EP 328 - Questions - Laura Howe answers "How am I emotionally present for people, digitally?"

up." And this is not—and you know, I don't want to hear about God. And it's a—and really, like, it was the not being sensitive to where he was actually like turned him off and pushed him away accidentally. Like, the two of them didn't recognize the potential. And it's like, maybe to be more sensitive towards that. Um, how do we—how do we as— People and I'm a type A guy, I'm a jerk. Like, I just admit that publicly. How do I start to think more like being emotionally available, to be more sensitive to the people around me? Like, what's the—is there a cue? Is there a trick? Is there like a mind thing? How do I flip the switch to be able to kind of change some of my psyche? What do you recommend? Well, um, I don't know if this is textbook, but I think empathy comes from suffering. So I think the more you live, the more suffering you're exposed to, the more empathy grows in you. And so, um, now I don't—yeah, there's probably able to people to prove me wrong on that, but I think there is definitely a correlation to someone's experience. Empathy grows from experience, from experiencing suffering. Yeah, so the more that you're broken, the more that you're humble, the more that you're able to be reshaped is how you become more emotionally available. Well, you see it in others. You see the signs. It becomes familiar. When you've experienced it yourself, it becomes so close to you that you begin to see it in others. So if you've been hurt or bullied or, um, you know, grief or any of the number of suffering that people can experience—when you've experienced that, you can quickly pick up on when other people experience it. And empathy is wanting to meet the person where they're at and extend compassion in a way that we wish we've received. We can feel. We know what it feels like and we can put ourselves in their shoes. And so, um, you know, I think if you want to become more of an empathetic person, then I think you need to put yourself into spaces and be vulnerable and take risks, and you will quickly learn empathy by feeling, by that exposure. But I think there are ways to show up when you just don't know what to say if that doesn't come naturally. There are, you know, I walk through—you have a BLESS acronym. I don't have a special acronym, but I definitely have some steps that I would recommend if you don't know what to say. You know, here is how you can show up to help create that space. Um, but I definitely think if you want to become more empathetic, then you need to put yourself out there. Yeah, oh, by the way, I'm the acronym king, and so if you ever need any acronym for anything, I will figure that out. I love me an acronym. But, um, you know, there's a little bit we talk about—if we're going to shine light in the darkness, we need to be prepared. And this is a personal testimony for my life: if we're going to shine light in the darkness, we need to be prepared to shine that light on ourselves. And, um, you know, being broken in some of this has been at a personal level for me has been very hard, but I do think that that brokenness has allowed me to be more empathetic and has allowed me a different view and a different passion. Um, which is, you know, one of the reasons why we're leaning so hard into the addictive space. You know, and realizing A, we're doing ministry in addictive space. B, we're inviting others to do ministry in an addictive space. And C, we're working with people, we're doing ministry to people, we're reaching out to people that are addicted to things. And so we need to care for ourselves. We need to care for the people that are ministering with us and the people we're ministering to. And so being able to be broken in that, I think, is important. It's funny. I, um—I tell this. I told—I wrote this story. I'm not going to tell the story, but it often the story led to this point. I'll just get to the point where sometimes, like, my experience in doing as a digital pastor for a physical church, I felt very clean. Like, you know, I was not connecting with people. You know, it was just very kind of shallow relationships, and I was working people through the system. Let me get them connected into a group. Let me, you know, I'll connect with them at a superficial level, but I really didn't know the people I was ministering to. Confession, um, doing digital ministry, emotionally available, um, missions work, relationships—as opposed to the other model—um, it has been far more challenging. And like, to me, it almost feels like I'm, you know, jumping in the mud with people just to kind of—where I'm being more real with people in that lens, in that scope. And that was uncomfortable for me for a while. Like, I'll be honest, like, that was hard. How much is too much? Do I—how do I protect myself? How do I, you know, there is a little bit of—honestly, there was a little burnout in my life going back. Um, how do we how do we stop ourselves from being too emotionally available? Is there a point that we don't go across? Like, what? Where? How do we stop? Should we stop? What? How do we control? How do we heal? How do we restore? Give me a little bit on that space. Well, I think one of the things that I say in—um, it's actually the third point of what to say when you don't know what to say—is offer support that doesn't require the person to initiate. So, you know, this is like jumping backwards from a different point, but the thing on that is, but it doesn't add burden to yourself. So knowing what is within your capacity and knowing what is out of reach, um, for offering support to that person, is really, really important. So if you just—a very, you know, simple example that I think is almost silly—but if you know you have a family plans or you have, you know, a meeting to go to, you're not going to say, "Hey, I'm going to give you a call at six o'clock." No, that's when your family dinner is. But you can say, "Hey, can I text you later on tonight?" You know, or "Hey, do you want to touch back tomorrow at such and such a time?" Then you know you're offering that. You're extending the olive branch. You're doing the work to extend the olive branch, but it's within the bounds. So I think the first thing is really just only offering what is within your capacity, and the first step is knowing what's within your capacity. Yeah, um, so I would say that would be the first thing: don't overreach or overextend when you're engaging with a person. Yeah, I—that's hard, right? It's well, it's hard. It's hard. But I think you learn your lesson pretty quick when you overreach and you're like, "Now I am agitated. I am resentful. I am overwhelmed. I can't juggle it all, and now I'm hoping that the person doesn't ask for more help because I've exhausted all of those things. All of my capacity, all of my time and energy has been used up." And so you want to be able to have the slow—you know, only extend what is within your capacity so that you don't completely extinguish everything. Can you hear me now? It's funny. I, I think I double-clicked on the wrong thing. You can hear me okay? Good. I was trying to mute my mic to cough, and I think I messed that up. Sorry. Um, so how else do we protect ourselves? How do we set boundaries up on this? Um, don't overextend. Are there some other things we should consider? Um, there's definitely things to consider. Um, but how to maintain boundaries—is that what you're asking? How to maintain boundaries? My goodness, I did not bring those notes up. I'm sorry. You had me off, off— No, no, we can talk about it. It's just casual, right? This isn't a formal lesson. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, you know, when I think of boundaries, it is, um, for me I have the red flags and the yellow flags. It takes a lot of self-reflection. I'm going to be honest. Engaging in reflection is an absolute must skill for any caregiver because if you're not reflective on how the caregiving is impacting you and how your stuff is impacting you, you're going to spew it and slime it all over everyone. And so I think you need to be really reflective, and one of the things you can reflect on is what are the yellow flags and the red flags? What are the warning signs? And what is the—like, you need additional support. You need to press pause. Um, being the red flag—for me, my yellow flag is when I isolate, when I'm pulling away from activities that I normally would enjoy, like, um, book club or playing volleyball or, um, you know, walking. Those are the things I say, "Ooh, I'm not doing really great. I need to keep an eye on things," and so just really recognizing and being reflective and knowing what the yellow flags are when you're starting to go downhill. And, um, by knowing those, you know when to stop and care for yourself. And so, um, I think that's really important for boundaries: not overextending. One of the hardest things for me—um, and I still don't know if this is good or bad. Like, I wrestle with this—is passing it on to someone else. Yeah, like, I'm emotionally available. I'm connecting with this person. They're going through a hard thing. It's taking more energy, more resources, more equipping, more knowledge. Like, the scope of this thing is probably beyond what I can really do. But what I'm finding is that, like, I don't know if it's ego, I don't know if it's pride, uh, but like, I feel like I can solve it. I can fix it. I can handle it. I can do it. I don't—I don't want to pass it on. Um, is it healthy to pass it on? Is it, you know, does that break—do I need to be better and study harder to be able to handle these difficult situations? Like, how—what do you recommend in that space? Yeah, um, one of the signs of compassion fatigue or when you're becoming weary or burnt out as a result of the caregiving is an over-engagement in other people's stories and other people's issues and problems. And it's like the number one thing: it's you skip lunch, you don't go on vacation, you miss activities. You think you are God. You think God has sent you and only you to that person. Um, that no other person can care for them quite like you can. And, um, I'm not saying like it's in a delusional way where you know there's a psychotic feature to that, but more in that over-responsibility. You feel overly responsible for that person's life. And that actually is a yellow flag. When those thoughts come and when those feelings come, that's the yellow flag saying, "Oh, I think I've stepped in. I'm too deep into it. I need some perspective. I need to gather people around." And I don't mean refer as in send them away and say, "I can no longer help you," but let's bring another person into the conversation who can add a different perspective, right? It's how—no one wants the feeling of rejection. The worst feeling ever. No one wants to feel rejected. And so, "Oh, your problems are too hard for me. I'm going to send you away to a specialist because you're, you know, you're so broken"—that's a terrible feeling. We never want to do that. But what we can say is, "Hey, I feel like I am this person in your life. I feel like I am a friend or I am a fellow student or I'm a fellow parent or whatever. I actually don't have a lot of experience in this other issue that you're, you know, struggling with or that you've shown. Do you mind if we bring—if I connect you with someone else?" And you can maintain the relationship. You can stay in someone's life, but you definitely bring in other voices. There's scripture on that. Multitude of advisers, isn't there a Proverb on that? I'm not—someone put it in the chat then. Know the reference to it. But yeah, Luke's got it if he's around. I'm sure what a multiple of advisers or something. Yeah, and it's healthy to bring more people in. It's not healthy to gossip and just spread news around people, but to— Know what is within your capacity, within your skill set, where your expertise lies, and then bring in the extra for sure. The idea of bringing somebody in to the relationship that's new to me, I've never—I haven't done that. I've always—I don't want to say always, but for the most part, if it's out of my league, I hand it off to somebody else and let that be the thing. And so it's interesting. Ukulele comes in here, saving the day. Without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed. There you go. Thank you, Pastor Google. Ukulele. Good, good find on that. If you used Google or if you used ChatGPT, that would be interesting, but she nailed that pretty quick. But the heart of this, I think, really leans into knowing where your limits are. You know, being invested, know where your limits are, and then invite others into the conversation with that. You know, I would say one of the things that we want to do with the church digital is to try to create systems, processes, and helps for people that can come along. You know, I was talking with the church digital, and they had had two or three suicide situations. They dealt with two or three suicide situations within a couple weeks. There were a couple, you know, frictions within leadership. There were some negativity among some of the volunteers, and like there's just there was major issues that needed to get worked out. And you know, mental health, being able to listen and process and help them work through some of these things, is important. But when you're looking at, like, you know, their suicide, how do you handle those situations digitally? What's the process of that? There's really—there's not a lot of well. There's mixed clarity. Once somebody says do this, somebody does that, and like it's all over the place. And as we're emotionally available, we're going to get more of those types of situations. And that's okay. We want to know that, but we want to be available. We want to work through it, but we need to know where our limitations are and to be able to hand it off. And so what if what we're trying to do with the church digital is to create trainings and find partners that can help digital missionaries, digital churches, virtual reality churches like you, solve that. And so El, Michelle, Stacy, Laura, we're working—I would say very hard. I don't know that we've ramped up to the very hard level yet. That's coming. But we're, I think, working hard on that right now and having some really fruitful conversations globally. Some partners are coming on board that are excited. Go ahead, Laura. And I would challenge the hand them off language. Let's bring them into the conversation. That's better. Thank you. Yeah, let's bring them into the conversation because this is—we want to build community and we want to really maintain trusted relationships, right? Transformation moves at the speed of relationships. I heard that quote from someone last week, and I was like, oh, it's changed. You know, it keeps coming up every conversation. And so we want to maintain relationship with people. And so by bringing people into the conversation, we are maintaining that trust. We're staying connected. We're walking alongside. And I think that is, you know, when you look at what is transformational in people, when they find recovery, whether it's in addictions or mental health, the model or the theory or the skill set or whatever clinical practice the person uses doesn't actually make that much of an impact. The biggest impact in recovery is in relationship—the relationship between you and your therapist, relationship between you and the peer supporter. And so if we really want to see transformation and care for people in the digital space, I really think we need to bring people in. You know, what I really like about you, Laura, is you find the weak spot in language and you call me on it. She's done this maybe two or three times. I'm not allowed to say triage. I'm not allowed to say hand off. And like, even—it was funny. We were in a meeting, and we were working through the framework, and she's like, that doesn't—you need to have, like, graphical representation of that. And I was like, great. I got my kids. My kids created a 3D graphical representation. We're going to make some adjustments to that, but it's the prototype. El, Michelle, said in the chat, she said alongside, alongside. I think that's a great—and so that's where we're bringing people alongside the relationship where we keep the relationship. Yeah, no, I love that. So from the church digital, please—challenge you. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Not to challenge you on language all the time because I don't think it has—you're not saying anything wrong. We're—no one else is saying anything wrong. We all have the best of intentions. But we are literally carving a new pathway, right? This is newly developed space. So we are, you know, when you think of culture, you think of art and food and language. And so we are developing a whole new culture. And so that's part of the process. No, I love it. And you know, like, Barbara, listen, I love getting bossed around. I love getting told. I love being challenged. You know, and I started to say I'm man enough to be able to handle it, but you know, the fact is that I'm humble enough to recognize that sometimes people around me are smarter, and I try to surround myself with smarter people than me to make the ideas better. And same team, we want to be the best. Oh, totally. Laura, El, Michelle, Stacy, on this mental health stuff, Mindy Caliguire, historically, like, there's a number of people that are shaping my worldview. And even things like alongside instead of handoff—I mean, that's a tell. Historically, I've been handing off, and it's not. We want to include into the community and invite more people, which is my heart to be honest, but I've been saying my words have been handing off. And so to be able to shift to that language is so important. Ukulele, absolutely. What's available in language is a culture that greatly influences how the culture develops. Yeah, with the church digital, we want to create that culture. We want to create a culture of digital missionaries by encouraging, equipping, experimenting, empowering mission work that happens. Scar, I don't know that I believe this, but Jeff is like, Mortal Kombat, new challenger has arrived. That's funny. Scar's a fun guy. I just met him today, and so I'm looking forward to meeting him a little bit. Yeah, that's cool. We'll dig more into it. This has been great. How do—what's something simple? Let's back up here a little bit. Let's talk about being emotionally available. Okay, what's a simple—let's—I'm going to kick the tires. What's a simple thing that I can do, practical step, that I can do to start to apply this to my ministry? What would it look like to be a simple way to try to be more emotionally available? I would say the simplest way is your first response when someone tells you something that is feely, you know, has that touchy-feely vibe to it. Rather, your first response back to them is a validating response. And you say, hey, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like you're having a really hard day. It sounds like you're upset. It sounds like—you're reflecting back to them and you're validating their experience. You're not questioning. You're not fighting with. You're not satisfying your own internal need to be curious, you know, more and what's behind the scoop or who said that. It sounds like you've had a really difficult day. If your first response to them is their own words and own feelings, it tells them that you're a safe space, that you can handle this conversation, and that you're really hearing them. And so I would say that is the very first thing and just to get try that on and see what happens. Yeah, that is such good advice right there. Reflect it back to show them that you're listening, to build trust. I've got my friend Joel here. Joel is somewhere in Africa. Forgive me, I don't remember if it's Nigeria or Kenya right now. I just met Joel. He's going through my EDM cohort, equipping digital missionaries right now. It's a blessing to learn new things every day. My network is not working well, but I am following up. And so Joel, I want to challenge you, maybe as you're following up, to use some of the language that Laura is talking about here, of reflecting it back, asking some of those questions. That was beautiful advice, Laura. My question to you in this context—Joel's in Africa. Like, is the stuff that we're talking about, this emotional availability, is this global? Is this contextualized? Do different cultures adapt this way? Like, how do you see some of these ideas scaling globally? Well, I'm not arrogant enough to say that my words are contextualized to every culture. I think that would be inappropriate. However, why not come on? No, no, that's very humorous. But I would think that as we learn about culture and context, that we can—the concept of validating what someone says is really valuable. Depending on the context, so you know, if there's gender or age or cultural norms, we want to respect that, right? If it's not a cultural norm to be able to respond that way, we—that, you know, is priority because if we speak inappropriately, then that's going to create barriers and mistrust immediately. However, if it's on a peer level, you know, I think that from my understanding of Western culture, it would be appropriate. And so if I was responding to Joel in that, I would say, wow, Joel, that sounds like it's really frustrating that your network. It sounds like you're experiencing a lot of tech challenges right now. So it's really just that simple. It's just hearing what someone says, then responding with sounds like. And is it culturally appropriate? I would have to defer to the person of that culture. Yeah, and that's—I mean, that's—I don't want to be like that's the right answer, but that's what we believe with the church digital is all this stuff needs to be contextualized. Joel, you need to experiment with it, and we're going to get some of that into the cohort ultimately. And Joel, I'm going to fast forward because you don't know this yet, but we're going to talk about it later. We want to involve you in one of our outposts, Joel. That offer for you that operates in southern Africa where we're collecting together people that are doing digital ministry and digital mission work in the southern African context because, I'm just to be honest, they understand what's happening in southern Africa better than I do in Miami, Florida, or better than Laura does in Canada, Toronto. Where are you? Toronto, Canada. Toronto, Canada. Where it's cold. It's colder than where I am, at least say that. But the point is, Joel, to you, to take some of these lessons and experiment on it. It may work. It may not work. It may need to adapt. And one of the things—the listening would work, I think. The listening would work absolutely. Okay, but it is, you know, are you going to respond and say those words? Yeah, that's good. Here, Scar. It's very humble of you, Laura. Listening is universally appreciated. That's a good word right there, Scarrett. Cool. All right, so we've got some practical insight, we've got some next steps. We're gonna listen more, we're gonna dig into it. Steve, Steve, I haven't put you up here yet today, I think so, just, you know, agreed to that. He's happy. So as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts? Any other challenges that we need to look at at being emotionally available? It is really tempting for us to start to share our story back in and trying to create common bonds and common relationship. However, just be aware of when that is an appropriate time. If someone is sharing and you know, being emotional or feely or vulnerable with you, that might not be the best time to share. Oh yeah, my aunt, my Aunt Sue had that same thing happen to her or whatever. Keep the focus on the other person. On the other person. It is very tempting trying to find that common ground and mutual experience by sharing your own story, but true listening is really making it about the other person. You just challenged me on that. Yeah, okay. Um, like put a time on that. Like, we talking minutes? Are we talking hours? Like, how? Because I mean, that's man. I feel you. I've been, tell me about it. Like, I'll, you know, I'll do that to try to relationally connect with them. But you're saying that trying to relationally connect with them actually devalues what they're saying? I think it depends on the relationship. If someone's coming to you, best friend, brother, sister, colleague, if they're coming to you because they're struggling and they're opening up to you, do not share about yourself at all. But if they come back and you can say, hey, how was it? And you're initiating the conversation or you're checking back in, and then there's continual, but as when that person is vulnerable and sharing with you, try to resist the urge to share your own story just for that conversation. There will be opportunities later to create that common. Or you could say, hey, that story you told me or what happened to you, it reminded me of a time when, how was it? And then you turn it back to them. You never want to turn it to yourself in the moment of vulnerability. You want to keep the focus and keep the attention, the support heading in their direction. Yes, Steve. That's this. You're challenging me, Laura, which I love. You know, Steve's asking, how's that fit within shared experiences with bless? Begin with prayer, listen, shared experiences. Um, you know, I'm as I'm hearing this and applying it to it, you know, listening is more about the person. Shared experiences make it more about the person. It's more about the relationship and spin it more towards them. Serving is more about the person. And so like, really when you spin it, it's when you get to share your Jesus story, that's at the bottom. And so you've got to just feel that. And I agree with that. Like, I've always felt that. Just was like, I would, you know, somebody would tell me something and be like, oh my gosh, that's so bad. You know, and I would try to empathize with them by connecting. But if that's, it's interesting that that's bad. Like, I feel bad. I put the label of bad. I don't want to put the label of bad. Um, but if the, because if you're having a connected conversation and someone is sharing a story, then yeah, it's you're just, you know, catching up for coffee, it's fine. But if someone's like, oh my gosh, I have a rough day, can you talk? Or I really would love to talk with, when the intention of the conversation is to provide support, then you want to make sure the support is directed towards the person for the entirety of the conversation. Yeah, this is so good. We need to do this more. Like, I really, I really like hanging out with Laura. And Laura was connected to Barbara, is how I found them. So once again, like, Barbara is the best thing I did in twenty-four. And, um, you know, the connection with you and the influence, um, it's probably one of the two best things that we'll do in twenty-five because I am so driven. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not kidding. Equipping, mobilization, the stuff that J-Mo is working on now with me, I'm excited about how it's going to roll out globally. And solving this mental health, this care problem, um, digitally. This is a major issue within the space that needs to be addressed. And I, you know what, there are resources and there are people that want to partner with us. They just don't know it. Like, I've met very few people that are like, no, that you're crazy. Everybody's like, yes, there's an opportunity. Let's figure it out. Now it may or may not work, but I'm confident that we're going to find people to come in and address this. And so Laura, I am very excited for this conversation and many others to come. If somebody's got questions or they want to connect with you at a personal level or learn more about Hope Made Strong, like, what's the best way to connect with you? Email, Laura at homemadestrong.org, goes to me. And then homemadestrong.org is the website. You go on there or Instagram. Awesome. And so you'll be seeing Laura and the effects of Laura all over the church digital in the days to come. When is your summit coming up? It's October tenth. Oh yeah, you guys, you got a long way. We, and so, but Hope Made Strong will be in breakouts. Rebecca will be doing a couple breakouts. I'm not sure on the topic. I don't know that I've seen it yet. But we're excited about that and some of the other, I think it's about burnout, to be honest. I think it is about burnout. I mean, I can certainly relate to that. So that's good stuff. Um, mental health's important, you know, especially, I just, we're doing ministry in addictive space. We're getting volunteers, recruiting them to come in to do ministry in the addictive space. And we're ministering to people that are in addictive space. Like, we've got to get that armor of God on. And I'm thankful for Laura for El, Michelle, for Stacy, and the others that are speaking into this from a mental health capacity, from a prayer capacity, some of the stuff that Whitebeard's doing as well, and it's ramping up to do with us. Like, it's an exciting season. It's a hard season today, but I know that what we're building towards is going to be used by the kingdom in a big way tomorrow. So stay tuned on a lot of this. But we're going to land the plane, and this has been a great conversation on being emotionally available. We've got another stream next week, and actually, I may jump on a stream Thursday just to have fun and hang out with y'all. But more later on that. But to land the plane here for Barbara with Hope Made Strong, this is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out on the stream with us, and we'll see you next time on the show. Take care, everyone.