00:00 Introduction
01:58 Defining Self and Self-Forgetfulness
07:33 Understanding the Self and Healing
09:50 Noticing Ourselves
14:12 False Self vs. True Self
16:31 The Concept of Self-Denial
19:18 The Role of the Body in Self-Understanding
22:08 Embracing Insecurity, Humility, and Limitations
29:33 The Role of Self in Parenting
31:34 Beyond Self: Purpose and Community
38:12 Practicing Humility in Daily Life

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Free of Me and Gazing at God • Books by Sharon Hodde Miller
• The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller
• To Be Made Well and White Picket Fences by Amy Julia Becker
• Amy Julia’s new podcast: Take the Next Step amyjuliabecker.com/step/

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WATCH this conversation on YouTube: Amy Julia Becker on YouTube

SUBSCRIBE to Amy Julia’s Substack: amyjuliabecker.substack.com

JOIN the conversation on Instagram: @amyjuliabecker

LISTEN to more episodes: amyjuliabecker.com/shows/

Note: This transcript is autogenerated and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Amy Julia Becker (00:05)
I’m Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. I’m talking today with my friend Sharon Hattie Miller. She leads Bright City Church with her husband Ike and she is the author of three books including Free of Me and Gazing at God.

She also holds a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She is smart and funny and accessible in all that she says. I’m really grateful for Sharon’s wisdom about how we can think about ourselves less without thinking less of ourselves. Sharon, it is really fun to be sitting here with you today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Sharon Hodde Miller (00:54)
I know. I was really looking forward to selfishly just catching up with you. Everybody else gets to listen, but you’re my friend.

Amy Julia Becker (01:03)
I know. know. Yeah. And we used to have a lot more opportunities to see each other ⁓ than we have in recent years. So I’m just glad to be here, even if it is over a screen. And I am thinking back to, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago, you and I were in a writing group together and you were working on a book called Free of Me. And I was working on a book called White Picket Fences. And recently you published a devotional that is a companion to Free of Me. So going back to some of those themes and the devotional is called Gazing at God.

It’s 40 days. I highly recommend it. Actually, both of those books. And it’s always a sign that other people recommend the initial book if you’re invited to write a devotional about it. So I think that just like kind of speaks for itself in terms of the power, both of Free of Me and also now this this new book. But I thought we could maybe introduce people to what you’re writing about in both of these. The subtitle of the book is.

a 40 day journey to greater freedom from self, which again kind of harkens back to free of me. So let’s define self and self forgetfulness and then we’ll go from there.

Sharon Hodde Miller (02:12)
Man, right out of the gate, I wish I had my-

Amy Julia Becker (02:16)
You want me to tell you what you say?

Sharon Hodde Miller (02:18)
What was the definition I wrote down? I should just read straight from there.

Amy Julia Becker (02:23)
You

said that you needed to define these terms and you said selfhood is a psychological term that refers to your individual identity, your you-ness. This is actually quoting ⁓ Alison Cook. ⁓ Yeah. It’s what makes you a distinct person from everyone around you. And then self-forgetfulness ⁓ is a less familiar concept. And it does not mean ignoring the self or repressing the self.

nor does it mean the self is bad. It refers to a kind of freedom from being distracted by or preoccupied with the self. So can you like maybe just speak especially to that second point, right? Like why would we want to be self-forgetful and what is not self-forgetfulness?

Sharon Hodde Miller (03:07)
Yeah, so those two definitions also thank you for reading those definitions because I could not have I probably should memorize the technical definition that I wrote in my own book. And so thank you for quoting that back to me. But part of the reason why I actually want to start with the self, if that is OK, up to free of me.

Amy Julia Becker (03:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for

Sharon Hodde Miller (03:31)
That book was about self-preoccupation and the ways that self-preoccupation make us really fragile, make us really insecure, that when we make things about us that are not about us, it turns everything into sort of a referendum on our value and our worth, which creates a lot of weight on our shoulders. Because if things are going well, we feel good about ourselves. But if things are going poorly, then we feel badly about ourselves.

And so Free of Me is very much an exploration of that. And actually, I guess I will start with self-forgetfulness. Self-forgetfulness, I got that term. I first happened upon it through Tim Keller. has a book called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. And it is this idea that…

It’s not about self rejection. It’s not about self neglect, but it is freedom from really being distracted by the self that you’re not constantly running everything through the filter of self that you aren’t making things about you that are not about you and that there is a freedom in that. so free of me is is really exploring that. However, part of the reason why I wrote Gazing at God is that I was noticing

especially in leading my church, that when people are struggling with self-preoccupation, when they are making something about them that isn’t about them, you know, they’re running it through this filter of self that is making them feel really horrible or thinking everyone’s conspiring against them, whatever it is, that usually the reason they’re doing it is because of a wound. There’s some pain there.

And we know this intuitively from like physical pain, that when you’re in physical pain, it draws your attention inward. Like you focus on, if I were to break my ankle, I’m going to become preoccupied with that ankle. It’s gonna draw attention to itself. I’m gonna wanna make sure that I’m taking care of it. I’m propping it up. I have crutches. have, you know, whatever it is I need to protect that thing until it heals. And that…

is healthy to some extent. But to know that the self is that way, like emotional pain functions that way as well. so I realized even though there’s nothing that would change necessarily about Free of Me, I realized that there was more work to do around why we struggle with self preoccupation in the first place, that it’s all well and good to say that if you do it, if you focus on yourself, it is going to

take all the joy out of your life and that there is freedom in living for God and loving God and loving others, you know, that first and second greatest commandment. But if I’m never addressing why are you struggling with this? Because, you sometimes it is pride. Sometimes it is just age old sinful vanity. But very often it’s also like shame or, you know, some unhealed wound.

Yeah. And so that was part of the inspiration for gazing at God. But the second reason gets to this notion of the self, which is that ⁓ a number I’ve heard over the years teachings around self denial that are essentially, I would say, Gnostic, which is to say for anyone not familiar with that term, heretical. it’s it’s.

bad theology. we say, we talk about the self as if it is bad and that it just needs to disappear. You know, and some of this is like biblical language that Paul uses about, you know, becoming less and all of that. But this has strayed into unbiblical bad theology about the self.

And those two things combined, if we’re not addressing wounds and then we’re also combining that with bad theology of the self, then we aren’t setting people up to actually be free. Like we’re just entangling them and ignoring the fact that they aren’t entangled. And so the purpose of gazing at God was to take people on a journey where I am defining the self, even though I

clearly can’t call it to mind, you know, in an interview. But it’s there in the book. But defining the self in a way that is biblical, like Alison Cook, her definition is more psychological, but we also have biblical understandings of identity and how to establish that.

Amy Julia Becker (08:07)
You

Sharon Hodde Miller (08:24)
⁓ noticing the self, understanding the self, healing the self, validating the goodness of the self that we are created in the image of God, that God’s ultimate plan is to redeem all of you, that the story doesn’t end with you just completely disappearing behind Jesus. That’s actually not the story that we’re given, but that you are fully restored. And so starting there,

But then continuing on with this now informs a better understanding of self-denial, of self-forgotfulness, so that we are then able to focus on God again, to love God and love others, which I would say also is a key difference between the arc of this book and maybe some other like secular self-help books, which the end goal is restoration of the self, and that is a worthy goal.

but for the Christian is not the ultimate goal. It’s just a step on the way to something greater than ourselves. And so that is the backstory for how Gazing at God came to be.

Amy Julia Becker (09:33)
I love that. And I think the progression of the movements of the book actually speak to what you’ve just said. And I’d love to talk those through a little bit. ⁓ So there’s this first movement, which kind of seems counterintuitive and builds off of what you just said, which is that the first movement towards self-forgetfulness is noticing ourselves. So can you talk about what does it mean to notice ourselves and why would this actually be?

important on our way towards self-forgetfulness because they sound almost opposing.

Sharon Hodde Miller (10:07)
Right. Yeah. So one thing that was really helpful for me in my own journey was noticing what was going on in my own interior world. Like what was pulling my focus inward. And for me, one of the things that I noticed, for instance, and I have a day that is devoted to this, was noticing a particular kind of script that was very me-centered. And one thing that I

learned in researching for this devotional is that in studies of people with depression, they are more prone to use me-centered language. When you compare someone who’s depressed versus someone who isn’t, the depressed person tends to use more me and I and mine. And so I think that’s really fascinating that when you notice this language,

It can be an indicator that, what’s going on here? And so I look at different versions of this. Another one is noticing your assumptions that when there is a gap of information, we tend to not say, you know what, this person that I ran into at church who was a little bit rude, they were probably just having a bad day. They probably got in a fight with their…

husband at home or maybe something happened that was unexpected or they were running late, whatever it is, there was probably something going on that I don’t know about and this had nothing to do with me. We literally never do that. In the absence of information, we fill in those gaps with typically me-centered narratives. And it’s like the worst possible one.

they must not like me. Like that’s immediately where we jump to. And so it was really helpful for me in my own journey to be able to recognize the moments when I am making something about me that is actually not about me. And more recently, the ways that this has played out as a pastor is in leading our church whenever I feel this weight.

⁓ or an urgency or a franticness that I need to fix this thing that is wrong at our church or I need to figure out what’s going on with this family who is upset or someone brought a problem to me and I need to attend to it immediately. And it creates so much anxiety. And I started to realize in those moments when I feel that weight, when I’m paying attention to like

how my body is actually feeling. That is also for me very often an indicator that I have made, this is actually not about them. This is not about the church. This is about me. And I wanna make sure no one’s upset with me or no one thinks badly of me or no one thinks that I’m leading poorly. And when I do that, when I have made this thing about me,

does create that it is a burden. It is not an easy yoke. It’s a very heavy one. So that’s sort of the interior examination that helps us to realize, hey, this is what is going on. And part of the reason why I feel so insecure, why I feel so fragile is I’ve filled in all the data points with myself.

Amy Julia Becker (13:49)
Yeah, and there’s another like where you move from the noticing is also to this understanding of the false self and the true self. ⁓ And I think that also might be something worth kind of trying to define a little bit. What is the false self? What’s the true self? Because what you’re really also getting at is that practice of noticing is essentially noticing the false self and the true self so that you can actually live more into the true self. ⁓

Sharon Hodde Miller (14:13)
Ultimately. Yeah. So the false self is the self that you put on when you walk into a room and you ask the question, who do I need to be in order to belong? Who do I need to be in order to get approval or to succeed? It is the self that we essentially perform.

I think that’s the easiest way to understand what the false self is versus the true self, which does not have to perform in order to belong. That’s one of the things I really love about that moment in the Gospels where God says to Jesus, you know, this is my son and whom I am well pleased. And that is

prior to Jesus having done anything. That’s at the beginning, the front end of his ministry. And expressing this, that you belong, you are a son, you are chosen, you’re cherished, all of this prior to anything that you do. And the true self can only, we can really only be in touch with that true self in that environment.

Amy Julia Becker (15:33)
I love that so much. And I love thinking about places because I think there’s there’s both obviously some work that we can do on that interior level to notice when and why and how we are showing up in the false self. But I also do a lot of work, obviously, around that concept of like belonging and ⁓ how we can create spaces where people are actually invited to show up as their true selves. And so it seems as though as part of that work.

can actually be this act of hospitality and invitation to other people to show up in their true selves if we are not assuming that we have to show up in that false way. Anyway, that’s what you made me think about. So ⁓ I want to move to self-denial because as you said, I think that is something that can be really easily misunderstood both within the church and then also especially for people who have perhaps left the church because of really kind of toxic and distorted messages around self-denial.

You write about how it’s not self neglect and it’s not self abandonment. So maybe even like, are those things? But then can you for people who aren’t familiar or perhaps are familiar with a distorted view of self denial, ⁓ can you explain that and talk about why we need it? So that’s a lot.

Sharon Hodde Miller (16:49)
Just to circle back to with the true self, to know, I don’t think we can have a healthy understanding of self-denial if we don’t first have a healthy understanding of the true self. That the true self is made in the image of God, is good. But also there is a sense in which there are aspects of yourself that are gifts that you are invited to.

be a good steward of and to cultivate and that we cannot be a good steward of the gifts that God has given us and ourselves if we neglect ourselves, if we abandon ourselves. And so that’s why it was so important for me to start there before we get to self-denial, that we have this common understanding that the self is actually good and brings glory to God. So self-denial,

I actually think self-denial is a couple different things in way that we see it in scripture. One is the invitation to that performative understanding of the self. think that self-denial is the choice to strip that away in some ways. And sometimes it is stripped away for you and to not fight those moments when they come. And so I think that’s part of what

what self-denial is, kind of serving this image of this false self, making the choice not to do that. But more importantly at its core, it is simply acknowledging that the self is a good thing but not a God thing. To quote Tim Keller, that the self is good but it cannot be Lord, it cannot be primary, it must never be an idol.

And so making sure that our relationship with it is in proportion to what it should be, that Jesus is our Lord, not the self, that he is first, not the self. And so self-denial is really this invitation back to a rightly ordered way of living and seeing the world.

Amy Julia Becker (19:10)
So within that you write about the body and you’ve mentioned this a little bit, but I’d love to just spell it out a little bit and that like self denial is not a denial of the body. So what role does the body have in a healthy understanding of the self?

Sharon Hodde Miller (19:24)
Yeah, that’s honestly, I would be so curious to hear how you would answer that question because in some ways, like I wrote a little bit about it, but you have devoted books to this topic. And so, you know, I think it’s this balance of recognizing that your body is given to you as a

gift to be received. that at the same time, your body is also, because of the world we live in, it has limitations. And I think that we are taught that those limitations are always bad, always wrong, that we need to deny them. We need to…

fight them, we need to resist them, we need to minimize them. And because our culture has an idolatry of beauty and youth and health, that it is very easy to get swept up in serving those things and co-opting your body into that instead of receiving those as invitations to discard the false self, but also to remember

that at the end of the day, you exist for God’s glory and not your own. And so that is how I would answer that. I also wanna be really careful to say that that doesn’t mean, like your body is also given to you to enjoy. And so that doesn’t mean, you know, this asceticism, again, this self denial where it’s like, and therefore, you know, don’t ever wear makeup, don’t ever.

you know, wear nice clothes or anything like that. So there’s a tension there that I think we see in scripture.

Amy Julia Becker (21:25)
Yeah, and I think this might even help like that. I thought it was almost hilarious to like when I finished reading the devotional, I went back and was looking at I’m through my books right now. So Movement Three is denying the self. And if you read the list of the different essentially invitations you have in this section, it’s about the most countercultural list I can imagine, because you are inviting us to receive like each one starts with receiving. I’ll just list them in security.

Humiliation, rejection, exclusion, loneliness, hiddenness, failure, insignificance and mediocrity. That’s like, my gosh. I I loved this section. I thought it was fabulous. But I’m like.

Sharon Hodde Miller (22:09)
Very inspiring. That’s what we all need.

Amy Julia Becker (22:13)
We live in a culture that says we need self-esteem. need inclusion and belonging. We need social media platforms. We need body positivity. We need excellence. We need beauty. We need youth, like all these things. And so like how on earth could receiving insecurity, humiliation, rejection, exclusion, hiddenness, failure, insignificance and mediocrity ⁓ be a good thing?

Sharon Hodde Miller (22:37)
Yeah, you know, I find that what I’ve found through this journey, and that’s also partially why I wanted to take people on this journey that I have been on for the last really, I guess, almost 10 years now, is realizing when we think of self-denial, we think of kind of like I just mentioned these ascetic practices, like during Lent, you know, giving up chocolate or, you know, whatever it is.

And that’s all fine and good. And I think there is a way to practice certain aesthetic practices that help you to crucify the flesh, so to speak. But I have found that I don’t have to search very hard to find those things that help me to identify either my false self.

or ways that I have elevated myself to a level that belongs to Jesus. And it really is all of those things that I just named that we, when we feel those things and they hurt us, we tend to think, and this is the toolkit that our culture gives us, is you just need to fight it, that you need to affirm it away, you need to remember.

you how special you are, what is good about you, all these things that the insecurity is only ever bad. And to some extent, I don’t want to negate that entirely because sometimes when we feel insecurity, specifically when we feel shame, lots of times that is because of real wounds, real lies that were spoken to us by our family of origin, whatever it is. And so I don’t want to belittle that.

But what I have found is that very often when I’m feeling insecure, it is because I am standing on something that is not secure. And it is an opportunity for me to ask, what am I standing on to give me security that cannot.

And really all those other things are sort of like a subcategory of that in some way, like the hiddenness, rejection, loneliness, mediocrity. They’re all sort of manifestations of insecurity. But yeah, for me, it usually highlights was I looking for security in something that cannot provide it and to make sure I’m not missing out on the information that this is giving me.

because I’ve just been taught to affirm it away, you know, with self-help or Bible verses, essentially. Yeah. And so that was kind of the inspiration for that section.

Amy Julia Becker (25:35)
Well, I really did appreciate it. And I think ⁓ it does dovetail, as you said, with the body aspect, which is in that section as well, and the idea of actually receiving our limits as good things. And as you know, and many listeners know, for me, one of the pivotal breakthroughs in understanding not just of disability and our daughter Penny, but of myself was, limitations and brokenness are not the same thing.

Like to be limited is actually to be created as God made me and to receive myself in its limitedness is actually a part of trusting the goodness of how God made me, but also that God made me to be in relationship with all these other people ⁓ to need them. Actually, to be a needy, vulnerable human is a good thing. And I think all of those things. ⁓

If you’re right, if we are standing on that foundational love of God for us ⁓ and for others and for the world, then something that prompts us to experience insecurity, humiliation, rejection ⁓ can actually be an invitation to further security from that place of belovedness rather than finding my security, which I did for many years in like striving to be.

independent and to be what everybody else wanted me to be and to prove myself. And I was kind of able to do that for a long time. And it still didn’t really work in terms of like creating a self that both mattered, ⁓ like felt secure and a self that was actually contributing much to the world.

Sharon Hodde Miller (27:16)
Yeah, I still remember honestly the first time I heard you say something to that effect because it was at the Festival of Faith in Writing. I remember hearing, where I was. Like I remember where I was sitting when I heard you say that and it has really shaped my thinking ever since. But I also want to say again why I start with the self. One of the things I say is just being able to notice yourself in a non-judgmental way.

Because I don’t when when we’re talking about self denial and self-focus, think shame is just like crouching at the door You know looking for an opening to come in and so I want to say To the extent that you can notice what’s going on without judgment So that you’re not shaming yourself where you’re like, ⁓ I’m feeling insecure because Trusting in something other than Jesus and I know that we do that to ourselves. Yeah

And that’s not how he wants you to come to him. It’s much more of a like, hey, it doesn’t have to be this way. I came for you to have freedom, but not like a guilt trip. It’s his kindness that leads us to repentance, not his shaming voice. And so I really want to make sure that is clear as well.

Amy Julia Becker (28:39)
Yeah, thank you for underscoring that, because I think there is, again, especially around the idea of self-denial and even I think also ⁓ for women in particular and anyone who’s already in a vulnerable social position, the idea of self-denial can also be kind of weaponized to mean don’t have a voice, don’t try to get a job that pays you well or don’t. There’s a whole set of like

kind of cultural assumptions that really can just end up being like misogynistic and on down the list of problems. And so I think it’s important to just underscore that that’s not what you’re talking about either. Like this is not a denial of your God given gifts. It’s not a denial of your purpose in this world. It’s not a denial of the like really important work that you have been given to do, whoever you are and in whatever way.

Sharon Hodde Miller (29:33)
Yeah, yeah. that’s especially for women. I think we’ve been handed this image of motherhood that is sort of like the martyr mother who just, you know, lays herself down for her family and her kids and sets aside everything. And I think too often that is much more a loss of self or a self abandonment that we’re really talking about or kind of to flip it.

and over identifying with that role, which is to say you’re making this about you when it was never meant to be. That you’re very important to your children and you are still not the center of their story. And one thing that I often tell parents when I speak to them is your kids already have a perfect parent.

and it is not you. And so your job is very simple, which is to direct them to him. And that is so much lighter to live that way. It means you can fail because you can go to your kids and you can apologize and you can say, you know what, I failed in this moment. Like I lost my temper. I spoke to you in a way that I shouldn’t have, whatever it is, but then be able to say, but do know who never fails is

is Jesus, He’ll never do this to you. And that is just an easier way to parent that doesn’t require you being a martyr for your children.

Amy Julia Becker (31:10)
I’m curious just to circle back to one of the things you said is we’ll find lots of kind of self-help books that end with a worthy goal of self restoration. That’s not a bad thing. Much of what we’ve been talking about can be found in many of those books, but you also go farther than that as far as what the real purpose is of the both noticing the self, getting under uncovering the true self, denying the self.

There’s a there’s a purpose on the other side of that. And I wanted to ask you just to talk about the point of it and the ways in which self-forgetfulness actually helps us. You know, the name of the show, Reimagine the Good Life, to actually live with a sense of like purpose and goodness that might not look like it does in our culture or on Instagram. Yeah. Can you talk to that?

Sharon Hodde Miller (31:51)
Yeah.

So some of that goes back to my own story. And when I first was wrestling with my own insecurities, specifically around ministry and writing and speaking, and that used to be really inherently meaningful to me. But when I started to make it about me, then that lost all of its…

joy and I became really fragile, really insecure about everything that I was doing. But initially, I didn’t realize that’s what had happened. I just knew I was feeling insecure about my work, but I didn’t know why. And so I started out by reading books about insecurity that were very much that message of

if you just remember how special you are, that that will set you free, that that will empower you. And that’s essentially the self-esteem culture in a nutshell. That if kids can just, it’s like an alternative gospel, that if kids can just understand how special they are, that that will set them free. And it’s not that that message,

doesn’t matter or doesn’t have any truth to it. But it didn’t produce the generation of confident kids that they thought it would produce. And for me personally, it didn’t yield the confidence that I thought it would yield. I was believing all these things about myself that were biblical, they were true, but also not getting any traction around my own insecurity.

And one way that I recently was thinking about this, I’m curious actually what you, I posted about this. I don’t know if you saw it, but I’m curious because you care about literature, if you would like agree with this or not. But I was thinking about how Disney movies right now are all about identity. They’re all of them. They’re all about identity. And specifically the Frozen franchise.

is very much like, you know, finding yourself. And it made me think about this idea of the hero’s journey, this kind of classic narrative arc where you look at like the Odyssey or like Lord of the Rings or something where the hero goes out on this journey for this purpose that is greater than themselves. But how nowadays

that hero’s journey, what they are going to discover is their self. And it just made me wonder if that is symptomatic of how we have lowered the ceiling of purpose for our lives. And ultimately, I do think that is why the self-esteem movement fails to yield the results that it promises is because you are created for

for wholeness, for healing. You should absolutely love yourself because we should love anything that God loves. But at the end of the day, you were created for something much higher than yourself. And if you lower the ceiling of purpose too much, where it’s just like self-actualization, that I think it creates its own sort of spiritual bankruptcy to some extent. And I think we’re seeing that.

But that’s why it is so important that we don’t just stop at the self is good, but that we have this higher vision of what is the self for in the first place and that it is for the glory of God and the good of others.

Amy Julia Becker (35:37)
Yeah, I love that. And I’m to add a little aside here, which is that if you are on Instagram and you don’t follow Sharon, you should, because I ⁓ think you are one of the you and Rich Fiotis are the two people who I think do the best job of like capturing a spiritual truth in very few words and putting it out there in a way that I’m like, I’ve never thought about it that way before. That’s really helpful. So anyway, just a little plug for your ⁓ I’m sure it’s.

more than Instagram, but I get it on Instagram. Your wisdom that’s really out there on a very regular basis. So thank you for that. did, but I missed the Disney, the Disney wisdom. So I’ll talk about it now. Yeah, I think that’s a really astute observation just that, ⁓ again, probably some of the older heroes journey stuff might actually ⁓ be a little dismissive of the idea of self-actualization. Whereas like this is more dismissive of the idea of like having a purpose.

Sharon Hodde Miller (36:26)
think that’s true.

Yeah.

Amy Julia Becker (36:33)
is not it’s not just beyond the self, but that like all of us are are meant to be kind of ⁓ created for one another. You’re and working, ⁓ doing things in the world, participating in things for one another. There’s a quote in the book about just like it’s too small to just think of yourself as for yourself. And I loved that. I loved that idea. So I do think there’s just a like bigger imagination that we can have.

And it’s weird because it’s like on the one hand, there’s a humility in knowing that I myself is not. The be all end all of creation, right? Like there’s actually we are we really need lots of other people going back to like understanding our own limits. And I also have a particular gift to offer role to play peace in all of that. So there’s kind of a beautiful purpose that can be uncovered there. So I think it’s a bit of a both and and we tend to.

in our own lives and maybe in our Disney movies like swing from one end to the other.

Sharon Hodde Miller (37:31)
Yep, 100%.

Amy Julia Becker (37:34)
Well, just as we come to a close, I’m curious if there are any like ⁓ spiritual practices that you have found that help you forget yourself, like in an ongoing way or that help with any of the things we’ve been talking about here. But is there anything that you might offer to listeners who are like, I mean, obviously, if listeners are curious, they should buy Gazing at God and they should go through it. The course of 40 days, it’s really good. ⁓ But I’m also curious, yeah, if there just are any spiritual practices that have been helpful to you in your own life.

Sharon Hodde Miller (38:03)
So the primary one in this, I guess it would qualify as a spiritual practice, is I have this kind of personal motto of just letting humility come when it’s there. I think we fight humility very often. We combat it. We try to resist it, make ourselves bigger, more impressive, whatever it is.

church planting. So I released Free Me and then we planted a church right around the same time actually. It might’ve been the same fall. And oh no, no, no, no, no. I released Free Me exactly a year prior, exactly a year prior. And then we planted a church a year after. But there are a lot of opportunities for humility when you are planting a church because there’s a lot you can’t control. A lot goes wrong. And it, especially when you first start out, it’s

entirely volunteer led. And so you have to have appropriate expectations for a volunteer, which means there are times when someone that you have given leadership to, you kind of handed this ball to them to hold and they just decide, actually, I’m to go to the beach this weekend. And so they toss the ball back to you and there’s no one else to catch it except you. Yeah. Or it just gets dropped entirely. Yeah.

Amy Julia Becker (39:23)
Those are the options.

Sharon Hodde Miller (39:25)
And, you know, in those moments you can either get really upset with that volunteer or make them feel bad or like pressure them or you can throw them under the bus to other people and say, you know, I was depending on this person and then they let me down. But those are all me trying to protect my own image and my reputation, what people think of me as a leader, because it does look like incompetence. It looks like you’re doing just doing a bad job when really it’s just

can’t control people. And I have learned it is much more freeing to just let humility comes when it comes instead of fighting it and trying to cobble together this image that everyone has of me. That is exhausting. And so whenever God gives me this opportunity to just put down that false self,

essentially and just be who I am because at the end of the day, I didn’t start this church to win people to me. That’s not why we exist. And when I forget that, when I think I am trying to win people to me, it’s crushing. And so that’s as simple for me, just letting humility come has been really important to me.

Amy Julia Becker (40:49)
when I feel like that’s applicable in so many of our experiences, whether that’s the workplace or the home in terms of just like, yeah, I didn’t want it to go this way and this is the way it went. And I’m going to receive that. Well, Sharon, thank you for just these, again, like examples and the the work you’ve done over the course of all your books. ⁓ But it is fun to have you return to free of me with this new ⁓ devotional. I really benefited from

going back to some of those ideas myself and seeing how you’ve developed them and just being reminded of the importance of noticing the importance of actually understanding what it means to deny the self in an accurate way. And then the real ⁓ joy of considering how I get to be a part of how myself gets to be a part of the work that God’s doing in the world and how that like progressively, I think, allows me to be forgetful of myself without ⁓

being kind of neglectful of myself. So thank you very much for all of that.

Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. I’m excited for the episodes we have ahead. Leo Labresco Sargent is going to be here talking about the dignity of dependents. Justin Hurley is going to be talking about his new book, which is called The Body Teaches the Soul. I had to check on my bookshelf. And Kevin Chandler is going to be here talking about the hospitality of need. These are great conversations and you do not want to miss them.

If you enjoyed this conversation, might also like my other podcast. It’s called Take the Next Step. Over there, I’m having short, practical conversations for families affected by disability. And we’re talking about how to take the next step toward a good future. It is always incredibly helpful for you to follow, rate, and review this show. That way more people know that it’s out there. And it’s always especially helpful if someone comes to mind who would appreciate this conversation or might need this conversation, please share it with them.

As always, you also can send questions and suggestions my way. We have a link at the end of the show notes and that says, us a text. So just click that or email me at amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this podcast and Amber Berry, my assistant for doing everything else to make sure it happens. I hope this conversation helps you to challenge assumptions, proclaim belovedness and envision a world of belonging where everyone matters. Let’s reimagine the good life.

together.