Episode 83: Navigating Pain and Suffering with Others

Pastor and author Scott Sauls shares a message of hope for parents from his new book, Beautiful People Don't Just Happen.

Automated Transcript

Sissy Goff

Welcome to the Raising Boys and Girls podcast. I'm Sissy Goff.

David Thomas

I'm David Thomas.

Melissa Trevathan

And I'm Melissa Trevathan.

Sissy

And we are so glad you've set aside a few minutes to spend with us today. In each episode of this podcast, we'll share some of what we're learning in the work we do with kids and families on a daily basis at base. Our counseling in Nashville, Tennessee. Our goal is to help you care for the kids in your life with a little more understanding, a little more practical help, and a whole lot of hope. So pull up a chair and join us on this journey from our little yellow house to yours.

Sissy

David, do you remember when we had Emily Ley from Simplified on the podcast last season?

David

I sure do. What a fun episode. She is delightful.

Sissy

Yes, she is.

David

I love her story. How she was trying to do it all as a working mom with dings and buzzes constant lea controlling where her attention was each day. But she made a decision to do it a different way.

Sissy

Yes. And it's made all the difference in her own life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of women around the world. I love Emily's heart and simplified mission to equip, inspire and empower women with tools and systems that will simplify their lives.

David

I know that's music to your ears as an Enneagram one.

Sissy

You know me so well. The Cornerstone product, the simplified planner, is so beautiful and incredibly practical. You don't even have to be an Enneagram one to love this planner.

David

And if you're not a paper planner person. Simplified has tons of other products that will help you simplify your life to notebooks, mugs, baby books, art prints, journals, and more.

Sissy

And every single one of simplified products are beautiful. To see everything simplified has to offer and start simplifying your life today. Head to EmilyLey.com and use our code RAISING15 for 15% off your purchase at Simplified. Again, that's EmilyLey.com and the code for our listeners is RAISING15.

David

Scott Sauls is the senior pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church here in Nashville, Tennessee. Before coming to Nashville, Scott was a pastor alongside Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Scott is a frequent speaker at conferences leadership retreats and university students, where he helps others connect their emotional and spiritual lives. His latest book, Beautiful People Don't Just Happen, is a field guide to help readers who feel unfinished and on the mend under Jesus merciful, mighty healing hand.

David

Scott is married to Patty and has two daughters, Abby and Lee. Scott, it is so much fun to have you in this room. Yes, you have been a long time friend to the two of us and someone we respect and a voice that is so needed in our world right now. And you, as we just shared, are an author of many books, and it's so much fun to get to talk about your newest book.

David

I'm going to read the title and subtitle because I love both so much. It's called Beautiful People Don't Just Happen How God Redeems, Regret, Hurt and Fear in the Making of Better Humans. I love that title so much and I love the words behind that title.

Sissy

And we got to come to a kick off of the book where you read some of it and I kind of loved it any more.

Scott Sauls

That was a fun night.

Sissy

It was a fun night.

David

In fact, I told you the story that night. I don't know if you remember it or not, but Scott and I released books on the exact same day, and so we ended up guest on different podcasts like right after each other with several folks. And my publicist texted me and said, I've listened to a couple of the interviews you've recorded and you're talking more about Scott's book than your own, and that's a problem for me.

David

I said, Well, it's not a problem for me at all because I love that man and so thankful for his word. So it's so much fun to have you here today.

Scott

And we go way back, don't we, David? I don't even know what we do.

David

Tell the history.

Scott

I think you were a tour manager for a Nashville recording artist. Yes. And you were dating one of my dearest friends from college who is now your wife, Connie.

David

Dearly?

Scott

Yeah. So I was I was in all those behind the scenes conversations where she was falling in love and going crazy, you know, not being able to spend time with you because she was working out in the woods and you were on the road and then you got married.

David

And you read Scripture at our wedding. I did.

Scott

Credible Garth wedding. I remember that.

David

Painful for a lot of years. And so fine to have you here now and.

Sissy

So.

David

Fine. Even as we talk about your newest book, we talk a little bit about why you wrote it and what you hope folks experience in reading it.

Scott

I think it's important to acknowledge that the title did not come out of my brain. It came from an Elizabeth Kubler-Ross quote, and she's, as you all know, a therapist. And she talks in this paragraph that she wrote, I don't even know where it came from. But she talked about how the most beautiful, approachable, durable, empathetic people that she's ever known are people who've known defeat, who've basically at some point in their lives, hit bottom.

Scott

That's not a direct quote. But the last line of that excerpt is beautiful. People do not just happen. And so the title came from that. The book was Born Out of the Pandemic. A lot like yours was David and just had human pain points on the mind and heart. My own experience of those years and of course, just, you know, being a pastor a lot like you all just being surrounded by people who are trying to make sense of what's happening and people being isolated from each other and home lives getting more difficult and all the rest.

Scott

We were just thinking out loud with the publisher like what would be helpful? The themes of regret, guilt and shame, those things we wish we could go back and change, or those burdens about ourselves that we carry with us hurt, which is sort of the catch all of the groan of creation that Romans eight talks about, that we're all subject to and fear, you know, just worrying about what's next, what's around the corner and what the future is going to be like.

Scott

And so, well, planning to it became probably the most transparent that I've ever been in anything that I've written just out of my own life. And I finish the book and I'm like, Man, I'm one messed up dude. I didn't know I had this much need and neediness in my own life, but it became really kind of a cathartic exercise for me to kind of draft off of a lot of years of counseling that I've been through and have Daystar and especially UCSC, to thank for the way you've served our family in the past and helped us just process the hard parts of being human as a family together.

Scott

But it was a season where just a lot of things came back home to me and to us in terms of what we've learned from people who do what you do. I don't know. At the end it became something that I didn't expect it to be. And that was like, you know what? If somebody asked me, how do you want to pastor people?

Scott

I would say, this is what I would want you to experience being pastored in your regret or your hurt or your fear. And this is what I would want to hand somebody if they were showing up for somebody else in that regard. And there are a lot of great books along those lines. So I wouldn't say it's like a unique Eureka kind of project, but it's our project, you know, I'd say Arc is my wife.

Scott

I've never submitted a chapter that Patty hasn't improved before. It was put in front of an editor or somebody else. I hope it helps.

Sissy

It does feel like we have the same heart in so many spaces and yours obviously is different from a really spiritual standpoint. But I think, Scott, you do such a beautiful job of weaving the emotional and spiritual together, I think in a way that speaks to the heart of where all of us are now and how we all feel like messed up people.

Sissy

And and we love as counselors that you talk so much about emotional health and so thinking even specifically, you talk about joy and gratitude and lament and how those contribute to our emotional health. We you talk a little bit about that.

Scott

To the ownership, Don. Yes, yes. Yeah. He was the religious as well, more as my therapist than anything else. But but I've worked with Chip for a while. Patty and I both have and he wrote this book here. I will talk about raising emotionally strong boys and also the voice of the heart, the voice of the heart is, I guess, his sort of manifesto on what he calls the eight core human emotions.

Scott

And I'll see if I can think of them. Sadness, guilt, shame, anger, hurt, fear. One more distress, emotion and gladness. Right. So what's striking to me about that list is that seven of the eight are distressed emotions, which to me just tells a story about how God cares for us. This world is now fallen, wasn't created that way, but it became that way.

Scott

And so I'm going to give you seven different ways as my beloved image bearing people, I'm going to give you seven different ways to process the distress of living life in a groaning world. And I'm also going to give you one emotion to remind you of the world that you came from and the world that you're going to.

Scott

And that's the emotion of gladness in the American context. Emotions, I think, are just so poorly treated in our even willingness to allow them, right? Like stop being so emotional or stop acting like a baby. When was it wrong to process the world like a child? I mean, Jesus had a lot to say about that. Right. And so much of your work is about helping people reconnect with the child that they are, especially the child of God that they are.

Scott

And so it's been a journey. I mean, it took me until I turned 50 to be willing to feel fully or at least take the risk of feeling fully and still in process. There it feels more healthy to invite healthy expression and stewardship of emotion in myself and others, and it feels threatening and scary as well, because honesty is threatening and scary as broken people and sinful people.

Scott

But we're just kind of along for the ride right now. I wish of Patty and I could have started earlier in that journey, but here we are.

Sissy

David, can you believe it's already Thanksgiving week?

David

I really can't. This year has flown by right?

Sissy

But I'm not mad about it. I love this time of year. What's one of your favorite things about Thanksgiving?

David

David I love asking the kids in our offices what they're thankful for, what about you?

Sissy

Same. I also love looking at verses about gratitude in the Bible. I was just looking at some in the Explorer Bible for kids and I love that it already has. So many good kid friendly versus highlighted.

David

I love that, you know, the special call out sections like exploring creation and discovering the truth, they make it so easy for kids to connect the dots between the Bible and their reality, which is such a great way for kids to absorb what they're learning.

Sissy

Yes. And the more they learn and understand the Bible, the more they'll have to be thankful for.

David

So true, engaging God story is one of the best ways to build gratitude in kids. You know what I'm thankful for right now that we get to offer our listeners an incredible deal from our friends at Lifeway. Buy your copy of the Explorer Bible for Kids Today at Life Wacom and get 50% off using code RB G. Scott.

David

This season of our podcast, we're focusing on raising emotionally strong and worry free kids and would love to ask you what is a memory from your growing up, a memory or story that shaped you into who you are?

Scott

So I'm an abuse survivor, violence, rage and other such things. And so I grew up scared and built a lot of defense mechanisms in order to survive that. And it's interesting, my brother's coming in town. We're going to go to the Pearl Jam concert tonight.

Sissy

Oh, wow.

Scott

But we have kind of a river runs through its story where I'm the older son who fought back by chasing success and victory and winning. And my brother became the prodigal who ran to a distant country. And we both ran to a different country just in different ways. But he went to school for counseling and became a believer a little bit later in life.

Scott

And I did. But we now have this ability to sort of look back and name what was tragic and yet help each other, not be victim martyrs, but hopefully be stewards of the hard things and also not caricature that whole season of our life as if it was all terrible and bad because we were given a lot of graces and gifts even in the context that we were in.

Scott

But I think being an abuse survivor, David, to the question, I mean, it feels really dramatic, but that is the formative memory. That's the memory and experience that I think has made both of us who we are now more than anything else. We don't know what it's like to grow up in a nurturing environment. And we've been fighting hard in our own marriages to create what we don't know ourselves in hopes that our kids will have something to pass on to theirs.

Scott

But back to the Kubler-Ross. There's something about having experienced and tasted the worst of what it means to experience being human, that if our hearts go at that fork in the road, not in the direction of cynicism and despair and victimhood and martyrdom, but in the direction of how can we be repented and fathered and re mothered? Well, there's Jesus.

Scott

There's Jesus is the answer also for people who grew up in great environments and life giving environments, even that environment, we'll never be able to give you completely what you're made for. And in a sense, having two things, having suffered uniquely and having the gospel, having Jesus and having people help us, you know, put those two together like people like you who do what you do.

Scott

It feels like there's an advantage. We have a friend who lost a son, David. We both showed up the night that it happened. Their instincts that I have that people there didn't have, and so much of those instincts in terms of how to show up in that kind of situation come from my own trauma. But that trauma has to go through a long process of mending.

Scott

Right. The scars create thicker, stronger skin, a reset bone that's been broken is harder to break in the future. And so, I don't know. I think there's some metaphor in all of that that points back to what even the scriptures themselves tell us about how suffering produces perseverance and character and hope. That doesn't disappoint. But but there's a submission and a surrender that has to happen in order for us to enjoy those benefits later on.

Scott

Right. And so, thankfully, I want more to submit and surrender most of the time than I do fighting back and resisting and being cynical. We have our moments. I have my moments in that regard.

Sissy

Yes. I feel so privileged to know your family little and to get to witness the I feel like you all have as much tenacity and commitment and like doggedness to having an emotional, healthy family. I think you have fought hard with your girls to move toward.

Scott

They're still in junior high in the process. I mean, all are.

Sissy

Yes, yeah.

Scott

We're still figuring it out. But thank you.

Sissy

Well, we you talk a little bit about them. This season of our podcast is about emotionally strong and worry for your kids. Anything that you can think of that's helped contribute to that in them, because they're kind of raised mostly partly at this point.

Scott

Kind of amazing. But they are.

Sissy

Amazing.

Scott

And they couldn't be more different than the other. They share in common that they have Scott and Patty solid as their parents, for better or for worse, mostly for better with respect to their mom. And they both, thankfully, are walking with Christ and are actively involved in their local churches and continued with the kind of community that we raise them in which you're always kind of nervous about, you know, because there are no guarantees.

Scott

Abby just got married. You met us through Abby and we met you.

Sissy

Amazing.

Scott

She is a carbon copy of me in terms of the things that trip her up and the things that make her the remarkable contributor that she is. And we're both Enneagram Fours with a three wing. We both feel the darkness and notice the darkness are more sensitive to the darkness in the world than most. And we both long for redemption and and our our our tears come when redemption and darkness are put together in the same sentence or story.

Scott

We're moved. It's not just factual to us, but we're also hypersensitive and hyper protective and all of those things that go along with with our wiring. But yeah. So she married Jeff Timmer. So she's Abby Timmers now and they are in New York City, which was the city that formed her. And he is working with the Mets, which is really fun.

Scott

And she just got a job with hope for New York, which is the kind of mercy and justice, nonprofit supporting organization that was a ministry of the church that we were were part of and served when when we were in New York. And so they're on their way. They're not without struggles. There's they're living in a room about this size, and they pay more in rent for that room than we do in mortgage for our house.

Scott

But but they're all grown up. And Ellie's at Auburn, our youngest, and she's just a bright light. And she's in her junior year. She's interning with her church. She's in a sorority. She's doing great in class, having a blast, doing all these things and wondering about what her life's going to be after college. And of course, and so we're just thinking about them as long as it's in Nashville we're doing.

Scott

But yeah, she's just she's precious. Yeah. So and she takes after her mom and in a lot of ways in that regard, yeah. She's got her mom's, you know, tenderness and empathetic vibe, you know, like she really cares about people and she's approachable and safe and a whole lot of fun. Yes, yeah, yeah.

David

It's awesome having young adult children and the perspective that you have in that season of life. What is something, looking back, that you worried about as a parent that you think now I wish I hadn't?

Scott

Well, I don't know if I wish I hadn't, but we worried about whether or not our kids would become damaged. Pastor's kids, right. You hear the peak stories. And from a very young age, we just kind of felt like we need to fight for them, to have their own identities and be their own people and have their own path.

Scott

It was harder in high school. I think it's less difficult now in adulthood. They're remarkable in and of themselves and who they are to be. And that's who we want them to be. Obviously there are, but we don't want that to be the main thing that they're known for because they have their own unique, amazing contribution to make.

Sissy

Yes. Well, thinking back on Parenting Journey, if there is something you wish someone had told you early on, a statement that you feel like would have helped or something that someone did, what would you say it would be?

Scott

So this is what I always encourage. Young couples who come in wanting to get married want me to do their officiate, and I require some premarital stuff, work that we do together. And I always say, look, no matter how healthy or how unhealthy things are around your lives and in your lives and in your relationships, I highly recommend at least your first year you do marriage counseling from the very beginning for your first year because preventative maintenance is a lot less involved than corrective.

Scott

You know, maintenance and repair down the road. It takes me to what the writer of Ecclesiastes is said who's looking back on all these regrets in his life. And there's this one line in there where he says, Remember your creator in the days that you're young. The answer the question is start as early as possible to get as healthy as you can emotionally, personally, relationally, spiritually, vocationally and otherwise.

Scott

I feel like if we could go back in time, we would start a lot earlier on that journey and it probably would have spared our kids a lot of grief and struggle had we made that commitment, been willing to spend the money. You know, it's always about the money when just starting out and not wealthy, you know, you're like, Oh, we just can't afford that.

Scott

And I would look back probably on younger Scott and Patty, newlyweds Scott and Patty and say, You can't afford not to. But at the same time, it's never too late to start.

David

It's good. Yes, it is.

Sissy

David, have you heard everyone talking about the chosen season three?

David

I have. This season, the most emotional chapter yet picks up right where season two left off, but turns up the tension.

Sissy

We see Jesus deliver the famous Sermon on the Mount and the consequences others experienced for living out his teachings.

David

His followers and enemies multiply, bringing all kinds of troubles and tough questions. Many questions we've all asked ourselves.

Sissy

But in the middle of all of that upheaval, we are reminded that Jesus gives rest.

David

We all need this story, and especially that reminder. Watch for free in the chosen app. Episodes will roll out before Christmas. Visit the chosen tickets dot com for more information. That's the chosen ticket scam.

David

We talk a lot about arming ourselves with truth and would love to just ask you, what is one truth that you would say has helped you worry less specifically as a parent?

Scott

As a parent. They belong to God before they belong to us. He's writing their stories so we don't have to. It's just a huge burden to assume the role of author to your own kids stories. You're going to be disappointed. Just knowing that there's a God who looks out for them, who doesn't slumber and doesn't sleep, which is actually a psalm that your wife introduced me to.

Scott

I became a believer in college, and Connie introduced me to the 20th Psalm that talks about how the Lord watches are going in and are coming out now and forever more. He's the shade at our right hand and that he neither slumbers nor sleeps. So even when we're checked out, even when we're dead and gone, the Lord will not stop watching over them.

Scott

So that's a comfort. And he's shown signs throughout the duration of their lives that that's true, but also just the comfort that every regret that we have and we have a lot of them. And I wrote graduation notes to both of our daughters. I'm sorry. And you're welcome. You know, it's just it's just a convoluted mess of both of those things.

Scott

And to know that all of that can get resolved now through just owning things as opposed to trying to compensate for things with toys or becoming nice but never dealing with when you weren't, you know, to bring it into the light as the Gospels encourage us to do with our kids. But we've experienced so much healing, all of us have from just talking about the good in the heart and in our own life as a family.

Scott

And I'm sure there'll be more of those conversations in decades to come. But also knowing that everything is completely resolved and then you have it in the new earth. And as C.S. Lewis says, you know, heaven will work backwards and turn the worst and hardest things into a glory, you know, like waking up from a nightmare and you lose your spouse in your nightmare.

Scott

And then you wake up and they're breathing right next to you, and you love them more because you have the nightmare. You know, you're more warm toward each other because you have the nightmare. I feel like that might be a small glimpse of what heaven will be like. We'll look back and say, You know, that was real. But it also now is only a bad dream because of the life that we we get to enjoy now.

Scott

So, yeah, all the things, reconciliation and peace, just a huge fan of how Christ gives those gifts.

Sissy

Gosh, just feel the hope. Wash over me, even as you're saying those things. We talk so much about how thinking about the pandemic and as you said, it's part of what you write this book out of. But we just have never seen parents feel as discouraged or hopeless in some ways as we have in the last few years.

Sissy

And you already did this beautifully. I didn't know if there's anything that you would add as a pastor, if there's something you could say to every parent of kids, every age today, what it would be.

Scott

The long view is your friend.

Sissy

Yes.

Scott

Your child's story in all likelihood, is going to be 80 years long and then infinite years after that. The long view is really important to not lose sight of the moment that you're in right now, especially if it's a really hard or even traumatic moment or season. I was telling you about our our 24 year old. I mean, it's just glorious.

Scott

And intense and wonderful, you know, just all the things. But she would not be that person that she is right now, if not for our parental failures and if not for, you know, the various hurts along the way of being moved from city to city three or four times. And pulled out of her community. Right. And she's starting high school.

Scott

Those were hard seasons and they brought out a lot of hard. But she's so much of the good of who she is now because she walk through those things. And this office, the office that we're sitting in right now, which helped us at home, you know, to have tools and resources to navigate. But the long view is so important because we can so fixate on the moment that we forget that whatever we're going through right now is developmental for all of us, us included, like we're being raised.

Scott

We're still growing up as well as a pastor, too, just taking it out of the context of our own family. Almost every time there's hard child raising experiences. Eventually there's going to be a warmth, something better and richer with mom and dad. And it may take until they're 30 or 35 years old. Yeah, but it usually happens. It usually becomes something you look back on and you can rejoice that you're in a better place later on.

Scott

But long view.

Sissy

Long view.

David

Yeah, I love that. We like to end with something kind of fun too, and throw a two part question at you. First question is case for Walk, and the second question would be What's your favorite kind of taco?

Scott

So Glock for sure, for a lot of reasons. One is it's just so enjoyable, but the other is you enjoy having eaten it more than you enjoy having it in. Okay, so good. So great. And favorite taco. I really like Bar Taco, which is more of kind of a boogie like splurge sort of place with these sort of crafty, artsy tacos that are also delicious.

Scott

But I'm also a sucker for Baja Burrito, which you can walk to from right here. So if I want to be full, I go to Baja Burrito and enjoy every bite. And if I want to have more of a sensory kind of experience, I'm going to Bar Taco.

Sissy

So that's great. Scott Even when you were saying the word pastor, I think that you have pastored beyond our community because it's so obviously your heart and that's what it feels like. This, however long we've been having a conversation, has taken that you have pastored us in these few moments and it just so excited and encouraged for parents to feel and experience the hope and freedom that you're describing and to hear your words wash over them.

Scott

The greatest calling on earth. There are a lot of great callings, but none of us would have survived without at least one parent in our lives, whether biological or otherwise. None of us would have survived without. That's the greatest call on earth. And sometimes it can feel like the most empty, lonely. Scary. Yes, isolated. One. Those feelings are real, but they're not true.

Scott

It's such a valuable calling.

David

Our friend out of town who I had encouraged to read your book recently and they texted me back and said, I'm on line right now. Which one should I get first? And I said, All of them, which is my answer to folks listening who are thinking, I need to sit in those trees more. Just we couldn't encourage folks enough to read everything you've written.

David

And as we said on the front side, just that I feel like more than ever right now, our world needs your voice. So I'm just grateful you would lend it to our time today.

Scott

Yours as well, my friends. Thank you. Thank you for your encouragement as well.

Sissy

Thank you.

Jess Wolstenholm

Hi. I'm Jess Wolstenholm, mom of two and director of Education and faith formation for Minno, a streaming service for Christian families. Wow, what an amazing episode with Scott Sauls. What a rich conversation between David and Sissy and Scott about his new book, Beautiful People Don't Just Happen in Scott's book, he says. I know what it's like to be unfinished and on the mend under Jesus merciful, mighty healing hand.

Jess

I think as parents we can relate to that a lot. Nothing sheds light on our need for God's mercy like parenting does. And in this season of busyness leading up to the holidays, when life seems frantic or when we feel like we just can't keep up, we're reminded even more how much we need him. Do you struggle to admit your need for the Holy Spirit, our promised helper?

Jess

I know I do, but God wants to teach us in our unfinished state that He is faithful to come to help, to mend our humanity with his powerful presence. And you know what? When we allow him to work on us right in front of our kids, they see firsthand his powerful love. God's divine design for our faith formation and for theirs is for us to grow together from unfinished, broken people into beautiful vessels that pour his love out into the world.

Sissy

It's our joy to bring the experience and insight we gain through our work beyond the walls of the Daystar house.

David

If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with your friends and don't forget to click the follow button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode to learn more about our parenting resources or to see if we're coming to a city near you, visit our website at Raising Boys and Girls dot com.

Sissy

Join us next time for more help and hope as you continue your journey of raising boys and girls.

Guest UserNovember 22, 2022

Episode 83: Navigating Pain and Suffering with Others

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