Making Peace & Beyond Podcast

Jamie: Have you ever wondered how to make sense out of your messy life? Or how to live in peace in the middle of a stressful world? My name is Jamie Norton, and I want to welcome you to the Making Peace and Beyond podcast, where we talk about life struggles and how to live in the peace, joy and freedom that Christ died to give us. Today, I'm here with my dearly beloved friend Brock Lunchbox as a licensed counselor and is a health services director at Hillsdale College in Michigan. And Brock, I'm glad to have you here.

Brock: So glad to be here. I we've just started using some of your material as a college. And the other day we were we were talking about the material and watching one of the videos with you and one of the girls was like, Wow, it's so cool that you know her and I count. It's such a privilege to know you over the last, I don't know, 20 or so years. And so great to be here.

Jamie: Yeah, I think our friendship has come of age. This kind of and I am so grateful for it. And today what we were going to talk about is something we often talk about is the, quote, mental health system, which often is the mental illness system. And so just the different things that we have seen over the years, I've been in this business for 44 years or of my own recovery, but also close to 50 years in the mental health system.

And, you know, I've always been grateful that my introduction to the mental health system was on the campus of one of the old psychiatric asylums that were built in the 1800s, late 1800s, when I was living and working in was built in 1875. And and it was right in the beginning of the days of deinstitutionalization. But what it allowed me to see was there are two things.

One is what happens at the end of the way we have dealt with mental health and mental illness in what we used to call the Thorazine shuffle, where people were walking around like robots. And the other thing it allowed me to see was the nature of some of the people that were making these diagnoses and feeding these medications.

And I ended up married to a psychiatrist who happened to be a drug addict. And we had housing on the campus of the hospital, which was built in after World War Two. And what happened was to be a person who lived on those campuses, you had to either be a Ph.D. or an M.D. or a department head. And we were literally making marijuana brownies for staff picnics.

This was in the early seventies. And and the psychiatrist I was married to had sheets of LSD in his medical books and would treat people the next day. And so I got this kind of idea about what we were doing that was a little unusual. We had almost rattle our keys to see who was the difference between a patient and a staff person in that day.

And since then, I've worked in community mental health, and one of the few people I know that has pretty much worked in every setting of mental health has worked in community mental health. When it first got going, I worked at the regional level, worked at the state level, worked as a consultant at the federal level, and then left public service and went into a private hospital.

And then I opened my own intensive outpatient and then opened a private practice and worked as an employee assistance person for the airlines as a consultant and and then started gravitating toward the thing that gave me peace was which was Christ and the church and started working with church congregations. And in all of that, about 40 years ago, I started doing the Making Peace and Beyond workshops and found healing that people were having that was beyond what I had hoped for.

And so a lot of concepts that came out of that. So give us a little bit about your history in the whole idea of mental health and working in it.

Brock: Yeah, so I'm a little younger than you and.

Jamie: Most people are!

Brock: I graduated with my masters degree in around 2006. And so I, I but I consider myself very fortunate, like you said, that I've been able to work in a lot of different aspects of mental health, which I think working on a college campus is helpful because you never know what's going to walk in the front door. And on a college campus, you're kind of, you know, the staff, you're you're kind of their parents.

They're looking to you to take care of them. So very varied interests and experience. I started off doing community mental health, doing in-home therapy on the east side of Cleveland. And so I was going into the projects and meeting with kids who were on probation and at the same time was working with sex offenders. So that was a county probation contract, so doing sex offender assessments and then doing treatment with them afterward.

Usually in group therapy, worked at a private practice on the west side of Cleveland for a while. That was primarily substance abuse and doing groups intensive outpatient groups, both with adolescents and with adults and then around I don't know, after I'd been in the field for maybe about five years, I switched over to a hospital based system where I was doing working in their outpatient clinic.

And then I moved inpatient. And then I always joked that I had a series, a fortunate series of people above me just quit. And so it's like everyone else stepped back and I found myself as the clinical director for four and one of the biggest psychosis battles in Ohio. So I, I was about four years, graduated from grad school, but had about 5050 employees.

And then so that was for profit mental health, which that's another that's a weird, you know, phrase when we talk about health care and being for profit and then that was my last stop before coming here to Hillsdale, where I oversee the medical services and and also the counseling services and, you know, and we one thing that's different about this setting is that we don't charge for our services.

You know, we so we see people and for all kinds of levels of acuity and sometimes just people who want to bounce something off of someone, you know, imagine working in a mental health setting where you can see people before they're in crisis. I would boy, what a thought. Right. You know, whereas most insurance companies don't pay for that because it's not a diagnosable disorder.

And so when when you talk about having a system that is based on pathology, that that is certainly true. And one thing that people don't understand with with actually modern health care, this is this is more of the Affordable Care Act that that Medicare reimbursements based on the Affordable Care Act, the level of reimbursement is based on patient surveys.

So it's based on how satisfied are people with the care that they receive, which in theory sounds really good, except that what people find in the medical sphere, but also in the counseling sphere, is that clinicians are put in a position where they don't actually give the advice that a client that they think a client needs, they, they, they give they give, you know, client information or recommendations based on what will make the client happy.

So what we're doing is we're avoiding a lot of topics that should be addressed. We're not dealing with things like, oh, you have diabetes, so maybe you should lose weight because you weigh £300. Instead, we're just giving people medication or when someone goes in for surgery. I broke my nose a couple of years ago at a monastery, which is a whole nother story, but broke my nose and I had to argue with the anesthesiologist to not receive a narcotic because as an addict, I didn't want a narcotic.

And but I think that whole conversation with him was based on the fact that he wanted to make sure that I had zero pain and and that, you know, so having having a health care system that is based on people's satisfaction like that is is pretty pretty dangerous. And and it creates an unhealthy system from the very beginning.

Jamie: And I want to just piggyback on that, too, because what happens is when we go to a doctor, we expect medicine, right? And and and that's the same thing that is true when people come into counseling or come into mental health with what's up, then to immediately make the pain go away. It's very American says we want immediate solutions, you know, So when people come into my office, what they're looking for is, number one, if they're a couple, they're looking for a judgment who's right and who's wrong, which is I tell them, if you want if you want justification, you're in the wrong system.

I'm about restoration, you know, But, you know, they want medication they want to adhere to. Here's how to do it. Here's a recipe for you to get what you want right now. And all right, our mental health doesn't work that way. And so what we end up doing is short term crisis management. We're managing to manage it without addressing core issues.

And, you know, the whole idea of of really looking at what's wrong with you, I think that's one of the huge things. The other thing is that in an insurance based system, very often our, you know, then we have to give a diagnosis, we have to give a label. And, you know, that's one of my pet peeves is we are sort of saying to people, this is who you are.

We're going to give you a new identity and you're going to always be depressed, You're going to always have post-trauma, you're going to always have anxiety. And so you're going to have to manage that rather than what we know now. That's the old system. What we know now is when neuroplasticity and, you know, people can heal, they don't have to always be anything, you know, that we can rewire our brain, that we can do things and and what we find, because in a Christian setting, you know, what we're finding is that what we know now about the brain and the way the brain works is that is is verifying is is is validating scripture.

You will be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You will be a new creation in Christ. And that takes a whole different venue of someone coming into an office for individual prescriptions. I mean, and an interesting that both of us are in recovery and both of us have learned what healing requires. You know, healing requires a community.

You cannot heal in isolation. We need people that can help us to see ourselves differently. We need people that can where we can tell our story and feel the hours of acceptance and see the eyes and acceptance to know that we can reconnect in a different way, that we can be who we are and still have relationships, that people are going to run away with their hands up in the air, you know, saying, Oh my goodness, this is terrible.

I can't be with you. Some will because, you know, some do. But there is healing available and that we're not chairs. You know, I did my my master's work on social labeling, self-concept and deviancy. And over and over again, what we find is that people are looking for an identity in who they are and where we put our identity in something that someone else says, then we're giving them tremendous power.

And I surprise in some kid me about my tik-tok stuff in my Instagram stuff. But but what are the things I found about Tik-tok stuff was one of them went viral and about half the people were like, because what I said was the things that happened to you in your past don't have to hurt you in your present because they really only exist in your mind.

Some people were like, Yeah, yeah, you heal, you move beyond it. But other people got mad. They got really mad because the hope of healing was not in their framework, right? You know, trauma is in your body. I'm depressed, am anxious. I can't get over this and gets out of that helpless victim mentality that was created when we put people in boxes. I don't know. What do you think?

Brock: Yeah. Well, I agree. And I think with with pain and things that are challenging, we we tend to go one of two directions. And I think this is as true in the church as it is outside the church, that we either tend to overly identify it and then we absorb that, that, that pain, that trauma, whatever disorder or challenges I might have and I absorb that into my identity.

And, you know, we say things like, Well, I can't do that because, you know, I just did that because I'm ADHD or, you know, I can't do this because I'm depressed. And I remember in group therapy once, maybe the the worst thing I ever said to someone in a therapeutic setting where.

Jamie: I can't imagine what it was...

Brock: I had this woman and she would consistently come to it was an eye or group. So we had three hour groups three times a week, and she would come about once every week, you know, and miss two groups. And finally she came back and she said, I'm so sorry. I, I, I couldn't come to group on Monday and Tuesday.

So I had had this woman and I was probably frustrated and I believe as a therapist in being honest in my responses. So I looked at her and I said, Do you mean your legs wouldn't work? And she looked at me and she said, No, I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. And I said, No, no, that's what I mean.

Like your legs wouldn't work. Like you actually were physically unable to get out of bed and everyone in the group was about ready to like, jump me, you know? And I said, Look, I'm I'm saying what I'm saying to prove a point. I understand being so depressed that you feel like you can't get out of bed, but if you're giving your feelings that much control over you, that is a dangerous way to live our lives.

You have to be able to do the things that you have control of. And as Marsha Linehan says, the founder of DVT, you take your depressed self with you to therapy. Right? Because, you know, when you stay home, you don't get better. So that's one side. We have people that over identify with it and those kind of things.

But then you have probably more of our tendency in the church to say, well, everything's fine. I've moved past that. Let go and let God forgive and forget, Forgive and forget has to be one of the stupidest sayings I've ever heard in my life. I can't forget things, you know, like and actually, how many times in scripture does God tell us to remember?

Remember the former things. So like, but we, we, we either we, we go to one of those extremes or another, and actually we're called to walk between both of that sense. We're called to remember where we've come from. And just like when we go to a to a doctor, he pushes on our pain to see where it hurts the most so that we can heal and we don't walk around with a limp the rest of our lives.

But we go one of those extremes. And I think at least in my kind of experience with Christianity, we tend towards the latter because we actually think it's dishonoring to God to to have pain or it's dishonoring to God to say my parents and the things they did actually affected me. And and there's hurt that's there. And we want to really gloss over that.

And that isn't we can't have healing from something we don't even acknowledge.

Jamie: I think I want to follow up on that, too. Is it We have all healing happens. In truth, we can't heal outside of true God is the source of healing and God is truth. And until we acknowledge, we can't move beyond. And sometimes I think in the church, what we do is we say, you know, if we hurt, they're just like, are you even saying, you know, Well, you know, one of the things that sometimes somebody will say, I'll say that I'm like, I want to know from what you know, I mean, it's like this never happened now or I haven't done anything wrong since then.

And to realize that we're human and we're always in the process of being transformed to be more like Jesus and we're transformed, being transformed that there is I mean, we have a story and we we were born into a story that was already going on, and we're writing a story with our life. And so we we have to have the whole story.

We have to be a part of something bigger. And we tend to be so all or nothing, either all the victim or I'm all better than then. And we make mistakes so that rather than just sharing a journey that we're all and and and when you heard I can come alongside you and when I heard you can come alongside me.

And that's the beauty of our friendship is that we don't we don't profess to be, Oh, gee, I'm all better now. You know, we we do tend to say, you know, our music, God uses all of those experiences not only to help us to heal, but to reach out to others in who are still living in the pain of all those experiences. And and to help each other.

Brock: Yeah, well, and I think that if a lot of times what does happen in the church is that we're if if we tell our story, we're comfortable telling our past story. You know, I used to do that. I used to do that. But I don't. Actually. You know, now I've attained some kind of level of perfection, you know? And I had a student recently say to me, he said, you know, it's almost like I am doing whatever I can to prove that somehow I don't need to be dependent on God like I'm trying to to look perfect, you know? And I think what is what I what I think is so important about 12 step recovery is sure 12 step recovery is about me being in and a group of honest people who know my life story.

But the main point of me going every week is to sit there and say, How am I doing right now? Because that is more important about my overall recovery than or as important as, you know, triggers and some of those kind of things. Have you talked about living in truth? And it's living in truth in the here and now.

And, you know, I think of all the scandals that have hit, you know, American Christianity over the last many years and Ravi Zacharias and like those kind of things. And I don't I don't judge those men because you know what? I'm one step away from making an awful decision that is that's any of us. And but I think what would have happened if 20 years ago Ravi Zacharias would have went to one of his elders and said, Hey, you know, I got a massage the other day and it was actually quite arousing for me and I don't want to act on that.

So would you keep me accountable and ask me how I'm doing? Think of the witness that would have been saved for this man who was brilliant and spoke, you know, But but we were sort of.

Heroes in ongoing honesty with people and because we don't live in ongoing honesty with ourselves. And and so that is such an important need. And a lot of times people think there's a great book written by a guy named David Benner called The Gift of Being Yourself. And one of the things he says is, you know, finding yourself sounds like it is this new agey kind of, you know, esoteric kind of Buddhist thing, he said.

As a Christian, when you really find yourself and know yourself, you will actually find God because then you'll be aware of your anxiety, your struggles, your fears, and that will lead you to God. And he says, if you don't know yourself, then you can't know God.

Jamie: I know for me, when I when I look at some of the things I did and still do and, you know, things that I've messed up, I try to always end those thoughts with, Thank God I have a savior because that takes me right back to gratitude. And I think humble gratitude is the best way to live. And, you know, so it's just I think you're right in that we tend to push people away because we act as if we're all perfect.

This is one of the things about making peace in the yard. When people come into the weekend, they they see a group of 15, 20 people who are who look very normal and who look like they never had the same struggles. And as and one of the things that I do is I tell my story because God let me do every sin there is so that other people would feel comfortable with theirs.

And so, so and then I always thought that people would get up and run out of the room because I was actually told and sent away and told that if you have to go far away and live a lie, if you want to have a normal life. And so it took me about 20 years to get back from that.

Yeah, but, you know, when I tell my story, I find myself even now, 40 some years later, at the end of the story, I'll panel look out to see the sea. If there's judgment out there. But instead of running out of the room, what I found over and over again is that people tell their story and their story has elements of my story.

And so people begin to know, I'm not alone in this. This is a human struggle where, I mean, we had there are other people that have been through some of the things that I've been through, and I don't have to live alone. I don't have to hide because shame makes us hard and and the risk of coming out of hiding is that I have to be vulnerable.

I have to allow myself to be seen and to be known. But then I found out I can be seen and known and loved. And sometimes we find out from God first the God knows me and He loves me. But then to see that there are other people who can both know me and love me is like the greatest gift in the world.

And there's such freedom in that that we just don't embrace it in the way that it can be embraced. And and so I feel I love to watch it. People come in on Friday night to this weekend thing and they are like scared, thinking, why did I agree to do this and how can I get out of here?

And I almost feel this little chuckle inside that I know that by Sunday night you're going to be a group of people who love each other and are bonded with each other because you know each other. You're beginning to know each other and you're beginning to feel acceptance that you may never have felt before and to to watch what God can do when we met him, when we enter into truth with grace is just incredible to me.

You know? I mean, and in the middle help system as it exists, we tend to lock in the illness because we medicate it and when I am sitting on the edge of a hot stove, the last thing I need to do is to medicate my butt. That's right. That's all I'm going to get as a fried. But I'm not going to it's not going to help me, you know?

But when I have people who help me get off that stove, when I have people who can really help me to to deal with that courage it takes to change my position, then that is a freedom and strength. That is just an incredible thing.

Brock: That's going well. And we've we've done some form of making peace here at Hillsdale for the last ten years. And one first of all, it takes us a lot more than nine weeks to get through the world, you know, So often what we'll do is we'll have six people, but we're on a college campus, so they're different ages, you know.

So what we'll do is we'll have we'll do it with six people. Three of them will graduate, and then the three who are left over, they will do it again and then they become like the veterans of the group. So as you were talking, I was not in my head because we we're just in we're just in the process now of everyone sharing their story.

And and we had a couple girls this past week who were introducing themselves to the group, and they had already done it before. And they said, I just want to let you know, it's so great because, you know, we're a Christian college, It's upper, upper middle class 32 ACT, you know, But they said it's just so nice to have a place on campus where you can be known and then it's okay that you've dealt with some of the things you've dealt with.

And and, you know, there's just such power in that. So I echo what you said. One question I have is, you know, and maybe maybe this is not the direction you want to go in, but, you know, someone might listen to this and say, yeah, but I'm dealing with depression and so I have some thoughts. But what would you say to that person is what are the things that they should then start to work on or address to get at the root of their depression?

How? I mean, I know that's a that's a really specific question, but what are what are some of the things that you would say, here's what you should do instead of just instead of just taking Prozac?

Jamie: I think taking Prozac like sodium. And it says and it gets you to that place where you think, I can't do anything about this because you don't have the emotional energy or pain. I mean, we change because the pain of where we are is worse than the fear of where we're going.

Brock: Right.

Jamie: And it's so it's it's it's hard to allow yourself to dive back into the things that happened along the way. But I want to find out where you've been. I want to find out what your story has led up to the Depression. What's the grief that you have? You know, what is the what are the things that what are the things you haven't talked about?

Let's put into words the things that you think and feel. I mean, you mentioned earlier, feelings are not gods. I mean, feelings are tell people sometimes if your God is your feelings, your God is an idiot because you're feeling your feelings. Don't know where they are. They don't know if they're fact or fiction or whether they're past, present or future.

They don't know anything. They're the result of what you're thinking and the things that have happened to you. And so we need to find out what is it? What are those beliefs you have that may be false? You know, what are the things that are are blocking your path? What is your faith? You know, I mean, we need to look at that.

What is your willingness to share with a group? You know, what are you willing to do? You know, I mean, because you're in isolation, you're not going to heal. You've got to have community to heal. You got to talk about it to heal. And it's scary. I mean, what I see a lot is especially these days and I'm going to tell about my little prejudice here, the word trigger.

Brock: A trigger is becoming a trigger...

Jamie: Trigger is becoming a sore word for me, not because people don't have triggers when things that are painful are here. If I've got a cut and somebody hits that cut, it's got a trigger of me. I'm going to have pain. But what I do find is that trigger has become an excuse for a couple of things. It's become and that triggers me means we're not going to talk about this.

And that triggers me also means the next thing I do is going to be inappropriate. You're supposed to understand that I don't have to follow the rules of relationship because I'm triggered here. And so either of those things is an unhealthy response to triggers. If I've got a trigger, I need to stop right where I am and talk about it.

I need to know that no matter, I need to leave this situation if the next thing I'm going to do is going to be disrespectful to somebody, I'm responsible for managing my triggers well.

Brock: But that goes back to that idea of the importance of really knowing myself and giving myself enough space and enough quiet to actually slow down and reflect so that I'm aware of what those things are instead of just blaming someone else I was offering a couple of years ago. I think I've told you this story, but again, people are going to listen to this and they're going to believe it's not true.

But it was a national college counseling conference and a woman was up front talking about all the different challenges that college students face. She actually said that's she said when it comes to college students who are underserved or who are who have challenges, we need to stop telling them to be resilient, because what that means is that they need to change.

And it's the system that needs to change. And I thought, oh my gosh, that is potentially the most dangerous thing I've ever heard come out of someone's mouth because you instantly have all of these 800 therapists in a room who are who are now going to look at that person sitting on the couch and say, you aren't the one who is the locus of control in your life, you are only a result of what everyone around you is doing.

And boy, that is that's, that's that's uprising. Oh, my God, that's so horrible. But to me, I think that what we've lost and I think this goes this is maybe some of the root ideas know one of the things we say around health all the time is ideas have consequences. And in the way that you think about things has consequences.

To me, I think that that is a lack of understanding that actually pain and suffering are some of the biggest teachers in our lives. And it's why we have parents who don't let their children suffer. You know, it's why we we we try to protect everyone when they feel bad. And quite honestly, what you said earlier, the idea that the depression isn't the problem.

Depression actually might be the solution to me. Finding a deeper answer as I start asking questions about it. What does this mean and how do I deal with things? And maybe I need to open up and maybe I need to tell my story and maybe, God, I need to be more reliant on God in my life. And when we just do anything to try to manage symptoms, we get away from that.

And and we think that depression and anxiety is the problem. It's actually maybe just an alarm that there is a problem and we need to figure out how to do something about it. You know, to manage our lives in a way where we're becoming more whole and healthy people. So.

Jamie: You know, the greatest gift that we have and that image God in us is our ability to make choices.

Brock: Amen.

Jamie: You know, I mean, that's our free will, free will. And that's what was available when people with the death camps, you know, that were found to, you know, what is it that helps a person to stay healthy? It is the ability to choose something. So if I get a crust of bread and I maintain the ability to say, I'm going to eat it all now I'm going to get half that, but away I won't save half of it for me later.

That ability to choose keeps me sane, you know, and it keeps me growing. And when somebody treats us as if we're a permanent victim, then we are taking their humanity away from them. We are destroying the very thing that makes them human to say, I am totally helpless as a result of my environment. That is not true.

You know, and I'm not saying that there isn't mental illness. I think one of the another way to say it is mental health things that I think has come along is you have a chemical imbalance where when I eat sugar, I have a chemical imbalance. If I go running, I have a chemical imbalance. You know, we know that neuroplasticity. If the brain can reform it, but I have to do the work. Somebody else cannot do the work in my story to make my story change. And I hear all the time I went to counseling and it didn't help me. Well, what kind of work did you do? It works if you work it, you know it doesn't work. If you don't work it well.

Brock: But that's what's nice about the chemical dependency world and why the mental health world. Be honest. As a therapist, I went from running a chemical dependency intensive outpatient program to running a mental health intensive outpatient program. And I saw a guy go I was hit by a mack truck. And the difference between you sit in a group full of people that are that are 12 step focused and they hear from the minute they step into a 12 step meeting, my recovery is my responsibility.

You also hear things like recovery isn't about sobriety. Recovery is about becoming a healthy person. So that's that's whole person. That's big perspective. You step into the mental health world and all of a sudden they look at the therapist and they say, okay, what are you going to do to fix me? Which again, is very deep. And, you know, I used to work with a therapist who would at those times bring in he actually had a magic wand in his desk and he would bring it out and he would say, I mean, I believe that sarcasm is a very effective counseling technique.

You know, he would wave it over the head and say, well, I did try it and we'll see if it works, you know, But but he made a point of saying, you know, that that would deprive you of the of the benefit and how wonderful it is when I say that I haven't had a drink of alcohol in 12 years.

The reason I'm proud about that is because I have put in the work. I've put in the work.

Jamie: I want to put in a plug for myself. Last week I had 44 years of sobriety, so that's amazing. I know what it is. It's an it itself is a miracle. And thank God for that.

Brock: You've been sober longer than you were than you were drunk.

Jamie: So I. I know. I know. And having come out of an alcoholic family system. Yeah. You know, my normal was so abnormal. And over the years, what I've been able to see is that I don't have to live that way. I have a choice to rewrite a different story, you know, to change the party line. And so that to me, is just like, I love it.

I love the gift. I love watching people heal and get it. But I've never seen me fix somebody or you fix somebody, right?

Brock: Yeah, that's right.

Jamie: You know, I mean, I tell people I don't know how to heal. You have a gray haired old woman that I know, the guy who can, and he says, You have choice. He says you're created in his image, you know? So to me, it's just like, okay, you know, And I'm not see, I don't discount middle illness totally, but I think we have so overrun the thing.

Every person is not mentally ill having feelings and grief. We've taken away the grief process that's become a pathology now. God gave us grief to adapt to change and then a great loss. And we need it. We need to cry. We need to get angry. We need to do those things. We need to learn how to manage those things in a way that helps us to grow beyond.

Brock: Well in what we've done. We've actually it actually cuts both ways because we've pathologize those people who are very, very depressed. But we've also created this line in the sand that if I'm if I have low level depression or something that, well, I'm not really bad. And, you know, then the truth of it is we all like to be human is to suffer, to be human.

I mean, I tell students all the time, do you realize there are some days I don't want to get out of bed? There are some days that I drag myself into work because I'm quite anxious, you know? I mean, I struggle with those kind of things. And, you know, that's again, back to scripture and the truth of Scripture.

That's why it's so amazing to me that the Book of Psalms was allowed to be in the canon of Christendom, because you have this book where people shake their fisted God, they're sad, They're they're, you know, and, you know, and it isn't always cleaned up perfect. You know, a lot of times people will say, well, no, in the book of Psalms, though, it always comes around back to God.

And it's like really read Psalm 88. It ends with and Darkness is my companion. And so, you know, I mean, the truth of it is we serve a God who allows us to be human, who allows us to cry and shake our fist at him and say, where are you? And The reason is because just like we're talking about the importance of honesty between you and me, God also wants that honesty.

He doesn't. He doesn't come to me when you have cleaned yourself up, he says, all who are weary and heavy burdened, come to me. I will give you rest. You don't get rest and then come to me. You come to me so that you can get rest. What a wonderful God we serve.

Jamie: I know.

Brock: ...where you're allowed to be human. I mean, that's just great.

Jamie: So it's. It's so. I don't know. It's. It seems like we go down a lot of wrong roads in the name of restoring mental health. And. And we don't have a lot of wrong roads in terms of being Christians without feelings and emotions like that. You know and so finding that balance. But I love Christian recovery. I love looking at how God can heal.

I love, you know, not going to try to find quick fixes, but looking at our experiences and being with other people and being honest. And I love our friendship. And I remember when we could probably go ahead forever. Never, ever think of this or say, Yeah, do you have anything that you think would be good to throw in at the last moment here?

Brock: Well, a couple of different times I've been kind of thinking about recovery and how we help people and those things. Our chaplain here is a dear friend of mine, Adam Myrick. He he gave a talk campus last year and I'm on holiness. And he said, you know, what's interesting is that holiness sounds a lot like holiness and it's the same root word and and that what it really means to be holy is, is to be whole.

And that means and we talk a lot on our campus about being a whole person. And that means having healthy choices that you're making, having healthy relationships, healthy physical life, you know, exercising, eating well, having healthy thoughts and healthy emotions and coping skills and having a healthy spiritual life, which means how are you connecting with God and what are you living your life for?

The counseling center, we often have people write their own eulogy, you know, thinking, if you die in 60 years, what do you want someone to say about you? And I think that's so much of what we're talking about, which is be a person that's committed to growing in those different areas in your life. And I think if we do that, then we will be able to encounter depression and anxiety and sadness and and everything else when it comes.

And it probably will because we're human. And just because we're experiencing those things doesn't mean God has been anywhere. Sometimes that's exactly when he enters into our story in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Jamie: Now he has a strong tendency to interrupt our plans and our ideas in order to give us himself, you know, at work. Thank you for being with me all these years in my day. Oh, yeah.

Brock: Well, you know what people don't recognize? This is just what our monthly phone calls sound like.

Jamie: So I go, we just look at this. I think so. I love you dearly.

Brock: Love you, too. Bless you. And yeah, and.

Jamie: Good luck with your. I'm really hoping that your are you making peace in the odd group goes well and.

Brock: I'll let you know I bet so far we've met three times and we're still in the midst of everybody telling their stories, which is just so precious. It really.

Jamie: Is. It is. It's such a gift to hear each other.

Brock: Yeah. Yeah. Really.