[00:00:01] Chealsia: Have you ever felt so angry that you couldn’t think straight? What about when you’re disappointed and just can’t seem to move past it? It’s OK. I’ve been there too.

[00:00:15] Dominique: ‘cause emotions flood our, autonomics nervous system like flight, flight, freeze, you know, it floods us. And so to know, like brake in case of emergency. When I’m flooded with these emotions, I have a place to go.

[00:00:29] Chealsia: That was Dominique Dawson, a spiritual director and care collaborator who provides soul care for historically marginalized staff within Cru. I talked to her about the prayer practices she developed to help herself and others navigate through anger and disappointment: two emotions that we’re often tempted and even encouraged to just jump over.

Instead, Dominique gives us a place to go with them. A connecting flight, if you will, that keeps us present and processing the emotion while moving to a place of true healing, where we meet God and are restored in the midst of pain. Welcome to the Created For a podcast, a space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story.

I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley.

[00:01:18] Chealsia: Hi Dominique. It is so great to see you. I would love it if you could just introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a little bit about you and your life.

[00:01:29] Dominique: My name is Dominique Dawson. I am on staff with Cru, for about 12 years now. I served in and have my whole time in Atlanta, Georgia. I currently serve as a spiritual care collaborator. I have a husband, Jared Dawson, and two little people, Josiah and Janelle Dawson. And I love stories. I love tea and I love K dramas and Chinese dramas,

[00:01:55] Chealsia: Oh,

[00:01:56] Dominique: and that’s me.

[00:01:57] Chealsia: I love it. I didn’t know that you loved K-Dramas. I’m super into K-Dramas.

[00:02:02] Dominique: Yes.

[00:02:03] Chealsia: Yeah. They’re the best.

[00:02:03] Dominique: Everybody is.

[00:02:04] Chealsia: Yes.

[00:02:06] Dominique: ’cause they’re their best. Exactly.

[00:02:08] Chealsia: So cool. Okay, great. could you describe a little bit about what your role looks like as a spiritual care collaborator?

[00:02:16] Dominique: Yeah. With my co-collaborator Hung Lu, our vision is to see staff stay connected to Jesus, to grow in their self-awareness and be established in healthy community. And the ways that we do that in our little pocket is to resource, support and shepherd historically marginalized staff and historically marginalized staff in Cru are the big three categories, which are BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, People of Color, women and across the generation. So really young staff and our senior staff, are the ones that we would say are historically marginalized within our organization.

[00:02:52] Dominique: And, I love caring for people. We do that through like soul care coaching, where we sit with people and hear their story and suggest practices or things that can help them, reconnect with Jesus if they’re struggling. I’m also a certified spiritual director and so I sit with people and do direction, And so I love caring for our staff and just caring for people in general. But yeah, it’s a special work to minister to those who are ministering to others.

[00:03:19] Chealsia: Yeah. That’s really sweet. For me, the way that I connected to you is through finding these, resources for, navigating anger and navigating disappointment that you’ve developed. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[00:03:35] Dominique: Yeah. I enjoy writing prayer practices. And formation practices is something I’ve learned more about as I went to a spiritual direction school. But I, I wrote them for myself first,

[00:03:47] Chealsia: Nice.

[00:03:48] Dominique: and then I was like, oh, this could be helpful for other people. But it came out of what I was living through. And so, I needed a more, a prayerful and a tangible, embodied way to process through difficult emotions.

[00:04:05] Dominique: And, I wanted it to be helpful to other people too.

[00:04:08] Chealsia: That’s great. Could you share a little bit about what that was like for you in your life to say, okay. Like, I don’t know when I’m angry, I don’t think, let me go sit down and write a practice.

[00:04:22] Dominique: it wasn’t my initial response either. This came out of the, like, the aftermath of processing, uh, months of processing. I think for me, I had to work through my own anger and disappointment, around my mother’s death. in my life I’ve lost a, a lot of people.

[But most recently, I lost my mother about two years ago. And the anniversary is just passed, but in her loss, my family kind of imploded, on my mother’s side. Some of us got closer. Some of us had to navigate extremely difficult relationships and a lot of pain and a lot of hurt. And so I had a lot of justifiable anger. I had a lot of disappointment.

[00:05:01] Dominique: I think each loss is different. And in this loss, I think the biggest thing that I had to grapple with was the disappointment of what could have been with my mother. Um, we loved each other and we had a relationship, but it was a challenging relationship. And I saw over the years growth with my mother.

Her grow as she got older, um, growing and me growing to be able to improve our relationship. And so one of the biggest losses that I felt was the disappointment of what I had hoped could be between me and my mother as we got older couldn’t be anymore. and yeah, the loss of that and then, anger and, I couldn’t go around these emotions. I had to go through them and it was very painful. It was very difficult. I had to do it in community, you know, I had my counselor, I had my spiritual director, I had my friends and church family and loved ones that were helping me, family, helping me process these things.

And as I came out on the other end, I came out with like, Oh, okay. You gotta go through these things in order to get to where the Lord wants you to be and to grow in relationship with him. The more you avoid these emotions, the more stagnant and shallow your interior life with God is. And so you kind of have to go through ’em in order to, and process them with the Lord. And, um, I wanted to help other people process these difficult emotions with the Lord too.

[00:06:35] Chealsia: Well, first thank you so much for sharing that. I’m so sorry for your loss and. I appreciate you. Being willing to say like, okay, this is what I’ve experienced and what I’ve gleaned is you do have to, go through and experience these emotions.

Even it’s difficult and hard. So could you walk us through what the practice, looks like that you developed?

[00:06:57] Dominique: Yeah. I’ll start with the disappointment one. I start with grounding always. Emotions are physiological, they affect our bodies, and so being grounded and breathing and slowing down in order to even engage your emotions and be honest about what’s going on is very important.

And so the first step is to ground and I do that through box breathing and just, reciting simple scriptures like being still and know that I’m God or things like that. And then I start with a simple prayer. Give us the grace to know where we have been, to know, where we are now, and to have hope for what’s ahead, even if we don’t feel it right now.

[00:07:40] Dominique: And then from there we talk about the losses. I do this in both of the practices, um, the grounding and all those things, but I, I learned that we tend to minimize these difficult emotions and we don’t count the cost. These emotions are costly.

[00:07:57] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:07:58] Dominique: Disappointment is costly, it’s painful. And when we just jump over the hard parts and we don’t really acknowledge the, the damage that has been done, we lose the depth with the Lord that he’s asking us to, the vulnerability and the honesty that he’s asking us to. So the first step is to really think about the situation that happened and describe it, the words and emotions and images that come around whatever happened.

And then to think about as you think about the memory, where do you feel it in your body? Again, emotions are physiological, and we feel them physically. Um, you know, people are like, oh, I can’t breathe deeply. Or I feel weight on my shoulders, or my stomach clinches or my jaw clinches.

Like, these are physical things that happen as a result of how we feel. And so, it’s important to recognize those ’cause sometimes as you notice what’s happening in your body, you’re able to see when there’s growth and progress because you don’t feel that response anymore.

And our bodies often don’t lie to us, even though we say, I don’t have a problem with that. But then you, you know, you got a stress headache and your, your shoulders hurting and your back hurt. You, you, you, you got a problem with it.

You just, your body’s sort of like, mmm don’t lie. Don’t lie about that. You, something’s not quite right. So, um, just acknowledging what’s happening in our body, and then listing the actual losses, listing what we have lost in the case of disappointment. You know, you might be talking about a loss of a dream or a loss of a hope that you had, what could have been,

And writing that out and asking the Lord to help you to grieve those things. I feel like, acknowledging disappointment and losses also go really well with lament and practicing crying out to God about the things you’ve lost and grieving those things, and then I ask about the longings and the desires that go underneath the losses. And so one thing we sometimes avoid, what we want are our desires that are underneath these things. But a lot of times they’re God-sized desires that we try to fill in ungodly ways.

And if we ignore that we have them. We’ll subconsciously or consciously try to figure out how to fill those needs on our own.

[00:10:14] Chealsia: Yeah, for sure. Can you give us an example of a deeper longing?

[00:10:19] Dominique: For example, if it’s like, I’m disappointed that I lost this relationship. Well, that means I long for community.

[00:10:26] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:10:27] Dominique: It reveals a longing and even some of the, like the janky not so good desires that we have. I wanna, I want to get revenge, or I want to da da dah. Well, there’s something underneath that is like, I want things to be made right, or I want, you know, this to be repaired and I am angry that it’s not, and this person has done this or I want harm to stop.

And so those are the deeper desires underneath the shallow like surface desire that we wanna bring to the Lord and say, instead of trying to extract that longing or desire from another person, we’re gonna try to, we’re gonna ask the Lord to fill those things.

[00:11:06] Dominique: ‘Cause if you don’t really deal with the loss and you don’t really acknowledge the desire that you have, you’ll try to take it outta out of that person. And they might not be able to give that to you. Well, they won’t be able to give it to you ’cause this really is a God-sized desire.

One example I give is with my children during the pandemic. I just want it quiet. I have a small house. Three bedrooms, one bath. It was a tiny little house, and they were just loud, constantly loud, and it was driving me nuts. And, I was getting jumpy. Like it was just so loud. And, and I just was like, I just want them to be quiet, like shush, you know, like, I’m trying to take my peace from my children. And God was like, you can’t get peace from them. I just want you to know that.

[00:11:57] Dominique: I’m trying to extract peace by telling them to be quiet. But that’s not where peace comes from. It comes from the Lord. And so, really going to the Lord with our desires and our longings instead of trying to take them from someone else so that we can actually love them.

You can’t really forgive and release and, and love a person if you’re trying to take it from them. Whatever you feel is owed to you, you have to have the Lord fill that in. And then, um, praying that, yeah, praying that God will fulfill those longings. And then noticing whatever the Lord is showing you through this.

[00:12:28] Dominique: A lot of these practices, talk about having a moment of silence in between just to sit with the Lord and listen and notice, and then saying Lord, is there anything that you want me to notice? Anything that stands out, um, that you are trying to show me? And so it’s just a practice to slow down and acknowledge the hard stuff and really give those things to the Lord and listen to what he has to say about it.

[00:12:51] Musical break.

[00:13:00]Chealsia:  Yeah, Dominique, that’s so good. I do want to remind our audience that we will have these prayer practices in our show notes and on our website. Um, it is definitely something that will be a resource that you can grab when you need it and go back to. But yeah, I wanted to hear more, Dominique, about the anger practice.

So, could you let us know a little bit more about like the inspiration behind that one and then what it looks like to walk through that?

[00:13:29] Dominique: That one was inspired, I was reading the First Nations Version, of the Lord’s Prayer, and there’s a line in it that says, release us from the things we have done wrong in the same way we release others for the things done wrong to us. And I really was just drawn to the word release, and I was like, how do you release something Lord?

Well, you can’t release what you can’t, what you don’t acknowledge. And so it’s really important to acknowledge the losses. Anger is a gut emotion. It tells us something. Um, so is disappointment. These are dashboard indicators. They’re saying check engine light. Something is wrong. They don’t tell us where to go.

They’re not navigators, they’re not GPS but they tell us that something’s up and anger is really a gut response of injustice. So, like something was done wrong, something’s not right. And we can, ignore those feelings stuff, those feelings or explode on people in those feelings.

Or we can take ’em to the Lord and the Lord wants us to process those things with him. And so, for anger, I thought about when you’re in a car accident, the first thing that you do is you get out and you look at the damage. You assess it, you take pictures.

You collect the insurance information from the other person, but you, you get the damage looked at, and then you take it to a mechanic, and they give you a professional assessment of what was done, what was lost, what was damaged, and then you submit that to your insurance company and they cut you a check to cover the cost of what was done to your car. So if you run into that person, like if you see that person on the street, you drive past ’em again, you got no problem with them because your check, your losses have been covered.

Now it’s between their insurance company and your insurance company. You ain’t in it no more. And I really thought like the Lord, like he wants us to assess the damages with Him and then get the, the losses recovered with God instead of trying to get them from the other person. There still might be, you know, boundaries that might have to be set, that might still be difficult conversations that need to happen, in love and truth, but I’m no longer trying to get it from you.

[00:15:42] Dominique: I’m not trying to get you to apologize. I’m no longer trying to get you to do what is right. I don’t feel that obligation anymore because the Lord has released me from this. Now I’m doing it for the sake of love. Anytime I engage with you from now on, it’s from the sake of love. It’s not trying to get what is mine out of it.

It’s for your own growth and help. And so, really, you know, the same thing of thinking through it. Where is it in your body? And just listing those damages, listing those losses, and listing those pains. And looking for the desire underneath them, um, and then sitting with the Lord with it, and asking the Lord to help you to release these things.

[00:16:22] Dominique: And so that’s kind of how I process through it and how I encourage other people to process through is to really acknowledge what has happened so that you can release it so that you can, process the pain.

[00:16:35] Chealsia: Yeah. Thank you so much. This is really helpful too. Cause I think that I’m someone who, I see like a list of questions and I’m like, Ugh, like I’m angry, I just wanna talk, or, you know, I’m sad, so I’m gonna cry, then I’m gonna move on. But to be able to see you break down all of these things of saying like, no, these are ways to become whole after you’ve been damaged. Like, these are ways to like experience reconciliation and coming back together, healing, in the midst of pain. And I really appreciate that.

[00:17:07] Dominique: I call them just tries.

[00:17:09] Dominique: Just try baby.

[00:17:10] Chealsia: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:17:13] Dominique: it’s, it’s a practice we’re practicing, you know, it’s not this like checklist. You’ve gotta do it. Um, my spiritual direction, schoolteacher, Danny, Danny Mullins, he told me that practices are meant to lower our resistance to the Lord. They are not the thing that saves us. God saves us. The Holy Spirit changes us. Like that’s what sanctifies us. But like, we are, practicing. We’re meeting God and lowering the resistance in our heart, the walls in our heart that are keeping, him out.

And, I think having a spiritual practice when you have these emotions is really helpful. Not in a perfectionistic like check the checkbox way, but in the like, this is a grace and it’s something to just try and you might not get through it in one setting, and you might not get through it in two settings and it might be really tough and you might wanna throw it and that’s okay. That’s okay.

The Lord knows, cause emotions flood our, autonomics nervous system like flight, flight, freeze, you know, it floods us. And so, to know like brake in case of emergency. When I’m flooded with these emotions, I have a place to go.

I know. Okay, let me just try something. Sometimes having a routine or having a place to go knowing like, okay, I know I’m struggling with anger right now and I don’t wanna say nothing, I’m not supposed to say, so let me, let me pray through this. Lemme go get that practice. Let me pull that out and pray through this, ’cause sometimes we don’t have our words for ourselves.

And, and it’s helpful when you can’t think straight to know I okay, at least I know where to go and where to look at. But also practices are like an opportunity and invitation. Like when we pray and process through these things, they reveal things in us. Like this is an opportunity to be vulnerable before the Lord, to be really, really honest. And allow him in.

And it also invites us to trust him. Like that’s the end goal is to hand over the things that you have lost to the Lord and ask him to restore them. And it’s an opportunity to see him work. It’s an invitation to just try to tear down some of the walls that we have built to protect ourselves in our difficult emotions and allow the Lord in and allow him to work and watch him work, cause he does work every single time.

[00:19:33] Chealsia: Yeah. That’s so good. Before you talked a little bit about the practice, it’s like saying, okay, how do I not try to take peace or reconciliation or the thing that I’m longing for, belonging, from this person, but take it from the Lord. What’s the difference between trying to take something from someone and holding them accountable when they’ve hurt you?

[00:19:56] Dominique: Yeah, I think it’s who’s covering the damages? Who, who cut the check? Who are you expecting to cut the check? If you have processed what was lost you have given that to the Lord and asked him to restore you, and you’ve taken the time to heal. It’s not an overnight process and not a one and done.

Sometimes you have to keep going back to the altar like Lord, again. Um, I feel like this is the forgiveness part between you and the Lord. Reconciliation takes two parties, but forgiveness with you and the Lord is just the Lord restore me. Let me, be filled in the places that have been emptied.

[00:20:38] Dominique: And so now when I am trying to engage with a person who has wronged me. I am not doing it from a posture of you owe me, I’m doing it from a posture of, I want to love you. What you did was wrong, and this is bad for your own soul. And it’s coming from a ministering posture than a, than a, um, retribution and, harm posture. But it does not mean you don’t hold them accountable.

Love, it likes justice, and it likes truth, and it likes honesty. Like when you think about First Corinthians 13, like, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing.

But it’s, the posture that you engage in now. It’s from a different place. But you still do the same thing of trying to hold people accountable of also apologizing for the parts that you have done and the things that you’ve done wrong. but now the repair is for the sake of the relationship is for the sake of, the other person and not necessarily for your own sake, because you already have been filled from the Lord. I’m taken care of. Now it’s for you and for your relationship with the Lord, my hope that, we would be reconciled. But even if we’re not, I’ve done my part, I’ve done what I could to try to love you. so yeah, that is kind of how I see it.

[00:21:55] Chealsia: Mm-hmm. Yeah. you shared a little bit about what led you to create these practices. I’m curious, how have you seen God use them to bring transformation in your own life?

[00:22:08] Dominique: Yeah. I was just recently telling friends, I said like, won’t He do it? Like you know, people have been praying for me to heal from what happened with my mother. You’re never over a loss like you’re never like it’s done. Grief is forever until you get to glory. Grief is here, but I look at those two years, and I’m like, man, those were, it’s the most painful time of my life, but the most healing time of my life. I grew so much.

I look now, like as I process the anger and I didn’t ignore the anger, I stepped away from some people for a season, like for a few months, and I was like, I need to step back because if, I continue to engage you in where you’re at, I am going to do harm. I’m gonna come outta my character. I’m gonna come out of what I feel like the Lord’s asking me to do. I’m not gonna be loving.

And I had to yes, step back and process, in community, like I said with my counselor, my spiritual director with my loved ones, my family, my friends, church family. And I process through these things. And then I was able to come back, with this one particular difficult relationship and re-engage again. And, slowly enter back into the relationship with wisdom.

Not just like whatever, but with wisdom. And I see now like, man, recently I, I saw this person and I was like, the Lord has really done a work. ’cause he’s better in a lot of ways cause I prayed for him as a part of my processing. But also I don’t have a grudge anymore. I was like, man, I’m not trying to get this from him ’cause it hurt me so deep.  The Lord has really binded up that wound.

And I can just talk to him and I can talk about the difficult thing that happened, but it’s no longer me trying to get him to be what I want him to be. I can allow him to be where he is, but I can still be honest about what it was, the damage that he did and I can release it.

[00:24:12] Dominique: And so I just was like, man, my posture has transformed. Because it did spiral on me. It did deeply hurt me. and I’m like, man, the Lord has done a work. And even with the disappointment, it still comes up from time to time, the regret and the sadness around that.

But it doesn’t crack me all the way open or fall all the way apart like I used to. I, I have more capacity to hold it in a healthier way than I did when everything first happened. And so I’m like, man, I see the growth. I see the change, and I’m really grateful to the Lord for it. I was going back and telling the friends who were praying for me. I’m like, the Lord has done our work. I, it’s a miracle where we are now. I don’t know how we would’ve been in relationship still.

[00:24:59] Dominique: I have no idea with what all the things that transpired. And God was, God was very gracious.

[00:25:04] Chealsia: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I just so appreciate your, realness and honesty and just the ways that you have seen God work and the ways that you’re still. still holding these things. It doesn’t go away. it’s still there but there’s

[00:25:18] Dominique: Yeah,

[00:25:18] Chealsia: Like healing doesn’t have to look like what it was before.

[00:25:21] Dominique: Yeah, and one thing that as you do these processes and you process the pain, one thing that brought me so much comfort is just like, man, I really get to experience Emmanuel, God with us. Like when I read in Isaiah 53 of like, he was acquainted with the deepest grief, the deepest sorrow.

He knows what all these things are like. He’s not unfamiliar. That’s why he can be a sympathetic high priest. ’cause he knows what it’s like. And if I’m ignoring my grief, if I’m ignoring my disappointment and my anger, I don’t get to experience God being with me in those emotions and understanding his compassion in those emotions.

[00:26:08] Dominique: And like that is a gift. You know, there’s just so many aspects of God that you don’t get to experience unless you go through.’Cause you, you know, you don’t get to see him as a comforter if you never need comfort. Practicing vulnerability allows us to just to see a deeper, fuller, more, whole relationship with the Lord.

[00:26:26] Chealsia: Hmm. Yeah. I needed to hear a lot of this. I’ve been going through it and like scurrying to the side and being like, uh, and now I’m moving back in. So, yeah, it’s been, it’s been really encouraging.

[00:26:42] Dominique: Yeah, I still do it from time to time, I still avoid my thoughts and myself with K-dramas. I still avoid it. I’m like

[00:26:51] Chealsia: I know, it’s the perfect escape.

[00:26:55] Dominique: And then like, I watched too many.  Okay. You need to stop running from yourself and your thoughts right now, and you need to be with the Lord. But yeah, like I’m definitely not perfect at it, but I’m trying. I’m, I’m trying and the Lord is gracious to meet me in my humanity.

[00:27:15] Chealsia: Yeah. And you’ve seen him work. You’ve seen him work, and so, and that’s a testament for, you, and it’s a testament for us as well.

[00:27:23] Chealsia: Yeah,

[00:27:23] Dominique: We’re just gonna try. One step at a time, baby. Just try.

[00:27:26] Chealsia: Try baby. Yeah.

[00:27:28] Dominique: Just try.

[00:27:29] Dominique: It’s okay baby. We can do it.

[00:27:30] Chealsia: I love it. So let’s try. We all know what it feels like to be overwhelmed by strong emotions or to try to avoid them altogether. But what would it look like to try one of Dominique’s practices instead? To ground yourself through breathing and a simple prayer. To take account of the losses and to ask God to restore and fill your deeper longings.

It’s an act of faith, and there’s no need to get it perfect. It’s a practice. He is faithful, and all we have to do is try. And so here’s a reminder for you when you’re going through it, and a reminder for me as well, let’s be real. Keep going through it.

Go through it with Jesus. Go through it in community. But go through and know that he’ll lead you to the other side, to a place of hope, of healing, and of love.

[00:28:34] Chealsia: Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor for a guided reflection based on this episode.