In May of 2024, Jason and Lauren spoke at an online event with the thriving singles ministry at Life Center Church in New York City about the foundations of relational health! This episode is part one of a two part message about connection as the bedrock of relational health.
Connect with Lauren:
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Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
In May of 2024, Jason and Lauren spoke at an online event with the thriving singles ministry at Life Center Church in New York City about the foundations of relational health! This episode is part one of a two part message about connection as the bedrock of relational health.
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection but that's not always what comes easiest. We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 3:Excellent. Welcome everybody. We're so excited to have you joining us here today. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Megan Montgomery. I'm one of the leaders of our Thrive Singles Ministry at Life Center and we are so excited to have Jason and Lauren Ballatin joining us tonight. I love learning. You know learning from them all the time. I follow a lot of their Instagram posts, listen to the podcast and they are such a wealth of amazing information to help us, you know, better thrive in our relationships, both romantic, but as well as friendships and other relationships in our lives. So I'm going to turn it over to them to kind of share a little bit more of their background and then dive into tonight's event and, as we go, feel free to type any questions in the chat and we'll handle Q&A later on in tonight's event.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, thanks guys for having us. Thanks, megan, for doing all the legwork to get us connected and locked into a time and we're really glad to be with you guys. I'm Lauren Vallotton. This is my husband, jason, and I'll tell you guys a little bit about us before we kind of dive into tonight's topic. We both so we live in Redding, california. We are on the senior leadership team at Bethel Church in Redding, redding California. We are on the senior leadership team at Bethel Church in Redding and, kind of respectively, jason oversees a men's movement called Brave Co and he also oversees our transformation center here at Bethel Church. That's our counseling center. We've got a lot of licensed therapists as well as pastoral counselors and he helps to oversee that entire entity of our church world.
Speaker 2:Here we have been married for nearly 13 years, which is wild to say out loud. Our anniversary is actually on June 4th, so it's coming up very soon, is actually on June 4th, so it's coming up very soon. And um, yeah, hooray, good job, babe. Almost 13 years. Um, we, we've got a few things going on in this season. We I'll tell you about our family in a second but, um, we have, like, as I mentioned, jason's leading Braveco. That's taking up a huge chunk of time.
Speaker 2:I'm at home with two little kids a lot of the time. But then we've got some real passion projects that we have dived into together over the last couple of years, the first being our podcast, which Megan mentioned. We've got a podcast called Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins, and that is just so much fun for us. Probably what we're most passionate about in general is just emotional and relational health, and so that podcast is a really fun space for us to have all kinds of conversations that fit under that umbrella. And then more recently we've developed a marriage intensive. That obviously is for married people, but again just an attempt at sewing into relational health in the body of Christ and beyond. And so this, what you guys are up to, connecting as a singles ministry at life center in New York city I'm going after God together, building community together and growing your emotional and relational health. That is something that we just love and respect so much.
Speaker 2:So, it's right up our alley. We absolutely love it and it's fun for us to talk about these things. I mentioned we've been married almost 13 years. When we got married, jason had been divorced for about three years and had three children from his first marriage, and then we were married. And then about three years and had three children from his first marriage, and then we were married. And then, about nine years into our marriage, we had a baby girl, and then, two years later, we had a baby boy.
Speaker 2:And so, when it comes to relationships, we have been singled, married, divorced, stepkids, biological kids. Basically, we can relate to all of you in some way or another Our story. If we were a pizza, we would be the works pizza. We've got a lot going on in our life, but all of those experiences have afforded us incredible opportunities to learn and grow and pursue God's best for us in the area of relational health. So, with that said, we are excited. Oh, there's our sweet family. There they are. Oh, I'm going to introduce you to them because they are the absolute best.
Speaker 2:On the far left is our oldest son, elijah, who is almost 25 years old this summer. He is married to the absolutely beautiful Allie Vallotton, who is one of the other blondies in the family. She married Elijah in 2020. Of course, there's Jason holding our now two-year-old little boy. That is Liam and he is so cute, my gosh, so cute all the time. Edie is four. They both had birthdays in March. So Edie is now four and she is an absolute firecracker. That girl in that photo you can tell I am tickling her, because no way was she going to participate in going along with the family photo plan. And then our daughter is Riley, has the green shirt on, she is the middle of the bigs and she is 22 beautiful Riley, um. And then Evan is on the end and Evan is our 19, almost 20 year old. He just graduated from his first year of Bethel school of ministry here in Reading. We're so proud of him. So that is our family.
Speaker 2:Yes, as I said, what you see represented, I forgot to mention that we also have a daughter-in-law, which means we could also be grandparents anytime. So add that to the works. Pizza, that's what we have going on. It's a lot, but they are a lot of fun and we are so proud of our family and the work really the work, that we've done to build family together. It has been work. But anyways, that is us and with that, tonight we're excited to kind of share a message with you that we're calling Foundations of Relational Health. We're going to unpack some things that we really believe are at the crux of a person, regardless of stage of life, actually creating a life that you're thriving in and that you are proud of when it comes to relational and emotional health. So, with that said, I'm going to hand it over to my incredible husband, mr Jason Vallotton.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you guys so much. Thanks, babe. It is so awesome to be on here. This is one of our favorite topics in the world and it really is usually the starting place when we're, when we're teaching. It's this it was kind of the starting place that we talked about in our podcast from the very beginning is relational health, because everything flows out of relational health, right, like everything in your whole life is, is like downhill from how healthy are you and how emotionally healthy are you, and we don't typically think a lot about that, but it is the foundation for everything.
Speaker 1:And when you, when you start to think about the foundation of your life, you have to think through from the beginning, right, your birth. How were you? What kind of family were you born into? What was your first inheritance? See, your first inheritance was supposed to be an inheritance of joy and connection and belonging and peace and unconditional love. Right, you poop your diaper and your parents clean it up and they think it's cute and they nurture you and they love you. And, in a home where you were poured into and championed, you have this incredible bond with your parents, right, and so that bond that's built helps to calm you down, helps to bring peace into your life and you get born into this inheritance of identity. I am loved, I am special, I'm important, I believe in myself. I believe in myself.
Speaker 1:And that becomes the foundation for the rest of your life, and most people don't think about this a lot. But if you didn't grow up in a home where you were nurtured and cared for and where you bonded really well, but the home was chaotic and disconnected and confusing, the rules changed a lot. Mom and dad said one thing and did another thing. Right. Then you grow up in this ecosystem that's very chaotic, that's full of anxiety, that lays a foundation, honestly, of chaos and dysregulation in your life, and we really don't think about our origin, how we grew up and what wired us. But if you think about it for a second, you're not actually the one that wired you, actually the one that wired you, you're not the one that designed how you see the world and how you see yourself. And we often think that we were. We think that the way that we see the world and the way that we see ourselves and that voice that we hear in our head is our voice. But it's actually not. And this matters so much because, well, you're not the one that decided how you feel about you. You're not the one that decided what you crave, right, if you crave sugar and junk food, and well, you didn't get to choose what kind of food you bought in the home. You didn't get to choose what kind of food you bought in the home. You didn't get to choose the boundaries that were set and the home and the ecosystem that was built right, your siblings, how they talked to you. You didn't get to decide that that was all decided for you.
Speaker 1:And again, the big challenge for all of us is this is your foundation for how you do life. It's your foundation for how you see you. It's your foundation for your self-confidence, your self-view, and for most of us, we've never gone back and actually taken a look and answered this question how are you wired? Who taught you your self-worth? Who taught you what life was like when you were young, very, very, very young. And so oftentimes we think, man, my parents were. They tried their best, they did their best, I mean they loved me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been in, I've been a counselor for 20 years now. Professionally I've I've worked at Bethel this year for 20 years and I rarely have someone come into my office that goes my parents didn't try their best, my parents wanted me to be messed up. I don't have anybody that comes in like that. Our parents try their best, but that doesn't mean that you were given a foundation of health, of peace, of joy, right, the fruit of the spirit of patience, of self-control. So you could have grown up in a home where your parents did your best, but often, for a lot of people, they were wired for disconnection, they were wired inside of chaos, and it creates so much pain for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how we grow up is so important. We talk about this when we're talking to people in any sort of relationship status. We talk to married people about this all the time, but same goes for even in friendship or in a dating relationship. What we know is that in any sort of relationship, you bring with you your we call it your normal, how you were wired, how you were wired, what experiences you've had in life that have taught you or reinforced certain messages. We bring all of that experience and all of that pre-wiring to the table of relationship and we always say that if you don't chart another path forward, if you don't intentionally rewire, then you're going to reproduce what was taught to you, what was modeled to you, what you witnessed in the home growing up, what you watched on TV, whoever discipled you in the area of, whatever discipled you in the area of emotional health, how to connect to people, relationships. That's what we will reproduce if we don't intentionally build a new operating system in this area and if we were wired for disconnection, like Jason said. So, if you did grow up in that home where it was chaos, they tried their best, they did love you, but man, mom and dad's marriage was a mess, or maybe dad wasn't even in the picture, or maybe mom had an addiction. Whatever the case might be, when we're wired for disconnection and I think more of us are than we realize wired for disconnection we wonder we get into these kind of repetitive cycles of broken relationships. Man, why can't I actually find a relationship that works? Or maybe there's cycles of shame, or you're actually really critical of other people or very critical of yourself, cycles of self-hatred or even depression and anxiety, things like this.
Speaker 2:These can often be symptoms of chronically. If these things are happening in our lives, it's often a symptom of being wired for disconnection, not ever having rewired in order to be fully connected to ourselves, to God and to other people. Other symptoms of disconnection can look like trouble in friendship. Man, I can't ever seem to find a friend group that really feels like at last. Something always blows up. I find myself sabotaging relationships or I'm not actually sure how to go deep with people. I find myself in these surfacy, unfulfilling relationships and I can't ever quite find that group of people that feels like my family. Or gosh, I mean addiction. Addiction is an incredible symptom often of having been wired for disconnection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to tell a story.
Speaker 1:It's called the Rat Park Story and some of you may have read this before, but the Rat Park Story is a really incredible story about connection and about addiction, and in the 1950s they did a study with rats where, basically, they are trying to figure out how addictive are drugs. Right, that was the question. And what they did is they took a rat and they did this several times, but they they take a rat and they'd put it in a cage and they'd put two water bottles in there. One water bottle was laced with drugs and the other water bottle was just fresh, pure water, and they leave the rat in there for an extended period of time and 100% of the time the rat would drink the drug-laced water and overdose and die Every single time. They did that experiment and it was really interesting because the scientists concluded that drugs have these hooks in them, that once you start to take drugs, it's like you can't stop. Right, you're hooked, which is part of where we got that expression hooked right, you're hooked and you can't quit. You become a consumer and you'll consume until it ruins everything in your life.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a guy that came along in the 60s and 70s and he started to again look at the experiments that had been done on drugs. And he went back to this experiment that they had done with rats and he thought to himself I wonder if this is complete, I wonder if this is the full story. So he started to tweak and change the experiment, and what he did was he built a rat park, he put all kinds of balls in there and all kinds of toys for the rats to play with, and then he put a bunch of rats in the cage, a whole bunch of them, and the rats could socialize, they could have sex, they could play around, they could enjoy their time. And what's really interesting is, occasionally the rats would go and drink from the drug-laced water, but not one rat ever overdosed and died. And in doing this study, what he found is he found that addiction has more to do with the cage that you're in than the drug that you're taking. Addiction has more to do with the cage that you're in than the drug that you take. Addiction is not about one day I decided to smoke cigarettes and now I can't stop smoking cigarettes, or one day I smoked marijuana and then now I'm all of a sudden hooked on marijuana, or I took LSD one time and now I'm a drug addict. Or I watched porn once and or I binged too much food and now I'm an addict. Or I scroll on Instagram too long. Right, when we think about addiction, we start thinking through all these different areas that people become addicted to. But in this study, he actually I think his name was Bruce went back and says no, that's not actually what happens. Addiction has to do with the cage that you're in.
Speaker 1:There's one great definition for addiction that I really love to talk about, and it's this addiction. Addiction starts in our life when we can no longer bear being present. You're probably thinking why are we talking about addiction? So there was a man that coined this phrase addiction. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. So think about it like this If we talk about your origin story and you were, if you were in my office and you were to say to me man, I grew up in a home that was very disconnected, it was very chaotic, it was very overwhelming, then guess what that starts.
Speaker 1:Guess what cycle that starts in your life?
Speaker 1:It starts the cycle of addiction, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Because you're disconnected, you're isolated, you're in chaos.
Speaker 1:Do you know how to get your life under control when you're a child?
Speaker 1:You don't.
Speaker 1:Even a teenager doesn't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, I need to set some healthy boundaries with mom and dad. Okay, I need to not let this chaos come in my life. All right, no one should be allowed to talk to me like this Dad, your inner voice is going to become my inner voice. They don't know how to do that, and so what happens is we begin to cope in life when we can no longer bear being present. Well, what happens for most people is they can no longer bear being present. Before they were even aware that they were alive, before they were even aware of what they were doing.
Speaker 1:And now, in today's day and age, they say the average child gets introduced to pornography between eight and 11 years old because of social media, all the access that we have to the internet. We have video games that are, again, very accessible and very addictive. Why are they addictive? Because it's an incredible escape. Right, we have social media. That's an incredible escape. From what? From the pain. Why are we the most addicted society that's ever walked the planet? Because we are the most disconnected society that has ever walked the planet, and it's really important for us to start to look at our lives Again. We're talking about the foundation for connection, the foundations for emotional health, and it goes all the way back to okay, listen, if you didn't grow up in a home that was full of connection, that was full of peace, that was full of love, that was full of joy and happiness, then chances are that started an addictive cycle in your life. It could be porn, it could be overeating, it could be medicating in a million different ways.
Speaker 1:If you don't understand this, you think that it's your fault. You go. Why did I sleep with a bunch of guys in high school? Why did I go chase a bunch of girls? Why am I a workaholic? Why do I go to work and just work and work and work and work and work? Well, because you have this hole. You got this giant hole inside of yourself that you're trying to fill and you're trying to cope with. And so I like to tell people, like it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Right, this probably isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility. And the question that you have to ask yourself is do you feel worthy of love? See inside of your home. What was supposed to happen is you were supposed to be told, be shown, believe that you are worthy of love and care and concern, worthy of love and care and concern.
Speaker 1:And when you believe that you're worthy of love, then you feel worthy of needs you feel worthy of boundaries, you feel worthy to take care of yourself, and so the question that you want to ask yourself today is do I feel worthy of love? See, because you're the only one that can answer that at this point, you're the only one that can go wow, I am worthy of love. The answer to this question dictates really the rest of your life, how you're treating yourself, what your ecosystem looks like. The answer to I actually really do feel worthy of love dictates and decides your ecosystem looks like.
Speaker 2:The answer to I actually really do feel worthy of love dictates and decides your ecosystem. Yeah, so if the title of this night is a foundation of relational health, then we would like to say the foundation of relational health is connection. And so, regardless of how you grew up, taking into account the fact that most of us, most of us, even with the most well-meaning parents, most of us do not grow up knowing how to do emotional and relational health really really well in the context of a life with God, of a life with God, there's very few of us that grow up in a home where we're taught how to stay in that peace, harmony outside of chaos, how to protect your connection with the people that you love the most, how to communicate through conflicts in order to find a place of resolution where you don't have to be right or agree in order to be loved and taken care of. Most of us are sent the wrong message because we're not taught even by the most well-meaning parents. But if we understand that the foundation of relational health is actually connection we're wired by God for connection with Him and with each other then we have to figure out how do we actually build connection If that's what we're wired for and that's the foundation of health in all kinds of our relationships which are going to come in life. Then we got to know how to build that connection and we like a lot of Brene Brown's material on this subject specifically.
Speaker 2:Brene says the difference between people who love themselves and those who don't is that the people who love themselves believe that their story is what makes them beautiful. They believe that owning their story and loving themselves through that process is the bravest thing they will ever do. And I want to say really quick we have to get to a place where we accept who we are and we accept our story. And coming into marriage with Jason, it's funny because he was married before me. He had been married for 10 years, legally married for 10 years, before Jason and I started dating. And although he had actually been married, I had more of a past than he did, because when he was in high school he met the girl who he married and they were engaged when he was 17 years old and married when he was 18 years old and they had their first child by the time he was. Before they even celebrated their first anniversary, they'd had a baby and all of the relationship experience that Jason had in his whole life was in the context of marriage, not my story Now.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a great home and I loved my parents a ton, but I'll tell you what my parents well, they taught me. Not one thing about dating, not one thing about sex. Not one thing about sex, not one thing about how to actually conduct myself. They trusted me a lot and I was a smart girl and I liked making good decisions, and so I guess they just thought they lucked out or something. I have no idea, but like they literally didn't teach me anything about relationships. So, you know, I come to Jason and I was technically a virgin, but I don't even know that you should really call it that. If you've had all kinds of other experiences, you know what I'm saying. So I'd had maybe like four or five boyfriends. They'd all been kind of long-term boyfriends.
Speaker 2:I had more of a past than Jason did in this arena, and so people would ask you know, when we first were dating or married? They would ask me how I felt okay with dating somebody that had been married before and how? How are you wrapping your head around the fact that you're going to have sex with somebody who had had sex with somebody else for like 10 years. And how are you going to, how are you wrapping your head around the fact that he has this whole past and these children even that he shares with somebody else? And these are all really normal questions, but it actually caused me to kind of go yeah, why doesn't that trigger me? Yeah, interesting, why don't I feel really thrown off by that? Because on paper it looks pretty bad and what I concluded was oh, wow, interesting.
Speaker 2:I actually never considered that Jason's past was any more intense or worse than or more complicated than my own past, because the truth is is that every single one of us walk through experiences in life that we are really proud of, and then we walk through experiences in life that we're really not proud of. We do things in relationship, in family, in dating, in friendship, that we consider big wins, and then we do things inside of those relational contexts that we actually have a lot of shame over or we feel guilty about, or parts of our story that we're not proud of. And the trouble is is that a lot of us use shame or guilt, or the parts of our stories that we're not proud of, to try to encourage us not to make the same mistakes again. We actually empower voices of shame and guilt to control us. Help me have self-control by reminding me how bad I am at this or how bad I did in the past, and it keeps us trapped.
Speaker 2:And so I feel like one of the most important things to know is that if we're going to have really deep connections in our life, we have to get to a place where we love ourselves and truly believe that the real version of who I am and the real story of what my life has been up until this point is actually beautiful and it makes me who I am, and my mistakes don't actually define who I am. My mistakes are what has catalyzed growth and health and thriving in my life, because I'm the kind of person that learns from my mistakes. I'm not the kind of person that stays stuck in the shame lies that the enemy would try to tell me about my mistakes, and so this is a journey right, and there are some real keys back to Brene Brown. There are some real keys that she gives us to help us in this arena of actually building true connection where we love ourselves and we love our story in the midst, because that's the only place that real connection can happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to give you four steps to connection and I will say we don't love everything Brene does. But I think in cause some people will go like, oh my gosh, Brene Brown, I don't know that she believes what you believe. It's all good.
Speaker 2:This subject matters? Yeah, this subject's great.
Speaker 1:And so she talks about four steps to connection, and what I love about this is most people talk when they talk about connection, they go you just have to be really vulnerable. But that's not actually the step to connection. There's four components to it. The first one is courage. Okay, so if you're taking notes, number one's courage.
Speaker 2:How to build connection. Courage, yeah, number one.
Speaker 1:Yep. So I'm going to give you a definition for this. Courage is the ability to tell your story with your whole heart and being willing to bear your imperfections. Courage is the ability to tell your story with your whole heart, being willing to bear your imperfections. Think about that. I mean, if you really unpack that, I love her definition for courage because inside of a relationship, when you're trying to create connection, the ability to share your story with your whole heart, being willing to bear your soul, I'm being willing to bear my imperfections. What that does is it sets us up for real, unconditional love and acceptance.
Speaker 1:See, when you came to Christ, you didn't come to Christ all cleaned up. Now you may have think that you cleaned yourself up, but that wasn't the intention. The intention was that you would come how? You would come muddy, you would come dirty, you would come unclean, because we don't actually have the ability to clean ourselves up. So everyone came through the church doors all dirty and nasty, and if we could see on the outside what's on the inside, there'd be places in us that we go like, wow, I feel embarrassed in this area. Right, this is embarrassing. And God looked at you and said, yeah, you're my daughter. You're my son. I love you. No, no, no, don't clean that up, don't wipe that off. Right, if we could see it, we'd be trying to wipe all this dirt off and he goes I got you. The only way that you can get here is through me. That's the only way that you can get clean.
Speaker 1:The ability to have courage, the ability to show your imperfections, allows me to come into relationship with Lauren and share my whole story. When I shared my story with her about my divorce, about my marriage, the things that I did poorly and the things that I did good, the areas that I was struggling in, I was a single dad raising three young kids. I wasn't crushing life. I was having a hard time. It was hard. It was very, very hard. I was able to open up and show her. Once we built trust in our relationship, I began to show her my life and where I am and my story. The thing is is, I didn't discredit myself. I loved myself, despite my imperfections, and that gave her a place to go. Wow, your story's beautiful, your story's incredible.
Speaker 1:Step two compassion. Compassion looks like being kind to yourself and then others, since you cannot genuinely give away what you don't actually possess Compassion. Okay, think about it like this when we're creating a bond and a connection with someone, if you don't have the ability to empathize with them, to have compassion, to put yourself in their shoes, then you're, then you don't actually have the ability to really connect to them. You don't possess it. And that's why it's so important that you love and understand your story, that your story is one of redemption, that God has made you whole right, that he's restored you, or that you're working on your story, and it still doesn't disqualify you from unconditional love. Because if you can have compassion for you, right, that's the well, that's the, that's the bank that you're pulling from and that that gives you the ability to really connect.
Speaker 1:When lauren shares something deep from her heart, I don't go. How dare you, why would you make that mistake? I and it's not like I just brush over it and go like make all the mistakes you want in our home, yell at the kids as much as you want. It's not that, it's that I actually have a real place, a deep place of understanding, of empathy, and it allows our relationship to thrive and to flourish. Because here's the key I don't have a bunch of judgment. See, our judgment kills compassion, and if you are critical of yourself, you're bringing that in unknowingly into every relationship you're coming into and eventually may not be at first, but eventually you criticize all of the compassion out of that relationship and it never actually works and that's probably why you have a hard time with you as well. It's that critical voice that goes on and on and on. So your relationships take on that ecosystem.
Speaker 1:The third step is authenticity. Okay, think about a relationship without authenticity. It doesn't really happen, does it a relationship without authenticity? It doesn't really happen, does it? Authenticity makes way for true intimacy and emotional connections with others. It's the ability to embrace who you are while letting go of who you think that you should be. It's the ability to embrace who you are while letting go of who you think you should be.
Speaker 1:When Lauren and I were dating, I used to tell her, especially as we were starting to get serious don't marry me. Don't marry me for who you think I'm going to be. Don't marry me because you think that someday I'm going to be the leader of Bethel Church or someday I'm going to be this awesome pastor Like you. Have to love me for me. You have to marry me If you want to marry me, marry me for who I am today. And let me tell you who I am today. I'm a single dad with three kids, who loves these kids, who's growing, who's working hard. I don't have a ton of money in the bank, but this is what I do have to offer you, right? Don't marry me for my future. I'm not my future. I am who I am today. That's the real me.
Speaker 3:But what's even more important, is that I don't love me for who I'm going to be, because then I'm the poser right, then I'm the pretender.
Speaker 1:I'm'm the person. I'm the guy that's always coming in pretending like I've got more money than I got, pretending like I've got it all together, pretending like my business is doing better than it's doing, pretending that my kids Listen better than they really listen, because I got a podcast and I'm supposed to have kids that listen perfectly every time. No authenticity to have kids that listen perfectly every time. No Authenticity allows people to really love me where I'm at right here today. Therefore, my relationships have the ability you actually have the ability to bond to me, not to this poser, but to who I really am today. Finally we get to vulnerability right. Finally we get to vulnerability. Yes, vulnerability is a necessity and connection. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love and belonging, of joy and courage and empathy and creativity. Vulnerability it's very hard to be creative without being vulnerable. You have to bear a lot of your soul to be creative. That is a birthplace of creativity and belonging. It's very hard to be creative without being vulnerable. You have to bear a lot of your soul to be creative. That is a birthplace of creativity and belonging. It's hard to belong without vulnerability. You can be a part, but belonging is different than being a part of something. When we talk about vulnerability, a lot of people think that they're doing vulnerability because they show you what's on the inside. That's not vulnerability, folks. That's transparency. Vulnerability says you have permission to change my mind. You have permission to wound me. Blessed are the wounds of a friend. You have permission. In our covenant, my covenant with Lauren, I have permission to change her mind. I have permission to change her mind. She has permission to change my mind. And when we have permission to see inside of each other what's really happening, what's really going on, you also have the ability to reject me and to love me. See. Transparency says you can see all of me, but you can't touch me. It's window shopping, ladies. You don't have the dress just because you're looking at the dress outside the window. You're not a model. Just because you're looking at a model, you're not whatever. For us guys like I don't own that motorcycle just because I'm looking at a motorcycle, I'm not a motorcycle rider because I look at a lot of motorcycles. Right, unless you actually possess it, unless I am allowing you to affect me, to change my mind, to confront me, then I'm not actually being vulnerable. We do this a lot too in relationships.
Speaker 1:We tell people about the part of our life that's already been redeemed so long ago. It's like in my life. I had oral sex when I was 10 years old with one of my best guy friends. When I tell you that today, you may go wow, that's shocking. I had a great dad who said, hey, you're just curious, don't do it anymore, no problem. My dad didn't freak out. That's all he told me. Well, that's all I remember him telling me. He remembers telling me more, but that's all. I got out of it Like, oh, I'm normal, I'm curious, I don't need to do this anymore.
Speaker 1:People tell me all the time Jay, you're so vulnerable. I can't believe that you share that story. Guys, that was 36 years ago. That's 36 years ago. It's not vulnerable for me to tell you a 36-year-old story that I've already dealt with. Now I realize some of you have some stories that aren't already dealt with and it is vulnerable, but you can't hurt me with my story. I've already written it in a book. I've already weaponized that story.
Speaker 1:What is vulnerable? What's vulnerable is to tell you what I'm going through today, where I'm at today, my emotions today. It's so hard. It's the scariest thing that I do. The scariest thing I do is to tell my wife what's really going on inside of me. Even scarier is to hear what's really going on inside of her. How is that going to affect me?
Speaker 1:But that's where the real vulnerability lies. That's where our relationship begins to flourish and where we actually get real connection right. Because connection isn't in the exchange of information. Connection happens in the exchange of emotion. We connect through our emotions, not through the exchange of information. She connects through what's really going on inside of me. And so when we're talking about how do we really connect to people, we have to be able to bring our full self to these relationships, because if you bring a partial, protected, armored up self to a relationship, then you never actually feel connection. Brene says this. She says the armor that protected you when you were young, the armor that kept you safe when you were young. It drowns you, it chokes you out, it keeps you lonely. When you're older, it kills you. And it's true. We have to begin to take off the armor so that people can really love who we are today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is huge and in our story, jason's ability to be courageous, to be able to tell his full story with his whole heart and bearing his imperfections, his ability to have a lot of compassion for himself, have a lot of compassion for those around him who were affected by his broken marriage the first time around, his ability to be really authentic with me in sharing all the details of what happened and why Um. His ability to own his story and not deflect or defend himself, his ability to be humble in the midst of life's challenges and his ability to be really vulnerable with me and present with me all of that helped me me feel more safe with a guy than I'd ever felt in my entire life, even though he's the only guy I ever dated who had had a previous marriage and had three kids come with the whole deal. So I think that it goes to show that when these things are at play, it's what really truly sets us up for the kind of connection that breeds real intimacy inside of relationship. So in the friendship arena, in the dating arena, in the marriage arena, for certain, we only get real intimacy, we're actually only experiencing fulfillment in relationships if all of these qualities are at play. It's what actually makes us feel safe in relationship with other people. And your story could be as wild and as gnarly as wild could be, but if you do the work to actually rewire yourself for connection through practicing these four different things, then your story, like Jason said, it becomes your weapon. It doesn't any longer have any hold on you and it's not keeping you from fulfilling relationships. It's actually empowering you and it's creating a place for other people to feel safe around you. So, taking the time and the energy um, however long it might take to actually rewire yourself for connection in these ways, it is, it is the crucial step, it is the foundation for relational health. And then from there you know what we get to do is well I'll say, I'll say this I often get asked this by single people especially.
Speaker 2:We love doing Q&A on our podcast and we ask people that follow our podcast and listen like hey, send us all your questions, we will incorporate them into some of our episodes. So every five, six or seven episodes, we do a whole Q&A episode where we ask questions that people write in. And there's a trend, right, there's a trend, and amongst single people, one of the questions I often hear is in the season of singleness, what should I be working on and what should my focus be? And my answer is always you should be working to build a life that you really love and that you're proud of. Build a life that you really love, build a life that you're proud of. And the first key to doing this one thing is this connection piece that Jason and I just talked about for the first 45 minutes of our time together tonight. After that, it's a lot of practical stuff. Once the connection thing is in place, once you actually have the foundation for relational health, then in your season of singleness you get to build a life you really love and a life that you feel really proud and fulfilled in.
Speaker 2:And the first component of that is actually just getting that friendship and community place locked down, making sure that you understand like we cannot actually thrive outside of deep friendship and rich community. We're not wired to. It's not possible. We can only live alone on an island for so long before we actually just don't even act like ourselves anymore, like God actually created us to live inside of community. So, um, we have to be really intentional. Nobody can do this for us. The church can't do it for you, the singles ministry can't do it for you, the person next door can't do it for you. We have to get really intentional, um, about calendaring, communicating and making commitments to people. That's how simply practically we go about building really deep friendships. We got to get good at communicating expectations inside of friendship.
Speaker 2:People say, well, I don't know, I like my relationships to be kind of organic. I don't want it to feel too forced and I'm like, yeah, organic doesn't mean the same thing as like accidental or happenstance. Organic is not organic just because you like throw something into the air and you see what happens. Organic actually has to do with the quality of raw material that you have before you grow something. So how's your quality, how's the quality of that raw material? That's all the connection stuff we just talked about.
Speaker 2:Or, the best friendships happen with a lot of intentionality. Jesus was very intentional in how he built relationships and what his community building was like. We got to grow in our self-awareness right. If we're going to have great friendships and if we're going to thrive in community, we have to become really self-aware. We have to be comfortable asking the question how are people experiencing me? Because that has a lot to do with the kind of people that we're going to attract and the kind of people that want to stick around, and then we have to understand like attracts like. So we got to become the friend that we want to have, and, beyond friendship, I think that it's really important that we make sure we're cultivating purpose and passion in our life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, in order to build a life that you love, you have to be aiming at something, because there's a lot of anxiety in life when you don't aim. If you think about it, if you get dropped off, if I got dropped off in New York city and I didn't know where I was at in the city or where I was going, there'd be so much anxiety. Right, it's not just the fact that I'm in an unfamiliar place, it's that I don't have a direction. I don't actually have a goal, I don't know where I'm going. It's the sense of feeling lost. But as soon as you went, hey, here's where you're at and here's where you got to get to, even if it was far away, even if it was 15 blocks. Or even if it was 15 blocks, it's like or 20 blocks like wow, this is going to take me all day. I know the direction, I know that I can invest and put hard work into this way, right here, and I am on the right path.
Speaker 1:You'd be shocked how very few of us feel like I've got a target, and there's often reasons why we don't have purpose in our life. One of the reasons is that responsibility is a lot of what gives you purpose in life, you're actually, you're low. The Galatians six says carry one another's burdens or bear one another's burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ. And there's a and there are things in life that is too big for me to carry, and it's talking about. If you actually look in that verse, it talks about what's too big for you to carry. The actual word burden there means if carried on your own, it would be damaging, it's your sin, it's your bad way of thinking, it's being overloaded. But then it goes on to say but let each man carry his own load. Well, why does it say that? Because as soon as you take the load that I'm supposed to be carrying, I no longer have purpose.
Speaker 1:Think about it in terms of family. If my kids don't have any way to contribute to our family, then they just exist and the world becomes all about them. And then they go. Well, why does the family need me? The truth is, oh, we don't really need you because we're doing everything for you. Well, that feels really good for a while as a child, but then, when you grow up into an adult and you get into a world that you're looking for someone to be self-serving you. You're looking for a world that's self-serving. You start to look around and go well, what am I contributing? It's our contribution to the world that brings us so much purpose. Think about it in these terms jesus didn't come to be served, but he came to what he came to serve. He was the greatest servant of all. That was his whole, entire plan. How can I use my life to better your life? When his feet hit the ground in the morning, he had a direct target. He was aiming at.
Speaker 1:It was his mission, it was his purpose. My life is going to be laid down so that you can have life. That was his whole goal. We have to get something, a target that we're aiming at if we're going to have a life that we really love. That can be serving at your local church, that can be a whole bunch of different things, but you have to have a target that you're aiming at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And then lastly, just in the practicalities of building a life that we really love and feel proud of, we've got to grow in our confidence and our responsibility. We can't thrive, actually, if we don't grow our confidence in, specifically in our ability to respond to the demands of life. So how many of you guys know like okay, I'll say this, my best friend, I'm going to be 39 years old in July.
Speaker 1:You are really getting old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 39. I know my best friend is two days older than me. Her birthday is June 30th, mine is July 2nd. My best friend on the planet, we've been close since I was in the sixth grade and, uh, you know, I got married, I said 13 years ago, and we were like, cool, she's next y'all. She's still single and she would love nothing more than to be married and to have a family. That's her, her greatest dream and, um, and what has happened over the last 13 years is we've walked this journey together and we have. I have gotten to partner with her in her greatest desires yet unfulfilled, and she's gotten to partner with me and some of my desires that were unfulfilled for a really long time, in having kids. And I remember walking through certain seasons with her and she would say, you know, lauren, I actually can't afford to wait to find somebody to marry before I make something of my life that I feel really proud of. And I was like, yeah, of course, of course. But the truth is, is that for her as a single woman she's a nurse and she's lived all over the place as a single woman Um, she has had to rise to the occasion.
Speaker 2:How many of you guys realize that, like hard things don't happen to you only if you have all the support network that you could possibly want the spouse, that you want the spouse, that you want the help, that you need the money, that, like you don't. You don't only have to walk through hard stuff If you've got all the support and resources at your hand right. Life is hard, whether you are married, whether you are single, whether you are divorced, whether you have children or don't, whether you grew up in a great home or not, life can be bananas and we actually don't get to choose often what happens to us in life and so, single or not single us having a confidence in our ability to respond to the demands of life, this is really really important of life. This is really really important. It is actually a huge component of what sets us up to thrive in life is that we have this confidence. So I think we get to look at different areas of our lives and go you know, do I have things in order, like, how are my finances? What are my goals? Is my life in order? Are there areas of my life that need work? Do I actually need to grow a skill set that I don't have. What do I need to up in order to feel confident in my ability to respond to life's demands?
Speaker 2:And what I've gotten to see is my best friend over the course of these years. She has this fat tool belt on her at all times. Within it are the tools that she has sharpened and picked up along the way, and she could handle most anything life throws at her because she's really intentionally worked hard to be somebody that is responsible, and the word responsible is literally you are able to respond. That's what the word responsible means. You are able to respond. That's what the word responsible means, and we want to feel confident in our ability to respond to life.
Speaker 2:I think, as a single person, that's even more important, because you are, in a sense, on your own. Yes, hopefully you've got a deep, thriving community. Hopefully you are in intimate friendships with people. Hopefully people know you and love you on a very deep level. And yet I know because my very best friend has been single for now 40 years is that she has to do a lot of things on her own that I don't have to do by myself, and so she needs a skillset that she's confident in. And you know what she's actually dating this amazing guy who, honestly, we're going to they're going to fly out here and hang out with us in June. We're so excited.
Speaker 2:She just started in January dating the most incredible guy. He was somebody who we knew about in college because he was the mentor of one of our best friends. Well, life is weird and crazy things happen and all of a sudden, now he's dating my very best friend on the planet and he's this incredible man. But what she did was she built a life that she was so proud of. She intentionally went after shoring up all these areas of emotional health, relational health. She has gone after it in community.
Speaker 2:That girl has more friends on this planet than anybody I know. She is so connected in so many cities. We laughed that she could go anywhere and have dinner with a group of. We laugh that she could go anywhere and have dinner with a group of friends. Honestly, she could go anywhere and it's because she's used these years of singleness to build this really beautiful foundation and it has set her up to be in a relationship. Now I believe they'll get married in the next year or two. Now I believe they'll get married in the next year or two to set her up to be with this incredible guy, because she has become the woman that God has asked her to become, regardless of what her circumstances were, and I think that that is ultimately what we're after right Our goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean the goal is to be in a community that you're pouring into. So I mean the goal is to be in a community that you're pouring into that's giving to you that, to have a target that you're aiming at right to, to have a job that you're good at, to have dreams that you're dreaming about and that you can build upon and, ultimately, a life that you're proud of, and so you.