53 | Steve Cuss: The Pros & Cons of Boat Stepping

It can be scary to examine spiritual messages we've heard all our lives, but it sometimes can also be the path to experiencing God more truly, deeply, and biblically. 

Steve Cuss is an author, speaker, and pastor who has a passion for understanding what drives Christians to feel anxiety, fear, and exhaustion about their faith & relationship with God. He has written books that examine the role anxiety plays in leadership (Managing Leadership Anxiety), and the troubling gaps we notice in our spirituality (The Expectation Gap).

In an illuminating conversation, Steve talks about the importance of...

• Leaders and caregivers being spiritually and emotionally healthy.
• Realization that not every dramatic spiritual story is meant to be an exact template for exactly how all Christians should react.
• Understanding that self-condemnation about lack of spiritual progress actually keeps us stuck and frozen.
• Discovering gentle steps we can take to increase resilience and move in the directions we desire.

#stevecuss #expectationgap #managingleadershipanxiety #humansized #spirituality #growth #change #curiosity #kindness #selftalk #spiritualpractices #therapy #healing #trauma #vulnerability #recovery #grace #gospel #transformation

SteveCussWords (Steve's website)

Steve's books (Amazon)

Five Steps to Christmas Sanity PDF (signup download)

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro (with Andy Gullahorn)
• 5:47 Getting to know Steve
• 9:00 The weight of caregiving
• 18:41 How anxiety affects spirituality
• 24:34 What do we do with anxiety?
• 29:30 How the expectation gap affects us
• 34:51 Showing up authentically in daily life
• 38:03 Realistic steps toward growth
• 43:16 The journey toward a healthy self
• 48:01 Thanks & closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

When we talk about the story of Jesus walking on water, we turn that into a self-improvement project of how we should all step out in faith. But actually, what's the truth is 92% of the disciples stayed in the boat.

Announcer: 0:15

Welcome to What We Really Want Conversations about Connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg: 0:27

Hey everybody, welcome back to What We Really Want. Today is episode 53. It's called The Pros and Cons of Boat Stepping. And our guest is Steve Cuss. I didn't know who Steve Cuss was until very recently when my friend Andy Gullahorn told me, hey, you ought to have Steve Cuss on your podcast. And I said, okay. And that's about all. I didn't really need a whole lot of context. But I thought that in setting up our conversation, which by the way, it was fantastic, and you're going to get to hear it in a few minutes. I thought a good way to intro the conversation would be to have Andy come and talk about Steve a little bit. So hey, Andy. What's up, Craig? It's good to see you. Good to see you. So we're recording this on December the third. Where are you headed tonight?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

We start the Behold the Lamb of God Christmas tour. This is like the 26th year of the tour. Probably the 23rd year that I've done it. So I think it either starts in Louisville or Atlanta, one of those cities.

Greg: 1:26

You're not driving the bus. You're just getting on it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28

I'm getting on it and hopefully sleeping on it.

Greg: 1:31

For those of you guys who don't know about Behold the Lamb of God, this is an album that came out in 1999 or 2000, one of those years. Andrew Peterson put that together.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

The album would have come out definitely after 2002. The first time we ever sang Labor of Love was when Jill was pregnant with Drew in December of 2001.

Greg: 1:52

Wasn't there a version of the album at first that didn't have that song and then it was added later?

SPEAKER_00: 1:56

There wasn't a recording of it. So they had a version of the tour. They're doing some of the songs from that record, and then, but I don't they didn't do the record until they had all the songs finalized.

Greg: 2:08

I didn't know that. I think I've been assuming that the album came first.

SPEAKER_00: 2:13

Well, you know what happens when you assume, Greg.

Greg: 2:17

Yeah, you get it wrong. You get publicly corrected on your own podcast by your friends. So yeah. Anyway, the album, Andrew Peterson and Friends, it came out in the early 2000s, apparently.

SPEAKER_00: 2:30

Yeah, sure.

Greg: 2:31

And uh, and an accompanying tour that apparently came first. And every year, this is a tradition for about two, two and a half weeks. This this Sunday, my family's gonna be at the Ryman in Nashville watching and listening.

SPEAKER_00: 2:43

Yeah, man. Can't wait to see. If you listen to this and you can go back in time, join us at the Ryman.

Greg: 2:48

That's it. That's it. That's a wise use of your DeLorean. So, Andy, tell me a little bit about why you told me I ought to have Steve Cuss on the show.

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

Well, Steve, I love him for so many reasons. One is because he has an accent, so he just sounds he's just interesting to listen to. Yeah, very much. And it's a way southern accent. But also, but he has this unique mix of being a pastor, a theologian, a chaplain, and like this mixture with therapy and recovery kind of fits into that as well. And he mixes them in a way and talks about them in a way that I can mostly understand, which is a it's a huge feat.

Greg: 3:30

Yeah, I picked up on that in our conversation. And then I actually read his newest book, The Expectation Gap, after he and I talked. I had already gotten it and had started it, but I read the majority of it afterwards. And it really is it's very pastoral, but it's also very emotionally intelligent and seems pretty therapeutically informed.

SPEAKER_00: 3:52

Yeah, especially when I think about that that book, and and I think about like a world of recovery where you're trying to take an honest look at yourself.

Greg: 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

A big part of that is like what I love about the language in that book is looking at like what you want to say that you believe about God. Let's let's take that. And then practically what your life actually says you believe about God, and looking honestly at that gap, not judging it or being like you should do this or whatever, but like you can't really move forward unless you have a clear picture of like what those differences are. Yeah. And I found that to be really helpful for me.

Greg: 4:22

Well, the thing I just loved about Steve is he gives a very gentle other way of looking at things than is the typical sermon presentation.

SPEAKER_00: 4:30

Totally. And and he's got this contemplative mystic side to him as well. He's really smart, he really cares about what he what he does. He's a he was a great pastor, but he's also just kind of like funny and fun to talk to. I just love that guy. And he seems like somebody who's done his own work.

Greg: 4:44

Yeah. He's taken it out of the hypothetical into the first person.

SPEAKER_00: 4:48

Well, and speaking from experience, it doesn't matter. As long as you marry a therapist, it that kind of works out, does your own work for you. So I think that's how how Steve got to be so wise. What about when you marry somebody who later becomes a therapist? Does it grandfather then? As soon as she becomes a therapist, you automatically download it.

Greg: 5:07

Well, that's handy. Yeah. Well, Andy, thank you for taking a few minutes. I know things are crazy busy getting ready to hop on a bus tonight. Really hope and pray that the the tour goes fantastically. And again, if you live in the the few places where they have tickets left, just go to Andrew Peterson's website and you can see where your opportunities are to see the tour. But Andy, thanks so much for introducing me to Steve. It was really a great conversation to have with him.

SPEAKER_00: 5:32

Oh, I'm happy to connect people that I love.

Greg: 5:34

Be safe on the road. Yeah, thank you. All right, everybody. This is episode 53. Our guest is Steve Cuss. It's called The Pros and Cons of Boat Stepping. And the conversation starts right now. Steve Cuss, I'm really excited about our conversation today. It's good to meet you.

SPEAKER_03: 5:51

Good to be with you, Greg. Yeah, where are you joining me from? I live in Erie, Colorado, which is a little town kind of between Boulder and Denver. How long have you been there? 20 years. We love Colorado. You know, I grew up in Western Australia, beach kid. I uh if I could, I would live near the beach, but second best is the mountains for sure.

Greg: 6:10

A geography lesson for somebody who wasn't paying enough attention. Western Australia, is that is that Perth?

SPEAKER_03: 6:16

Yeah, Perth is where I grew up. Okay. Most isolated capital city in the world. So the next biggest city in Australia is 1800 miles away.

Greg: 6:24

Wow.

unknown: 6:25

Yeah.

Greg: 6:26

So if you're gonna visit anywhere of substance, you're gonna get on a plane.

SPEAKER_03: 6:30

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it takes me, you know, 32 hours to get from where I live to where my my family, my dad, and my sister and cousins and uncles live. Yeah, it's a long trip. You know, once you get to Australia, it's still usually a five-hour flight.

Greg: 6:45

And whenever you go, you skip a day on the way there and you get a day twice on the way back, right?

SPEAKER_03: 6:50

It's really fun to leave Sydney. You normally leave Sydney 11 or 12 in the morning, you know, 11 a.m. and you uh you arrive 8 a.m. before you left. That that is a crazy thing to adjust in your brain.

Greg: 7:01

Yeah. I remember when when my wife Stacy and I visited New Zealand back in the early 90s, that that really messed with me for a few days coming back.

SPEAKER_03: 7:09

Well, and even just the the time, the time difference can really, I mean, it's it's big.

Greg: 7:14

So we were talking a little bit before I started recording about how I first heard your name from our mutual friend Andy Gullahorn.

SPEAKER_03: 7:21

Yeah, I love Andy and Jill. They're incredible people.

Greg: 7:24

How far back do you guys go?

SPEAKER_03: 7:26

You know, not that far. 2018, I think, is when we first started getting to know each other. I was working at a church in Vegas when they came and did a show at our church, and I met them just like lots of people met them. But I've been an Andy and Jill fan for a long time. I I love their point of view, their songwriting craft. I would rate Andy as one of the finest songwriters, I think, alive today, honestly. Yeah, that's not a that's not an exaggeration. My wife and I went to one of Andy's shows in 2016. It was really meaningful for me. I was on a sabbatical, my first ever sabbatical as a lead pastor. I was really trying to figure some things out. And, you know, I'm with my best friend Lisa and I, and Andy just has a a healing approach, I think, in his concerts, and there were very few people there. And I just I remember it was in Denver, and I remember coming up afterwards and just saying, Look, we don't know each other, but if you want to come back, I I think I can pack out my church. And so he came and did a concert. I think it was 2018, and we so we sold it out, and then he and Jill came back, and we we've done conferences together, and we try to catch up whenever we're in town.

Greg: 8:32

So Pop Quiz, favorite Andy Gullahhorn song?

SPEAKER_03: 8:35

Yeah, really tough call. I I am loving the new album. I it would it would be impossible to name a favorite. I think I haven't either because I've been listening to it for so long. Yeah, but boy, this new album, yeah, I can't name a favorite. But where I would get, if we're nerding out, between Winning Streak and Fault Lines, which is my favorite album, I honestly don't know. They're both masterpieces.

Greg: 8:59

Well, Steve, I'm really excited about wherever this conversation goes. I was trying to resist the temptation to do something different than I normally do. What I normally do in these recordings is have very, very few questions prepared because I like them to be spontaneous. I like to have a general idea of where we're going and then just kind of let it go. I actually do have a few more notes because I was kind of devouring the expectation gap before we were talking. And I'm like, okay, I could either come in with a few questions or I could come in with a thousand, but let's let's come in with a few and see where it goes. But before we jump into wherever we're gonna go in this, I just love to hear from you. What do you really want out of our conversation?

SPEAKER_03: 9:40

Oh, I like conversations more than interviews. And my goal, I think, is always that the audience feels seen and and we maybe give them something that can help them on their path to freedom. I guess that would be it.

Greg: 9:52

Gosh, I love that. When I started to dive into the things that you've put out into the world, the question that came up for me is how did I not know about you for so long? Because there's such alignment in the things that you communicate and the things that we're trying to communicate. And I know, I mean, neither one of us came up with the concepts that we're trying to put out into the world, but the way that you verbalize them is so congruent with how I feel about things and what we try to bring to people in recovery. So I've been really excited about this. Help us get to know you. Tell us about yourself, your life, and kind of how you've come to be where you are today.

SPEAKER_03: 10:28

Yeah, that you have every reason to not know much about me. Um, first of all, I'm not very well known. And secondly, I've only been doing public work for, you know, three or four years. So I was a lead pastor and I happened to write a book as a lead pastor. It's kind of a funny story. HarperCollins decided they had a little window where they didn't care as much if an author had a platform, if they liked the author's ideas. And I had no platform at all in this 2018, and they published my book in 2019, and then no one bought it. You know, as you would expect with someone with no public platform. And then COVID hit and everyone bought it. Right. Kind of what happened is I my first book was Managing Leadership Anxiety, and a lot of leaders were anxious in COVID, and they discovered their anxiety, then they discovered me, and I've been busy ever since. You know, there's a lot I could say, but functionally, where my adult journey with this began was as a hospital chaplain. And I was very young, I was 24, I was very green, I was very sure of myself. I didn't know that my confidence was covering a deep well of fear and insecurity. And boy, there's nothing like intensive care wards and emergency rooms to expose you to your own humanity. And so that was in 1996 and 97 when I was a hospital chaplain and it changed my life.

Greg: 11:50

You know, I if I could just jump in real quick. I I really when when I was I've been listening to the audio version of uh of your newest book. And when you talked about that, I really resonated with it because when you're walking with people who are going through some of the darkest experiences of their life, it's impossible not to go home with the residue of that all over you.

SPEAKER_03: 12:12

That's right. The biggest surprise to me in Chaplain Sea, I was shocked to discover my first job is to pay attention to myself so that I'm not bringing all my own reactivity and triggers into the room. You know, so many people, when they are face to face with somebody who is suffering, the caregiver's internal pressure to relieve the suffering gets in the way of actually connecting in the suffering. This has been my lifelong lesson. How do I step into someone's pain without shrinking it down so I can fix it? Without giving a piece of advice when that advice is really about me, not about them. And chaplaincy was a masterclass in that. And it was also a masterclass in discovering just how human I am. I think I went into chaplaincy. You know, I just graduated Bible college. I think I went in thinking I wasn't human. I was a different species called a pastor. You know, that's somebody who knows the Bible, who can help people, you know, in any any given situation, never sweats. And the chaplains, the veteran chaplains, it was really beautiful. They really encouraged us. Functionally, they're like the only thing that you have to offer when somebody is suffering is your presence in God's presence. There's nothing to say, there's nothing to do, it's just human-to-human presence, God's spirit. And that's surprisingly hard to do because all of your own coping mechanisms as a caregiver show up. And you think they're from God. So learning to detangle what is from God and what is my own coping mechanism, that's been my lifelong journey.

Greg: 13:43

Yeah, and I think for me, when you said the only thing I have to offer is my presence and God's presence, for so long I didn't realize that's not only all I have to offer, that's really the primary thing that they need.

SPEAKER_03: 13:56

That's what people need, especially my vulnerability. I I again I I took all of this into my pastoring, but I d I wasn't sure. Like if somebody is dying, is it okay that I cry? They really told us, no, you are a human being. And if you are feeling emotions, you should express them. You know, assuming that it serves the people. You obviously don't make their tragedy about yourself, but some of my most poignant moments with people were when I let them see my humanity about their suffering. Yeah. And then of course, the the the other side of that is you know, if you're in a level one trauma hospital with a helicopter and and the transplants and all the intense stuff, there's a lot of death. And the other side is growing your capacity to step into death again and again without phoning it in, detaching, going there were times, Greg, where you know, we do these long shifts like the medical residents do. We do 28-hour overnight shifts. And there'd be times that I'm finally in the break room at 10 p.m. First chance to sit down and have dinner, and the beeper goes off. I've just sat down and I'm so angry at somebody for selfishly dying while I'm trying to have dinner. Like everything gets twisted, you know, and learning how to notice that and get back into it.

Greg: 15:12

And how can you not feel that at times?

SPEAKER_03: 15:14

Yeah, that's very human. There's nothing wrong with feeling that. The problem is if you bring that into the room, yeah, then you're gonna shorten the visit. You're gonna be more concerned about your meal getting cold than the person, you're gonna get irritable. So it was a masterclass. It felt to me like, you know, if Bible college was like boot camp, this was special forces. This was like Navy SEALs for sure.

Greg: 18:35

When you were talking about, is it okay for me to cry with the family as they're hurting? I mean, the phrase that came into my mind is that by them seeing your tears through their own, like that's you bearing witness and honoring that what you're going through is real, and I see it, and God sees it, and this pain is good. Maybe the pain isn't good, but maybe you're bearing witness and honoring the fact that their response to the pain is good. The pain is there for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 19:03

And and we do live in a culture that's terrified of pain, yeah, suffering, and death. And so people don't have any reps in coping with it. So there's there's just so much internal work. A lot of the work I do now is with caregivers, you know, pastors, people who help with recovery, people like you, Greg, because we're often the last one in the room to know when we're not well. That our healing ministry is 100% dependent on us being well. And then you then you see Jesus and you realize he put a lot more time into being well than we talk about in our churches. He quite frequently said to the crowds, We're done for the day. Yeah. And you know, we don't talk about, we talk about his healing. We don't talk about the times he didn't heal. The crowds pressed on him and he's like, Nope, we are done. Yeah. So I a lot of what I do is help healers and caregivers grow in their in their well-being because we we tend to neglect ourselves.

Greg: 19:58

So helping healers and caregivers grow in their own healing, I feel like in your book, you're calling out all the things that I am blind to and struggle with. And it just made me curious: are you familiar with like your Enneagram number? Are you a two? So it's sort of I'm a three.

SPEAKER_03: 20:16

Okay. Do you wing two? I feel like I have a strong four-wing, and all of my friends and my readers tell me I'm a two-wing. Yeah. So I I like to think maybe I'm a three with both wings.

Greg: 20:28

Yeah. Well, it was very relatable to me and how you know, so many comments about the best way that we can be there for other people is to not neglect the things that we need. And that's, you know, that's a big trap that that twos fall into.

SPEAKER_03: 20:41

And yes, twos particularly fall into that. Yeah. And then nines. Nines often are the last to know they're not well.

Greg: 20:48

Yeah. Um well, Steve, I'd love to talk about something that I think would be really very interesting and very relevant to people who listen to this show. And that is just the overarching concept of anxiety, which was, of course, the subject of your first book that nobody read when it came out and then everybody read once COVID hit, which makes total sense. You didn't need to give any context to that at all. I think anybody who went through COVID knows why that totally aligns. But you have studied anxiety more than the average person. And a question that I would love to get your take on is do you think that people in general have a good or don't have a good understanding of what anxiety actually is?

SPEAKER_03: 21:30

What a great question. I I do think there's a couple of problems. I I think we tend to think of worry and fear. And a lot of the people I work with are type A leaders, and they are not very in tune to their worry and fear. They they wouldn't realize that their productivity and their certainty and their strong leadership can sometimes be a cover for worry and fear. So I do think that's a misunderstanding. The other issue I have with the word anxiety is our society will not move forward until we use the plural. So we always talk about it in a singular. What we really should start talking about is anxieties, because there are so many different kinds, and they all, you know, it's one word, but but the different kinds of anxieties are wildly different from each other. And the one anxiety I am most fluent in is reactivity. Clinically, it's called chronic anxiety. And it's fascinating because for two things, it's always based on a false need that feels real in the moment. And the second thing is the only kind of anxiety that's contagious. So we catch it and so you know, if you take trauma, for example, it's not based on something false, it's based on something real, but it's complicated because it turns that real event into a false narrative. Something real happened to you, but then you make meaning out of it and you put that meaning into your future. So, you know, at our church we had a military sniper uh attend our church, and he always sat in the back row because his nervous system told him that no one can be behind me if you if I'm gonna relax. When I sit down and talk with him, I would say, Look, what's going on? He's like, Well, there could be a shooter. And what's tricky about trauma is there actually could be a church shooter. That does happen. But his nervous system is telling him it probably will happen. He has to be in a hyper-vigilant state. Okay, that's trauma. Reactivity or chronic anxiety puts you in that state, for example, if you're a perfectionist. And so a mistake becomes an anxious response or a perfectionist. I'm a people pleaser. So disappointing someone or someone being upset with me activates my nervous system. And my body tells me I'm in danger when I'm in no danger at all. Yeah. And so, like if like if at the end of this interview you were to say, you know, Steve, I really didn't get much out of this. My nervous system would actually have a threat response to that statement and would tell me, Steve, you must get to safety. Maybe you need to send Greg money. Maybe you need to offer to do a recording or something. But basically, it tells me I must change the way things are for everything to be okay. And so then the third thing about reactivity is it it removes our awareness of God's presence. It puts us out in the control seat. I now must manipulate the world. So, you know, perfectionists are often the easiest to notice this because for them, they do so many things to avoid a mistake because their nervous system is telling them a mistake is the end of the world when really a mistake's no big deal.

Greg: 24:27

Yeah. You talked about the contagiousness of reactivity. And I know that I as I was taking in your newer book, you you kind of used a word picture of something we're carrying around in a bucket, and it gets to where it's filled up and it's spilling over. Our reactivity spills over into other people's buckets.

SPEAKER_03: 24:46

That's exactly it. Yeah, the easiest place to see it is on social media. You know, somebody I'm I'm still confused, Greg, these people on my feed that really think that what we want from them is a another political opinion.

Greg: 25:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 25:01

But but then what's even more confusing is the people who comment, and it just is predictable. It devolves into name-calling and generalizations. And I look at that.

Greg: 25:09

Well, you say it devolves. I mean, it it it starts often with name-calling. It's crazy. Just there, I guess the buffer of civility just seems to be gone in a lot of those cases.

SPEAKER_03: 25:21

Well, we have political leaders, and I'm not a particularly a conspiracy theorist, but we have a media empire that has an interest in keeping us anxious and at odds with each other. So we have two massive forces in this culture, in the United States, politics and media, that are both generating massive levels of reactivity. And so we have to learn to manage it. Otherwise, we'll dump it on each other, which of course is what is happening nowadays.

Greg: 25:50

So because so many people experience a multitude of anxieties, and so many people use social media, and obviously there's a lot of overlap. That's probably a Venn diagram that just looks like one circle sometimes. I don't want to jump straight to what do we do, but I think it would be easy to say, just get off social media, right? And maybe somebody may need to take a break from social media or do some adjustments to some of our habits. But before we do something about it, what is the process of coming to understand what's going on look like? How do we how do we keep from bypassing what may be even more important than what do we do?

SPEAKER_03: 26:28

It's a really important question. The first thing to do to manage reactivity is to notice. It's always step one. A lot of people want to diffuse it before they've really gotten a handle on what's going on. And so the simple rule, Greg, is just because someone's spreading anxiety doesn't mean you have to catch it. So that means, okay, I can actually walk into that staff meeting that drives me crazy and be fine. And so therefore, in the same way, okay, I'm actually going to do the opposite. Rather than stay away from social media, I'm going to go on it with the intent of noticing what's going on in my nervous system. Because the human condition when we get reactive is to fixate on the other person. We see that Genesis three, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:10

Adam's like, well, the woman you gave me, she did it. And then the woman's like, well, let's talk about the serpent. Like, like it's just the human condition to blame or to fixate on somebody else. But reactivity management always starts with taking responsibility for yourself. So actually, I do go on Twitter and scroll to practice reactivity management in my own life because my temptation, you know, when I'm at my worst, I really think I know better than other people. I when I'm not well, I move into a self-righteousness. And then I get teachy and it's pretty obnoxious. So therefore, I'm prone to want to comment. All right. Well, then what I'm going to do is get on Twitter and actually feel that desire to comment and then manage it with God rather than post a comment. So that you're just noticing, whether it's social media or if you've got a family gathering coming up, family is usually the hardest to manage. But just knowing, okay, well, someone can spread it doesn't mean I have to catch it. Gosh, that's so tricky.

Greg: 28:07

I'm I'm I'm thinking about all the different ways that that shows up. You know, you're you're talking about things where there's not necessarily a right or a wrong thing to do. It's, you know, it's as my friend James, who's a therapist that I work with a lot, says, it's my relationship with the thing. It's not the thing itself. And so, you know, you would see something on social media, Steve, and you're like, I do have something good to say about this. In fact, I'm not prideful by saying I've got something that would add a lot of value to this conversation. And yet, one of the things for me that I have to struggle with before I post or don't post a comment is A, does anybody actually need to hear this? Right. And then B, how is it going to be for me if they don't respond well to it? Or even if they just don't respond the way I want them to respond? Is a negative response to my comment going to make gonna increase my resentment, my anxiety, my insecurity? Is that something that you go through as well?

SPEAKER_03: 29:05

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, my my training, one of the great gifts I was given when I went to graduate school, right after chaplaincy. I did my chaplaincy, then I went to grad school. I'm really grateful for both. I I studied uh a form of anxiety management that teaches you to notice predictable patterns. And once you see them, you can't unsee them. It's like the matrix. And every relationship forms predictable patterns over time, both healthy ones that form intimacy and toxic ones that disconnect us. One of the aspects of a predictable pattern is what's called the attempted solution. Greg, you may be familiar with all this, but this therapist Jay Haley, in the 1960s, people would go to him for help and they would say, Here's the problem. And he would stop them and say, Oh, I'm sorry. I don't treat problems, I only treat your attempted solutions to problems. Yeah. And so, like Ian Cron famously says, he says, I don't have a drinking problem, I have a drinking solution. Right. Yeah, he talks about that in the fix. I love Ian and I love that book. What a helpful thing to realize. And so in my parlance, I would simply say, Yeah, Ian has a drinking attempted solution, which of course he means as well, because it's not working at all. And so posting on social media is purely an attempted solution. It never works. And it's a predictable pattern. So knowing that really helps me stay out of that cycle more. And so what I teach people is how to how to dissolve patterns by paying attention to your part of the problem. When I was a pastor, I had some pretty harsh critics in my church. And, you know, like the human condition, I focus on them, I fixate on them, and don't notice all of the things that I'm doing to attempt to fix them that are making it worse.

Greg: 30:47

Well, I'm just noticing, Steve, so many connections between the overarching topic of anxiety and things that you specifically talk about in your newest book, which is the expectation gap that came out in 2024. And one of the things I want to let you know is I'd love to talk about how anxiety relates to this these gaps that you describe in the book because I could see it, I could see a ton of ways in which it it overlaps. I love the way that you communicate. I really feel like it's a beautiful blending of coming to understand the deeper things that are really going on in me and then inviting practical ways to move through them toward growth. It's not one or the other. It doesn't stay and just get mired in the deeper space without a solution or a path forward, but it also doesn't bypass or avoid the deeper meaning by giving just a simple checklist. And it feels really balanced and healthy.

SPEAKER_03: 31:42

It's so kind, Greg. I I can't believe I get to do this work, but for whatever reason, what I'm good at is noticing the dynamic and then giving us concrete steps out of it. I was taught in church leadership, if people aren't going where you want them to go, you know, it's easy to blame the people. It might be that you have not clarified the step. So I feel like I was well trained in church leadership, and I I do bring that into my healing ministry of I would like to give you simple steps that are deep. They're not like pithy or they're simplistic, but but actionable things you can do. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the bottom line is I, from my chaplaincy and probably even my family of origin, have a weird superpower of noticing dynamics that infect. 2016 was when as a pastor, I hit a wall in my faith. Wasn't the first wall I'd hit in my faith for sure, but when it became a light bulb for me of wait, I've been focusing all of these invisible dynamics on my human relationships. What if my relationship with God is infected by the same dynamics? And that's what gave birth to expectation gap. All of my psychological training and field testing in leadership and family, wait, reactivity infects my relationship with God. Assumptions, predictable patterns. I really enjoyed writing expectation gap because I felt like, man, I can I can help people have a breakthrough in their faith, which of course will then help them in their human relationships as well.

Greg: 33:16

Yeah. Well, it's very pastoral. And and I love the clarity of the three gaps that you describe, you know, because one of them says, I believe God loves me, but I don't feel it. And so that's the gap of God's particular love. And then I believe God's with me, but I don't see him, which is the gap of God's visceral presence. And then when we say I thought I'd be further along by now than I am, and that's the gap of my spiritual progress. Yeah. One of the things you say in the introduction of the book is I want to help us mine these gaps so that what we believe will be more congruent with our experience. We'll always have gaps, of course, but I believe we can find a way to approach them in a soul-satisfying way. Yeah. We're gonna have gaps because we're in a gappy fallen world. Yeah. So what was it that made you feel like it was so important to help people understand these gaps and to know how to move around through them?

SPEAKER_03: 34:11

It it was our attempted solutions that made me want to write this book. You know, first of all, seeing the pressure that pastors are under to not tell the truth.

Greg: 34:20

Ooh, say more about that, please.

SPEAKER_03: 34:22

Yeah, they're not liars. You know, almost every pastor I work with is a very good human being. But the pressure to tow the party line, to show kind of a victorious walk. And so when I, you know, when I'd notice things like, and I write about it in the book, like when we talk about the story of Jesus walking on water, we turn that into a self-improvement project of how we should all step out in faith. But actually, what's the truth is 92% of the disciples stayed in the boat and were fantastic followers of Jesus. Therefore, like have you, Greg, have you ever heard a sermon where the preacher says to the congregation, This week, most of you should stay in the boat? Secondly, if I may rant, Peter's walking on water is really not the model of walking by faith we want to be. Like it's a total fail. He takes what a couple of steps, but we turn it into this go change the world thing. So talk about reactivity and attempted solutions. Right. And so then our congregants, you know, I I was our congregants then say, Well, what's wrong with me? You know, Greg, what if what if you have a congregant who's an insurance loss adjuster? Their whole wiring and gifting is risk mitigation. Yeah. They are not going to step out of the boat until they make a spreadsheet of pros and cons of boat stepping. And by the time that they're done with their spreadsheet, Jesus and Peter are back in the boat soaking wet. Well, in my theology, that insurance loss adjuster is as good a follower of Jesus as Peter is. So that would be an example. But I I just saw how many of my congregants, and when I started doing more public work, how many of our well-meaning efforts to follow Jesus were the actual thing getting in the way? Like with God's love, the thing that gets in the way is my self-talk. That's the number one threat to experiencing God's love, is the way I treat myself.

Greg: 36:13

Can I just go back to the insurance loss adjuster for a minute? Yeah. If that person is just as godly as the one who hops into the risk immediately, I'd love for people to be able to have a picture of that because the way I took it is because A, by recognizing I'm not wired or built or ready to jump out right now, to jump out right now would feel so completely irresponsible and incongruent with how you've made me. And two, if I allow myself to be who I am and how I was made, then by the time I am ready to jump, it's going to be legitimate and authentic and heartfelt. Is that kind of a part of expanding what you were saying about that guy?

SPEAKER_03: 36:56

100%. And there's so much to this. The scriptural authors, John records 26 unique days of Jesus' life out of the 1,350 adult ministry days Jesus had. John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke together, between 52 and 57 scholars disagree, you know, what's a day and what was not. Okay, that's 4% of Jesus' public ministry recorded in the Gospels. What do you do with the other 96% of the time? I do laundry. Did the disciples do laundry? Yeah. The authors of scripture are not interested in the mundane. I don't blame the authors of scripture. That's not the problem. It's the way we make meaning on it. If you go into the writings of Paul, the spotlight of the scripture is all on the leaders. But this wonderful pastor named Larry Osborne, he talks about the cobbler in Corinth. Larry says, you know, for every Paul, there's hundreds of shoe cobblers. They wake up in the morning and they do their work and they put food on the table for their family. They're not spectacular, they're faithful. That's it. And Larry Osborne, I think, is making the correct case that that is as legitimate a follower of Jesus as Paul is. But we feel so much pressure to be a fictional super disciple, contemplative like Mary, bold like Peter, courageous like Esther. You know, we stack all of these traits. But imagine, Greg, imagine someone saying to you, Greg, in order to be faithful, you have to be Mother Teresa, Yo-Yo, Albert Einstein, and Heidi Klum.

Greg: 38:27

Those are four different people.

SPEAKER_03: 38:28

Can't do it, no matter how hard you try. So, you know, I moisturize my face. I'm still not at risk of being a supermodel. I'm not even close. It doesn't matter how hard I try, I will never be a supermodel. And so I'm just trying to relax the internal pressure that we carry so that we can actually encounter Christ. Because I think, particularly in Western United States, Western countries, and Southeast Asian, as I do with in Southeast Asia, we carry so much pressure to improve that we miss encountering Christ.

Greg: 38:57

And now that takes us back to the self-talk that you mentioned earlier, because the way that we see and think about and talk about ourselves is going to either support or get in the way of the way that we move through these gaps. So, how does it support it? How do we learn how to engage in self-talk that does talk about goals, desire for growth, but doesn't condemn ourselves for not being yet where we want to be?

SPEAKER_03: 39:24

Yeah. The simplest skill that I teach people is to write down three habits that they practice to show people they love them. Your friends and family. What do you do that expresses care and love for your friends and family? And so for me, like I check on my friends. When my friends tell me how they're doing, I would never say, Well, suck it up, Greg. Get it together. I'd never say that to you. I couldn't imagine doing that, but I do that to myself all the time. So writing down three things you do or say for people you love, and then I make people write down two things that you say to yourself that you would never in a million years do or say to another human being. So I started doing this in 2016 and I did a moron inventory. I started on a Sunday and I just counted up how many times in a week do I call myself a moron, idiot, or stupid? By Wednesday, I'd already gotten to 50. Wow. Right. Didn't even know. It was so subconscious. I would never call you stupid. I couldn't fathom doing that, but freely doing it to myself. So I picture my self-talk as like a valve. If God's love is like a water pipe, then my self-talk is the valve. And when my self-talk is across God's water pipe, I'm blocking. So I'm just trying to treat myself the way God treats me. And then I realize in some church cultures, you think it's humble to condemn yourself. It's pretty arrogant to stand in front of your sovereign king, your king who says there is now no condemnation, your king who says you are fearfully and wonderfully made, to say to your king, I'll I'll I'll depend on myself, thanks. And that's what I was doing. So so then once I've got my top list and my bottom list, things I do for others, things I do to myself, I start to try to practice the top list toward myself. So I started checking in on myself, and that was revolutionary for me because I tend to not be aware. Ennegram twos are the same way. And then I I started believing myself when I was weary, hurt, angry, sad, I just gave myself permission. What it did for me, Greg, is it gave me, I would became more in touch with what's going on, and it gave me something to exchange with God. I think before that I was bringing my disconnected self to God and it wasn't really doing much. But now I was like, okay, Lord, I am calling myself a moron again. I'm gonna give that to you. I'm gonna exchange it for what you say is true about me. And it just changed where I put my faith. I I now try to put my faith more in what God says than what I say. And it's hard to do, but that's the habit I'm in.

Greg: 41:51

So if I bring my disconnected self to God, the immediate dilemma is how well can I connect to God from that place of internal disconnection? But maybe he reveals to me, like, hey, you're disconnected from yourself. And so through that connection, I become better connected to myself, or just all of it's kind of working together. Do you see those as complementary ways of connecting?

SPEAKER_03: 42:15

I do. I I think most people feel selfish or wrong connecting to themselves before God. But I found it much more fruitful with God if I first connect to myself. But that's also my life lesson from chaplaincy and leadership. I connect to myself before any meeting so that I can manage myself and be present to people. Be present, yeah. Manage my reactivity. So when I connect to myself before reaching out to God, God and I have a rich encounter.

SPEAKER_04: 42:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:43

Because there's always a little hot mess going on in me. It's very rare that there's not a hot mess. And of course, sometimes there's floods of gratitude that's going on in me too.

Greg: 42:53

But that makes so much sense, Steve, because if I want to fully be present, maybe I should deal with the things that are distracting. Me first. And then that that really addresses the dilemma of people who feel like self-care is necessarily self-ish.

SPEAKER_03: 43:07

Yeah. I mean, we we all could play that horrific game of name the public Christian who got exposed for a scandal. You know, they weren't well. And they were proclaiming Christ while they weren't well, and that does so much damage. Yeah. What the world is desperate for is Christian leaders and Christian healers who are well. I mean, Greg, you've met you've met healers that are not well. It's not gosh.

Greg: 43:31

Yeah. I mean, Henry Nowen, I think, was the one that described the wounded healer. Yeah. And that's a healer who has identified his or her wounds, recognized the way that those wounds can either get in the way or can enhance the way that we are used to heal, and has taken steps to be healed.

SPEAKER_03: 43:50

Well, and and now wrote that book based on his chaplain training experience. We had to read it as chaplains because it was him going through the chaplain training that caused that book. The wounded healer is, in fact, the only model, I believe, of pastoral care.

Greg: 44:05

So I'm thinking about pastors who are listening. I'm thinking about Christians who do something else professionally, and they're they're hearing about the things that are getting in the way of being able to have a healthy relationship with these gaps that we walk through in life. And their hearts are saying, okay, yeah, there's something here. There's something that connects with me. And so this is a new way of thinking for me, right? This is a new thing to pay attention to. And so, again, in the spirit of not just bypassing the process and giving them a quick checklist, if someone did want to begin to hone in on what is a healthy way for me to engage with this, what would be some of the first things that you would suggest to people for whom maybe this is a new way of thinking or being?

SPEAKER_03: 44:51

Yeah, it it is a new way of thinking or being. I would say the journey to a well self is one to three years. And so, you know, a lot of people want quick steps, but it's it's more of a posture. So there's a lot of good news. If you hear one to three years and you're like, okay, I'm out. Well, it's not full time, you know. It it has more in common with going to the gym after being out of shape, it has more in common with signing up for martial arts where you work through the belts. No one becomes a black belt in a week. But at the same time, Greg, if you only are able to do this 15% of the time, we we've discovered that that's life-changing. That should be really good news. You know, in our desire in this culture and in the Christian pressure to do it 100%, all in, sold out, 15% is pretty good. Yeah, that's the A in my class. And so that means, okay, one to two out of 10 times I'm managing my reactivity. I think most of us can hit that target. So that's where I would start is realizing, okay, long journey. And then the the first thing to do is just to notice the triggers that get you reactive and disconnected, and begin to talk to God about them and begin to put yourself in those situations on purpose so you can get to know yourself better. So for me, some church meetings were that way. I just knew, oh boy, this is gonna be a doozy. Great, that's good practice. You know, usually the nightmare for a pastor is the text from somebody saying, We need to meet. Your brain doesn't say, Oh, they want to give the church a quarter million dollars. Your brain never says that. And so learning to notice that that's great practice for me. So anything that does make you anxious becomes like a jujitsu move, your opportunity to practice, relax into God's presence. The other thing I would say, Greg, is every one of us can make a list of microhabits of God's goodness. So my dog actually walked in to this while we were chatting, and he's a gift from God. And so I rub his ears multiple times a day. And as I'm rubbing his ears, it takes 30 seconds. I just give thanks to God for this dog. Uh I happen to be married, I have an incredible privilege of being married to an amazing human being. And before we got out of bed, we held hands and I I relax into God's presence through the gratitude of this gift of this woman in my life. Uh, you know, we're on video, I know this is mostly audio, but you can see behind me there's a record player. In fact, this whole shelf behind me is a life-giving shelf. Just a group of things that God has put in my life because I'm God's kid. I'm holding, as we speak, a cricket ball. Australia and England are about to play cricket. We play every other year at the Big Grudge match. And watching cricket is life-giving for me. And so the list goes on. So I have 160 different ways, literally, to relax into God's presence on a regular basis. So I would encourage people to make a life-giving list.

Greg: 47:49

And those came, I would imagine, mostly, if not completely, after coming to better understand these are the trigger situations for me. And this is what it triggers, and this is what it's connected to. So this is why I'm coming into it feeling activated and feeling like I've got to go into that reactivity. And I can't get answers or understanding for that until I engage it with compassion and kindness for myself.

SPEAKER_03: 48:17

Absolutely. Self-compassion, self-kindness, as much compassion as God has for us. You know, how sad would it be when we do die and we discovered that we were harder on ourselves than we needed to be? We put more pressure on us than God ever puts on us. And also, you know, people can sometimes misunderstand that this is very earnest work. You're looking at childhood wounds, and that's true too. But don't underestimate the gift of play. Our mutual friend Andy Gallaghorn, he has the spiritual gift of play. Yes, he does. Everybody around him talks about it. Like, whether it's badminton, bowling, silent Bob Youcher. I I've been with Andy when we play Banderdash. It's Boulder Dash that Andy has co-opted. And so laugh human laughter. So like my wife's belly laugh is on my life-giving list. I love when I hear my wife belly laugh, great, it does something to me. So, so I watch stand-up comedy every day. Make sure I'm laughing every day. So it doesn't always have to be earnest. Sometimes playfulness is also the serious work of play, is what we call it.

Greg: 49:22

I love that. Steve, this is amazing. I can't believe that it's been almost an hour since we started talking. How do people best get in touch with you if they want to find out more or grab your books?

SPEAKER_03: 49:33

Yep, they can go to stevecuswords.com. That's my website. And they can get on my email list. They can get my books. My podcast is there. We also have free courses if they want to sign up for some like this life giving list. We have a course on that with a downloadable spreadsheet. They can create their own life giving list. So stevecuswords.com is where to go.

Greg: 49:50

So Steve, I'd love to tell you how great this was, but you you kind of suggested that if I told you I didn't get much out of it, you might send me some money. So this was just this was the worst.

SPEAKER_03: 49:59

Yeah, good. Yeah, yeah. Just give me your Venmo. I'll make sure that you and I are okay so that the world can be okay for sure.

Greg: 50:06

Steve, this is great. Thank you so much. It's it's a pleasure now to be able to say that I don't just know of you, but I know you. Thanks for taking some time to be with me.

SPEAKER_03: 50:14

My pleasure. Great conversation. Thanks, Greg. God bless.