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Ingredients for the Healing Journey
61 Plays8 months ago
Allender Center Facilitator and licensed mental health counselor Wendy Osborn takes the mic for an intimate look at two recent and very vital components of her journey to healing from trauma. Each of them may surprise you, and each will definitely be an encouragement for your own healing path. No spoilers here, so check it out!
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Surviving Saturday, a podcast about holding on to hope in the midst of life's difficulties, disappointments, and dark seasons. Times like that remind us of the agony and despair the followers of Jesus felt on the Saturday of Easter weekend, in between the Friday on which he was crucified and the Sunday on which he rose from the dead.
00:00:23
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That someday forever changed the way that humans can relate to God. But what does it look like to be honest about the very real pain we experience in the in-between? To fervently cling to hope in the God who promised us his peace and his presence at times when he feels distant or even cruel.
Meet the Hosts: Wendy and Chris
00:00:40
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I'm Wendy Osborne, a licensed counselor in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm her husband, Chris, a marriage mediator, conflict resolution coach, and trauma-informed story work coach.
00:00:51
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Join us each episode for authentic conversations about how life not turning out as we'd expected has created the contextual soil for the growth of a tenacious hope in the resurrection and in a God who is still making all things new. Hi, welcome back to Surviving Saturday. Today it's going to be just me. Chris has laryngitis and he's also very busy.
Life Lessons from Bread-making
00:01:20
Speaker
So I started making bread again this past weekend. I used to make it when our kids were young and we had a lot of time at home, but I'd probably given it up for close to a decade. And I realized as I was making a loaf of bread this weekend,
00:01:45
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that what I love as much as the finished product is the invitation that it gives me to waiting. There is exponentially more waiting in the process of making good bread than there is work. You can't rush it and you also can't ignore it. It's very much like the process of redemption in my own life.
00:02:15
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I routinely hope for the goodness of God in the land of the living, and I'm forced to wait on the slow work of the Spirit to bring it into view. Jesus knows when and where and how to engage my next steps and stages and growth edges. He knows when the wheat kernels in my own life need to die, when the dough that is my soul needs to rest or needs feeding.
00:02:46
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when I am parched and dry and need him to pour living water straight into my veins, what my rising from places of dormancy and death will look like, and how and whom I will nourish with what I am becoming.
Spiritual Insights and Everyday Jesus
00:03:03
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My spiritual director, Roxanne, has been a part of helping me see Jesus in my ordinary, everyday life and trusting that He's always at work, often in the most unexpected places.
00:03:19
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I'm learning to be watchful in my waiting and deeply expectant that my creator God is always on the move and he is loquacious. I mean, he calls himself the word and he's always talking to me through the people and the things around me.
00:03:37
Speaker
On Sunday afternoon, when I took my loaf of sourdough out of the oven and it began to cool, it sang to me. Now, scientifically speaking, I know it's a chemical reaction that leads the bread to crack and exhale some of the heat, but I think it was also, and mainly, Jesus' sweet voice singing the power of resurrection to me as I witnessed the process of death to life in my kitchen.
00:04:07
Speaker
This morning, baby lemons greeted me at the base of my front porch when I came back home from a walk. They offered the sweet smell of their blossoms and the anticipation of deliciousness that's currently wrapped in tiny green thick-skinned ovals.
00:04:26
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I believe that far deeper though, these baby lemons are bearing witness to Jesus way of bringing life from nothing. I'm grateful that he does this in me as well. Recently in my own healing journey, I knew that I had reached a point where I needed to engage the harm that my body and specifically my face has known over the course of my lifetime.
00:04:54
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I'm the product of the South with its unattainable beauty standards and I'm the child of a woman who, in my observation, has always hated her own face.
00:05:07
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Since countless little old ladies over the course of my childhood at family reunions and funerals always commented that I looked exactly like her, I began to conclude that I must be deeply unattractive.
Self-image and Southern Roots
00:05:23
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And so I began to hide my face first behind a super sweet personality, because I gathered that if you have a good personality, people worry less about how you look.
00:05:36
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Then behind a huge smile, maybe if people focused on how happy I was, they wouldn't linger too long on my features. And then I hid behind the dropped eyes of my shame. Maintaining a sustained gaze with anyone felt like I was subjecting myself to sure and high level scrutiny. Then my mom began to take me to the dermatologist.
00:06:02
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That almost felt like a secondary religious practice and I began to find hope for fixing my face with creams and capsules. Maybe then I'd like it. Somewhere along the way I began to avoid my own face and I stopped looking in the mirror and I felt a sense of dread and internal panic when confronting cameras. It didn't help that my dad was a photographer by vocation. God definitely has a sense of humor.
00:06:33
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I've tried appealing to my own intellect to get around this issue. And for about a year I submitted to hardcore CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, to stop this war with my face. But it never got downgraded below a low intensity military conflict. So this past winter, I finally decided to dive in more hardcore and try to find places in my life
00:07:02
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where my face actually felt safe, where it didn't feel as if it needed to guard itself, but it felt as if it could show up to the table and expect love, where it could bring its entirety to any situation to receive from people and also offer love and care to those around me.
Counseling Through Visualization
00:07:27
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In the quiet of my waiting, God reminded me of some interactions I had when I was young with my paternal great-grandmother. And in the process of some visualization work in my counseling, I imagined an interaction with her based on truth of times I actually spent with her and experienced deep and abiding love.
00:07:51
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Now her name was Mama Towne. Her last name was Townsend and we shortened it to Towne and called her Mama Towne. She was a sweet but toughened by the world woman. She was a lover of Jesus and all of his creation. She had survived the death of a toddler and the abandonment by a husband, leaving her to raise kids and keep a farm running so she could feed the kids.
00:08:19
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She quilted and cooked and taught me to fish with a cane pole in the pond she had created right smack dab in the middle of her cow pasture. She was a low key hoarder as evidenced by her front screened in porch and she was a notorious taker inner for all unwanted pets. Her smile was constant but hard fought and she literally prayed without ceasing. If she wasn't talking to you, she was still mumbling.
00:08:49
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saying something to Jesus like he was right there with her in the room. Visiting her Pentecostal Holiness Church just down the dirt road from the homestead brought a bundle of curious confusion to my little girl self. Everyone prayed out loud all at once when the preacher said, let's pray.
00:09:12
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I vividly remember being caught off guard the first time wondering if no one knew that none of us, and in my opinion that included God, or the good Lord as they called him, could understand anything coming out of their mouths. Maybe it would be better, I thought, if they would at least just do it quietly in their heads. Maybe the reduction in cacophony would increase his ability to comprehend all the things they were trying to tell him.
00:09:39
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So I'm going to read to you a story that I believe Jesus revealed to me as he spoke in and through my sensory memories of a time when I didn't doubt that I was beautiful and loved and through my imagination of what could have flowed between the heart of this good woman and mine if we'd been gifted more time.
Imagined Moments with Mama Towne
00:10:04
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So this is a story between myself and mama town.
00:10:12
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I am standing in the yard at the base of my great grandmother's concrete steps. Ascending all three will land me onto her screened porch that covers the entire front of her house. I am waiting, not able to come inside just yet. My eyes are focused on the dirt below.
00:10:33
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I hear her calling for me saying, baby, I just can't wait to see your face. I've been waiting for so long. You had a long drive and I just want to look into those eyes of yours. I'm now just inside the screened walls sandwiched between the two doors of entry to her castle. I wait and then she calls to me again, her hand now cracking the seal of the wooden door.
00:11:01
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I'm still looking down, not yet ready to meet her gaze. She reaches out her wrinkled fingers, placing them under my chin to slowly lift my head. I can't wait to look into those beautiful eyes, Wendy. The words tumble out of her mouth with such a trustworthy gentleness.
00:11:22
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I wonder if I have her eyes. I think hers may have been blue, minor hazel, but I wonder if there is anything about my eyes that resemble hers. I hope so. A grin of delight takes over the bottom half of Mama Town's face as she stares at me. While she's looking directly into my eyes, she places her hands on my cheeks.
00:11:47
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I love your face, she says again with so much tenderness. I've missed it. We walk further into the kitchen and she chooses the topic of making tea cakes together to be our next exchange. On this day, we are going to make peach in addition to pear. She begins to giggle as we begin to make a mess. Flower everywhere, including a heavy dusting of it all over her floor.
00:12:15
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I didn't know the recipe had called for so much of the white fluffy runaway bandit. She muttered something about one of the newest stray dogs being happy enough to help us with the cleaning. She giggled. She had no fear of the germs that might be attached to its tongue.
00:12:33
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Her whimsy gave me the freedom to know deep down in my soul that perfection was never necessary. It was only a rule of life that my mother and others had chosen. A balm to soothe their own anxiety. With Mama Town there were no requirements. There was no rigidity. Only wild flexibility and that grin and those twinkling eyes and that enchanted chuckle
00:13:04
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We sat down to eat the steaming tea cakes. I started with Peach that day and she grabbed a pair one for herself. As we sat on a blanket in front of the fireplace where she had tried to teach me to crochet, the kitchen table was far too large for the intimacy we craved, I was aware that she couldn't take her eyes off my face. In those days, this didn't bring insecurity to the surface because I had none.
00:13:32
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She commented that my face was so soft and my smile so sweet. She mentioned that she loved the sound of my voice and all the things I thought about the world. We ate and laughed and stared at each other's features with delighting eyes while a happy dog looked up crumbs beside and between us. There was no talk of anything needing to be other than it was and that all was more than well because we were together.
00:14:02
Speaker
Her presence made it clear that even when we worked together, the love we shared would always be with each of us. She told me that the two of us had fire in our bellies, that we were women who could both ninja and nurture. She had walked through the personal hells of saying goodbye to a child and a husband far too soon, the former being ushered into heaven while the latter sent her to hell.
00:14:32
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She didn't stay there, though, because we are not women who are consumed by fire, she said. It had burned her and would come again to scar us both, but it cannot stop a woman who will do the hard work of contending with its power and the power of Jesus' resurrection.
Mama Towne's Wisdom on Resilience
00:14:52
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She was here now, sitting on a quilt made by her own hands, devouring the best damn tea cakes a kid and her great grandmother could drum up.
00:15:03
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sharing the whole event with a formerly stray dog. The latest one that had been tied to her porch because no one else in town wanted to bother with it, but they knew that she would never turn a chance to love away. Her twinkle and her touch convinced me that I was cut from the same cloth.
00:15:22
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that I too would walk through fires and come out the other side, that I would be hard pressed, but not crushed, struck down, but not destroyed. We're going to be okay, baby. You're going to grow up and be a creator. You will see angels and you will dance with the devil. You will turn fire that is hurled at you by the forces of evil into sculptures of beauty by blowing the breath of your lungs into its face.
00:15:52
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When you meet people who tell you they know everything about everything, don't listen. Jesus is a man of mystery. His love knows no bounds. His mercy simply cannot be contained. You will learn the most about him from the people at the margins of this world, the ones that society wants to proverbially tie to a porch instead of being bothered by.
00:16:20
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The ones that don't seem seem too smart, the ones that are a little unsightly and unseemly, the not straight, not sober, not even sure what they believe ones. She glances over at my two tattoos and says, I adore your tattoos, sweet baby girl. She spies the elephant on my ankle and the chisel on my wrist. You can don English for laurels as you delight in the symbolism of the ink that pinks
00:16:49
Speaker
peaks around the shape of its preppy fashion. This will work because both of those sides are you. You love feminine beauty and its outermost edges. You a poor box is just like me and that will serve you well. When you're older, you'll have a house full of kids with tattoos who teach you more about the world than you ever taught them.
00:17:16
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they will lead the way and so will others and you will find the real Jesus. Don't follow anyone else. At this point, she mentions that she loves my ears that have taken in all the noises on her farm and my youthful hands that cling to her wrinkled ones and my legs that climb into the hayloft of her barn and climb down just like the boys.
00:17:44
Speaker
I move my body to stand as it's time for me to be on my way. I stare at her for a long minute, taking in the gray bun atop her head, the scrapbooked face, the blue dress with the white apron, and the hands that hold so much time holding mine. I tell her it's been a lovely visit and she kisses my cheek as she draws my cheek to her breast. We're going to be okay, baby. Darkness never has the last word.
00:18:15
Speaker
So as I've sat with what I believe is the face of Jesus in this imaginary encounter with my great grandmother, I have felt the tenderness and the generous graciousness that he holds for me, that he holds for you, that he holds for my face, that he holds for all of his creation.
00:18:45
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And as I have looked from the loaf of bread on my counter to my face in the mirror, I feel like in both places, I'm coming to see more and more of who he is.
Seeing Jesus in Everyday Life
00:19:01
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and I can't take the smile off my face and I can't stop seeing his beauty and his resurrection and his goodness in the form of the bread on my counter and in the sweetness of its taste. So I hope this has been a blessing to you. I look forward to being with you next time.
00:19:24
Speaker
The Surviving Saturday podcast is brought to you by Nurture Counseling PLLC, a counseling teaching and training center based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We help families flourish one story at a time. Nurture Counseling provides counseling, counseling intensive for couples, conflict resolution coaching, story work groups, seminars, workshops, and retreats to provide a safe and welcoming context for exploring the agonizing experiences of pain, brokenness, and evil that disrupt our lives.
00:19:51
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and that God often uses to nurture deeper trust and intimacy with Him and with each other. You can find us online at www.nurturecounseling.net