MADE FOR THIS WITH JENNIE ALLENHOSTED BYMADE FOR THIS WITH JENNIE ALLEN
Jennie Allen is the 2x New York Times bestselling author of 'Find Your People' and 'Get Out Of Your Head'. She is also the founder and visionary of IF:Gathering. She is a passionate leader following God's call on her life to catalyze a generation to live what they believe. Jennie has a Masters in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Zac, and their four children.
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SHORT. FUN. TRUTH. REAL CONVERSATION ABOUT THE STRUGGLES WE ARE FACING AND THE GOD THAT SETS US FREE.
Two episodes release each week - one episode of Jennie teaching and one interview.
This is Ginny Allen, and you are listening to the Made for This podcast. Welcome back to Made for This Podcast. My name is Ginny Allen and I am here with my beautiful daughter. What's up, guys? It is Kate Allen Summers. Have you told everybody what you do? What I do? I take pictures of people. It's a beautiful vision. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I do a lot of different I do a lot of weddings and lifestyle stuff, like family, couple, all that. But what I love to do more than anything is just step into people's really ordinary and capture it for the sake of remembrance. But, also, it I just feel like capturing it in a beautiful way, it bestows, like, a significance and an honor on people's just normal and the the rhythms that they're doing every day. And It's pretty incredible, the pictures you take of people in their kitchen together. And Yeah. So that's that's really sweet, and I love to do that. So Crazy gifted daughter Kate Summers. Thanks for gossiping me up, mom. Yeah. Anyway we're talking about sharing. Man, that was what a shameless plug, y'all. I didn't even pay for that ad. I know. I just was advertising for my daughter. If you need a wedding photographer. Kate Summers photos. Especially if you get married in a beautiful place, she will she will fly there. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Let's talk about this. So this week we're talking about sharing our feelings. And for some people, it's like, finally, like, this is the best part. And for some of you, you're like, this is the worst part. I cannot imagine. And so what we want this to be today is super practical and helpful to where we really address some of the reasons this is hard and how to do it well. And, Kate, you are the best I've ever seen at this. How many people did you have in your wedding? This is embarrassing. You should be embarrassed. So bad. How many people were in your wedding? If you just bridesmaids alone. So we had 19 bridesmaids. Never. I was leaving them at all to do the work of their people. And then I don't regret it. I got I got
This is Jenny Allen, and you are listening to the made for this podcast. Well, many of you have been blessed by this man's work. I read it many years ago and It was just revolutionary at the time. Pete Scazaro is with us today and wrote the book, emotionally, healthy spirituality, and then has followed it with many books about emotional health, emotionally, healthy leadership, lots of others. And so what I wanna talk to him about today is just what it looks like to grow in this area of our emotional health and how it affects everything. It affects every part of our life. So, Pete, thanks so much for being here. I love your work. Such an honor to have you. Thanks, Jen. Great to be here. Let's talk about when you realized that this was needed, when you wrote emotionally healthy spirituality, talk a little bit about when you came to this in your own life. Yeah. So, you know, I was, you know, I've been a pastor now for almost, wow, 35, 40 years, but, I had you know, been on staff with, power church organization for, 3 years and then with seminary, then planted a church here in New York City. And it was about year 6 or 7 into this church plant that it became very obvious that I was, I was really stuck I was miserable. I was exhausted. My wife was very unhappy. We had 4 young daughters at the time, and our church had we were growing planting other churches, but we were very it was very chaotic, and it was a crash. And very simply put ended up, in a therapist office because our marriage was in big trouble, and that's when I realized, oh, I don't do feelings. I I don't have any theology for emotions. And it opened up a whole world to me, and actually god met Jerry and I in such an extraordinary way. We're talking 29 years ago in
And she'll continue to do that and to heal. And she's had to learn, like, okay. A lot of my life might stay hard for a long time, and I can live with that. I can still find joy in the midst of difficulty. But the way she's done that is to to really grieve the difficult things in her life. Well, I had kind of a fun little surprise a couple weeks ago because I opened my front door and there was a box sitting there waiting for me from Factor. If you've heard of Factor, you'll know, like, it's different than any of the other meal delivery options because they are delicious and they're ready to eat. So they've never been frozen, and they're fresh, and they're healthy, and they're ready in 2 minutes. So you get to choose from a weekly menu of 35 options that have calorie smart or keto, protein plus, like, anything you can imagine, and 60 different add ons every week. So I had all of these different juice tiny little juice bottles that had, like, immune support or ginger and cayenne, like snacks, beverages, like all kinds of things. Because throughout the day, when James and I are working at home, a healthy gourmet meal is like one of the last things on our mind. With Factor, you can get chef prepared meals on the table in 2 minutes with Factor's ready to eat meal. So you can get back to what you love this spring. Factor has gourmet meals that feature things like shrimp or truffle butter, broccolini, asparagus. Like, these aren't just your kind of run of the mill meals. They are no fuss, no mess, and they're delicious. Factor is tailored to your schedule so you can customize your weekly meals with the flexibility to get as much or as little as you need so you can pause or reschedule the deliveries based on what you have going on. Head to factor meals.com/madeforthis50 and use code made for this 50 to get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next box. That's code made for this 50 at factor meals.com/madeforthis50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20
Comes from because we live in a world that is all about triggers and trauma and you hurt me and I can't be around you because you know, it's very attitude of victim mentality. And I hope and don't believe that anything we've talked about here is in that context. But it should be addressed all the same, so I will address it. And I will say that we look back to heal. We do not look back to hate. We do not look back to build resentment. We do not look back to dwell on the negative things of our life and let it define us. We look back to heal. And if that is why you are looking back at your 6 year old self that felt completely isolated as your parents fought in the other room again and again and again, and you didn't know why, and you felt like it was your fault. If you look back at that 6 year old for that part of you to heal, there is so much freedom waiting for you in that. Why? Because God wants to take all of our life and bring restoration and healing. That is his heart. That is his goal. He is the great healer. He is the great counselor. So it is not just the immediate. It's not your day to day. It's the pain and the grief from the abortion you had when you were 13 by yourself, and still nobody knows about. God wants to go to that and heal that. And how I know that is look at the woman in the well. Look at the moment that he was with her. He wasn't enough to say I'm the Messiah. He didn't begin there. He wanted to heal her from her past. He wanted her to name her reality so that he could heal her past. And he didn't just say you're living with someone unmarried. He could have started with her immediate circumstance. No. He goes all the way back to 5 husbands ago and says, you've been married 5 times. He goes back to her
But I do think that we are near it last week. Somewhere deep in this Italian. I've never done the DNA on us, but we are very Italian. And we share What a wild goose hunt. All of that easily. But sadness sadness is like it feels like you just don't want that guy. Like, when you think about the the little guy on Trolls that's, like, the the cloud that's raining all the time, everybody like, he always walks up and everybody's like, go away. Like, nobody wants you here. Because it's like nobody wants that. But at the same time, I've learned the beauty of it. I've learned the intimacy of it Yeah. Walking through sadness. What would you say about it? Well, I think exactly what you're saying about how a lot of times sadness can transition into anger because, like what you're saying, there's such a lack of control with sadness, and anger is how we try to grasp for control Mhmm. When we don't wanna just sit and be sad because it's not fun. And and we don't like that feeling of, like, I don't know how long this is gonna last, and I don't know Yeah. If it's gonna change. And so I just think that again, it just it makes sense. And then fear, when was the last time you felt remember feeling worried or afraid? I mean, this one is really consuming our culture, and I am not suggesting that it should consume us. So when an emotion becomes something that is controlling your life, now no longer is God controlling your life. So it is not that you don't feel the fear. It's that you take the fear to God. And I love the conversation I had with Sydney McLaughlin earlier this season, who is an Olympic runner. You heard when she was talking that she felt fear, you know, in moments when she was 16 and she's showing up at the Olympic trials as the youngest runner ever to be in, you know, a trying out for the Olympics and making it. She was intimidated and terrified. But she said, I just invited God into that. And I think that's the the story we're trying to tell. It's not that we eradicate fear from our lives. It's that we invite God into it, and we really trust
