Season 1 | Episode 48 | Special Guest, RT Therapist and DTS Professor Dr. Erik Salwen

Foreign.

What's up, man?

Rhett, dude. How's it going, my friend? Did I do it the way that Aro likes it?

Yeah. Episode 48.

48. And we are great. Hey, man, this is pretty big. We're at 48 today.

Yeah. And we got a great guess for number 48.

Dude, this. So Rob, I feel like, had, you know, his. His vocal chops, like, are very, you know, engaging. And we found another, like, amazing voice today with Eric. I'm excited. Not only does have a great voice, but a great brain. But I'll let you introduce him a little bit. Do we have any announcements with the POD or stuff going on?

We have level one training in January.

Yeah.

With Michael Cox. Correct. Do you have a date in front of you? Either one of you?

Well, you mean paying attention to what we should be doing?

Yeah, that's in January, if you want to pull the dates up real quick.

So we have Jason Wilkinson's and then we also have Michael Cox's. Michael Cox, I believe, is in February, but I'm not.

Okay, while you're looking that up, I'm going to also say Megan Ekin has Restoration Coaches training coming up on January 23rd through 24th. That will be online, and people just need to go to restoration therapy training.com backslash RC training. And I'll put that on the. On the show notes. Easy to find if you just go to Restoration Therapy website. So Restoration Coaches training with Megan Eakin. January 23rd through 24th. Yeah.

And then the other dates are January 9th through the 10th. It's with Jason Wilkinson. And I think they have a few spots left, so I definitely recommend doing that one. If you're up in the Northwest or you gotta hanker in and make it out there, probably throw in some skiing. You know, Eric likes to travel to. To hear music, so maybe there's a good music festival going on. And then we also. Michael Cox is January 23rd through the 24th in Austin, Texas, so. And then Eric's got one coming up soon, too. Let him tell us about that.

We'll have him tell us. All right, so Our guest is Dr. Eric Solon. Am I saying that right? Solon, Solen, all like Paul. Yeah, I feel like I pronounce it wrong. Eric is a professor at dts. Associate professor of counseling. Right. Counseling. The actual title. Counseling Ministries. Also a therapist down in Hill Country. College Station Counselors. Is that Hill Country? I guess that's.

No.

No, it's not.

No, it's. I'm in College Station Hill. Hill country is up In Austin.

Yeah, I guess I should know. When you say College Station, Texas, A and M, it's pretty flat land out there.

It's flat.

He's lpc lmft, also BCC board certified coach as well. Level one trainer. Eric, when's your date coming up for training?

Yeah, that's, that's in March, and I should know the exact weekend, but I, I don't.

I got it. It's the 20th and the 21st.

20Th and the 21st of March. Yep. So that'll be in Dallas, actually on the DTS Dallas campus.

Oh, yeah. That's gonna be exciting. And also we'll put this little out there. It's not in the, in solid yet. Eric and I and a couple other people at Hill Country Bible Church are planning a Texas meetup, a Friday night, Saturday day training in April. So we'll have to firm up those dates and we'll announce those. So we got a lot of RT stuff going, so. All right, Eric, all that aside, welcome to our podcast.

Thanks. I, I, I have loved every minute of what you guys have been doing in. And you know, Rhett, you and I were just talking about how, how this is not just a, a, a forum for unifying all of us, it actually is a forum for really growing all of us in the work. So really thankful for you guys.

Well, I appreciate it. We enjoy it, actually. It's a lot of fun. It is fun, as I told I, I was telling Rob last week. It's, it's, it's a cool little way to get people to have a conversation with you that maybe normally wouldn't hop on and have a conversation with you, even though I know I could give you a call up, Eric, still, it's like, hey, come on. Our podcast. And people are like, so it's like a cheat sheet to have cool conversations with people.

It's very cool.

Our last, when we did Rob's episode last, the, you know, his thing where he was talking about, like, taking your kid to school. I've been doing that with my daughter, like, asking her different questions about, like, trying to find that truth and like, you know, like Gardner, like, helping her feel stronger in her truth. So it's been fun, like, you know, to, to ask her. The other day, she said, I was like, julia, what makes you, what's one thing that makes you happy about yourself? And she goes, because I'm cute, like, with that little upper. And, and I doubled down on how cute she was. And she just had this really sweet, you know, spunk in her Step. And I was like, dude, that's such a great easy intervention to just like really? I, I don't want to call it an intervention. It's just a. Intentional conversation to have with your kids on the way to school.

Yep. See the things we learn, the podcast we just test out in our own lives here.

Come on.

Love that.

Hey, Eric, wait, so are you a go travel to places for a concert guy? Is that what.

Oh, well, mostly within the state, but Lance knows, Lance knows how much I've enjoyed the last few years of coming out to SoCal for the ohana festival there at Dana Point, so.

Ah, okay. We'll have to connect off. I, I. Nothing more than I love to travel to concerts and go to concerts, so.

Oh, it's so good.

My, My daughter's home from college and she is obsessed with Radiohead and huh. We cannot get out to Europe this time of year to see them in Copenhagen or something, which would be awesome because I could go visit Kierkegaard's, you know, home. So hopefully they'll come to the US But I love a good concert. Maybe we can have some artists come out to our rt Texas.

That would be great.

You know, maybe get country, get George Strait to come out and hang out with us.

Do we have that kind of poll? I don't know.

I don't think so. All right, I'll cut through all this. Let's start with the question we usually ask because I don't even know if I'm clear. How did you get to rt? Eric?

Yeah, man. I want us, I want to. Well, I know I'm following your lead and I want to do that, but I also want to make sure that I'm going to get to talk about the really important people. Right. Like my family and other stuff too. Right.

Talk about them. Right now this is. You can do whatever you want, man.

Honestly, I gotta start just by giving the shout out to my sweet, amazing wife. 32 years in February next year, Julie. And we've got three amazing four now, amazing kids. So Jessica, our daughter, is 26. She just got married a little over a year ago to Peyton, so she's now a Logan. And then our boys, AJ is 23 and Johnny is 17. So that's.

And one of them's in Europe playing soccer.

Yeah. Yeah. So Johnny got an opportunity, got recruited to a soccer academy in Rome. And so he's been. He's already been. Yeah, it's crazy. Finished half his year there. He's back for Christmas and then he'll go back in early January for the spring. So he's learning Italian, playing soccer, taking the train around the country. He's living the life as a 17 year old. Kind of crazy.

Is he as big as you?

Are he. So I'm. You can't see it on the camera. Right. I'm 6 foot 8, but and, and everything worked out, I feel like just Right. Julie, my wife is about five seven. Our daughter Jessica is about five nine. And then the boys, AJ is about six five. And Johnny, Johnny at 17 is coming up on. On six. On. On him too. He's six five also.

Whoa.

So yeah, big boys.

Soccer player or football?

He's a big guy. He's a center back. So he likes his. He's pretty solid back there in defense.

Wow. There could be worse places to go visit your kids while they're away, right?

Yeah, yeah, we've got trips planned to go visit. Go visit him. Yeah.

Go visit him in Rome.

Yeah.

I love it. Well, shout out to your family for all their support over the years.

Yeah. Amen. The. Thanks for that.

Especially Jules. Where would we be without her?

Yes, yes.

She's, she's been the. She's awesome. We got to meet her once. It was so cool.

Yeah, we, we, we, we actually just talked about that. Just the time that we were able to be with you guys and, and Terry and Sharon. That was, that was just really sweet.

Yeah.

You asked though. It's so funny. I actually would have thought that it would have been longer that I had just been. Just because of how much it feels like it's such a part of the fabric of how I live every day now. But met Terry and Sharon for the first time on, on. And I've got the day. It's March 30, 2012, and we were at the CAPS conference, the Christian association for Psychological Studies. They did their conference out in D.C. i think it was. I think Regent was the host that year, but the host school. But yeah, they were doing a 30 minute. It was just one of those one hour, you know, seminars that they have. And, and Terry and Sharon were making the rounds. They got up and they put the, the Pain in the Peace charts up on the screen and they talked through love and trust. And it was such an, it was such an important time for, for me in developing as, as a counselor because I had just graduated the year before with my master's from dts. So kind of a little bit later to the game in the world of counseling and marriage and family therapy. I spent 15 years in the tech industry. At Dell, Compaq, HP, a couple software companies. And then the Lord led me over into what I thought was going to be pastoring. Went to seminary, went to dts, started learning Greek and Hebrew and then realized that it wasn't pastoring, it was counseling. And, and, and Right. Learned all the theories. Now I was learning the individual theories, not the systemic ones, because I was in a counseling program, not an MFT program, but. But every single one of those theories was developed by a guy who denied the existence of God. And so, you know, DTS did their best at just trying to reframe that and put to integrate theology and bring the Scriptures in. And I kind of got drawn towards initially cognitive behavioral therapy, but. But then also was really intrigued by Viktor Frankl and man's search for meaning. And the idea that there was this, you know, this bigger thing that would drive all of us to really explore why we exist. Right. And so that plus kind of an Adlerian element of telling, just telling our stories. Right?

Yeah.

What became more of what guided me. And yet, so I'm a year out of my master's degree doing my LPC associate work and just kind of floundering because I'm not seeing the theological depth to any of the approaches that I'm trying to get more solid in the room. Right. In the clinical work. And so that's where the Lord's providence came in with getting to meet Terry and Sharon and getting to be exposed to restoration therapy. Because I think it was a couple years after that that Julie and I went out to Malibu and Terry and Sharon did a relate strong training with us. And that's where the two of them really just opened up even more of what I keep hopefully trying to build on of just this theological base that is so solid of what RT does, tying together the concept of love. Right. That speaks to our identity, tying that to the actual trinitarian nature of God and then with safety, tying that to the trinitarian character of God and really just exploring that more and having it become something even from a clinical basis in doing Christian counseling, where people are open to having more of that language be brought in, they find so much more meaning in that as well. Right. Just being able to hear something that connects to the deepest part of what motivates them to live every day.

Totally.

What is there some theologians that you kind of lean on heavily in your program when you train students that you think about from that trinitarian perspective, who you find is. Is a good connection point in terms of love and trust.

You Know, I wasn't as much thinking about it from a standpoint of necessarily like authors, but certainly there are some really foundational kind of influences on me, I would tell you. One is probably the professor I worshiped the most with in any of my courses I took in seminary was Scott Harrell. Dr. Harel. Actually. He's somebody to look up. I don't know. He's only actually published, I think one small text on the nature of the church, kind of a study in ecclesiology called from the Ground Up. But he is, he's incredible. He spent some time with, with Schaeffer at Labrie. He actually was the general editor of a theological journal at a seminary that he ran down in Brazil for a number of years. Wow. He spent some time in the Caribbean doing mission work. This, this guy is just, he's one of my. He's one of my heroes. One of the things that DTS does, they actually give students the opportunity to go. They turn it into an academic course and they take students, a small number over to Israel for three weeks and, and there's always a faculty sponsor that goes with the students. And they announced the faculty sponsor at the beginning. And I was in my last year at seminary as a student and, and they announced that, that Dr. Harrell was going to be the faculty sponsor for the three week Israel trip. And I'm like, I'm going, I'm going. Right. And so I'm 6 foot 8. He's. He's probably, he, he probably barely scratches like 5ft tall. And so when we got to the Elah Valley, we, we role played it out. He was David and I was Goliath. That was a lot.

Look at. You're already practicing experiential stuff back.

That's right. That's right.

I love it.

Great.

So you're, it's more like less about certain thinkers, but just the, the trinitarian theology and the concept and the idea, especially as it relates to God's love and trust.

Yeah, I feel like person. I feel like that really. When, when I learned about restoration therapy, it definitely changed my lens when I was reading scripture to, you know, personally, like I would, I would read scripture and like words would jump off the page all of a sudden and I would see the correlation, you know, like you'd see like, you know, he's the God of peace and like, oh, like there it is, you know. And you know, there's so many like elements inside. So I imagine that probably. I don't know if that's for you as well, Eric, but like it really just like, oh, this all makes sense within that framework of reading scripture in general.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's the thing is that I don't. Well, and this is even why, Rhett, when you ask about that, I think there's, I think what's so amazing about what, what the Lord. I want to say it this way. The Lord revealed to Terry was this, this language that connects so deeply to these themes that run all throughout the Scriptures. Yeah. Related to God's nature and God's character. I mean, just everything about those concepts of worth, of belonging, of uniqueness that tie to, they don't just tie to proof texts. It runs throughout all of the scriptures as it relates to the worth that the Father assigns to the Son, the relationship they have within themselves, the power that we have as the Spirit indwells us. I just, part of what I just have been captured by and continued to dig deeper on that definitely. And I'm not talking about that. It's because I don't like the idea of everything being brand new. I love it when it has roots in other studies that have come from historical Christianity and historical Christian scholars and the work they've done. And so there's definitely more to do in digging into that. But, but so much of what, what Terry put together of this model is just so incredibly connect, tightly connected to the ideas that run throughout the scriptures of God's nature and how he manifests himself in Trinity and in perfect relationship within himself. And doesn't it, I mean, isn't it such an incredible kind of connection point that we're involved in doing this relational work and, and the idea that we were built for relationship, that it's tied to one of the most critical elements of God's nature is that he is so fundamentally relational within Himself, Father, Son and Spirit. I just, I love that.

Yeah. It's the I, I, I, I agree. I think there's so much to see that Rhett, I, I remember was it was that you that was talking about the paraclesis of like the dancing where he puts his hand out to dance.

I was talking about in his book the Christ plays in 10, 000 places. His yeah. Theology. He talks about the, that word of like, you know, this idea of like. Yeah. Kind of this interplay, this dance between the three parts of the Trinity. You know, you can get in some, some, some deep theology there too where. The three, you know, the three in one are in complete freedom with one another and don't violate or take away from one another and don't subtract from one another. It's just a beautiful.

Hmm.

It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful theology. That trinitarian. I was thinking a lot about. I. I always. I don't know if I have it on my shelf, but. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you guys have read. She's at. I think she's at Princeton, but. Deborah Vaughn Hunsinger, theology and counseling. And she. Her husband is a BART scholar, so there's a huge trinitarian then approach there. But she looks at all of like counseling through a trinitarian lens. And it's really beautiful and really profound and been kind of rereading her work a little bit here recently.

That's great.

I have one of her books on trauma. It was really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think you recommended it to me.

So does this mean. Eric, is this. Is this something you're working on in your own. This seems like a passion for you right now as a professor and as a counselor and kind of a. Not kind of, but a theologian, thinker, researcher, writer, and put all those. All those labels on you.

Well, all around. Good guy. I don't know. I don't know if I can. Yeah. Fully live into or live up to all that. But in the sense that. In the sense that we connect the way that we live to whom we understand ourselves to be, and the sense in which we connect both of those to God's nature and character, I want to be someone who encourages everyone, and not even just counselors and therapists, but everyone, all of us, To be a theologian of sorts. Right. I mean, I also. I really even want to think of it in terms of the RT based kind of focus that we have that you guys have on this podcast that RT therapists have such an amazing. I want to just call it a head start, but just such an amazing framework within which to operate as counselor theologians, where we don't. And I don't mean that in an academic sense. I mean it in the sense that. We never operate in the room without an awareness of God's presence with us and our dependence on him and his absolute and complete sufficiency to meet every need in his timing, which is so often not ours.

Come on. So that's cool. So. So walk us through that, Eric. You know, I think a lot of people struggle with, like, how do I integrate my therapy, you know, where I'm not like, I don't want to be the therapist that's just throwing out, like, oh, have you read this scripture? Have you read this scripture? You know, tell me how you engage with your clients. Because I think this is probably a big thing for people that, you know, they, they kind of will walk gently around this, around sharing. What does it look like to. If I'm in the therapy room with Eric and I'm getting some good RT therapy as with my spouse or even individual.

So going to go a little bit professional orientation on you here. Right. Which is not as much an RT focus, but there is a reason why I specifically named the practice College Station Christian Counseling. I wanted that consent based element to be in the name of the business.

Yeah.

That when a client signed up to come in and we put that, we put the language into our consent form as well. That, that we're never going to impose our values on our clients. We're still going to operate in a completely professional manner. But that these are the values that guide, that guide us in the room. And, and this gets into a whole nother kind of conversation around counselor ethics that has been debated now for going on decades.

Sure.

Of what does it look like for somebody to operate in a truly professional manner as a counselor or therapist? Because so often what we've been told is that you need to remain values neutral. You need to effectively the term we use, we need to bracket our values and set them aside. And I think that violates the fundamental ethics of counseling and therapy. Actually, I think it's completely wrong and I think it's actually spoken to in the RT framework. Because what is one of the critical elements of trust and safety? Right. If we're going to build a therapeutic alliance with the client, what do we have to have in order to build trust? We have to have openness. They have to have a sense that the person they're seeing is the actual person, you know, that, that that is being represented. And if, if we're taking our values and we're, we're, we're putting them under a bushel. Right. Or we're, you know, bracketing them, then we're what, what makes us think the client won't, won't be able to tell? They, we all know when some, or I mean, unless somebody's a really good faker and maybe, maybe some counselors get, get to be really good fakers, but that doesn't make them better counselors. What needs to happen is we need to navigate this incredibly intricate dance of being faithful to our values without imposing them. And more of the time in the way that we operate in the rest of society is that is that we feel like if we're not defending our values all the time, that we're not living into them in the way we're supposed to. Well, I don't have to do that in the clinical setting. I don't have to defend my values. I know that I hold them and I'm not going to defend them. I'm also not going to hide them, and I'm going to do whatever I have to do to express care to that client, to let them know that I'm not going to operate like they maybe have experienced others who have values that sound like mine, you know, in the rest of their lives, where those people basically said, you need to either believe what I believe or I, I'm done talking to you. It's like, no, that's not the way relationships have to work. So going all the way back to just consent, I want to communicate what it looks like to represent Christian values. And being a Christian in the clinical office in a way that probably changes the perception of the people who are walking in where they say, well, I thought you were gonna. Right. I mean, what you just said, Rhett. I thought you were going to recite. Either recite Bible verses or tell me to memorize them, or that you were going to pray out loud or tell me to bow my head with you. And no, that's not what we're doing here. You know, I'm going to operate very specifically in a way that doesn't take maybe the external practices that we associate with Christianity and impose them on you. But I am going to represent everything about what it means to hopefully live into what it means to be an image bearer, to have the infinite worth of Jesus be represented in the sense that I value myself, in the sense that I recognize my value as actually being infinite as Christ lives in me, that I'm going to recognize that I don't have to isolate, that I can actually connect with you, and that the biggest reason why I can connect with you and be relational and be warm and be open to where you are is because of the power of the Holy Spirit, who has indwelt me and has reminded me of how loved and safe I am so that I can love you well and establish trust with you, man. It's just the, The. The therapeutic implications of having an appropriate theology that ties to the RT elements and, and even more than that, right. The other element of uniqueness, to be able to look across at you and say, you know, there's a you that is amazing and like no one else And. And I, you know, I go to. I. If they. If. If I know that I share faith with them in the room, I'll go straight to Psalm 139, right? But the Lord, the Father knew you before you were born. He formed you in your mother's womb. You know, go to the Sermon on the Mount. He.

He.

He loves you so much more than the flowers and the birds. And it's more than just. And the thing is, it's so much more than just providing a roof over your head and clothes that you will wear and food you will eat. It's like he made you for a unique meaning and purpose. And to have that relate to the infinite creativity of our Heavenly Father. Not just something to build up the person sitting across from you, but to. To have it in your soul to know that when you're saying this to somebody that you're actually representing. You're representing more of the. And this is. This is language I learned from John Piper. Just the contours of our God that are. That are so much more. So much deeper and so much, so much greater than we. Than we. Than we used to usually take the time to explore. So don't mean to go on too long about that, but.

No, it's good. I think what I'm hearing from you is the way when you integrate your faith, it's how you're. It's. It's in that way that you approach yourself and the way you approach the person that you're with. I think that's so important of. Like, to be a good integrated therapist is like, you know, to remind ourselves which man. It gets hard sometimes times, especially when you have these really difficult couples, you know, like to be like, oh, yes, this person is a child of God, you know, and. And this person is struggling. They were. They were made, and they were made for purpose. So I think that's such a beautiful thing to keep you in the room and then also calling people to greatness to see that which, you know, to me, I think that's one of the things that I love as a therapist who's integrated is that I feel like I get to see through the junk and the. And the ick. And once you know that pain cycle, that this person is just struggling with their identity or with their sense of safety, and that's all it is. And inside of them is actually someone who is made for good. So to really. That the transformation work that we get to do, uh, and. And RT is one that really invites them to step into the wholeness of who they're called to be. So I. I think that's awesome, Eric.

What.

What goes on inside of you, Rhett?

I was just going to read something. You know, by the way, the bookmark in my thing here was something we did as an activity at one of the retreats. So it has my peace cycle in.

The back.

From some time, I don't know, that's sitting there. But now there's. She's quoting Guthrie, this other theologian, and she just says, you know, human beings are thus understood from a threefold perspective. First, as created in the image of God. Second, as sinners who fail to live out God's purpose and who stand in need of redemption. And third, as people who are promised a new life in Christ. And so she was just this idea that we posture ourselves in a sense that we were always reminded that the person before us is created in God's image, has been saved, saved by Christ, and has the Holy Spirit currently at work in their life. And to kind of hold that space is. I mean, I try to remind myself that's hard to do sometimes. Right. But I was just thinking about that, and. And Eric, you're right. Like, we as therapists have to show up in loving and trustworthy ways for a client to experience that if we aren't safe and loving as therapists, people can pick up on that in the room. And then, then, then it's hard to integrate.

Right, right. I mean, I, you know, I was just. I mean, going back through so much of what Terry's written, you know, a huge part of what he emphasizes, whether it's the work on forgiveness that he's done or the work on rt. It's always about how are we as clinicians going to do the work ourselves and make sure that we are in a place where we're not getting tripped up, where we're not ending up in a place of pain because of what the client's presenting and making sure that. That we're staying grounded in what is true. And again, to go back to what is true, it's that I have infinite worth because of Christ in me. I'm never alone because the Spirit indwells me and loves me and knows me greater than I know, better than I know myself, and is communicating with the Father on my behalf with groanings too deep for words. And that I have a Father who formed me and made me and loves me and has a unique purpose and meaning for my life that is primarily grounded in the relationships I'm going to have. And how am I Going to enter into those. I'm going to enter into those. Hopefully not just being that person, but also reflecting his character, which goes to that element of trust. Right. That if identity, if love represents identity, which is tied to all the ways God loves, tied to whom God is. Trust is establishing safety in the relationship, the space between you and me, hopefully from a perspective that's tied to the perfect character of God. And so those, you know, those words that we have in RT of predictability, you know, that's fulfilled perfectly in the faithfulness of God and the unchangeableness of God.

Yeah, Same yesterday, today, and forever everlasting God. Everlasting Father.

Exactly. And that our emphasis on balanced give and take is represented perfectly in terms of God having infinite resources from which he is infinitely generous and expects nothing in return from us, from his children, except, you know, acknowledgment and gratitude and doesn't really expect that. That's just what works itself in us as we receive that from Him.

He's also the God of justice. Right. You know, there's, like. When you're looking at the fairness factor, like, so important.

Well, that. That one. It's so funny when you bring that up, because that. That brings me over to the thinking. Some of the thinking I've been doing around Terry's work on. On forgiveness, because, you know, we kind of look at. And I don't. I don't know if y' all are ready to make a shift there.

Yeah, it's a good segue.

Wait, did you want to talk about. Because you. You hit almost all three. Do you want to talk about the openness that you're ever present?

Well, no, it's even more than ever omnipresent. It's that he is a revelatory God, that he has revealed himself. I mean, Romans 1, you know, men are without excuse. But even more than that, right? I mean, if you go up in the mountains and just what we. Purple mountain majesty. I mean, you know, but even the greatest of all expressions of the way he reveals himself is through the pinnacle of his creation, through other people, through the humans that we get to relate to. I mean, that's a whole nother kind of perspective as counselors and therapists that we need to have of. I'm. I'm sitting in front of the pinnacle of God's revelation of himself in creation. Talking about rats, huh?

Are you talking about Rhett?

Both of y', all, man, I'm talking about both of y'. All.

I mean, the rat. I mean, the way his Hair's done today. It's like he's.

It's.

It's. The pinnacle is felt, you know, whether it's.

Whether it's the apostle John or Isaiah who, you know, if. If God ends up revealing a little bit more of himself in Scripture, what do people do? They fall on the ground as though dead. I mean, he. He is.

He.

He reveals. If we're really paying attention, even us. If we're paying attention in the rest of our lives to. To. To how God is revealing himself all the time. We would be overwhelmed if we really were paying attention, I think.

Yeah, it's true. Well, we have good. Rhett.

No, I was also thinking just integration, like, from a real practical standpoint, too, like nuts and bolts. Like, I remember being in seminary, you know, and you all have been there, and you study and you study and study. I remember professor saying, you're filling up this deep, deep reservoir of this well that you will draw on the rest of your life. You don't know when you will draw on it, but you have access to this knowledge and information. And I know the three of us went to seminary, and so there's, I think, a pretty good deep well in terms of stuff we've read and pastored and stuff. But I kind of want to say this to encourage everybody else, too, because I know not everybody's gone to seminary. It doesn't matter if you've gone to seminary or not. I think what matters that really helps integration is that we are people who are curious about learning, and we're, like, reading books. We're listening to things. We're reading the Bible. We're deep in these things over the years, so that when we're in the room with someone, we just kind of know what to. And of course, that's the work of the Spirit in the room, too, to. To say, hey, pull this resource out.

Yeah.

And so I think the other piece of integration that's important, I think, is that it's not magic. I think it's the years of all of us reading and listening to the texts that are important to our faith, that are either like the Bible itself or adjacent to it. Listening to their thinkers and writers outside of theology, novels, you know, works. Works that aren't Christian. And so you have this deep, deep reservoir that when you're in the room with someone, you know, the spirit kind of taps you on the shoulder and you can. You can pull this thing up that, like, connects with who they are in the space. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

I feel that's how integration happens too, is just we gotta be people who are deep and deep in the work and build this reservoir over our life. That's actually one of the things that excites me about getting older as a therapist, you know, is that I hope over time I just know more and have more wisdom and knowledge than I did as a therapist when I was in my 30s, you know.

But that was like 20 years ago.

Yeah. So all that to say, I just, that's another. As you guys were talking, I was like, that's another piece of integration. Because I've heard people recently say, well, I didn't go to seminary or I didn't pastor. And so like, they talk about, I think they minimize or discount their ability to integrate. And that's not true at all.

No.

Like, I just think what, I think what allows us to integrate is that we're building, filling up this deep reservoir and our lives of, of reading and listening and studying and being curious and all of that is in there. And then when the moment's right in the room and we create a safe and loving environment, like, boom.

See, I, I, I, when I hear you say all that, I, I bring it back to, to what, what we've all explored and what, what Terry emphasizes of, of mindfulness. Right. And I also love what the work that I got to do in Brene Brown's daring way work of just making that so not common, but just something that, to your point, Rhett, that anybody can access. It doesn't need to be. And it's kind of what I was trying to say at the beginning here is that this isn't about an academic aspect. It's about recognizing that as we connect more of what we're doing to the presence of God, to our dependence on him, to our paying attention to how he's working, man, we're going to get amazed. We're going to get amazed at how he shows up when we're really paying attention. And that's where I brought Bernay up is because I love the way she reframes mindfulness. She says, we Texans, we define mindfulness as just paying attention. It's just paying attention, that's all. I just love that.

That is good. Paying attention.

Paying. Don't they have to have the a. Pay attention?

Well, this may be more of a teaser for next time we have Eric on, but I think we let's. You brought up the forgiveness piece and I think it'd be good to jump in that to a little bit. And you know, we obviously that's A huge topic we could go hours on. But, oh, man, I, I could tell Eric, like, at the last time I saw you, you were kind of in the corner with Terry talking for a while about forgiveness stuff. And I was like, oh, this is like, I could just. Like, this is really important to Eric, this, this topic in terms of, I think something he's really into right now.

It. It has. Yeah. Well, and, and not, not just, not just through the course of, of teaching classes at the seminary or, or. Or not just even in terms of, you know, specific clinical situations, especially with, with the marriages that I'm working with. But, but I'll be really honest, it's been super important Even in my 32nd year of marriage, in the things that keep coming up with Julie and me where. I tell my clients all the time, this is not about getting to, you know, perfect resolution. This is about. This is. This is not about achieving perfection in love and trust or, or even kind of, Lance, to your point, you know, a perfect sense of justice having been accomplished where we never violate each other anymore. This is. Yeah, this is simply a matter of, Of. Of Julie and me getting to a place where we, we are much quicker to recognize our own pain and the way that we're violating each other and stepping. Stepping out of that back into a way where we can restore love and love and safe love and trust with each other. And man, I wish. I so wish I didn't break those elements as often as I do in my own marriage. So.

Are you.

Wait, are you a knucklehead, too?

Oh, of the first order. The first order.

Oh, man.

Yeah. But it's an ongoing work, the act of forgiveness. Right. It's not right. It's not a one time thing. It's like we are constantly in a state of learning to forgive and to heal and to restore.

Yeah, well, and it even also kind of is reflected in the language that Terry and Nicole introduce of it not being, you know, not being steps. Like we have our four steps in our t. It is, you know, he calls them stations because you're kind of moving among them. I mean, there is an order to them, but in terms of how we functionally operate, we're going to move back and forth between the stations and. Yeah, I would. Rhett, I would love to talk more about that if, if. Because I'd love to hear more from you, all of what, what you've done and how that's actually been a part of your work.

Yeah, I was thinking maybe after the new year, we could. We should have you and Nicole on. And Terry, we should have a roundtable or something because I think, Lance, you know, we hit this a little bit earlier in the year with. It came up with Michael Pachuco and, and, and, and Lance has a really cool handout that he's created based on Terry's work around. Around this forgiveness piece with the Tilich model of Love, justice, power. And I, I use that at a talk I gave a few months ago at a like, Re Engage Ministry night, you know, and, man, that it went. It just is not because of me, but just. I think the model itself was really powerful for the people in the room. And we don't. I don't know if we know. I don't know if we know in our culture of what the forgiveness journey looks like.

We don't.

We.

It's like a moment in time.

Yeah.

Especially in our. I would even say this, especially in our churches. We don't understand. We turn it into this 70 times 7. We just have to go straight to the obligatory, you know, yes, I will forgive you as soon as the magic words are uttered. So it's tough. And even. Also, Lance, I mean, without going into it. Rhett, can I just say one more thing about this.

Yeah.

Is just that because this gets to. This gets to theology again, that I don't. That I think this needs to be explored so much more in the model that Terry put together is that the salvaging elements of insight and understanding, those are always possible. Right. They're always possible because they're primarily about the work that I, I need to do for myself.

Yeah.

But. But I don't know how much we actually. I mean, Terry definitely talks about that the, The. The restoration elements of forgiveness are not always possible. He definitely points out that sometimes the, the violations are too deep and too, you know, have gone too far. And maybe that the person, maybe that the violator hasn't earned the right for that offer to be made by the one who's been violated. But if you go to the theology of it, right. That the Spirit is really the origin of the power that we have to engage the process of insight, and that the Son Jesus is the one who, who is at the very center of how we actually are able to engage in a place of love and compassion that understands without excusing, those are always possible. But what do we know about this world? We know that that all is not right. We know that the final settling of all accounts isn't going to happen until the Great White Throne judgment, where the Father sets all Things. Right? And in that sense, it makes so much sense that the restorative part of forgiveness is not guaranteed to us. That element of justice is not something that we can count on in a forgiveness process with another person. It's really, in a lot of ways, it's the explanation for all the brokenness that exists in our world today is that final justice has not been reached. And it also makes the point that when we actually engage in a restorative forgiveness process with someone, and it moves through to that overt forgiving with all of the agreement and the acknowledgment and the apology, where there is true trust that is restored, man, that's a glimpse. That's a glimpse we get of the new kingdom that is coming that the Lord is bringing in when Jesus returns. It's so beautiful. It is so amazing. It ought to be, in a lot of ways, so unexpected that we actually can get through to that point of justice being realized in this life, in this world.

Yeah, I find it interesting. You know, for me, I kind of gone with justice with a different light. You know, for me is like, when. When. When we're. When I'm. One of the things I like, really, the forgiveness piece is the thing that, like, set me free. Like, you know, it helped me to not only see the way that, you know, like, when you look at the state, the first station of insight, you know, because I've been hurt, how in turn do I turn hurt others?

Right?

When you look at that first station of like, you know, you know, like, stopping the cycle, right. Like, opened up my eyes to be like, oh, my gosh, I totally do, like, pass this on to. To others, but. But then I would actually kind of look at. I look at justice a little bit different for me. Like, I remember one of the parts I was really struggling with, with the wit in the Forgivist model. I can share this. When. When we were going through it, I was brought to it. Terry's like, lance, if you're going to do this forgiveness work, because we were doing it with a group at Lake Avenue Church. Terry was like, hey, if you're going to do this, you need to be a part of the group, which means you need to work on forgiveness in your own life. And one of the big things that came to light for me when we were doing that group was I had to figure out someone that I want to forgive. And the person that I chose to forgive was my wife's rapist. And it was a really hard journey of, like, because this is A person, I don't know, but a person who has had profound impact in my life and my wife's life. And as I started, like, going through the process, one of the. One of the parts of the. Of, like, as I was working through the stations, I was like, well, what does justice look like? You know? And I was praying through that, and, you know, that. That idea around justice. Where is justice? There's no justice right now. This guy, you know, whatever. But then I remembered, like, no, it's the. It's the weirdest thing. One of the easiest things in my life was walking to the cross to receive forgiveness for myself. But when I went to the cross to see that Jesus died for my wife's rapist, it was. It changed my heart and my view of, like, damn, like, you actually did have to die. Like, it changed that whole course for me. And I had to accept that his. His death on the cross was enough to. To. To begin the process of making things right. So I said, Christ, you died for this. And it really changed my heart and the way I interact with Jennifer and a lot of things. And this is like, one of the crazy parts of. Of the story is so we. Jennifer had this, like, big experience of praying to God, like, you know, you died for this, you know, horrible person. Um, and. And you. You made it right. And like, within, like, probably six months, the guy wrote to Jennifer. He said, I just want to let you know what I did to you was so wrong. And my soul has been like, you know, whatever. Like, it was like, just like, you know, like, just burning for what I did to you. And it was, you know, I don't expect you to respond to this or anything. And it's like, wow, God's justice actually does play out. You know, I mean, obviously the work continues, but there was this moment of time for us where we're like, oh, justice can actually, like, justice played out on the cross, and it can play out in our own lives. So, yeah, I think. I mean, we could lean into, like, the love and the power elements as well. But, you know, I think that for me, I. I've really seen that personally play out of, like, no, justice is here now. Like, he is the God of vengeance, and he is working it out on our own accord so we don't have to seek vengeance. In fact, my vengeance is pretty lame. So anyways, I'm. I'm rambling about something here, but it's, you know, it's. It's definitely been heavy on my heart and it. But it set. They Changed that. Changed the trajectory of Jennifer and I's relationship. Right. Because I would get so angry when things wouldn't work out, and where would my anger be directed? Right at Jennifer. So I was continuing the cycle of abuse that happened to Jen. So once we got that, like, dialed, I could stop being such a jerk. So Jen like that a lot.

That's incredible. Incredible testimony and story. Lance, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I did not know that story.

And I really appreciate also what that brings, because I was not meaning to imply that there isn't already. There isn't already a measure of justice that that is not only possible in relationships, like. Like the amazing story you just shared, but that actually is already accomplished at the cross. Yes. So that. That part. That's definitely a part of that as well. But. Yeah.

What is that called? Like, the both. And, like, where. It's. It. It is. It's the perfect tense in the Greek, but, like, where they call it, like, something that has happened, is happening and will happen.

Yeah.

What's the name of that, Rhett?

It's the. It's the. It's the present errorist and imperfect. So present continuous habitual error is simple. Snapshot, event, imperfect, past, ongoing.

Nice.

Oh, man, I. I loved Greek when I was in it. I was like, I want to be a Greek scholar. And then I got to Hebrew, and I'm like, I don't know anything. Like, destroyed me.

So Hebrew was hard.

It was like, I don't. Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, I know we all have to roll because we got things. We got counseling sessions and things, and that's a good place to end. You know, I. I appreciate Eric, you and Lance. I appreciate you sharing that story, too.

Sure.

This isn't just intellectual theology, right, we're talking about. It's practical.

Absolutely.

Stuff that changes our lot, changes our lives. This RT stuff changes our lives. And, you know, like I said earlier, I'd love to. We'll touch base and love Eric to get you back on in the new year. And I could see a roundtable with you and Terry and Nicole again. This forgiveness model is huge. I think it's really important. I know it's stuff that's still being explored, and so I'd love to circle back. But in the meantime, if you want to train with Eric, can non DTS students join that in March?

Anyone? Any. Any therapist and any student. Yep. March 20th and 21st.

Lance, you want to come to Dallas? And we set up an RT dialogue booth, like, on the. On the campus.

Dude, that is so funny.

That'd be great.

Yeah.

This a non stop flight. I'm sure.

All right, you two have a good day.

Day.

It's good seeing you. Thanks for joining us.

Great to see you guys.

Take care.

Much love.

Bye.

Bye.