077: Seeking Wholeness in Low Seasons with Justin McRoberts

What if your anxiety and depression aren't going away any time soon?

Many have been taught that depression means you're broken, that sadness is a lack of faith, or that anxiety is a sign of weakness. This can feel hopeless, especially when the strongest prayers and medicine don't cure your condition. In this conversation with Justin McRoberts, we explore the concept of wholeness and challenge the idea that health is the absence of negative emotions and experiences. He talks about his latest book, co-written with Scott Erickson, In The Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons, and how he has learned to embrace anxiety and depression. Your heart will stir as you hear his story and compassion for those stuck in the low, especially those who have lost their faith community due to spiritual abuse.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Justin McRoberts is an author, coach, speaker, and songwriter. For over 20 years, Justin has helped artists, ministers, and entrepreneurs find their way and solve problems in their creative processes. When he's not writing, speaking, or coaching, you can find him as the host of the At Sea podcast. He lives in the East San Francisco Bay Area.

Links & Resources 🔗 

Website | Instagram | Podcast

• In the Low by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson | Amazon | Bookshop
• In the Absence of the Ordinary by Francis Weller | Amazon | Bookshop

Similar Episodes You Might Like

• 036: Burning a Path to Renewal with Erin Moon
• 069: You Are Not Your Pain with Monica DiCristina

Don’t Miss the Next Episode!

Sign up for our Podcast Newsletter and subscribe on your favorite podcast app below and never miss out on these conversations with old and new friends. Is there a guest you’d like to hear from? Let us know!

Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Amazon Music  |  YouTube

Spread the Word. Leave a Rating and Review. It would mean the world if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple or on Spotify or share with your friends. 

Broken to Beloved is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to provide practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse. Our programs like this podcast are made possible in part by the generous donations of our supporters. Consider joining our community of supporters with a gift of $25 today.

As an Amazon and Bookshop.org affiliate, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Episode Transcript 📄

Justin McRoberts
When we hit those lows, what if instead of trying to get the hell out of there, what if what I recognize is there's more to me than I thought there was? What if these things are actually part of my wholeness? What if that's part of what makes me beautiful, actually? What if that's actually an aspect of who I am that is a good part of who I am, and that if I consent to the work of God in my life, I get to call these things good and then change my posture towards myself?

Brian Lee
Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. I'm an ordained pastor and spiritual abuse survivor, and I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why Broken to beloved exists.

And we need your help. We're looking for just 80 people to join us by setting up a donation for $10 a month. You can head to broken to beloved.org/support or click the link to donate in the show notes.

Today, we're talking with Justin McRoberts. He spoke at one of our previous summits about his book, Sacred Strides, and I loved that conversation, and I hope you'll enjoy this one, too. Justin is the author of eight books, including his newest, In the Low, which he co-authored with Scott Erickson. Now, here's my conversation with our friend Justin. Justin, welcome to the podcast.

Justin McRoberts
Happy to be here, man. Good to see you.

Brian Lee
Yeah, good to see you again. Let's start with some...Technical is the wrong word, but is it safe to say that you are generally a writer and Scott is generally an artist? Because you are extremely creative.

Justin McRoberts
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think that is safe, and it's because it's safe to be wrong. Good. I'll start with Scott, and I'll tell you an anecdote. Scott will love that I'm telling in his absence.

Brian Lee
Yay.

Justin McRoberts
We were at a conference in Pittsburgh, the conference we met at, which is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a conference called Jubilee. There was someone who was speaking on the main stage that afternoon or the evening. Scott had run into six or seven times. We were talking about speakers and celebrities and all this stuff. Scott said, it doesn't irritate me, but it's a little bit embarrassing. He's like, this guy reintroduces himself to me every time. He doesn't remember having met me before. I was like, Oh, that's As we're having that conversation, that guy walks onto the elevator, the guy we're talking to. He sees me, and I've known the guy for a long time in different contexts. I'm like, Hey, it's good to see you. He's like, How do you know what time I have for? How did the kids? Et cetera. Then goes to Scott, he goes, Hey. Oh, no. He increases himself. He goes, Oh, yeah. You paint. That's what he says. Then the two of us later got off the elevator, walked off, and we were just like, That was perfect. It was a skit. But from then, he and I, Scott and I have this back and forth conversation.

It's actually part of Scott's life. It's like his handle is @scottthepainter. At this point, it's a misnomer. I would suggest that Scott... If Scott falls into a category, I would say he's more of a performance artist.

Brian Lee
I love that.

Justin McRoberts
This is me. Scott would probably say something otherwise. He's a world-class artist. Scott's capacity for visual art and the particular kinds of visual art he makes, he really does things differently than anyone I know, and he does them at a really high level. He's very good at that. I would I would say that the thing he's best at, though, is the synthesis of visual art, communication, humor, and reflection. I love that. I would say more of a performance artist. I would say I do some writing, but if I look at my calendar and the way I spend my time, I spend most of my time in more of a coaching, retreat leading posture. I'm a communicator facilitator, and I also write. So there's the complex menagerie answer to your question. Yeah.

Brian Lee
Well, and it was all in service of a follow-up question that I really want to ask, which is this. I love that the book just lists both of your names, that it's not so simple as written by Justin with artwork by Scott. Would you tell us about that choice? How much of your writing is informed by Scott, and how much Scott's artwork work as informed by your writing, and how that worked?

Justin McRoberts
Yeah, at this point, there's a lot of... This is our third book together, and we've done quite a bit outside of those books as well in terms of live shows or performances. And there's a lot of what we do together that has I'll use the word synthesis again that has this synesthetic back and forth. There's a lot of energy back and forth between my writing and his visual pieces, then his visual pieces, and what I'm writing, and then some what he writes. To Even to the degree that when we were starting to put the book together, the way we both tend to write is... I don't think I've ever sat down and said, I'm going to write a book about rest, or I'm going to write a book about creativity. I will look up and see, over the course of the last 10 months, I've collected these thoughts, these notes. I'm clearly thinking about these things, and then I start to assemble and build. At the point in which these things started to pop up after, honestly, almost eight years of conversation about a project like this, there was so much resonance already between this is a piece that very clearly works really well with what Scott's doing.

Scott was putting these pieces together. This very clearly has correlation with the stuff that Justin's doing. There's the a natural cultural spiritual connection between what we do. This book, more so than the ones in the past, to some degree because we're more practiced at it, but also because this is just a deeper place for both Scott and I to talk about depression and the sadness and disillusionment. There's a truckload of that. Then once we actually get into the practice and process of assembling the thing, I would say probably a third of what ended up written or drawn was really, really informed by what we already had on hand. In other words, showed up with most of it. And then the rest of it was relatively easy because that energy was bubbling, a little bit volcanic. This is already happening, and about a third of the book emerged and erupted from the energy and the collision of what was already happening. So a lot of it is that way.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I love that. Well, I always appreciate trying to credit the right people. I think especially with a book like this. And knowing Scott also writes, he has Say Yes, he has Honest advent. So in reading through the poems and the prayers and the pieces and looking at the artwork and assuming that you had some input on that and he has some input on the writing, just to know that I don't want people to walk away and assume that you just did the writing and he just did the artwork, but that it really is a collaboration. I love that. You open up the book with a new mantra. This is your third book. So you add to the other two books, We spend time in the low because we are human, not because we're broken.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
And I love that because personally and from so many people that we've heard from in our community, that there's this idea that lowness comes out of our brokenness. So tell us more about that.

Justin McRoberts
Specifically for your community of people, identifying depression, lowness, sadness, anger, all the negative emotions, identifying those as internal problems for me to internally deal with so that I can get back to my life is such a terrible narrative. If I'm experiencing depression, if I'm experiencing dissolution, if I'm constantly experiencing anger, well, those are issues that I have, my anger, my dissolution, my sadness. I need to either medicate those or figure out what's going on in me. What that does, it does two things that are awful. The first one is it foregoes the cultural diagnostic moment, which is to say, if we are collectively experiencing a depression, if we're collectively, if there's so many of us, you have a community, folks, we're experiencing a lot of these same things. What are the chances? We're experiencing the same thing because we're having the same internal experience because we're sharing a cultural moment. What does that say about the systems that we belong to? That's not to say I push everything out on the systems because how I respond is is on me. But in, I think, a more mature posture, what we recognize is my not being well might be evidence that the culture I belong to, the systems I am functioning in are also not well.

I want to follow the thread. Instead of just concluding, depression is a problem, I need to deal with it, where does that take you? Follow the thread of your depression. Where is this coming from? Does everything have a cause? Maybe, maybe not. But if I follow the thread, there are probably some practices and protocols in me that I need to deal with. But I'm also probably dependent upon or attached to social cultural patterns, institutional patterns that are jerking with my mind, and I need to diagnose those as well. I'd love to come back to that some. The other piece is, I was just having this conversation. We tend to conflate health and wholeness, and I don't think they're the same thing. When we talk about health, we talk about people's mental health journey or spiritual health. Oftentimes when we talk about health, it's hard, and I don't think this is a problem, it's hard not to... You say men's health and the They say health, and you think of my magazine as men's health. This is a picture of what health is. Health, when we talk about health, it has a lot to do with the absence of negative emotions, the absence of negative patterns.

Being physically healthy is the absence of fat. It's the absence of these negative things. Now, is it a good idea to eliminate certain things from your diet and all that stuff and move towards health? That's fine. I would suggest that wholeness is a deeper journey. Health is fine. Health is a good thing to pursue. But wholeness means that I actually embrace the aspects of me that aren't going to get healthy in a healthy way. This is a part of me that will never go away. For those of us who live with depression, if I'm constantly pressing myself up against the wall of health, then I'm adding to my depressive journey the shame that comes from, Well, I'm a complete broken. What I want to do with the book is to say, Well, Should you address some of the factors, practices, and elements in your life that lead to this cycle of returning to the low? Probably. But please don't go down the path of thinking that at some point you will eliminate this aspect of who you are because that's not the human journey. Health is one thing, and it's a good thing. Wholeness, I would suggest, is actually the stage on which all of it happens.

If I don't If I can embrace myself as a whole person, then my health journey will be riddled with shame.

Brian Lee
I think that's it. And there's so much of that theme throughout the book, this embracing of the low with all of the other pieces, that the low isn't something to get It's not something to just push through. I think there's even one point, it's like the low is part of who I am.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
And so embracing all that towards wholeness and integration rather than just the shunning or dismissing or pressing down and all of these things. So I love that whole idea. You also invite us through Mary Mrzowsky's Welcoming Prayer into an embodied approach to this work in a book which we largely consume with our eyes, with our thinking. So I love this embodied approach that you talk about this need to notice our sensations and experiences. And it's so much a part of what I'm learning in terms of that work of wholeness to take that embodied approach to it. And there's a phrase you include in there. You say, Welcoming experience as an opportunity to consent to God's presence. That's a phrase that I think a lot of people aren't familiar with, consent to God's presence. Say more about that.

Justin McRoberts
The consent piece really is a hallmark of, I would suggest, the good spiritual formative practice. That me, it's a prayer and spiritual formation have far less to do with me accomplishing something with a tool and getting something done and more to do with allowing myself to be cared for, allowing the divine to be the divine in my life and to actually consent to the activity of God. What Mary Mrzowsky does with the prayer is actually moves us towards the actual practice of consenting to what's happening in us, consenting what's happening between us and God, as opposed to the constant Western-driven practice of trying to make something happen, adding stress upon stress. I'm experiencing this, and if I'm experiencing this, then I have to do something to deal with this.

What Mrzowsky says, and I love, is like, why don't you, instead of doing that, why don't you consent to what's happening in your body already? If I can consent to what's happening in my body already, then it allows me to consent to what God is actually up to in me, as opposed to trying to get God to do something that God's not already doing.

Consent, I would suggest, is maybe actually the spiritual pivot point for mature adults, because what we don't get is that we are constantly being acted upon without our consent at anyways. I'm not consenting necessarily. I'm not consciously consenting to all the aspects of my culture that are actually acting on me, informing me. If I can begin to consciously consent to the activity of God that awakened me to the permissions I have been giving other entities, other agencies, and other powers in my life that have been forming me. I would suggest consent is the pivot point for a healthy spiritual mental practice because I recognize how much my life there is in which I'm giving myself over to powers that are acting on me that I didn't give them permission to.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's really helpful. And I think consent... It's funny because I hear it a different way or I read it a different way than the way I hear you explaining it now. And I think for so many people who have experienced some abuse or trauma, that agency is taken away from them. So this idea that we can consent to these things or consent to the presence of God, which we're so often taught, is just everywhere, and that we don't have the agency to consent to that presence being there. And yet there's this invitational surrender to it rather than this forced surrender of force, I just have to deal with it because it's always there, versus the invitation to become aware of what's already there. Yeah. I think that helps so much.

Justin McRoberts
I agreed. And even that, I agree, I think the attempt at kindness in community that God is everywhere at all times. I understand that. But what you're pointing out is if God is good and kind, then God doesn't act without consent. In other words, you have Jesus saying that there was... How is it phrased? I should probably pull up the scripture itself. That there are places in the scriptures where Jesus won't do He won't work in a certain region. He's like, We're not working there. He relents. He decides not to work there. The way we tend to teach that is like, Well, there wasn't enough faith in that place. So Jesus didn't act on the faith. That's a way to talk about it. The other side of the coin is part of the act of faith in me is consent. I will allow you to come and do this work of healing. Even watch it in the healings where Jesus say, extend your hand. Instead of just saying, your hand is in your cloak, I'm going to go ahead and heal it from here inside your cleaves, extend your hand. That puts this gentleman in a position in which he can, the way it doesn't happen.

He can extend his hand or not. Go wash in the pool of Siloam. If you want the healing, then you get to participate in this healing. I think that's part of the character and the kindness of God. Is God present? Constantly? Yes. Is God constantly acting on and around and with you? I don't know. I wonder if part of what we learn with regards to what it means to have faith is actually granting God permission to move and act in areas of our life, specifically more delicate ones.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I find that fascinating. And I also love that you say that at no point are you asking us to welcome hurtful circumstances, abuses, acts of violence, but instead to just welcome God's presence. And to and with us in those experiences, to the ways our soul respond. You've already said that this is the act of spiritual formation. Isn't this also the nature of spiritual direction? Is that invitation?

Justin McRoberts
100%. And both Scott and I became spiritual directors, got certifications in spiritual direction between the last book and this one. And that's informed the way we shaped this as well. And the delineation between consenting to or welcoming negative circumstances versus welcoming how I feel about that negative circumstance is a really, really healthy spiritual and mental health practice. It's like, I don't need to welcome and embrace what happened. I really do want to be okay with how I feel about it, though. I don't want to conflate the two. I don't want to say this thing is this thing, how I feel about it is the thing, the thing is how I feel about it. What Mary Mrzowsky's prayer does is it actually puts me in a position to say, these are my responses to the data around me, negative and positive, this is what I'm experiencing. And I get to embrace what's happening in me without making a judgment about my circumstances. I don't have to attach to to it. I can just deal with what's going on me, which I think is freedom.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I totally agree. I felt the temptation as I was reading through the book, knowing that that prayer was going to come at the end of each section to just skim through it or skip it. I was like, I got more to get to. And I also felt the need or the invitation, I guess, to just slow down and just read it anyway, because it's not that long. But it was such a welcome invitation to be like, Hey, let's just check in. This was a whole section on these things. And it really was just such a beautiful way to do that. Yeah.

Justin McRoberts
I'm really glad you did that.

Brian Lee
Me too. And I feel that invitation. There's a poem, prayer on 52. And you say, One thing I do know is that the heaviness makes thinkers of us all. Grant me the courage to get out of my head and not think my way out of healing and wholeness. And there's that beautiful artwork of Rodin's thinker in a vice. So this invitation to embodiment. If the way to healing and wholeness isn't through thinking, where is it through?

Justin McRoberts
So that's the consent piece. So here we come into the conversation about systems of control versus the activity of the divine. And healing and how we identify healing, most of our definitions for healing or health, they come from systems that have a really particular goal in mind. And those aren't bad things. I would just say they're probably lesser things. So if I'm going to be healthy, spiritually, emotionally, that means I have a vision for that or the system that taught me that has a vision for what that looks like and how I get to that. So I want to try to get to this place. That effort is fine. I want to hold that effort loosely because I would suggest that God's perspective on what healing and what wholeness look like are grander, deeper, more complex. We use the word mystery far too often, but a tad more mysterious. Do I want to hit my health goals, spiritually, emotionally, physically? Sure. But at some point in there as well, I would like to be whole in a way that I'm designed to be whole and not just in the ways I'm trying to be whole, which means consenting.

Okay, what do you want for me? So we go to Paul's often misused bit about like, there's this thorn in my flesh, and I asked God to take it, and he said no. Then we go really quickly to, and I think they're clearly a task, we would go quickly to, my power is made your weakness. That's all cute when we move that to, Well, Paul had to be humbled so that he could do this thing. But before the work of Paul's life, even that notion of there's this thing that I really want God to remove from my life, this thorn in my flesh, this thing in my body, this thing happening to me that I really want you to take away, and that God says, No, I'm not going to. Just that little bit of conversation, what is the divine perspective on human wholeness? What is God's take on me? What does God mean? What does God desire for me when it comes to my wholeness? And as someone who has lived with ADHD and depression the entire... And these things aren't going away. I will live with ADHD and depression the entire of my life.

It's never gone away. So if these things aren't going away, what What if me living with this thing that my culture calls a dysfunction? What if me living with this pattern of lowness that my culture calls depression and a problem? What if these things are actually What if that's part of my wholeness? What if that's part of what makes me beautiful, actually? What if that's actually an aspect of who I am that is a good part of who I am, and that if I consent to the work of God in my life, I get to call these things good and then change my posture towards myself? Yep.

Brian Lee
Because without that, we wouldn't have gotten In the Low.

Justin McRoberts
Yes. True story.

Brian Lee
Because your experience would have been completely different. And then we don't get people who need that message of how to live with this thing, not in spite of, not around, not ignoring, but just like, how do I integrate this anxiety and depression into me as part of me and say, this is how we live. This is what wholeness looks like.

Justin McRoberts
It removes, hopefully, it can remove the shame piece of it, that I should not be this way. How about we stop that piece for a minute and just say, This is how I am. This is an aspect of who I am. Let's just begin there. I was supposed to begin from, and there's a poem in here about this, this ghost of an image of who I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to live this way. That's not real thing. This perception of who I'm supposed to be, that's not real. What's real is what's actually happening in me, which takes me back to Mary Mrzowsky's prayer, like embrace and pay attention to what's actually real, what's actually paying attention. Let's just begin there and stay there long enough. That I can see what's good about this as opposed to chasing this ghost of health.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I love all of that. You write about how our relationships and connections are so intertwined when it comes to our perception and experience of connections, both to God and people, right? And you even say, I think when those people were gone from my life, it was less of a social bummer and more of a full-blown existential crisis. I am now radically aware of the way my God connection is tied to my people connection. So when those connections feel severed or lost, how do or how did you find a way back toward safety and vulnerability and even consent in making new connections?

Justin McRoberts
I didn't for a long time. Part of the chapter, I think, will resonate with a number of people in the broken beloved world. I've been a pastor for going on 20 years at the time, and I tied my identity to the work, tied my identity to being a pastor, which really, it's one thing to say that like that. I tied my identity to the work and to the role. What I actually mean by I think, is that I tied my identity to a specific set of results that it was supposed to turn out this way. I don't think I knew that I had done that at the time. It would have been easy for me to say, I'd attach myself to the name pastor, to the role pastor. What I didn't know I meant by that was that by attaching myself to the role pastor, I was attaching myself to a certain set of expectations that this is how this is going to turn out. When those things went away is when the bottom fell out and I hit that low. For a long time, man, I did not. I didn't climb out. I didn't reconnect. I stayed. I didn't choose to. I'm glad that I did.

One of the prayers in the book, close to the center of the book, is my hope is not just that I ascend back to the surface, though I do hope that. My hope is that I learned to breathe at this depth. It If had I chased reconnection immediately, which is like, that's the impulse, is like, I've hit a low, I feel isolated, I feel alone. I need to get the hell out of here. I need to find some new friends. I need to move towns. I need to find a better job. Immediately jumping to, I've got to get out. For all kinds of reasons, and none of which had to do with my will or wisdom. I was dumb as a brick at the time. I was just there for a long time. I would even say it like this, I stayed long enough to figure out that that deeper, deeper part of me, the deep, dark feeling of isolation, I didn't get there. It didn't happen. I didn't come to that knowledge after That sense of isolation didn't show up after things had fallen apart.

That place, that depth in me was already there, and the floor I fell through was a false floor anyways. Those relationships as a pastor... I think we had this conversation a long time ago that I was told by the guy who was training me. He said, once you type on this role as a pastor, you don't get to just be another person in the room. Your friendship changed forever. They won't treat you the same. I didn't believe that. I had all these false expectations of what this community would be for and be for me. Then the floor fell out. Well, that isolation, that loneliness, that was there already in me. My time in the low, the deepest part of the deepest low of my life after losing the church, what I discovered was this is actually part of who I am. I have felt isolated and alone. There are a lot of places where In my life in which I'm just going to feel isolated and alone. This is an aspect of life. I'm not going to have as many friends as I thought I was going to have. I'm not going to be able to go as deep with as many people as I thought I was going to go deep with.

I didn't get reconnected initially. It took a long time to become familiar with, and I don't even know if I want to use the word comfortable with. To consent to, this is an aspect of who I am. This darkness, this depression, this sense of isolation. So again, one of the poems in the book, I never got out. I never climbed myself back out. I didn't reconnect in a way that got me back out of the low. What I did is, well, okay, if this is an aspect to it, I connect differently now. My relationships are different. My relationship with the institutional church is different. My relationship with myself is different. I learned that there's more to me. The last piece I said by this is when we hit those lows, what if instead of trying to get the hell out of there, what if what I recognize is there's more to me than I thought there was, and this is part of it.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thank you. There's a set of prayers back to back on 70 and 72 about grief rescuing us from this illusion that everyone wants the best for us, followed by the idea of how disillusioned clears the path of false hope so that we can experience the fullness of pain that comes with a good life. My goodness.

Justin McRoberts
Yeah, man.

Brian Lee
I imagine some people hear this and liken it to their own experiences of whatever, deconstructing, deconverting, cynicism, the loss of these connections and relationships. And yet what I hear in these prayers is hope. What does receiving that gift of disillusionment or about grief rescuing us from that illusion look like without the soul-crushing weight that I think people often feel or hear? Because I think there is that hope in receiving disillusionment.

Justin McRoberts
Yes. It's a good question. I can tell you what I discovered, which is that it ended up being a choice between... So you're talking about soul crushing weight. It has ended up oftentimes being a choice between two different kinds of weight and burden, which is part... I love the teaching of Jesus in which he says, My yoke is easy, my burden is light. What he doesn't say is, There's no yoke or there's no burden. That there's a path in life in which there's no yoke, and there's a path in life in which there's no burden. No, there's a yoke and there's a burden. The prayer on 70, I've come to realize that not everyone wants me whole, knowing that comes with some grief. I do have to grieve. This is how I thought it was going to go. This is how I wanted it to go, and I have to let go of that. And yet that grief rescues me from the illusion that everyone is for me and has my best interests in mind. May grief over the ways I thought I was cared for. A clear room in me for thankfulness to shine on the ways I am.

I have come to believe my soul has far more wisdom and knowledge than I give it credit for, than I give myself credit for. We figured this out after a time, and we figured it after we hit the wall, and I think we figured this out in the low. Figure this out? We come to know this in the low. It's my soul, and We say this after the we say this after the breakup, right? Something in me knew. This thing happened. I just kept having this feeling and she would do these things, and I wasn't sure about it. Then we were like, Oh, wow. I knew. I knew. That we call it instinct. I think our souls are experiencing life at a depth and a degree that we don't give our souls credit for. We don't live our lives oftentimes at a pace slow enough to pay attention to what's happening in our soul. In the grief of letting go of how I thought things were, I actually get to pay attention to my soul, say, I knew this was going to fall apart. But also in the same way that I knew This is falling apart.

I want us to pay attention to this. These are the friends that you thought you were going to have. These are people who are actually caring for you. So maybe deeper than anything else, I think our souls, The depth of our souls are the places where God is doing this work that's secret from our conscious mind and is divorced from our calendars. And on the other side of the grief of losing what we thought we had or what we thought we wanted, we get to discover what our souls... We get to discover what our souls are wanting and what our souls are experiencing.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I think that's so good. And we've talked about this one already several times, but just that question of how did you get out? And it's like, well, I didn't get out. It's just the lowest part of who I am. I so appreciate the idea that being in the low is not just a season to endure or escape or any of these things, but to integrate into part of our wholeness. And like you're saying, sometimes there's a false floor that we set up for ourselves that when it falls out, we discover that all of this stuff was already there anyway.

Justin McRoberts
Yes. It's not just who I am now because something happened to me. The thing that happened to me started or stirred a process in me, which I got to pay attention more deeply to what's actually happening in my book. Yeah.

Brian Lee
I mean, we'll say it several times, tell everyone to get the book, but obviously, the whole thing is so good. But worth the price of admission that people should just buy is the turd sandwich on 96. So we won't say more about it so people go get it for themselves. I love that so much. Thank you. There's no question. It's just I love it.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
Let's talk about main character energy.

Justin McRoberts
Yeah.

Brian Lee
Because you write about despising this hyper individualistic narrative that so much of our storytelling trends toward today, right? Yes. And you pull us back towards connection and community that we don't We have what it takes to be the main character in our own lives, that we need other people to speak into that and give us essential aspects of our identity. There's so much about our culture that says, just go do it yourself, right? You do you. And yet we discover that the truth is we can't.

Justin McRoberts
No.

Brian Lee
Tell us about that.

Justin McRoberts
The main character energy piece, gosh, I can't remember where I was at the time, and I probably should name it in public, but I was at a conference of some kind. I think in general, it was fine. But there was definitely a motivational type speaker person who was on the stage giving the quintessential, you're the main character talk. I noticed, and it didn't just happen to me initially. I noticed the room not get as stoked as she wanted to be. You and I have both experienced this where folks have this collective, maybe nameless experience. Again, something in your soul says, I don't want that. I really don't want that. I realized, I thought it afterwards, I reflected and thought, Well, it feels like maybe there was a burden placed on them. That's what I thought.

Brian Lee
That's a good way to say it.

Justin McRoberts
You're the main character. Then I thought, I left the conference and I started thinking about some of the things I've been saying to coaching clients about, listen, You can count on you and all this stuff. I'm like, I mean that well, but I think I'm putting things on people that they're not designed to carry. So the main character, be the main character. I think it works really well as a cute motif that sets up great Instagram reels and TikTok. But I think it's a shit way to live your life. It sure is. Because outside of the reality, if you really are banking on you being the main character and having all your ducks in a row all the time, boy, it's a recipe for utter disaster. It's like absolute utter disaster. Also, it's a recipe for feeling entirely isolated. The better way to say it is like, Gosh, you're missing out on so much.

I was out on a ride with... I'll do this and then I'll get back to the book. I was on a ride with my 15-year-old a couple of days ago, I'm on a bike ride. We went to a place called Rockville, which is not too far from where we live. I am trash with maps. I was really great. Digital maps, I don't know what happened. I used to have one of those Rand McNally atlases.

Brian Lee
Atlases?

Justin McRoberts
I loved it. I traveled the country for years before digital media, and it was like, I love the map. I had all the barns and nobles in the country marked out on the map because they had Starbucks in them. It was like, We know where the coffee is going to be. I could read those maps, but digital maps, I don't know what happens. My brain freaks out and I can't... We're out on this trail, and I know that I'm bad at figuring things out, figuring where we are, but he loves it. He's 15. He loves it, and he's really good at it. What a deeper experience it was for me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. The manly good guy, dad thing to do is I've got her in control I know where we are on the map. I have a node and a satellite in the sky. But the deeper experience was like, I have no idea where the hell we are right now. Hey, buddy, how do we get back to? And he pulls his phone out. That's just a deeper experience of life in which my inabilities, my weaknesses, my shortcomings actually set me up to be in a relationship in a way that is way more enjoyable.

I get to enjoy him more deeply. And that's not just because it's my son. That's true of community in general. I pave pathways to deeper connection by way of my absences, my weaknesses, my absences, my deficiencies, all these things we have negative terms for. They're just permissions for us to grant other people to have power and to have access and give gifts. But the way we came in the book was... I'll read a piece of this, and then I'll do the rest of it. The section is called Considering the Disconnection from the Natural World and Status and Respect. The South of where I live by just about an hour is Henry Cowell State Park. The park features redwood trees that are upward of 1,600 years old. For some perspective, only seven nations on Earth are older than these trees. Towards the back of the park is a redwood tree you can climb into and stand fully upright. The tree's roots have grown to provide a doorway, complete with a small staircase leading down into the Earth. During a recent visit, as I was waiting my turn to enter the tree, I watched a younger man, wearing a very nice business suit, smack his head on the tree while climbing out.

The crowd gathered around the tree, gave a collective, 'ouch, ' while the young man staggered a bit. The park docent reached out to steady him, adding, You hit your head pretty hard, son. I'm sorry. ' This is what the guy says. He goes, I'm sorry. Did I hurt the tree? ' The docent smiled, Oh, the tree doesn't even know you're here. Are you okay? I go on to reflect on how vital a moment that is for someone like that, which is, say, someone like me, to realize the tree is 1,600 years old. Literally the nation you live in didn't exist. The tree did. It doesn't care. It doesn't care about you. The ocean that you step in doesn't care about you. When we touch base with nature, this is part of what we do in the book, when we touch base with nature, we actually engage with, and I say this later on in the chapter, we engage with rhythms of wind and tied that have actually been that were set in motion at the moment of creation. It puts us in a position which this tiny little speck of a moment in which I'm living, I'm not the main character.

The hell are What are you talking about? You get to live. You get to be here. The main character narrative steals from us the joy of just being able to exist, that you get to at all. If I can embrace that and move away from the main character narrative, then actually I've got a little bit of room to say, If I get to live here at all, then maybe I get to be sad. Maybe I get to be disillusioned. Maybe I get to have pain. Maybe I get to have all these things that the main character never wants to push out because the main character is supposed to be the hero. But someone who just is allowed to exist, then if I'm someone who is just allowed to exist, then I've got room for whatever the hell happens while I'm here.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Well, and how liberating that must be to allow yourself to be small in a very large story and to not have to put on airs or overcompensate for areas. If you had just tried to make up a reason or a way to read the map and just get yourselves home and just got yourselves in a worse mess, instead of that invitational, beautiful connection that you get to make, whether it's your son or anyone else, I just love that idea, the ability to just be small and get to just live without having to know everything, without having to be in charge, without having to make all the big decisions and all the things.

Justin McRoberts
It allows life to be...

Brian Lee
It does. I love all of it. There's a story that you tell about vaulting at the 2000 Summer Olympics that just struck me. I love that illustration. And all these gymnasts are not sticking their landings. And then finally, someone's like, Hey, is the vault maybe at the wrong height? And it was five centimeters off, right? It reminds me of similar themes from Monica DiCristina and Erin Moon. Erin starts her book with that dedication to her parents for offering a gospel so real, it made all the false versions easier to kill. And Monica writes about, You learn to spot a counterfeit by spending lots and lots of time with the real thing.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
Just this invitation to authenticity and reality and just having the reps in on practicing the real thing over and over again, that as soon as you spot something's off, you just know.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
And it's something you know in your body.

Justin McRoberts
Absolutely. Yeah. And we're sharing that moment. And part of why I find your work valuable is there's so many reasons why your work is valuable. But part of why what you do is valuable is because when you start collecting these stories of... Because if it's one gymnast who's not sticking her landing, you're like, Oh, poor girls having a bad day. Sucks. It's too bad. But then it's another one. You're like, That's weird. But then six or It's a point in which there's a community of persons saying, Shit's wrong. This doesn't feel great. Then we begin to diagnose the environment. That's when magic, I would suggest, culturally starts to happen. I don't know if I'm going to recommend a book that's not mine. Do you have this one yet In the Absence of the Ordinary?

Brian Lee
No, but it's been on my list.

Justin McRoberts
I need to move it to the top. Doggy. Get this, bad boy. Part of what Weller gets into with the book is that we really are, and I buy this, we are collectively experiencing a shared moment of encouragement. Things have legitimately changed. It's not just like, oh, I won't say it negatively. If this many of us are having this similar experience, maybe there is a truth we're telling. We're So it's like painting around the edges of that thing. And part of why what you do is so vital for folks is you actually... The more folks you collect, the more stories you collect, the more stories you highlight of folks giving language to their experience, the more you end up helping to paint that shadow image around, like what is real then. We are all feeling this distance, this frustration that comes from my soul saying, there is something better than this. I'm not just disillusioned because I want in because I'm selfish. I'm disillusioned because there's something real here and my soul longs for it. If I'm dissatisfied here, that's got to mean this is me. There's got to me and there's something real in my soul longs for it.

My soul longs for it. What you all do as a community, what you do as a curator of that community, actually gives shape to that in a way that a singular book or a sermon can't do that. Why don't we do that by collecting people who are sharing the same stories and putting those up in a world in which... Putting those up in an environment which people can see that and say, Oh, shit, me too. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe the equipment's off. And like, You all, the equipment's off. The equipment is off. And it's not off terribly, but it is off just enough for us. It's enough for us to know. So thanks for doing what you do and for folding me in on occasion.

Brian Lee
I appreciate that so much. I want to close with fear and hope.

Justin McRoberts
Let's do it.

Brian Lee
I love this pairing that you do. You say that's one of the tricks that fear plays. It convinces us to trade hope for an angry, controlling version of practicality. It says, If you don't kill the thing chasing you, it will kill you. Hope, on the other hand, sees everything fear sees, recognizes those same threats and takes them just as seriously, but does so with a sobriety of history and with peace in her heart. And then you connect hope to vision by saying, Hope gives birth to vision.

Justin McRoberts
Yes.

Brian Lee
Which isn't about knowing the future. It's about actively creating the future regardless of our circumstances and obstacles, and far better than the ability to predict tomorrow's outcomes, it's the willingness and capacity to work towards goodness and beauty with whatever we have on hand. It is so beautiful. It is so invitational. After everything that you have seen and experienced, and Scott as well, who obviously we can't answer for, why or how do you continue to hold on to hope?

Justin McRoberts
I'm designed to. Yeah. I mean, it's like that it is the way I'm designed. It's why I'll say it in a very positive way, and then I'll say one negative thing. I'm designed to hope. I'm designed to desire and work for better. It's just what's in me. And so I do it because I have to. And I find nothing else actually satisfying. It's not satisfying. The critique part is fine, the diagnostic is fine, but the hope part in which I collect whatever I can have, I collect whatever I can on hand and then do with it whatever I can, okay, that's so satisfying. That's the only thing that's ever satisfied. So I continue to come back to hope because it's just the way I'm designed. And it is the reason, and this is the reason why the named unnamed agencies and elements in our environment work so incredibly hard to keep you mad and to keep you blaming, to keep you Anything other than hoping, keep you distracted. Because when there is change, it's because someone says, Okay, I'm exhausted. I don't like what I've experienced, but I'm unsatisfied, and I'm going to do something with what I have on hand and for whoever I can do it with.

That's when actual change starts. Is you say, Listen, I've got some words You got some images. Let's throw this thing together. Let's put it in the world, and then let's see what other people do with it when they have it in their lives. That just feels better because that's what I'm designed to do. Yeah.

Brian Lee
Thank you. So for people who are feeling caught or stuck in the low and can't seem to find their way back to hope or vision, what would you want to offer them?

Justin McRoberts
One, offer that to some other people. In other words, there aren't a lot of wrong... I don't want to say... There aren't a lot of wrong moves, per se, when it comes to spiritual and mental health practices. There are things are far less helpful. And the primary thing that is least is to do it on your own. By on your own, I mean you and an Instagram feed. Don't. Connect with the community of people as best you can. It's why broken blood exists. Get help from a coach, from a therapist, from a spiritual director. Part of why you are where you are is because you don't have the capacity or the ability to see everything you're supposed to see, and you can't see yourself the way you want to see yourself. You're not designed to. You need other people to help you do that. Once you've gotten a little bit of help, take a deep breath and plan on staying where you are for a while. Don't just try to fix it because it puts you in a position to get addicted to some bullshit someone else is trying to sell you. Follow the threads of your disillusionment.

Follow the threads of your sadness. Follow the threads of the the darker experiences you've had or are having. And follow your own soul's guide with the help of other people to what it is your soul is actually desiring.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thank you for that, Justin. If people want to connect with you, if they want to pursue coaching or spiritual direction, where do they find you?

Justin McRoberts
You just search my name, Justin McRoberts. I think I'm 12th or 15th on the... Just my name, Justin McRoberts. I post to Instagram every day. So if you go to Instagram, my stuff's there. But my website is fine and available.

Brian Lee
Perfect. And we'll have the links for everyone so they can hit you up number one. Everyone, go get a copy of In the Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons. Justin McRoberts, Scott Erickson. We'll provide the links for everyone in the show notes. Justin, thanks again for being with us.

Justin McRoberts
Anytime, man. Thank you.

Brian Lee
What an insightful conversation. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to follow Justin and say thanks for being on the show. You You can find links and all the things in the show notes. Coming up on the show, we have Sara Billups, Ian Morgan Cron, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, and more. Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review or share with your friends. It really helps us to grow and continue providing quality content for you.

And a special thank you to our listeners who make this show possible through their financial support. If you consider joining us at $10 a month, consider donating today at brokentobeloved.org/support or at the link in the show notes. This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and postproduction by Lisa Carnegis. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to Moving toward healing and wholeness, together. I'll see you next time.