136 The One Thing Your Soul Actually Wants

In this new episode, Geoff and Cyd explore joy as a crucial part of practicing Lent, making Lent worthwhile by creating space for a deeper connection with God. They begin with a gratitude practice, and then reflect on Hebrews 12:1–2 and “the joy set before Jesus" as he endured the cross. They link this to wilderness experiences and the concept of spiritual bypassing.

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

Stay Connected: 

• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support the podcast with a one-time or regular gift (to keep this ad-free without breaking the Holsclaw's bank).

Transcript

What If God Actually Likes You?

[00:00:00] 

Geoff: Welcome back to the Attaching to God podcast During this season, number eight, Cyd and I are gonna be working through key concepts and practices around becoming more deeply attached to God, so that whatever landscape your soul might be in, that we can all learn how to follow the good shepherd back to the pastures of peace and joy.

Cyd: Yeah, and during this episode, we're still in the season of Lent, or we're recording during Lent, and today we're gonna focus specifically on the concept of joy. And the practice of Lent, which don't often go together. So we're hoping that today as you listen, you might emerge from this, listening from this time with us today with a vision of how joy is not something you have to go [00:01:00] without during Lent, but it's actually a crucial part of Lent in practice.

So just to give you a quick teaser on that, it's that joy is the vision that makes Lent worthwhile. So we're not just giving things up, but we are making more space to move toward our joyful connection with God and Lent helps us get more connected with how we live in protection mode, so that we can also be returning to connection with God and with others.

And so speaking of connection, we decided that a new way that we wanna start these episodes going forward is we always wanna start with practicing gratitude. So we come from all different places in our day, and as you listen, you've come from all different places in your day and who knows what happened right before you pushed play on this podcast episode.

And so we just wanna give you a moment to take some time to reflect and to become present and just to consider. What's something in your [00:02:00] life in the last week? I'm gonna give you a moment to think about this, and then Geoff and I will

Geoff: No, we're gonna go first.

Cyd: Oh, we're going first.

Geoff: and then Yeah,

Cyd: All right. We're gonna go first.

Geoff: we're gonna go first and then we'll take a

Cyd: All right. Well, Geoff, why don't you go first? First,

Geoff: Alright, first. So if people are watching this on YouTube, and you can go to our Substack and look at any of these episodes. There's always a link to a YouTube video is if you're watching on YouTube, I have my Cubs baseball hat on.

I also have a Cubs hoodie on with the Cubby Bear who usually holds a baseball. Bat, but I got a special one from last year where he's holding an electric guitar, so I'm already for baseball. Spring training started just a couple, days ago, and I blocked off the afternoon of opening day baseball. So I'm very grateful and excited for baseball.

Cyd: Yeah, and you made it really clear to all of us that like no meetings on opening day, my.

Geoff: That's right. I blocked it off of my calendar. No student meetings, no podcast recordings, no [00:03:00] brainstorming with my business partner and wife about stuff. It's just opening day baseball.

Cyd: Just baseball. That's

Geoff: right.

Cyd: Yeah. I'm grateful for your joy in baseball, but that's not what I'm gonna come with for my gratitude. I am just so excited because I, volunteer in our toddler classroom at church. and yesterday we only had two. Little kids. So one was like two and a half and the other one is three and a half.

And I just love being around kids that age and getting wrapped up in their worlds of make believe. And so we just had such a good time, uh, imagining the story of the Good Samaritan and playing together. And I just love getting captured into, and those kids are, an encapsulation of joy too.

Like when I see one of them in particular, it's like her face when she sees that it's my turn. 'cause we only do it once. I only do it one [00:04:00] Sunday a month. When she sees that it's my turn and I walk in the door, she goes, it's you. It's really cute. So I love that.

Geoff: That's

Cyd: So all of you, as you've listened to Geoff and I's example, it could be something as simple or epic as opening day of baseball or as simple.

Which is also epic of a little child looking at you and saying it's you or anything in between. So sunshine, good food, good friends. Just take a moment now as you come into this time and just think what is something either ordinary or unusual that I am enjoying or have enjoyed? And to just take a [00:05:00] moment to just receive that as a gift from the God who loves you.

Geoff: Amen. Amen. So let's. Shift from that, from those places of joy to thinking of Jesus. In uh, Hebrews 12, verses one and two, we hear this, and the main point is gonna be the joy set before him. It says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings to us so closely and let us run with perseverance, the race that is set before us.

We could pack, unpack so much in there. But continuing on to verse two, that we should be looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who, for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, disregarding its shame and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God, Jesus, who for the sake, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

And I think [00:06:00] that's such a. Pivotal verse that has been for many years, uh, as we've been learning these, uh, attachment kind of realities and truths as well as joy. our first book, uh, does God Really Like me, was all about how it's not just the joy that was set before Jesus that motivated him and his work of salvation.

It's really also the joy in a sense behind him in his eternal relationships with the father, son, and spirit, and just, and then more practically in his human life, the joy that he experienced in the baptism when he heard those words of affirmation from the father and when the spirit was poured out upon him before he went into the wilderness, which we talked about, um, in the last several episodes.

The time of temptation in Jesus. And so this joy set before him really is a foundation for why we can think about lent or times in the wilderness or just spiritually dry times as, connected to joy in some way, even though that's often very counterintuitive.

Cyd: Yeah, it's [00:07:00] super counterintuitive. No, I'm just saying it is right? Like when you think about am in the wilderness, I'm in a place that I, that is not happy for me or a place that's where I'm struggling or where it doesn't seem evident that God is doing anything in my life right now. Right? Like, isn't that what Jesus was experiencing?

The wilderness was like, it's not obvious that God is doing something. It's more like everything has been taken away and it's just him in the wilderness. This constant torment of the enemy. And so when you're in a place like that, it's what do you mean talking about joy? Isn't that spiritual?

Bypassing Geoff?

Geoff: Uh, we're not gonna talk about that right now. There is there. It can, it could be. Um, but I don't, I don't think so. I think when we dig deeper that, we could say something like Hope is a storage joy that then we access. In the wilderness times, and it's kind of faith and joy can be stored up [00:08:00] and then kind of used, in hopeful ways when, we'll, in the wilderness.

A little preview actually, since you said all those things. I am interviewing Kyle Strobel on his new book when God Seems Distant, which actually gets at some of these themes. Uh, also, so that episode will be, we're not doing as many interviews, so much in season eight, but, uh, we are doing that, so that should be dropping just in a, in a week or so.

But. Why don't we transition, because, you know, we always want to start off with a good definition of joy, uh, especially as we kind of are looking at these core concepts. So can you just kind of unpack what we mean by joy and how it's different from maybe like happiness or some other things?

Cyd: Yeah, so the thing that's really helpful for me at least to understand about Joy is that joy is a relational emotion. It's something you experience either in a moment to moment relationship with someone, or in the memory of a relationship with someone rather than happiness, which is more circumstantial.

So you can be really happy on opening day of baseball [00:09:00] because it's opening day for baseball, but you can also be filled with joy. Even when you're all by yourself, when you're recalling that someone is glad to be with you or has been glad to be with you, or you're in a relationship where someone is glad to be with you, and so that idea of joy is relational.

It requires sort of reciprocation. It's like when it's like, it's like the little kid that when I walked into the room and she looked at me, went, it's you. She was glad to see me in that moment. She was glad to be with me. And then I experienced joy because of her sort of awareness that it was me in toddlers that week.

And so that's the kind of thing we're talking about with joy, whereas happiness is, I got a good grade on a test, or things are going my way today, or the sun is out. But the joy is the relational, the, understanding or the feeling. Of that, someone is glad to be with us, and of course we have access [00:10:00] to that all the time because God is always glad to be with us.

He's chosen us. He's called us by name. He's glad to be with us, and so we always have access to joy.

Geoff: And we're gonna be in our next episode, we're gonna be talking, at a little more detailed kind of level about joy, amplifying joy, return to joy, and some of those things, but. Why, just to kind of have an open-ended conversation between the two of us. Why, is joy so important? Why have we found it to be so important?

Whether it's in scripture or whether it's kind of like the neuroscience this episode is, is titled The One Thing Your Soul Actually Wants. and the answer is joy. And a lot of times we think, well, it's love, like we need to be loved. But we're kind of sometimes trying to replace that with like, well actually you need joy.

So why is that?

Cyd: Yeah. Why is that?

Geoff: it to me? I.

Cyd: No, no. I'll, I mean, I'll, from at least like a trauma under. Standing of, you know, we've, I think we've talked in [00:11:00] other places before, but like, when you experience something difficult or challenging, it doesn't automatically become trauma in your life. but one of the factors that does increase the likelihood that you'll carry it as trauma is if you were alone in it or if you were, um, really.

Understood, or there was no one with you who had compassion on you. Or actually another way of saying this, because we're talking about joy, is there was no one who was glad to be with you. And so that's just from a, from a trauma perspective, joy is foundational because no matter how miserable. Um, or challenging or painful, the circumstances that you're going through and the situation that you find yourself in.

If there is someone who is glad to be with you in it, like in an attuned kind of way, like they're glad to be with you in your own experience of it, um, and they're able to be compassionate and attuned to you, then that can prevent a [00:12:00] challenging and painful circumstance from becoming a trauma that you carry.

So that's pretty important.

Geoff: Yeah, for sure. And we're not really opposing joy to love. I would think something like joy is just the expression of love. It's the it's the experience that we have of love. And so we're just trying to put more language around. 'cause sometimes. Love can sound so vacuous or so abstract. and sometimes it's yeah, I know a love, But it's no, joy is the experience of being with someone who's glad to be with you no matter what's going on in your life. You're like, oh, that does sound like love. yeah, that's what we're, that's what we're talking about,

Cyd: Well, and I think about the number of people I've had conversations with who are just like, yeah, I mean I, I know my parents loved me, but they also didn't really express gladness to be with me. Right. That sense of like, I know my parents loved me. They might've told me that a couple times, but they also had sort of a prevailing sense that it wasn't really exciting or their parents weren't really glad to have them around.

They didn't really [00:13:00] enjoy them. And so there's a big difference between that sense of like. I love you and I enjoy you. And so the joy takes it that next level up of it's not just, you're not just loved or, and as we talk about and does God really like me, you're not just tolerated. or put up with because you can love people.

And sometimes that just means putting up with them or tolerating them. but going beyond into the joy is I'm actually really glad to be with you. I enjoy you.

Geoff: Yeah, and I, a lot of times we, we also, people will use like the language of belonging is that, well, you belong here and we accept you. Uh, and those are all great ideas in terms and we want belonging and acceptance. But a lot of times I think you can't be around people who say those things, but then you're like, but are you glad that I'm here?

I know you're telling me that I belong here, but your face is telling me a different story, which is that you're either ambivalent that I'm here, or you're nervous, or you're. Kind of upset. [00:14:00] And so, you know, that's why I think using this language of joy and delight kind of gets around some of those things and makes it more practical instead of a big idea.

I think from both a psychology and a neuroscience side, there has been, This emphasis on deficiencies is that, you are in a, a, good state of being when your needs are met. So you have no lack in your needs or that, happiness is the lack of distress or, um, yeah. So this kind of deficiency idea or that health is just the lack of pathologies.

And, and so you get that, kind of in the literature quite a bit, but there's kind of been, in a lot of the, the childhood kind of studies, they say, well actually, parents don't just need to take care of the needs of their kids. They actually need to input this delight, this joy into their relationships.

And that, that is so essential. And so you, it's actually moving from a, like a [00:15:00] deficit view. Of how we function and what makes us healthy to an abundance view is that joy is kind of this abundance of, in a relationship, this overflowing delight that we have with one another that actually does shape not just our relationships, but it shapes our brains that shapes our bodies, and it creates in us a larger capacity to recover from.

The disconnections that we might have. Uh, so we often talk about connection and protection. And so like when we have like a deep reservoir of joy, we're able to move between connection and protection in healthy ways rather than getting stuck in protective modes.

Cyd: Yeah. Yeah. And actually one of a great way to move from protection to connection is to recall joy that you've experienced in the past, and to have someone attune to you in your state of protection also can bring you into a place of connections and that that's gladness to be with. I can attune to you.

I'm glad to be with [00:16:00] you. I can see you and hear you and understand you, and I'm glad to be with you, and that can bring you back into the. The connection as well. And so that back and forth joy is fundamental for that connection, protection priority.

Geoff: Yeah, and the ability to shift between connection and protection in healthy ways. Allows you to be attuned to other people no matter where they are. So maybe they're in a wilderness moment or they're in distress, and then you can attune to them without entering into protection mode. You can still offer them connection because your capacity, has, has grown, uh, quite a bit.

That's why I find it so, um. Just so amazing that all the Gospels or Matthew, mark and Luke talk about Jesus being baptized in the river, having this joy moment, and then kind of having this distress moment in the wilderness. And those stories are told back to back. And I think big picture when we step out, you could say, well, yeah, Jesus.

Experience those things. And so now he can always attune to other people no matter [00:17:00] where they are. So you asked about spiritual bypassing earlier. spiritual bypassing would be something like, well, I can only attune to people who are happy, and that I only could attune to myself when I'm happy. And then I'm ignoring the distress.

I'm ignoring the upset, I'm bypassing it. But that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that when we build our joint capacity, then. We can attune to people and I can attune to myself when I am in distress or when I'm upset, when I'm not feeling, I'm not feeling it, whatever it is. And then we're able to move back and forth in healthy and constructive ways rather than just bypassing the negative and accentuating the positive or doing any of those kind of things.

Cyd: Yeah, and that all, actually, as you talk about that makes me think about the way that people talk about parts. is that, spiritual bypassing would be like trying to push a part of you away, like saying that part of me is not welcome here or it doesn't belong. but joy would mean actually moving toward that part and [00:18:00] saying like.

I see you, I know you're here. Like I wanna understand what are you doing for, you know, the whole moves into a whole conversation, but it's that gladness to be with, and I know for me, like the only way I can stay in a place of not reacting when someone around me is in protection is if I can try to stay in connection with the God who's always glad to be with me and borrow his.

Amazing capacity. 'cause you know, my window of tolerance is only so big and so to borrow his amazing capacity to be able to stay. In connection with God and then be able to offer that to the person in front of me who is experiencing pain or struggle. And that's how I, you know, stay connected through my calls with people.

That's how I stay connected in my coaching, is by relying on the God who's always glad to be with me, all the parts of me, even the ones that I'm not super excited about.

Geoff: that's so important. [00:19:00] So when we say here the title of the episode, the One Thing Your Soul actually wants. A lot of us would say, oh, it wants love, which is true, but we need to experience it and put the other layer on, which is what, we actually are built for joy. And the big picture is, is when you zoom out, you see that all of creation is built for joy.

That all of creation is always rejoicing and celebrating. And worshiping God. You get this all throughout the Psalms. Uh, and then Jesus, you know, in John or uh, Luke 15, he tells all these parables just about how whenever one sinner, whenever one sheep, whenever the last child comes home, all of heaven rejoices.

And so really this cosmic delight is something that's all throughout scripture and it should be all. all about our faith, uh, but so many times it's not. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit more, in the next episode. Uh, getting a little more granular and then talking also about, well, why is it maybe theologically or culturally it is hard to get into more of these joy spaces, but we [00:20:00] wanna, kind of end these episodes a little bit more with some like practices and things that we can do.

So Sid, there's one or two. Do you have one or two, practices

Cyd: Oh, I'm like in this theme of examine for Lent, because Lent is a theme where you're looking at your life and how you're making space or not making space for your connection with God. And I'm just inviting you as you, come out of this episode. We've talked a little bit about that connection and protection, um, of this idea of like when you are protecting yourself and you don't really care about what's going on with anyone else, versus when you feel connected with someone, even if you're experiencing something difficult, but you're connected with someone who wants to be with you.

And so maybe even just for this next invitation into examine would be to look at your life and to consider. Can I notice when I switch between connection and protection? Like is that something I'm even aware of? And then if you do that, as you look [00:21:00] back over a day, you might notice it more than in the moment.

'cause a lot of times in the moment, if you shifted it into protection, you're not even able to observe yourself. Very well. But at the end of the day, you could reflect back and maybe just ask yourself, where today was I feeling like I had to live for myself and protection? And where today did I have a sense of people being glad to be with me or being able to connect with others out of God's gladness to be with me?

So that's one thing you could do. And then, you know, we talked about how a way to move out of protection and into connection is to remember times when someone was glad to be with you and. Just an encouragement to all of you as you listen to this, to start collecting moments when you're glad to be with other people or when other people are glad to be with you.

Sort of storing those up and collecting those so that, you know, like was, like Geoff was saying, when you're, you know, in the backpack, in the wilderness, when Jesus was in the wilderness, he had this sort of [00:22:00] collection or this history of all these times in his life of, his father being glad to be with him and of his.

Gladness to be with others. And so loading that all up into almost like a backpack that you carry with you, that has a good weight to it, right? Not like a heavy, burdensome weight, but a good weight. And that there is a lot of joy, in my life somewhere. And so just starting to savor and collect those joy moments.

Geoff: that's so important. And we're gonna be talking, uh, next episode more about joy, about amplifying joy, but also about returning to joy. So be sure to, whichever platforms or however you kind of listen to these, be sure to like, and subscribe, review, and share these episodes. That's the only way that the word gets out.

and yeah, we'll be definitely diving more into the passage that Sid's about to end this episode with.

Cyd: Yeah, so we just love talking about the blessing that, God gave to [00:23:00] Aaron in the early stages of the Nation of Israel. We'll talk about it more later, but for now, I'm just gonna bless you with this. if you're in a place where you can close your eyes and open your hands, invite you to do that.

If you're not in a place where you can do that, still just receive this blessing of God upon you. So may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. And I'll also just add and remember that He is always glad to be with you.

Amen.