You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan and I, Rachel Clinton, continue our conversation about the experience of not doing well.

After talking about the disruptive moments that pause our spirals and old methods of coping,

we talk about the terrifying but

essential act of turning towards community and allowing the spirit to care for us through the

care of others.

Where we left off last time, with my dear friend and colleague Rachel Clinton.

Hello.

We left off with not doing well.

How we often fail to engage are not doing well, only adding up the spiral of even doing worse, to a point where as we began

to end, we talked about we need something, someone, to begin to stop us, that disruption that

begins to expose that we've gone too far. We've got to begin to find a way back up, but not power up, not shut down, quit,

but actually something that contends with us.

And I think that notion of contention is that there is something better, that there is something good.

I go back, I can't even tell you how often the

phrase I would have despaired if I did not believe that I would see the goodness of God and the

land of the living. Now, that phrase from, I believe it's Psalm 27, invites me back into that play that I will not always be unwell.

That indeed, even if my life ends because of illness, that there is something other.

But nonetheless, I've got to have that spiral, that sabotage contended with to begin to open the door to more.

But what is that, what does that call forth for us?

Well, I mean, the reality is when we come to a moment where things are not well, the spirit is not just contending with that moment. The spirit is contending

with all the moments that we've not been well and how that's been handled. And very few of us,

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