Heavenly Minded Earthly Good

Anita Wing Lee 00:03
I made my decision. I was going to finish this master's of divinity program, which meant that I still had 20 plus courses to do, which averaged out to 80 assignments.

Anita Wing Lee 00:19
All while working full time with two jobs. I set about trying to figure out how to do all this work during the pandemic. At the same time, I was aware of something I had learned at my church. It was another way of looking at my tendency to overwork and overachieve. Or make an idol out of success. When I first started my job at the church, I got to attend a three week Leader School, where I learned about something called inner healing. It's the idea that we have deep inner soul wounds, lies that we've believed and accumulated throughout our lives that lead to bitter roots, and can ultimately hold us bondage because we keep repeating the same patterns living out of our wounds. In one particular session, we learned about something called performance orientation, which is one way that our wounds can manifest. The moment the speaker started explaining performance orientation, every cell in my body jumped back to Montenegro. And I got that feeling this remembering that there are parts of me so broken, I don't know how to fix them. I so clearly suffered from performance orientation. I mean, this belief that your performance is your worth permeates Western society, it's hard to get away from it. Many of us can see how unhealthy it is. It's why burnout is so prevalent, but we can't get away from it. I mean, we live in a society that's almost entirely performance oriented.

Anita Wing Lee 02:02
How many things in our life are set up to reward high standards, excellence, performance? Aren't those HR meetings called performance reviews. From the moment we are born, we are applauded for performing well. But there were things in my life that I could see contributed to the way I was performance driven. I was a middle child. And unlike the stereotype of the middle child who was overlooked, from the time I was a little girl, I excelled. I got straight A's effortlessly. And it gave me a sense of worth. When I was young, I also had light colored hair. And so people often thought I was mixed. And an Asian culture mixed babies are pretty one. So I was praised for being pretty. When I was in grade three, I even got a trophy, some kind of trophy that was only given to one student in the entire school for being a standout person. I don't remember what I did to deserve it. But I knew I was a good kid. And I was smart. And I was pretty. All of those early experiences must have made a deeper mark in my soul than I realized. I accepted that my worth was based on my performance. And so my self worth came easy to me until it didn't, until the standard for performance got higher and higher. Until I was in classes full of straight a student's and no longer number one until I stopped believing in God in high school. This meant I had no spiritual identity, no identity other than my performance. I was no child of God chosen and called by God. Only Anita who cares Lee, only Anita Lee. And if you Google and Anita Lee, there are 1000s of Anita Lee's on the internet.

Anita Wing Lee 04:05
Then I started hanging out in the world of business and the Internet, we're playing the game of worth was exciting, intoxicating, even online, I could be worth something. In fact, my wife could even be quantified. How many followers do you have on Instagram? Somewhere along the line, I simply accepted the fact that I had to fight for my worth my identity. I had to prove myself. And that's what I had been doing for years. Constructing a copy of Anita Wing Lee to put online. I exist because she exists online. Look, you could even Google her. Now I finally had a word for the strange behavior: performance orientation. This was what I needed healing from, I needed to stop getting my approval from my work and from others and the internet. I wanted my approval from God. I think, at least that seems like the only good option right now.

Anita Wing Lee 05:17
Either way, God already got a head start on this, for me, plopping me at a church and making it my workplace, at the bottom rung of the ladder, have a part of me that wanted to be worth something at work, didn't really have an outlet. There was no promotion scheme at this job. I was never getting promoted. And as much as I wanted human approval, I knew that it was actually good for me to not get much. I needed to know in my heart, in my soul, that I was approved by God, not by the internet, and not by the people around me. Approval and adventure or my crack, and I was an addict. I wasn't a better than anyone. I was just broken differently.

Anita Wing Lee 06:09
Tyndale University presents heavenly minded earthly good. Deconstruction is the word commonly used for the process of critically dissecting your Christian beliefs.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 06:20
For some in the church deconstruction is kind of the new bad word of backsliding or apostasy or heresy

Anita Wing Lee 06:28
Churches tend to assume that deconstruction is an intellectual issue. But it's intertwined with all these other layers of what makes us human.

Dr. Helen Noh 06:36
What makes up a person is things like their cognitive layers, their emotional layers, their behavioral layers and their relational layers.

Anita Wing Lee 06:45
This podcast follows my personal journey through deconstruction. Along the way, we're going to chat with professors, pastors, psychologists, researchers, historians and artists.

Tara Jean Stevens 06:56
But I was still really struggling with the fact that if I was wrong, I might be going to hell.

Anita Wing Lee 07:05
We'll explore the questions so many of us have about Christianity, the stuff you probably didn't feel comfortable bringing up on Sunday at youth group or small group. I'm your host and guide for this journey, and Anita Wing Lee.

Anita Wing Lee 07:22
So I've got trauma from my teenage years, I'm grieving the loss of multiple dreams and lives. I've got intellectual questions about religion and spirituality. I've still got the trauma from Montenegro to sort out. And I've got years of unhealthy performance orientation that I need to unlearn. I am a mess inside. One story on the outside was that I'm a free spirited traveler stuck in the ground floor of a church office, trying to make her way through a stack of theology books. But truthfully, I was in some kind of rehab. So how do you heal performance orientation? How do you stop chasing human or internet approval? Especially when our whole world seems to run around how good you are? The answer, I got at Catch The Fire was that I needed to heal. And healing meant experiencing God's love. I couldn't heal myself, but God could love me back to life. As I worked at the church, there was a picture that kept coming back to me. How does someone who's been in a car accident, learn how to walk again, I saw the image of someone having to hold themselves up along a railing, taking one wobbly step after another. Sometimes they'll lose their balance and fall back into the wheelchair. Or they needed crutches for a while. And I felt God tell me this is you, Anita. Montenegro knocked you out and put you in a wheelchair. But you can't just sit in your wheelchair. I'm teaching you how to walk again. I'm teaching you how to walk side by side, step by step with me. You have to get up and try again. And for me, that meant looking for my approval from God, hanging out at the church and just soaking in the content that I was getting there. So I listened to all the sermons and sang along to the worship songs. Oh, the overwhelming neverending reckless love of God. You're good. You're good. I even started to make friends at church. Something was happening to my heart. I wanted to know what would it mean for an Anita to walk again? What would that feel like? Would I ever run again? If God could make all things new, then who would be the Anita, who was learning to walk again.

Anita Wing Lee 10:09
I still had a few years of my masters of divinity ahead of me. When I made the decision to stay in my church in the city program, I was choosing to not take another swig. From my adventure approval cocktail. I was trying to stay sober. And that looked like being in Toronto and just living quietly, without approval. I'm just going to keep waking up and showing up at work. I asked Lyndsay Thompson, the registered psychotherapist we heard from in episode two, what are some baby steps towards healing?

Lyndsay Thompson 10:47
First thing that is coming in my mind is like we're not in this alone. So find some help counselor, spiritual director. I'm not saying that they have all the answers. But I think having a sounding board to wrestle with some of these ideas. And then another big part of that is, and again, this is all, like, we talked about it in seconds. But this can take a long time to do but like, actually getting some of this out, can be a really helpful thing. Right, keeping it all inside thinking about it, mulling it over. Well, that's really good. And, and definitely needed, I think, expressing some of this, as you said, putting words to a given language, bringing it to light, I think is is such a big part. Yeah, so So you know, getting some help reaching out expressing things, being patient with yourself again, right? Like, the idea of self compassion. Like, don't beat yourself up in the process. Again, I'm not giving permission to like wallow in it. But I'm saying hey, like this might take some time as you seek healing as you seek help, as you you know, pray to pray for creativity and healing to just be gentle and patient.

Anita Wing Lee 12:06
But what was on the other side of this for me? What did I have to look forward to?

Lyndsay Thompson 12:12
Some things that are running through my mind. Kristin Neff is an expert on self compassion. And I think that that's sort of funny to think about, but I think it is a big thing to think about. And, and what there's two things that are coming to mind a, which is self compassion, it's like, okay, can you not beat yourself up over? Like going through this? Because even like, neurobiologically, beating yourself up over something is just not helpful, right? It's just not helpful thing to do. So can you be kind yourself as you're going through this, first of all, and then B, she talks about this idea of common humanity that so many people go through stuff, so I mean, I wonder if there's a place to say hey, like, I'm not alone in this. Like, even like what you're doing here talking about it be like, okay, like, I'm not alone. I'm not going crazy. Like this is this is a thing. This is real thing. Secondly, I'm almost thinking of love meant to write so so I'm 13 Is this great structure for a woman. It's like, it's six verses first two verses are about crying out and being like, this is what is wrong. Second two verses are like, God, this is what I need. And then the final two verses are say, are turning back to hope. And I think like, Can we do that? Can we just be honest to God with like, Hey, I got mad about this, this is what I need. This is what I'd want. But can we hold on to any tiny bit of hope?

Lyndsay Thompson 13:39
And I'm thinking of, also to the word integration. So I actually got this idea from one of my clients a long time ago. So you're doing this art project in therapy and she's like, I don't know a tree came up in this analogy, but you know, she she went and did this project come back to like, Lindsey, I came up with something I didn't know if you knew this. So, if you like cut a tree in half, you know, you see the tree rings or whatever, right? And I think who studies trees, arborists, ecologists, those kind of people, and it was so you know, you couldn't tell how many years the tree has been alive based on the tree. But you can also tell like, what kind of year was right so there's like, Okay, this year was like a drought this year. I don't know worms and like, so you can tell like what happened in the trees life. But ultimately, they the tree grows around it. Right? It integrates that year into its life. And I think that that's something that I feel is what I hold on to is like, okay, so this is a season but how can I meaningfully integrate this into my life into my faith into my future, and not get stuck on like that quote unquote, tree ring, and we can end up feeling like we're getting stuck After that, but again, meaningful integration is the word that keeps coming to mind.

Anita Wing Lee 15:06
This is a season, but how can I meaningfully integrate this into my life into my future and not get stuck? That's exactly how I felt. When I came back to Toronto in 2017, I was 26. And now it was 2020. And I would turn 30. Soon, God, how long it's been three, almost four years, I could have topped 60, or even 70 countries by now. What is becoming of a leader. There was a part of me that was ashamed of what I had created online. Sometimes I just wanted to delete it all. All of my social media accounts. I was a little bit jealous of people who had never fallen into this trap of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and trying to be something online. But then I had this job at the church, which involves making content. It was like this wedge that God put in my life saying Not so fast, Anita, you still have a plan for you. My job forced me to stay on top of app updates, or at least not fall behind. But already I was falling behind.

Anita Wing Lee 16:22
I would open Instagram or Facebook and Tik Tok and be like, What is this? I don't even know how to use this anymore. Because everything has moved around. I wanted to leave all of my screens behind. I wanted to heal by moving into the countryside and raising chickens for a few years. But I had this job from God at a church. And making videos and telling stories was one of my favorite things to do. And occasionally at the church, I'd have video projects that made me happy and excited to be alive. I was kind of angry at God for taking it all away, but not all away and hated the part of me that was so broken, that I had constructed myself online. And yet, I was working at a church that was a huge advocate of the Father's love. That God's love is wider, deeper, higher and longer than we know. And we just have to experience that love and God can find us and encounter us with His love. God would heal our lives. God would love us so much that our lives would be healed. And I wanted to believe that. So every time I caught myself being mean to myself, I would pray. Or I would put worship music. I tried to stop going down that hole and turn to God. And slowly, those pockets of good, of believing in the good, of believing that God is good, started to get bigger and bigger. Just a minute at a time. Ontario was still beautiful. Autumn, winter, Spring Summer. I had Wi Fi anytime I needed it. I had a car to use. I tried to count my blessings. Time was still ticking. I was still alive. That's something Lyndsay mentioned earlier that working with a counselor or spiritual director can help. On my own, I would have never sought professional help like this. But as a part of my master's program, I was actually required to work with a counselor and a spiritual director for six sessions. And I found it helpful. And I actually kept working with both of them for almost three years. My counselor couldn't come on this podcast for confidentiality reasons. But I'd like to introduce you to my spiritual director, Sandra Hunt. First I'll have her explain what is spiritual direction.

Sandra Hunt 19:12
Spiritual direction would be offering you a place or anybody a place to spend time with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The director isn't there to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. The director there is to help support you and encourage you and guide you to spend more time and not spend more time but to spend time with the Lord. They allow you that space, that quiet space to sit in listen to God. Bring your questions before the Lord, and then help you and walk beside you. It's a really, it's an honor to be a spiritual director because you get to journey along with people and see God at work. Often I would bring a third chair in when we would meet in person. And we would then invite the Holy Spirit or Jesus into that session. So that it's not just you and I, it would be you and I, and Jesus.

Anita Wing Lee 20:35
There was one thing that happened several times in my sessions with Sandra, that really impacted me. So one thing that you said to me, and at the end of a number of sessions that meant a lot to me was, you would often end the session by saying, like, you're doing awesome. And Anita, you're doing so well, in that like, extremely kind, motherly way that you do. And I remember this, because there was this sense of approval, that felt like it was coming through your kindness that I didn't get anywhere else in life. And that to have somebody who's there, their role in my life was purely to hear from God, and just give me space to reflect on that. Like, there was something like there's no one else in my life, that that can or whose responsibility it is to do that. And so even just that really simple thing of you saying, like, you're doing awesome. It just meant so much to me. And I always, it always landed right here, like, right in my heart. It was like God knew that, like, and Anita, I know that when you try really hard, you're actually just looking for approval. And through Sandra, I'm going to tell you that you are doing awesome. So I wanted to tell you

Sandra Hunt 22:10
No crying.

Anita Wing Lee 22:14
Youre allowed to cry. Every time I sat down for a zoom session with Sandra, I felt like time stopped. I'd be rushing through my day trying to complete my work from home. But whenever the Zoom call with her popped on, I felt like I was allowed to be okay. Somehow, in these little moments, I could feel God close.

Sandra Hunt 22:52
But it's that intimacy that you you go deeper with the Lord that you want. Right. And so Jesus does know you even better, right? You eliminate and I think that was part of your growth as well. Right? He was not only your father, but we I think we discovered many things, right? He's not just your father, but he's your brother. He's your friend. You know that the friends study, right? Everybody needs to put Jesus do a friend study with Jesus and figure that out. Right? Totally different perspective. He's closer than a brother. We all say that. Well, yeah, but really, like, if you're with a good friend, whom somebody that you trust that you want to hang out with, you know, yeah, they do know you inside and out. You do want to share those things with them. And it just develops a whole new perspective. You know, he's not this big, bad daddy, that's gonna hammer you. He's a loving father, but he's also your partner, right? When you go for a walk, when you have your lunch, when you are studying when you're editing. You know, whenever you're doing anything, he's always there. The image that's coming to me and I don't know if this is was part of our time together or not, but is the the daddy sitting in the chair and his daughter is sitting beside him. And you're just so hungry for your daddy's heart and your death. He is so proud.

Anita Wing Lee 24:40
In my sessions with Sandra we never used the word healing. But I knew that's what was happening. I was in rehab. By now I had also done an Enneagram test. The Enneagram is an anxious model of the human psyche That describes personalities as a series of nine interconnected types. When I did the Enneagram test, and my results came back, I felt like God was showing me the exact recipe of how uniquely I was made, and also how messed up I was. My top two Enneagram styles are type seven, the enthusiast and type for the romantic. Oh, dear, I kid you not. This is what my report says. Sevens have begin to flee their inner anxieties by engaging in more distractions and activities. They expect that they and their lives should be exciting and dazzling all the time. Type fours exemplified the desire to be ourselves to be known for who we are, and to know the depths of our hearts of all types. fours are the most aware of their emotional states. And they notice when they feel upset or anxious, or some other subtle combination of their feelings, above all fours want to distinguish themselves from others, they want to feel that their taste their self expression, and their emotional depth are unique. So in other words, the seven in me is the part that seeks travel. And the foreign me feels emotions extremely acutely. So when I feel a good emotion, like I do when I travel, it's even stronger. And that also means I feel my lows, that much deeper. So this partly explains why I react to the world the way I do.

Anita Wing Lee 26:38
But the blessing that came from studying my Enneagram was that there's a section in the report that describes what it's like to be a healthy type seven, and a healthy type for my report stated, healthy sevens are steady and grounded. They grow up emotionally, and move from being an eternal youth to being a mature person. And for the four and me, healthy fours, are emotionally honest, and aren't afraid to reveal themselves to others. They combined self awareness and introspection, with great emotional strength and endurance. They're able to renew and regenerate themselves again and again, transforming even their most painful experiences into something beautiful and meaningful that others can benefit from as well. This is how I'm broken. But this is also how I'm beautiful. We can't change our primary types. It's how God made us. But reading my Enneagram results, I realized I can grow. There is a version of Anita that is enthusiastic and romantic. But one that is more integrated, mature, who knows herself, who knows her weaknesses, but knows that given time, love, patience. Those weaknesses could be her strength. Now, three years later, I have some idea of what happened to me. But I asked Sandra, what did you see?

Sandra Hunt 28:24
Up and down, right, up and down. It would feel sometimes like two steps forward and I am one step back. And then two steps forward, and then one step back, and then five steps forward. And one step back and each part of the healing journey. You're right. I don't think we ever used the words healing, but it was very obvious. Do you know the other thing that's coming to me to need as I'm watching you in this room, I think some of the beginning even sessions of ours, it was like you could see even in the atmosphere, the heaviness. And as we continue to journey together, your rooms got brighter, you know, as the long with you, right? You know, so your surroundings changed and you would change your art and you would add you know, different things. And so I think that was all part of it as well. You know, your surroundings also reflected what you were feeling at that time and what you were going through with achieving realizing it. And as you have been journeying along and changing and growing and healing. Your rooms have changed dramatically and as well. Your surroundings it's brighter. Look at the White, you know, like it's bright. And you're reading today and I think I've shared that with you before too. You are radiant you shine. I can tell when you've had an encounter with God. He just glows through you. I'd be like okay, what's going on, you know, God's up to something They're in you, and through you. And so yeah, definitely you can see that your heart has healed, it has come a long way. And you're excited. And through that healing and that emptiness, you know, or, you know, filling in those emptiness spots, you know those little holes, has given you so much more clarity, and peace, peace, it has given you peace, to be able to walk more confidently with the Lord, you had an encounter with God that brought you back to Canada in that really did the next process. Or if the next steps in the process of your journey kind of happened then and you were open. And you were trying to figure it out, thank God did not necessarily make it easy for you to figure out because he wants you, he just want it you just the way you were. Just come to me. And I will give you rest, and I will heal you. I will take that brokenness and turn it into beauty. And that's exactly what he's done through your healing process.

Anita Wing Lee 31:14
I used to count the number of days, since I had come back from Montenegro, and periodically check in with Google. How many days has it been since August 18 2017. First, I hit my big milestone 1000 days. And then 1500 days, it gave me a sense of movement and growth. I even cut my hair twice. Once when I first came back out of shame to destroy the needle wing Lee that traveled the world with long luscious hair. And a second time when I turned 30 just to watch time pass and give myself something to look forward to. So that by the time I finished my master's program, I would have long hair again. Slowly I noticed that the feelings of shame and grief subsided. Something in Mute was healing. But it wasn't just the sermons, the songs the prayers that helped me to heal. Circumstances in my life were changing. As I stood still, and I kept waking up and showing up my life changed.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 32:41
Alright, are you ready now? Yes. Okay. And 321 timer has started listening and just want to make sure that I am checking the length of the neatest hair. Because you referenced that. Today, that was very fortuitous of you. So I have no comment on that continue on.

Anita Wing Lee 33:02
So this episode is really near and dear to me. Obviously, I condensed like four to five years of healing and fumbling and falling back down and trying to get back up and live my life and be a functioning human being I condensed all of that into 30 something minutes.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 33:21
And I've always thought anyway, that being a functioning human being is highly overrated. But what I want to say is Sandra hunt, I didn't know she was your spiritual director. And I know Sandra hunt. And it was so lovely to hear her voice and picture her face. And she's so warm, and full of grace. And she's got a smiley face and this massive heart and it was so good to see. See, hear that again in this podcast. So What a pleasant surprise for me personally, that was wonderful. And it did actually lead me to a question, but I just want to give you a second to reflect on that. Oh,

Anita Wing Lee 33:56
yeah, she's like the grandmother I never had, but obviously even better, because she was my spiritual director. And she had this piece of paper taped to her bookshelf that I could see every session it said My boss is a Jewish carpenter.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 34:08
That's awesome. Okay, perfect. So let's segue into this idea about the office. I love the idea of setting up the third chair. I was just curious, did you ever do? Did you ever have the chair sort of set up there that's inviting the Holy Spirit of Jesus? Was that ever part of your spiritual direction?

Anita Wing Lee 34:22
Well, because we did it on Zoom. I didn't see an extra chair there. But I actually took a course on a course at Tyndale where we talked about spiritual direction. And so I was familiar with that concept as well.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 34:37
You know, here's the thing I love about that, because there's there's a sense that if somebody was hypercritical this that almost puts Jesus the Holy Spirit into the realm of like an imaginary friend like you think of like a kid doing that. This is where my imaginary friends sits. And that can invite a lot of criticism that a lot of our faith is basically just a glorified imaginary friend. That's who Jesus is. But it also opens up something I think Christians themselves overlook in our day to day walk with God is this idea of sacred imagination. And so much of what we're doing is based in imagination, and again, you know, because I'm a historian, looking at where we are in history, this is a, you know, for the past few 100 years, again, to return to our Enlightenment ideas, the idea of imagination is sort of seen to be like one something for children, which is just so sad, because the greatest adults still have great imagination. But also it's it's in the way that we understand myth nowadays, like it's not, it's not real, it's pretend, without recognizing our all of our worldviews are at the end of the day, our perceptions, our imaginations, placing motives on other people. And of course, it's a beautiful idea that that God is very alive in our imagination that of course, our imaginations play an absolutely central role. So that, you know, it's Lectio Divina. It's all these different ways in which mystics and Christians throughout history have tried to inspire visioning God and are all within God's kingdom.

Anita Wing Lee 36:02
Yeah, and part of my process of being like, you know what, I am on some kind of healing journey. And clearly, I'm in like a Christian hospital, you could call it right, like, all of the artifacts of my healing journey are Christian, because I'm in school, I'm working in a church. And to be honest, I kind of accepted that, like I talked about in the theology episode, everyone's got a religion, your religion can be science, it can be self help. And here's a bunch of people who are crazy enough to believe in this universe of Christianity. And so I almost tried it as an experiment like, hey, like, what does it feel like to use Jesus as my band aid? To use the Holy Spirit as my band aid? I'm like, Well, I've obviously used like, all the time management principles, I've, I've used like, non Christian spiritual healing stuff. And I'm like, wow, you know, that can be just as imaginary as Jesus. So let's see if this makes a difference. And this podcast is kind of that story of like, does it make a difference? Alright, so

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 37:03
We got about two minutes, 25 seconds left. Another part I found really interesting about this episode was, I don't know if this is your experience. But when I was when I was a kid going to church, we were always set up with that sort of flesh versus a spirit. You know that, you know, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You know, there's this battle between the sacred spirit and the carnal flesh. And the way it was always framed for me was that my mind was the spirit. And literally, my flesh, my body was always the sinful thing. And there's a whole bunch of images and issues that come up with body image and sexuality and everything that's on that. But what I wanted to focus on what I loved about going all the way back to Episode One of Montenegro is one of the greatest things I've learned that is problematic with Western Christianity is our view of the body being the sinful thing, because the mind tells these insane stories. And the mind is not more tapped into the Spirit of God. And one of the greatest things I had to learn was that my body is my best friend. It doesn't moralize. All it cares about is maximum health maximum benefit, if I eat the wrong foods, shirt chips, or my comfort food, but I'm gonna get sick to my stomach because my body's like, whatever your comfort food is, man, this is poison. And it's got to get out.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 38:18
And so I just want the listeners listening right now to because I know a lot of us in Western Christianity, we were raised with a sort of spirit versus flesh dynamic. And I think it's really harmful. It's very Greek. It's very Western, this sort of like, compartmentalizing, and the ability to listen to your body, like what happened you Montenegro, you had all these great ideas, you had all this great life and whatnot, but something physical happened to you. And it's not that I think God, like jumped past your mind. But what I loved in this episode is like it started as a physical reaction that you just could not ignore. And what we've seen in these past few episodes is now your mind is actually starting to catch up to your body. And he started thoughts on that, and the last sort of 30 seconds we have, and then I do have a question.

Anita Wing Lee 38:59
So we're going over this time, but actually, it brings up a good point, which is giving yourself time that I wanted to talk about, and I think Lindsay really hit the nail on the head by identifying for us that like we are whole systems we are whole bodies, and whole minds and and you can't just separate your body from your mind. And like I in Montenegro, I had that experience I physically knew that I like I was perfectly functioning healthy other than the food poisoning I had for a couple of days. Like there was nothing to stop me from making videos and, and going full tilt on making online content except something between my head my heart and body was broken. And like even that connection was broken. I couldn't even force myself to do it. And um, these are all parts of who we are. And in the west and in like the modern world. We're so used to treating ourselves like machines. And we just left them in this was a process of like, I'm clearly not a machine. There's something else going on here. And even when Christianity doesn't make sense, like I could like there's things in my life that don't make sense anyway. So let me, let me see what happens when I stuffed Jesus in my broken wound.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 40:11
Very visceral.

Anita Wing Lee 40:11
That's actually how it felt. I have something I want us to talk about. So,

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 40:17
Well, we got a problem because I didn't want the alarm to go off. But we are now at eight minutes.

Anita Wing Lee 40:21
We should limit it to like an extra three minutes. But this is something let's talk about if somebody isn't in a program, because obviously, I'm in this master's of divinity program, and I ended up working at a church. So the but the program is what forced me to have a spiritual director and a counselor. And I know that if I hadn't been forced to have these people supporting me, I wouldn't have gone to go seek it myself. And, but obviously, I found it really helpful because I worked with both of these people for the next three years, and I still have them in my life. So if somebody isn't in a program like this, what can they do?

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 40:59
I will give this to you, because I was going to talk about the fact that perhaps if you're Christian in a season of deep deconstruction, perhaps one of the parts if you if you have the ability to is to seek out a spiritual director before you fully make a break with the faith, what not, but it'll actually help you deconstruct? Well, as I think we saw the perfect example of you and Sandra hunt, as far as it pertains to Tyndale, Dr. David Charbonneau has a would you call it a collective of powerful spiritual directors, I myself have gone to a spiritual director, and this episode has inspired me to go again. But it's different than a counselor. It's different than a church friend, a spiritual director offers some real skill sets. So as we wrap up now, and as we're in the second half of the season, we want to find some landing spaces, highly cannot recommend enough if you have the ability to, or even seek it out. Bring your deconstruction to a spiritual director and see where that takes you. Sound good listener, I hope so. And thank you for giving us an extra three m inutes and 36 seconds.

Anita Wing Lee 41:59
And then the flip side of that is

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 42:03
Thre minutes and 36 seconds over and Anita, this is a whole other episode.

Anita Wing Lee 42:06
Okay, I'll keep this quick. I know that as an 18 year old when I actually started deconstructing one, there was nobody around me to tell me to go see a spiritual director. Podcasts weren't a thing yet. So I couldn't listen to someone deconstruct. But the other thing then is, I would say, like, use that time to learn because I know what it feels like to just be like, You know what, Christianity and all your Christian people, you've screwed me over. And I just need to leave all of you behind for a bit. And I need time for myself. So in that time, I would encourage you to actually learn and to seek and to read what you think you need to read and to keep seeking. And to keep looking until you find that resting place for your soul. Personally, obviously, like I believe that will ultimately lead you to God. But that's a journey that I can't control just like I couldn't have couldn't have controlled mine. So I would just encourage you to don't don't stuff it away by like watching another five Netflix shows actually. Go find what you're looking for.

Dr. James Tyler Robertson 43:05
And now a word from our sponsor Netflix. Just kidding. We're way over. Forgive us. Bye

Anita Wing Lee 43:10
bye. Oh, it's 11 minutes that's not too.

Anita Wing Lee 43:15
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