency to bring up our walls and make us feel justified to sit in our pain. But I always say that gratitude is how we rebel against the pain.

It's our rebellion. No, I'm not going to let this weigh me down. I'm going to enjoy what God has given me. Not that I don't acknowledge the pain. As a counselor, I'm all about acknowledging the pain and healing the pain.

But gratitude is how we begin to rebel and decide, am I going to fixate on the pain or am I going to fixate on the presence that God has given me here and now? Yeah. Wow. This is so good.

What a fantastic resource. Soul Care, Deborah Fileta. It's so good to have you here. Every time you just knock it out of the park and you help us think differently more deeply about our relationship with the Lord and each other. So thank you for being with us. I'm so grateful to be here and to help people heal on a deeper level. Amen. And it's so good to see your entire family with you this trip.

It's so fun. I'm sure there are people listening who are on empty. We didn't even talk about that concept of being on empty. I only limped into the gas station one time and it freaked me out to the point, I'd be stranded.

What do I do? That I rarely go below a quarter tank. That's the life application. You want to live with Shalom, with God's peace.

Don't let your tank go below a quarter or a half. I think that's the Lord's message and it's what Deborah is trying to illuminate for us. If this concept has touched you or you know somebody that needs this, it might be your spouse, yourself, or maybe a friend.

Get ahold of us. Order a copy of Soul Care today for a one-time gift or a monthly pledge of any amount. We'll send it as our way, saying thank you for being part of the ministry. We so appreciate your willingness to stand with us and do ministry through us here at Focus on the Family to help support and strengthen marriages and parents all around the country. So why not get a copy of Soul Care from Focus today and have it ready for someone who is running on empty and has blown by that quarter tank concept and needs to hear from the Lord today.

Yeah, get the book. And then we also have a team of caring Christian counselors here available if you need to talk with someone to help kind of guide you through whatever challenges you're facing. Request a callback from one of our counselors and make a donation as you can. And get your book from Deborah Faleta called Soul Care. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. 800-232-6459.

Or you can find out more and donate by following the links in the show notes. Coming up next time, you'll hear one man's journey to becoming emotionally connected in his marriage. I thought my marriage was great until it ended. Wow. Because I was doing everything I was supposed to do. I was so focused on doing things. That's one of the points that I touched on before. But disconnected men do things they do love.

They don't feel love. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. God wants true disciples, ones that think like him, talk like him, walk like him, disciples that bring shalom to the chaos of this world. Pursue that path with the RVL Discipleship series. Bible scholar Ray Vanderlon will give you the tools to understand the Bible more deeply and inspire you to be a passionate follower of Christ. Watch the first episode at rvldiscipleship.com.