Secrets for Holding on to Rest, Hope and Relationship: Interview with Gem and Alan Fadling (episode 21)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. Welcome, welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. Alan and Gem, that's spelled G-E-M because she's such a treasure. Alan and Gem Fadling. And I am so excited to have them here.

0:41 They, I met them, I don't know, was it four years ago or something that you came and did a seminar, a seminar for my team and they still talk about it because you bless them so and they learn so much from it. And so as I thought, who could bless the people who listened to my podcast? Well, I think that Alan and Gem could do that. So why don't you start off just giving us a little picture of how you got started on the topic of unhurried living. Just before you do that, I was noticing that at the beginning of the lockdown, I was ready. I said, good, I'll get all those rooms cleaned out. My kids are all gone. I'll get all that done and I'll read all the stack of books. It didn't happen. In fact, the mess got worse because we were doing everything at home and the books, well, a few I got done, but not very many. And so I found myself saying, all right, how do I get a little better control of my life and not always feel so pressured?

1:56 And then I said, I know Alan and Gem talk about this. And so your main, your ministry is unhurried living. And you have two books, Alan, Unhurried Life and Unhurried Leader. Is there another one coming? That's correct. Actually, I am working right now on a book that will eventually be titled Unhurried Daily Reflections. It'll be a one-year reader, but that's a little ways down the road. Yeah. Okay. And Gem, tell us about your book that's out and your book that's coming. Well, yeah, we wrote a book together called What Does Your Soul Love? And it's eight questions that reveal God's work in you. So, we're both spiritual directors and we believe in the power of a good question. And so we've already… I agree with that.

2:48 We've tackled some light subjects like resistance and fear and control and vulnerability, but really it's an invitation to ask a good question and then sink down into that into your own life. And then my second book, I just turned in my first draft. It's going to be for women and it's about managing your thoughts and narratives. Well, let me ask you a question. Lots of other people are just where I've been, especially after this lockdown and all of a sudden it's opening up, at least in Florida where I live it is, maybe not in California as much where you live, but people are getting out and they're doing things and going places and they look back and said, I didn't get anything done. And like I've said, but they're still thinking, wait, wait, it was nice having some downtime, some peaceful time. How do I get that?

3:47 Because in our nation and our world today with technology, especially everything is so fast and all over the place. And I know that you've heard and I'm sure that many of my listeners have heard that there's a great saying by Dallas Willard that has been out. And he says, what's the most important thing you can do for your life? You can eliminate, ruthlessly eliminate all hurry. And so we're not doing so well at that. So how did we get to this place of hurriedness, of rush, of so much going on in our life? And then begin to tell us a little about how you got into this topic.

4:40 Yeah, I love that piece of spiritual council that Dallas offers ruthlessly. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. I remember the first time I heard it, I thought that sounds impossible. That sounds really, really hard. But the longer I've lived with that sentence, the more I've thought that really is an absolutely strategic invitation that I think actually Jesus is extending to us. I think Jesus is the most beautifully unhurried person in the universe. And I think he invites us to follow his unhurried way. So how do we get here? Golly, that could be a podcast or two all by itself. Technology in part has accelerated our lives. The promise was it would save us time. You can get a big job done in a little time. But what happens though is the one job that you get done in a little time becomes six jobs that you do in the same amount of time. And so there's this gradual acceleration of our experience. So that's one way we got there.

5:54 A second thing I want to say is that this is more general. This is just human, not necessarily modern times. But one of the reasons we get so hurried is how we define our lives. We think that we are the stuff we do. We think we are the things we possess. We think we are all the stuff people say about us. And if we believe that, then do more, get more, impress more people becomes our mode of operation. And that is a recipe for hurry. That's really true. That's really true. Well, as you think about my audience, people who have a prodigal, somebody in their life who's making destructive choices, maybe rebellion, maybe just so wounded that they are acting out trying to handle their pain. Maybe it's mental illness. And certainly all of that has been increased with the pandemic that the people don't know how to handle themselves. And families don't know how to care for their families. So how do you see that this becomes an important topic then for the lovers of prodigals, which is what I like to call them? That's beautiful. So I think the first thing that might be useful to say is when we talk about an unturried life, we're not talking about some idyllic oasis life.

7:19 Trouble free experience where we sit around on Lazy Boys and read our favorite book all day. Sounds good. It wouldn't be a terrible thing for a vacation. But when we talk about unhurried, we're not so much talking about the stuff going on around us. We're not even really talking about the things on our calendar or the things on our to do list. What we're talking about is the quality of our soul. Like that is where unhurry takes shape in us. And the good news about that is our souls can learn to be unhurried in hard situations, in difficult relationships, like relationship with a beloved prodigal. We can learn that the Lord is our shepherd and can shepherd us through hard places and in difficult relationships. And so when we talk about unhurried, we're talking about learning from Jesus how to live his restful and unhurried way in the midst of our actual life as we find it right now with all of its challenges, with all of its pains, with all of its losses. That to me is a realistic vision of what unhurried could be. It's maybe another way of just saying what Jesus said when he said, are you burdened? Is your life heavy? Come to me. Come to me and you will find rest for your soul. That's the spirit of what we mean to say by unhurried. So Gem, were you just dragged along into this or did you come willingly?

8:56 I was not. She's better at unhurried than I am, I'll tell you that much. I don't know about that. Well, that's, I don't know if it, is it a coincidence? I was going to, I thought I would ask it the way I did then. Yeah, no, actually this was, fortunately for us, it was an invitation that was extended to both of us at the exact same time. We mark, I know we mark a point, we call about 1990, is the year where we met these people and they introduced us to this way of thinking, this sort of, well, we were introduced to solitude and silence actually. That was a big part of it. And we were both at the same workshop with the same invitations and we both just grabbed on at the same time. So even though Alan wrote the book, this is really a journey we've both been on together and in our own personal lives. Yeah, it may be my book, but it's our story.

9:52 Yeah, that's, oh, that's a good way to say it. It's our lives. It's our lives. Yeah. So how, yeah. So how would you say to listeners, how do you begin to do this? What are the first steps? How do you cultivate a different perspective on life that lets it not feel so out of control? Yeah, I think one thing that people can check in with themselves is sort of the classic question is, do you want this? Do you want to change? Do you want, even though everything might be spinning around out here, do you welcome a change inside?

10:33 So if the answer to that is yes, then you can begin to make progress on some relatively easy steps. If you're open, you could just start then noticing when you are triggered or when something is going on, sort of taking one step back as soon as you catch yourself. Cause we both understand that life is hard and when something's going on that's traumatic or triggering, we're not in, we're not in our best frame of mind. So of course there's the initial reactions and responses and angers or whatever there is, but at some point in that process, you can catch yourself and go, okay, this is going on and yet I have a good shepherd and yet I have been told that there is this light and easy yoke, right? I have been told that there is rest for the weary. So at some point in there, if you could grab yourself and bring in those beautiful invitations and then sink into it, even for 30 seconds, even for 30 seconds, we'll make a difference. Well, it's better than doing it zero seconds. That's true. So you're sure if you have a five minutes or if you have an hour, but I'm trying to say if you can just notice, catch yourself, breathe a prayer that comes from scripture and let yourself believe it. It's a good first step. A very good first step.

12:09 How many first steps before you began to recognize, I know this is, you can't really say, but you began to realize this makes a difference in my life and then I could maybe even do something to make it more so. Yeah. So as I was listening to Gem, one of the things that I had to come to grips with was I had a way of thinking of my inner hurry as a virtue. Like I am the guy who gets stuff done and I am the guy who rises the high standards and I am the guy who will not disappoint anybody and I am going to acquire every possible distinction that's available to me. And I had to decide whether that was working for me so well or not. And often it was a hard to decide.

12:57 I decided that it got me to some places of accomplishment, but it wasn't working great for my soul. The kind of driven, anxious, frustrated, irritated sort of inner life wasn't looking much like Jesus. And in the end, I might've been getting a lot of things done, but I wasn't bearing great fruit. And actually that was the hope of, that was my great hope. I wanted to live a life that bore the kind of fruit that Jesus would invite me to. That felt like what I'd been invited to. And so I began, part of my, so what I'm saying this is I had to get a vision for an unhurried life as the best possible version of my life. And that hurry, instead of being an asset or a virtue, was tending to get in my way of the thing that I said that I most deeply wanted and discovered I actually did most deeply want. So first let's stop for just a second and talk about the soul.

14:01 You've talked several times about the best, what's best for your soul. How are you defining that? How are you defining that? Soul is a hard thing for people to get a grasp of understanding. And so they might be able to apply it better if they have a little better understanding of what you're talking about when you say the soul. You know, there are probably any number of definitions that I could pull out of the catalog, but I'd rather just sort of talk about it. And so when I say soul, I'm kind of talking about the essential me, the whole of me on the inside of me, the me that has been made in the image of God, the me that has been redeemed by Jesus, the me that is being restored into God's original vision of who he saw I would be and the gifts I would bring to the world. So you could say the real me, the essential me, the inner person.

15:01 When Paul prays, I pray that the spirit might strengthen you in the inner person so that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith. That would be sort of the essence of what I mean by the language of soul. That's great. Anything else to add to that, Gem? I think that's probably what I would have said too. I love the word essence. That's good. I love the word essence. I love the idea of the root, the true, the real. I think Dallas Willard, maybe it's not him, but someone was talking about the soul being this sort of alive connector. It's connecting all the parts of us. It's sort of like a maybe like a membrane or a sinew or something, right?

15:46 It's the, when you were talking about the inner person, it's that part. I don't think I have anything to add to what he said is what I'm saying. Okay. So say the parent of a young adult who's out of control and they don't even know where they are except that they're probably doing drugs, hanging out with wrong people, perhaps doing some crime kinds of things. Those would be fairly normal in the parents that I'm connecting with. So what would you say to them? How do I actually do this? You told me a very first step, take that breath, let your spirit loose and your soul get ministered to, but they're used to first steps and many, many more steps and things that don't work over time or they are used to a child or a person in their life that begins to go in a right direction and then relapses or turns back. And so these kinds of things are really hard for them to look beyond the fact that nothing's under control, nothing's going in a good direction.

17:06 So what can they do to help themselves? They can't always help their loved one because they're not ready to be helped, but they can do some things to help themselves. And that's what I'd really like to be able to give them is some really specific things for this journey that they're on. It's not a quick thing very often, very rarely is it quick. So what are your thoughts? Well, so I haven't been on that journey particularly myself, but I have just been through a year that was maybe one of the hardest years of my adult life and I turned 60 this year. So I've had a few years to have bad experiences or hard experiences or challenging moments or seasons or eras.

17:51 And I think what I would say is in the midst of the stressors of this last year, what I have needed is to acknowledge I'm not in control, even though I keep trying to be. It's been good for me to remind myself and I've had to do this often daily and sometimes more than daily. I have a shepherd and I think by extension the one I love, my beloved prodigal has a shepherd. Now that prodigal is resisting the shepherd, wandering from the shepherd, but that doesn't change the nature of the shepherd. The shepherd is still so good at what he does and I may not be able to see how in the world Jesus is being the good shepherd he says he is in the life of my beloved prodigal, but it's a good thing for me to keep remembering that what I don't have control of, Jesus fully understands and is very present to. And in mysterious ways is at work. That helps me find hope in my own challenging moments. It helps me remember what I do and don't have control of. I can pray for the one I love who's wayward.

19:03 Absolutely. I can do that and that matters and it makes a difference and it reminds me of the one who cares. That has been at least one thing that's been really critical. It's a way of framing my vision of reality that right alongside the reality, in this case of a beloved prodigal, I also have the undergirding reality of a good shepherd and practicing that reality helps me then navigate the pain, the fear, the loss, the frustration, all of the feelings that I feel in a chronic, long-term, difficult situation. That's at least one thought that comes to my mind.

19:44 Gem, anything else you'd like to add to that? Yeah, so in our book, What is Your Soul of, there's a practice there. It's actually in the fear chapter. It's called the practice of unpacking and it really takes that idea of cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. And one of the phrases, this is a total cliche, but it helps me, especially in relationship to other people, is that I'm a good shepherd. I can care for someone without carrying them. Right? Well, yes. And that is a tremendous issue with lovers of prodigals.

20:26 Of course. Is they're trying to carry them? Yes. And so carrying is its own thing. It's loving. Carrying is a weight on you that can become unbearable. And I imagine in this situation, it is unbearable. So what does it look like to still care, but not carry someone on you like a bag or a weight? And so in the practice of unpacking, I just share, if you can get your imagination rolling, that you've got a backpack on your shoulders and it's quite heavy, but you imagine yourself taking it off, put it on a table or on the floor in front of you, and then you look inside and you see what's there.

21:11 And what do you discover? And what do you see? So for the people listening here, I'm imagining you're seeing your prodigal. And you can do this with any number of people or issues, but if you're seeing your prodigal in there, what would it look like if you just imagine yourself reaching into the backpack, taking them out, and then Jesus said, cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. Paul said that about what would it look like for you to take your prodigal out and hand them to Jesus? So this is carrying, but it's not carrying. And it shows a great deal of trust.

21:53 Absolutely. So because I think trust is involved here. Yes. When we're carrying, I don't know that we're fully embodying the idea of real trust in what God can and hopefully will do. We think we have to do it. We have to rescue them, make them make the right choices. I know by experience. So that's a great concept. And I think alongside that, to realize that, and you've really already said this, this is a journey. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just put your backpack on the table, pull out the prodigal, hand them to Jesus? Now we're all set. Good. Did that.

22:33 Everything changed. What's the next thing I'm supposed to do instead of, okay, I think I just put them back in my backpack about 10 minutes later. So I'm going to do that again. And I'm just going to learn to make that a way of life for myself, that I will keep releasing my carrying into the care of Jesus. And I will learn little by little, maybe not to keep carrying. Maybe I can learn over time how to do that. And I think you can. Oh, I think you can too. But I think that's just wonderful practice. And that's what it's going to take is things that you practice and do over and over to be able. So you talked about that concept of dealing with fear. For example, you said that in your fear chapter, what's another one of the topics in your soul book that would be helpful?

23:28 Yeah. Well, I think this is a word you already said earlier, which is control. We have a chapter on control. And in there, actually, I share a story of where I got a little too medley with a couple of friends. And I think that's the chapter I shared that in anyway. I just learned the hard way. And we all know this. And what I'm going to say, you're going to go, of course, I cannot control other people. We all know that, but we keep trying. And at some point in the process, it's all a process, as you said, of practicing. But at some point, it's got to soak in a little bit deeper to where we actually believe that. And when you can really believe that I cannot control the other person and you can take your hands off just for a bit.

24:18 But that's so scary. What are they going to do? Yeah. So there's something here about, I think as well, kind of the inherent dignity of a human being. Absolutely. That they get to choose what they think, what they do, how they behave. And we may absolutely disagree. But there is a reality of they get to choose. And this one's the hardest because being out of control, I think no one likes that. So you're talking to your 14-year-old, which is when ours really got out of control. How do you help them at that age when you have responsibility for them still to not control, but help them learn to make better choices and learn to better choices for life in general, but for themselves and see what they're looking at. What do they want for their future? I know they don't at 14 think very much about that. Right. Probably not. Yeah. Well, this is muddier than kind of what I was sharing about because I was thinking more of like, you know, other adults.

25:35 So if you've got a child, this is a different story. Under age, there is a responsibility here, of course, to help guide. But I'm wondering if we can bring in the idea of questions again. I think you could. That's good. And so I don't know how bad off this 14-year-old is, how rebellious they are, how much they listen or not. But what would it look like if you asked questions instead of giving directives so that they might be able to stumble upon the very thing you're hoping for, but maybe they can stumble on it themselves because they're thinking. I love that. What kind of questions? Oh, goodness. Help me out, Ellen. Well, so I still think the questions that we offer in this book are good for any age. And you get a different kind of answer probably from a 14-year-old, but you could ask, what is it you're looking for here? What do you want? That's excellent.

26:33 You know, and if they say, you know, they want something and their first answer is probably not the real want. And probably their fifth answer isn't even the real one. But if you keep, well, tell me more about that. What else do you want? And if you can get down a few layers, you might start hearing what's actually happening in their heart. And then you'd have something to work with. You would know how to pray. You would know how to care. But all of that, this is where Unhurried comes in too, because you have to be patient enough to ask a question, wait for the answer, listen, and ask more questions. This is long and it takes time. But it's beautiful because the tendency in your frustration and fear when you're working with a prodigal is you come in with accusations or you come in with demands. Fix it. So it's either you're this bad in some way, or you have to be this. And you're talking about a way to engage them in conversation with a gentleness as opposed to a toughness and a fierceness in their attitudes. And yet, help them begin to think as opposed to you're telling them how to think. I love it.

27:55 Yeah. And I think the challenge that we have to lean into is nobody likes to be controlled. Right. And we don't have to think very far to think, I don't like being controlled. I don't like being controlled. I don't like when other people use their words in a way to try and manipulate me in the direction they want me to go. I don't like it when someone else tried to force my hand. The challenge, of course, is in the end, the control doesn't bear really good fruit because what you're dealing with is a young person here with a will who's going to make choices. If you force them into choices, don't take them...

28:35 Now that starts at around two. Yeah, it starts a lot earlier than 14. And so always... Go ahead. If you force them to make choices. Yeah. They may do it because they have to, but eventually they won't. What you're trying to do is shape their will in the direction of good. You can't force that. You can't manipulate that because goodness doesn't come out of those sorts of initiatives. But like Gem said, asking questions loving questions, being genuinely curious, wanting to know what's happening inside of your son or your daughter, that's a loving response.

29:19 One that can make a huge difference because you do help them to think. And if you don't assume that their first or second or third answer is still the reality, but you don't tell them you're wrong, you just say, well, just like you said, tell me more. Let's go a little further with that. Or Josh McDowell loved to set up situations and ask his kids, what would you do in this? Or what would you think about this? And that helped them to think about it. And so asking questions is a great way to do this. What are any more things you would say in depth or briefly that would be really helpful?

30:07 I just want to help these prodigal lovers have a clue how they can find a little more peace for themselves while finding, helping their loved ones find peace. And again, some of them are young and you have some authority in their life. Control doesn't usually work very well though. But some of them are adults. So a funny story, yesterday, my assistant for 21 years, his daughter is young and trying to be a photographer. So I needed some more headshots for my podcast promos and stuff.

30:48 And so I asked her to take them. Well, her mom came with her because we're all very close. And so everything that Crystal wanted to do, her mom had a thought on it and how to do it. And don't you think you want to do this? And I said, it's really nice your mom comes as your assistant. But that's the way we do it. We aren't as outward in our control a lot of times. Manipulative, yes, as you said. But we still are trying to, but yet that doesn't work. I've learned not to do that with my adult children. I had to learn not to do it with my sons-in-law. It's like, no, Judy, you really don't get to say anything. You just tell them how wonderful they are and you love them.

31:35 So any other thoughts on how you would deal with people that are older, that are adults that are on their own, and yet you still would like to help them be encouraged toward a better choice, better choices in their life. So I have a couple of things here that I wanted to share. One was, I wanted to share just a small handful of other questions to circle back a little bit. Please do. Other questions you can ask. So the one question we threw out was, what do you want here? What are you looking for? You can also ask them, what are you afraid of? And what are you hiding from? Or what are you clinging to? I mean, these are the questions from the book. They're very potent, but again, you'll get a surface question. But here's the question that you ask after you've asked the question that gets you deeper in. And it's the acronym AWE, AW. You can ask this as many times as you need, and it's just, and what else? And what else? What are you afraid of? And you listen. Well, and what else? And let them talk and let them unpack. So I just wanted to go back to that idea of asking questions again and offer a few more. The other thing about the prodigal lovers is, I think some of the deep work is actually working with your own fears.

33:13 And you've probably talked with them about this already, but maybe I'm just underscoring it. Please do. I think it's very important for us to be as self-aware as we possibly can be. And so, and control and fear are usually at the base of most of the things that are happening up here on the surface, anything we're saying or doing. If it's not helpful to us or to other people, if you track it down, down here you'll find some issue of probably fear. I'm afraid of this. So if we can become aware of those things and bring them to prayer, take them to a counselor, a trusted friend, a pastor, and work through your own fears. Some of the control can then be released, because I think control happens because we want to manage this fear that we have, and we think we're going to do it by managing the person.

34:12 Really true. So does that make sense? Oh, absolutely makes sense. It does. I love it. And it seems to me also that this, well, it's not coming out right. So go ahead. I'll let you talk. Well, so the other thought maybe just to piggyback on what Gem has said is, and this is sort of maybe essential, and that is we often operate on the assumption that someone else must change for my life to get better. Whether it's my spouse needs to change, my child needs to change, my coworker needs to change, only then will my life get better.

34:53 That's a very precarious place to live, because suddenly now they have complete control of your well-being. That's really true. That's really true. And what I love about the genius of Jesus and the genius of the Scriptures is all of it is designed to help us find well-being and rest and security not out there somewhere in a solved problem or a repentant prodigal. But the well-being is something I find in relationship with God with me. And that well-being, that restfulness can be mine regardless of my surroundings, my circumstances, or the painful relationships in my life. That is just a sort of a, it's a vision that I think Jesus is inviting us to, that the kingdom of God is something that's at work within you, that peaceable, good, joyful place is a place of relationship with God. That's not just nice religious language. That's actually the life to which Jesus has invited us.

36:03 Now from that place of robust life, I can navigate a painful relationship with a beloved prodigal. I have resources in me to navigate their poor choices, painful choices, destructive choices. But if I think my well-being is completely hooked into their finally changing, I'm in for a long, bumpy, painful ride. Wow. I just think that sums up what we all need to hear. That when we think we can control or that if something happens and we'll be okay, we won't ever get there. We won't get there. And yet it's in that relationship with God. It's in the work he's doing in our souls, the taking the burdens and giving us instead the peace and the joy and the patience, all the things that the fruit of the spirit offer us, then those things will make the difference. And one of the main things I say to our prodigal lovers is, you know, this is as much about you as about your prodigal, which is exactly what you've been saying. And so I say, look at what God's teaching you, because he's working on your prodigal. Don't worry. He is working, but he's also, every bit of this is for you and we'll do something for you. And you have just given us some really practical things

37:36 to let our soul be free in a sense, to be cared for, to rest in Jesus and not in thinking we have to control. And that will improve our lives dramatically as we do that. And as we especially, well, the questions apply, we ask them for ourselves as well as we ask our loved ones. These are wonderful truths. And if you want to know more about those truths and the questions, especially, tell us again, the name of your book on soul. It's called, what does your soul love? And you can get it anywhere, anywhere. And we will mention that in the show notes. So it'll be there for people. And, but you have unhurried life, life and unhurried leader as well. And any of us need unhurried life.

38:31 Probably most leaders need unhurried leader. Well, I'll just say briefly about that. Really unhurried leader is not for the person who's in charge of something as much as it is, how do I navigate my relationships? How do I navigate my life out there as I'm trying to live on hurried in here? So that's the question. And I think many ways that book intersects with the conversation we've had because it gets to how it gets. Absolutely. It does. Yeah. Oh, that's great. So you're offering us these words of wisdom. And again, the questions are really, I think, so key to get us and our loved ones in a better place. But then you've got books to back it up and to give us a lot more to work with. And you do some seminars, is that right?

39:22 Yeah. So we do all the things we have. We have a website, unhurriedliving.com. And if you go there, you can actually find the links to all the books if that helps. And then we have a podcast as well. It's called Unhurried Living Podcast. So anywhere you just type in the words unhurried living, you'll find us on Facebook and Instagram and podcasting. And we do group coaching, we do individual coaching, speaking, all the things. And does this fill up your life and make it feel hurried, all these things you're doing? We are continually learning how to be busy and unhurried. Yeah. Which is possible. And we're finding that's really a nice thing to learn how to do.

40:07 Oh, thank you so much. I'm so grateful that you would come and love on these people who need a lot of loving help. So God bless you. Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. And for more helpful information, resources and books, check out judydouglass.com. That's Douglass with two S's.

40:52 You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.