About Confronting Normal.

In this episode Cindy and Renae have a candid conversation about their upbringing in church, their shifting beliefs, and how living out intentional faith requires some serious reprogramming to see: people are not projects, relationships are not agendas, loving others cannot be motivated by fear, and trust can not be about control.

Today’s episode is a conversation about what it means to think critically about how we’re going to engage life's tensions and how we’re going to participate in being the light amidst the dark. Perhaps instead of sanitizing what's uncomfortable to deal with, what we need to do instead, is have grace and space to walk through what’s hard, messy and ugly.

As Christians, traditionally there are two options when approaching the 31st, you can either head to church or turn off your lights. But what if there was another way? What if we viewed Halloween, instead, as an opportunity to turn on our lights, open our doors (and hearts) and meaningfully connect with our neighbours?   

Today’s church/faith/Christian structure takes the shape of—and places high importance on—the Sunday morning gathering. We all know it and we all get it. But in today’s episode and conversation, Cindy and Renae ask some honest questions about why the Christian faith has to come packaged as one standard structure? What if there are so many more ways to experience and enjoy God than simply sitting in a pew?

In today’s episode, Cindy and Renae discuss their summers, the journeys they’ve been on and the lessons they’ve learned that have brought surprising new insights about God, themselves and their lives.

It may not be comfortable to do so, but by examining your life, you empower your faith to grow and reveal itself in unexpected ways. And you might just fantastically discover the thing that’s been bothering you all this time is actually something so much more. Today’s episode is a simple conversation about the possibilities that just might be on the other side of self-examination.

Religious vulnerability is a very real thing. The cost of being honest about your questions and doubts is high, but the cost of suppressing them is likely even higher. If we can't find a safe place within church to be honest with our doubts and to wrestle with them then where do we go? If we could find more safe places to talk about these things and to be honest about these things perhaps we would see fewer people leaving church.

The need for security runs deep in our culture. It’s a natural human response to be on a quest for answers in order to find a sure sense of certainty for today’s chaotic times. But today’s episode challenges each of us to lean into areas of not knowing, to confront the systems that hold us back, and to redefine what wealth should really mean. Because experiencing the deepest of deep is healthy.

Practices such as mindfulness, stillness, silence and meditation are great forms of discipline for today’s hyper-connected culture. They are certainly trendy topics and much-needed habits for this fast-paced generation we find ourselves living in. And these healthy practices are wonderful at teaching us to sit, reflect and slow down our pace of life. But it’s also important to consider what our stillness is founded on. What are we being mindful about? Who are we being silent for? What is feeding our souls? And what do we consider to be the center of our lives in which all the other practices...

The drive in our culture to live our best lives and be all we can be is one of our greatest temptations and biggest distractions. It stirs up constant pressure within us, and a perpetual rat race of busyness around us. In reality, we’re just being distracted from what is most meaningful and what actually matters. But what if, rather than being caught up with all we could do and should do, what if we chose instead, to really engage with a practice of stillness and recognize that we can’t change everything going on on the outside, but we do...