12x12: February #4: "Q&A"

This is the fourth lecture of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker. This was held on February 4, 2025. The Conference was entitled: "On Fear and Failure: From "My life is an Endless Struggle" -- to -- My Life is a Compelling Story." In this lecture, Adam Young and guest speaker Rob answer questions at the halfway mark of the conference.

Rob, how did you get here on this journey?

Part of the curriculum of my life is that it is okay to be sad! I achieved all of the things the world said would make me happy, and I wasn't happy. It's okay to be sad and disappointed. They are an important dementia of life. "I became a master at protecting you from the depths of the human experience." And then needing to realize, sometimes you have to be sad.

How do we handle changing direction in our faith journey?

So many of us were taught that our self was bad and it was fundamentally flawed. I was baptized in self-contempt. If you didn't feel crummy about yourself, you were missing out on something. Of course you wrestle with that. The same people who put a roof of our head and food on the table, received a message from those parents. Four-year-olds can't parse that out. Twelve-year-olds probably still can't. So of course you learned self-contempt from them. What were you thinking? You were thinking: This is what I was taught from birth. They took care of me. I wanted to be loved. I was lonely. 

What do you do when you are dealing with incredibly intense fear?

Use your truth tellers!! Go to your people to help you go through your mantra! You have survived every single stress in your life. So what we know with 100% certainty is that you made it through it in the past, otherwise you wouldn't be here talking about this one. This one, at some point, will be another one from your past. When you say that question out loud, the question loses its power. Asking our truth teller, "Tell me it's going to be okay?" is allowing ourselves to receive comfort. It's one thing to have the fear. It's another thing to be alone in the fear. 

THE REACH can be one of the hardest things to do. 

How do I help my children with their fears?

Other than enjoying your child, you are helping your child listen to their own deep knowing. You are helping them learn to be you. As you are with them (withness) in the pressure they are feeling, it will start to morph into something else. 

If you have mostly been excluded ...

You need to grieve that. That is a loss.