God + Mental Health Podcast

Episode SummaryCan you burn out on your faith? Kayla Andersen grew up in church five to seven days a week, served on every ministry team she could, and by the time she finished Bible college she could barely open her Bible or walk through the church doors. In this episode of the God + Mental Health Podcast, Roslyn and Kayla talk honestly about spiritual burnout, the shame and apathy that come with it, and how learning to lament helped Kayla reconnect with God.What We Talk AboutHow spiritual burnout startsKayla describes herself as a people pleaser, a perfectionist, and an eldest daughter who just wanted to know what was required of her and how to meet it. Before college she was at church most days of the week, serving in worship, children's ministry, youth leadership, and summer camp. Then Bible school added a new layer: reading Scripture like a textbook and writing long theology papers. She knew all the right answers in her head, but she was empty. And because she believed the problem was her, that she didn't want God enough, shame piled on top of the exhaustion.Why it's hard to nameMost of us connect the word burnout to jobs and corporate culture, not faith. Kayla didn't have language for what she was feeling. She just knew she was tired and believed she was supposed to push through, find joy, and keep saying yes. She calls this "white knuckling" her faith, running on a list of supposed-to's about what a good Christian does.Apathy when you still careKayla would have told you her faith was the thing she cared about most. But her body and mind were reacting to exhaustion with apathy in practice. What she was doing on the outside got disconnected from where she actually was on the inside. Roslyn shares that for her, burnout has shown up as full disengagement, pulling away from anything faith-related. She also names how lonely this season can be: people affirm everything you're doing on the outside while you feel terrible on the inside.Why we're afraid to get curiousWhen your whole life has been built around pleasing God and the people who lead you, the main way to "go deeper" usually looks like serving more and doing more. So when something stops working, it feels like it must be your fault. Kayla shares that asking questions used to feel like the start of a slippery slope toward doubt. Real recovery started when she let curiosity ask what wasn't working and moved toward rhythms based on who God says she is, not what she does for Him. As she puts it, if she never does another thing for the Lord, she is still loved.You live life seasonally, not generallyRoslyn shares something she's been chewing on: life comes in seasons. Her boys won't be little forever, and her relationship with God will look different over time too. There are seasons for serving and seasons for receiving, seasons of fasting and praying and seasons where God says rest. She's clear that church systems for serving aren't bad. They help new believers and give people meaningful ways to serve. The issue is treating one season's level of involvement as a permanent requirement.Asking God questions is part of faithKayla points to the long Jewish tradition of wrestling with God that runs through the Old Testament, and to the question-based discipleship model rabbis used in Jesus' time. She compares it to a toddler's "why" stage. Asking questions is relational. It's how we draw near.Lament: Telling God the truthKayla admits the first time she learned to lament, it felt like self-pity. If you're used to putting a positive spin on everything, you haven't built the muscle to sit in the tension that God is good and this situation is not. She walks through how lament psalms are built: name what's wrong, bring it to God, ask Him to act, even hold His promises up to Him. Yes, those psalms end in praise, but getting there can take weeks or months.Roslyn shares a moment from a wilderness season after her first son was born, when money was tight and she couldn't pay for his speech therapy. She cried in the car and asked God what more He wanted from her. She calls it "crashing out on God," and says it's okay. Kayla shares her own story of spending much of her twenties in a ministry that eventually imploded. She felt like a pawn on a chessboard and wasn't sure she'd recover. While wrestling with God, she pictured a small child throwing punches at their father while he pulled them in closer. When we skip the grieving and wrestling, we skip the healing too.Shame makes us hideRoslyn connects this to Adam hiding in the garden after eating from the tree, and God asking, "Who told you that you were naked?" Shame pulls us away from God. Kayla adds that we don't have to protect God from our emotions or make our feelings smaller and more palatable for Him. One of the biggest shifts in her faith was going from being "God's teacher's pet" to simply bringing her whole self to Him.Practical rhythms for recoveryKayla's biggest tip is structure, because it takes the pressure off. You don't have to feel a certain way or pray a polished prayer. Ideas she shares:Meet with God at the same time and place each dayUse a Bible reading plan or read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year app so you aren't deciding what to read when you're running on emptyLet go of chasing a big "download" every time you open your BiblePlay worship music while you do everyday tasks like washing dishesBuild in time to check in with yourself: Where am I at? Do I need to say no to something this week? Does my calendar need to change?Pray honest prayers like, "I want to want You, and today I don't."Key TakeawaysSpiritual burnout often grows out of people pleasing, perfectionism, and a faith built on performance.Apathy can show up even when you deeply care about God.Curiosity and questions are invitations to go deeper, not signs you're losing your faith.Lament is a biblical way to bring pain, anger, and grief straight to God.You are loved by God apart from anything you do for Him.Simple structures help you stay connected to God when you aren't at 100%.Scriptures ReferencedEcclesiastes 3:1-8: a time for every seasonPsalm 22:1: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (the lament psalm Jesus quoted)Matthew 27:46 (also Mark 15:34): Jesus quoting Psalm 22 from the crossMark 9:24: "I believe; help my unbelief," from the father of the tormented boyGenesis 3:8-12: Adam and Eve hide, God asks "Where are you?" and "Who told you that you were naked?" and Adam blames Eve1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22: David described as a man after God's own heartJohn 14:16, 26: the Holy Spirit as ComforterThe Psalms of lament (general reference): many written by DavidResources and Links MentionedTake It From Kayla website: takeitfromkayla.comTake It From Kayla on social media and Substack (same handle on most platforms)Kayla's blog series on spiritual burnout and lamentKayla's spiritual burnout blueprint, which includes scripts for saying no, the seven types of rest and how to practice them, Scripture for setting new rhythms, journal prompts for reconnecting with God, and ideas for restructuring your calendarBible reading plans and read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year apps (general mention, no specific app named)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Denise Pimentel was diagnosed with bipolar 1 in her late twenties, after an abusive marriage, postpartum, and weaning her son converged into an episode that put her in the hospital. She's been hospitalized four times since, had a life-altering stroke in December 2024, and finished the memoir she started during a manic episode in 2017. In this episode she talks about living with bipolar 1 as a woman of faith, what a manic episode actually looks like from the inside, and what it cost her when people told her she just wasn't praying enough.Denise is a writer, educator, speaker, advocate, and visual artist, born and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and now based in suburban New Jersey. She's the author of Unshaken: A True Story of a Bleeding Mind, a Broken Body, and Buried Grief, the founder of Glorified Writing, and the host of the Unshaken Voices podcast. She holds a BA in elementary education and history and a master's in liberal studies. This is the first podcast she's appeared on as a guest.HOW IT STARTEDDenise spent most of her working life in education. In December 2024 she had a stroke that took her out of the classroom permanently. Her husband got her to the hospital in time for a TNK shot to clear the clot, and the recovery is what finally gave her the time to finish the book.The diagnosis came years earlier. She was in her late twenties, married to her first husband, in a difficult and abusive relationship. She describes her pattern at the time as trying to save people. She'd moved him out to New Jersey to get him out of the environment he grew up in, and she was trying to bring him to God while he was an atheist. She goes back to an illustration from her Christian school chapel, the believer standing on a chair trying to pull the nonbeliever up while the nonbeliever pulls the believer down. She wanted to be the exception to that. She wasn't.She didn't know mental illness could be passed down genetically. Her grandmother, her mother's mom, was permanently hospitalized when her mother was nine, and was given unregulated shock treatment that made her worse. Her mother lost her own mother to the illness at nine years old. Her grandmother's sister also had mental illness. It skipped her mother and came to her. That family history is part of why her mother initially tried to get her through without hospitalization, because she was afraid of what hospitals had done before.Several things converged at once. The abusive environment. Postpartum after her first son. Isolation, since she wasn't living near her parents and a therapist had told her to stop talking to her family, believing they were the problem. And weaning. She explains what she learned later, that nursing had been protecting her mind, and that stopping is when things started coming apart.The first hospital didn't take her in. She hadn't slept in about five days and was having delusional thoughts, and they sent her home with a sleeping pill. She explains why that doesn't work, that in a manic episode the mind overrides even the strongest sleep medication.WHAT BIPOLAR 1 ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKERoslyn asks Denise to explain bipolar 1 in her own words rather than clinically, and this is one of the most useful stretches of the episode.Sleep goes first. The hours shrink and shrink until there are none, and she describes lying in bed praying to fall asleep. Because of that, she keeps a strict sleep schedule year round, including summers when her kids are out of school, because staying up later while still waking at the same time has triggered relapse for her.Then the thinking changes. In her first episode she hallucinated, saw things above her, and heard voices coming through the baby monitor. She called the police in the middle of the night to ask if it was too late to report an abusive incident, something she says she wouldn't have done in her normal frame of mind, though it did start a process of things coming out. She still can't watch scary movies because of what she experienced.She's also candid about how it presented in her second marriage. She believed the problem had been the relationship, decided she didn't need medication anymore, and stopped taking it without telling her husband. Then came the paranoid thoughts, that he was cheating, that he was hiding money, about a man she describes as having taken care of her from day one. Anxiety climbed. She checked the locks over and over before bed, which traces back to people trying to break into her home growing up in New York.Her hardest part to convey: when you're in an episode you believe you're right about everything, and you don't listen to the people trying to catch it.WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS, INCLUDING IN A MARRIAGEDenise names four things as the core of managing bipolar 1: seeing your therapist, taking your medication, using your community or family, and seeing your psychiatrist.The practice she recommends most is joint therapy. She sees her therapist individually and also sees the same therapist jointly with her husband every two weeks. Her reasoning is that the therapist hears everything from her alone, advocates for her, helps her work through her thoughts, and over time also knows her husband well. When she's struggling to trust her own feelings, there's a third party who can ask her what she's feeling, ask him what he's feeling, and serve as a voice of reason for both of them. She's clear this isn't a confrontational marriage, it's someone helping keep a good marriage together.She's honest about how hard the first breakdown was on her husband. He'd never met the version of her that showed up, accusatory and mean and not who she was, and he almost left. Her father came and explained, and her sister-in-law, a nurse, told him it wouldn't be permanent and that she needed help.They also started doing couples devotionals together after that first breakdown, buying several and working through them, which she says has produced some of their best conversations and put God first in the marriage.Roslyn names what she's hearing as a wall of protection built out of community, accountability, and support, and points out that isolation is the first thing to go when shame is attached. She also names the piece Denise models well, that trusting your support enough to say "what I'm thinking may not be true" is not evidence something is wrong with you.FAITH, STIGMA, AND "YOU'RE NOT PRAYING ENOUGH"When Denise was first diagnosed she couldn't believe it. The public reference point at the time was Britney Spears, and she remembers looking at the paper and asking God how this could be her diagnosis. It didn't turn her away from God, but it was confusing, especially with people in her life telling her she didn't need medication and people in the church telling her that her faith wasn't strong enough and she wasn't praying enough. Her response: she didn't do anything for this to happen, and she had always been a strong believer.She also describes something she's since read about in other people with faith backgrounds, that when she becomes manic her religiosity heightens. She tells the story from her book of sitting in her living room during her first breakdown with her current husband, looking up at a skylight where the frost looked like an eye, and hearing God say "you're the chosen one." She's careful about this. She knows now that wasn't actually God, and she also believes that moment is when everything changed and she found the calling to write the book.Her advocacy message now is that your hardest seasons can become the transformative thing that leads to a new purpose. She believes her stroke and her mental illness were what God used to move her life somewhere she could help other people, and that people who think they're nobody have a story that can turn pain into purpose.The church piece gets addressed directly. Denise was told that if she left her marriage she would be setting her children up for divorce, because her own parents had divorced. She also admits she wasn't bold then, didn't tell the full truth, and didn't want to make anyone look bad, so the church wasn't working with complete information while her ex-husband was minimizing what was happening.Roslyn pushes back on the cause-and-effect theology underneath the "not enough faith" line, pointing out that belief itself is what ties us to Christ, and that God causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Believers aren't absolved from pain. The question is how God is with us in it.THE BOOKDenise started Unshaken in 2017 during a manic episode, writing at night while her husband slept, because in mania the words come faster than the hand can keep up. She set it aside when she went back to teaching and picked it up again after the stroke, when a cognitive therapist asked if she could write and told her writing is healing for stroke recovery. She wrote weekly while her brain healed. It took seven or eight years total.The book covers her life from childhood in New York through the traumas, the first breakdown, the diagnosis, and the stroke. She's clear that she put the traumas on paper not to complain about them but to show what God did. She also talks about how afraid she was to publish, and how she told her ex-husband ahead of time that she used no names. They're on decent terms now. He's apologized, he's a good father to her son, and she declines to badmouth him.The stroke chapter centers on the TNK shot. She was told there was a seven percent chance the shot could kill her, and that seven felt like ninety. She describes everything freezing while she had a conversation with God, telling Him that if He wanted her here after the shot she would still be here. She heard Him say take the shot. She took it.After publishing, with Matthew 16:18 printed on the cover, she got an invitation from the New Jersey Governor's Council to be part of a breaking the stigma event. She was surprised that a government body invited a book with a Bible verse on the front. Her frami

Almost half the women in Crystal Renaud Day's 1,300-person survey were exposed to pornography between the ages of 8 and 12, and only 2 percent said they used it because a partner asked them to. In this episode, Crystal and Roslyn talk openly about female sex addiction, why Christian women stay silent about it, and why trying harder and praying harder has never been enough to break the cycle. It's a conversation about what sits underneath the behavior, not just the behavior itself.Crystal Renaud Day is a pastoral counselor, speaker, and recovery advocate who has spent close to 20 years working with women who struggle with pornography. She's the founder of She Recovery, the author of Dirty Girls Come Clean, and her newest book, What Drives Women to Porn, released last week. Her work started with her own story. She was exposed at 10, in magazines, and stayed deeply addicted through her teens until she was 19 and met a woman who told her own story out loud. That was the first time Crystal had heard a woman talk about pornography as her own experience rather than as a wife dealing with betrayal. It gave her permission to say "me too" and enter real recovery, not just sobriety.She walks through how She Recovery began. She was on church staff doing graphic design and media in 2006 when it came out that her pastor and mentor had been in a long-term affair. That was the catalyst. There are people in the church struggling sexually that no one would suspect, and nobody was talking about it. She started blogging her own story, got flooded with comments from women who thought they were the only one, and asked her church for a classroom to run a group. Her leadership said yes. None of the women who showed up actually attended that church.Crystal and Roslyn both name the same pattern in their own histories: exposure around age 10, unsupervised time, and a decade of carrying it alone. Roslyn shares her own experience with early exposure and the shame of sitting in church while struggling with it, which is part of why this conversation exists.The survey findingsCrystal surveyed over 1,300 women about when and how they were exposed and what keeps them coming back. Forty-six percent were exposed between 8 and 12. Around 87 percent before 18. Only 2 percent named a partner's request as the primary reason, which dismantles the most common assumption people make about women and porn. Roughly 53 percent pointed to emotional release and 46 percent to physical release, which means it functions as both at once and moves back and forth depending on the need. About 47 percent had experienced sexual abuse.What female sex addiction actually looks likeCrystal describes the presentations, because it rarely looks like the stereotype. Pornography. Masturbation. Excessive fantasy. Erotic novels. Serial dating. Hookup culture. Returning again and again to the same man. She makes the point that the presentations look similar in men, and that "men watch porn" is too narrow a frame for either.She also explains what early exposure does. It happens before a child has language for her own body, let alone for what sex is or is for, and it shapes her sexual palate and her sexual worldview. Things she never imagined doing become things she inches toward, because porn desensitized her first. Nobody wakes up at 15 planning to become an affair partner. It's what Andy Stanley calls a series of unwise choices, a slow fade.The addiction cycleCrystal walks through the full cycle in the episode. It starts with the wounded self, the place where the woundings live. Something triggers it. Then comes preoccupation, where the brain starts circling the thing. Then ritual, which she calls the point of no return, where you're getting on your phone, getting in bed, putting yourself in position. Then acting out. Then despair and shame, which should send a woman toward God but instead drops her back into the wounded self, which starts the whole cycle again.For Christian women, the shame layer is heavier, because the behavior doesn't match who she wants to be or who she believes she's supposed to be. Crystal names the identity piece plainly: I am dirty, I am unlovable, I am unwanted. And she names where she believes that voice comes from, an enemy who wants women stuck, far from God, and ineffective for the kingdom.Her new book organizes this around five primary drivers: emotional, relational, identity, trauma, and spiritual. A woman can be carrying one or all five at once.Why it isn't really about sexThe most useful stretch of the conversation is about the nervous system. The nervous system learns early, it's built to detect threat and protect you, and it goes hyperactive after trauma, including the small-t kind that people dismiss and then feel ashamed for being affected by. Loneliness, stress, tiredness, hunger, boredom, and rejection all register as threat. The nervous system says let's fix it, and it reaches for the thing that worked when you were twelve.Crystal says the comfort framing misses it. It's about safety. That's why married women still struggle even when sex is available, why the masturbation and the fantasy are harder to give up than the porn itself, and why so much of it runs on muscle memory. It's also why trying harder fails. The groove is already cut. Until the nervous system learns a different path, that's the path it takes. Roslyn ties it to her own morning coffee habit, which she thinks about before she even falls asleep, and to neuroplasticity, the fact that new pathways can be built at any point.Roslyn also adds the clinical piece about locating emotions in the body rather than staying in your head, and notes that every emotion has a need attached to it.What actually helpsCommunity. Crystal is direct that we cannot heal alone or recover alone, and that this is by design, going back to God saying it was not good for the man to be alone. She built She Recovery to be a place where women can belong, confess, be accountable, and take responsibility for their own healing. She doesn't tell anyone to stop praying. She says keep praying and keep letting God into the struggle, but be open to the possibility that He isn't going to remove it the way you assume. In her own story she prayed constantly, led worship, led groups, did all the godly things, and was still struggling until she told her story and got into community. Roslyn adds that her own life is vastly different because she has people who will expose her and who she will expose herself to.Her closing frame: healing begins with understanding, and there is more to your story than the fact that you watch porn.SCRIPTURE REFERENCEDGenesis 2:18, referenced as it not being good for man to be alone, and used as the foundation for why recovery requires community rather than isolation.Galatians 6:2, referenced by Roslyn as bearing one another's burdens.1 Corinthians 10:13, referenced as God providing the way out from temptation, with Crystal suggesting that the way out may well be the community you need to recover in.Luke 15:11-32, the parable of the prodigal son, referenced by Roslyn for the detail that the father ran to the son rather than waiting for the son to come the rest of the way.LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONEDShe Recovery, the organization Crystal founded to help women struggling with pornography and unwanted sexual behaviorWhat Drives Women to Porn, Crystal's newest book, released last week, written for women who are struggling and for clinicians, counselors, church leaders, college leaders, and coaches who don't know how to ask the questionDirty Girls Come Clean, Crystal's earlier bookThe five drivers framework from the new book: emotional, relational, identity, trauma, and spiritualAndy Stanley's phrase "a series of unwise choices," quoted in the episodeAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Shunta Grant will tell you straight up that time management is the wrong term, and one of the first things she does with a new client is throw it out. She is a former business litigator turned corporate time management coach and the founder of Best Today, and in this episode she reframes the entire conversation around time stewardship, intentionality over productivity, and why you are both the problem and the solution.Shunta walks through a career path she calls organic rather than linear. She clerked for a judge for two years, moved to private practice as a business litigator, and started making hair bows for her daughter on the side. Those bows ended up in stores, and in 2015 she left law to run "Because of Zoe" full time. People started asking how she replaced her income, which turned into business coaching, and business coaching turned into something else entirely once she noticed she cared more about people's lives than their revenue. She launched Best Today in March 2020, the same week her daughter came home from school for what everyone thought would be a few days. Home became everything, people needed help with time, and the business grew from there into corporate coaching for law firms, hospitals, and universities, almost entirely by word of mouth.She also talks about the self-discovery underneath all of that, including the habit she had of opening every introduction with "I used to be a lawyer." She caught herself doing it and asked why she was introducing herself in the present by referencing a past she willingly left. She dropped the phrase and had to confront the belief that you only get one or two gifts, that you are either logical or creative but never both.The heart of the conversation is the distinction between time management and time stewardship. Shunta's argument is that time management makes time the villain, some wild beast you have to lasso and bring under control. But time does its job every single day. Sixty seconds still make a minute. Making time the problem is a convenient way to avoid ownership, and she would rather you be the problem, because that means you are also the solution. Every morning you wake up with hours you did not purchase, which makes you responsible for what you do with them. She gives the same treatment to the word productivity and swaps it for intentionality, since productivity lets you run yourself ragged and still check the box, while intentionality means doing only what actually matters.Roslyn and Shunta get into how intention gets lost in the first place. Shunta's answer is that it starts with the loss of self. She teaches what she calls top to bottom planning, where your days are the last thing you plan, not the first. Above your days sit your values and identity, and above your days also sits your season. She names her own three values as freedom, faith, and joy, and says if something costs her any of those, the answer is no. She also names her identity as a disciple first, before wife, mother, Black, or woman. Without that clarity, there is no filter, and you end up chasing whatever the world says is important that week.The season piece is where a lot of listeners will find themselves. Your season sets your capacity and your boundaries, and Shunta says most people are operating outside theirs because they are watching people who are not in their season and do not share their values. Her diagnostic is simple. If you are constantly comparing, constantly frustrated, or constantly saying you do not have time to do something, you are probably operating outside your season. She works clients through a framework called Name Your Season, built around four questions: what are the responsibilities, what is actually required, what are the opportunities, and what boundaries does this season need.They also talk about the invisible part of building anything. Shunta points out that the shortest part of an Olympic win is the part you watched, and that David was in the back tending sheep where nobody was looking, which is exactly what prepared him for what everyone eventually saw. Roslyn connects that to praying in the closet and to capacity, that the throne requires a level of groundedness and emotional maturity most people have not built yet.Then there is the Mary and Martha conversation, which Shunta says she brings up constantly enough that her friends tease her about it. Her read on Luke 10 is that the serving was never the problem, the order was. Mary chose to worship before the work, and the worship informs the work. Shunta applies that directly to how you start your day. If you are anxious, troubled, pointing at what other people should be doing, or in somebody else's business, those are signals that the order is off. Roslyn shares that this happened to her the morning of the recording, when she stopped, pulled out her prayer book, prayed for about forty-five minutes, and executed the rest of the day with noticeably more calm.On the practical side, Shunta gives her three planning non-negotiables. Preview your week in writing before Sunday ends, including what is most important and when you are going to stop. Plan every day in writing, limited to what is actually necessary. And let everything else live somewhere other than your head or your list, which for her is an "everything spreadsheet." She has no use for to-do lists and compares them to junk drawers, where the important and the unimportant get mixed together until things get lost. She also makes the case for not making real-time decisions, because deciding in the moment all day long can quietly cost you two hours.The conversation closes on why people resist hearing that they are doing too much. Shunta starts by asking what agreement you came in with, meaning who taught you that being important requires always going, always being on every board. Then she comes at it from self-love, because dragging yourself down to the bone is not actually loving, and she asks the uncomfortable question of whether some of the over-giving is really about being perceived as self-sacrificial. She uses the image of one cup trying to fill seventeen glasses, where seventeen people leave thirsty and you leave empty. Roslyn adds the clinical version from her own practice, where clients with high responsibility do not believe they are doing too much until they realize they give themselves no time at all.If you have ever been told to just manage your time better and it did not touch the actual problem, this conversation gives you a different starting place.SCRIPTURE REFERENCED1 Corinthians 4:2, quoted in the episode as a steward must be found faithful, and used as the foundation for the time stewardship framing.Luke 10:38-42, the account of Mary and Martha, read in the episode from the New King James Version. Jesus tells Martha she is worried and troubled about many things, that one thing is needed, and that Mary has chosen the good part that will not be taken from her. Shunta uses this as her central illustration of priority and order.Matthew 6:6, referenced by Roslyn as praying in your closet, with what is done privately being rewarded openly.Matthew 6:27, referenced by Shunta with the question about worry adding a cubit to your stature.Matthew 6:34, referenced as tomorrow having its own worries, and tied to Shunta's trademark phrase one today at a time.Philippians 4:6-7, referenced as being anxious for nothing, making your requests known through prayer and supplication, and receiving peace.Philippians 4:8, referenced as thinking on what is true, pure, lovely, and of good report, framed in the episode as a choice you make about where your thoughts go.John 16:33, referenced as the promise that in this world you will have trouble, used to make the point that the goal is not avoiding trouble but becoming more resilient inside it.LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONEDShunta Grant's website: shuntagrant.comInstagram: @shuntagrantBest Today, the planning and time management stewardship company Shunta founded, launched March 2020One Day at a Time for women, including a monthly workshop, a first Thursday of the month focus session, and quarterly planningWhere to Start, Shunta's program and her recommended entry pointRight Now Routine, an online resource Shunta created for building routinesWorth Reading Wednesday, Shunta's weekly emailName Your Season, her framework for identifying responsibilities, requirements, opportunities, and boundaries in your current seasonValues Vault, her tool for getting clear on your values and identityCorporate and team coaching, available through her websiteShunta has been featured in Forbes and EssenceIf this episode encouraged you, subscribe for new conversations on faith and mental health every week, and leave a review to help this podcast reach more people.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Episode SummaryWhat happens when a theology professor's own panic attacks and trauma make his lifelong understanding of faith fall apart? In this episode of the God and Mental Health Podcast, Roslyn talks with Dave, a professor of New Testament studies and Christian theology, about the anxiety, panic attacks, and trauma that reshaped his faith, and how tracing the Bible's recurring theme of water and chaos gave him language for suffering he didn't have before. Their conversation covers trauma, embodiment, shame, and community, and previews Dave's upcoming book, In the Sea Was No More: Reading the Bible in the Deep.Scripture ReferencedPsalm 69 — Dave describes opening his Bible to this psalm during a retreat and reading its opening lines, "Save me, O Lord, for the water has come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold." He does not cite a specific verse number, but identifies it as the beginning of Psalm 69.Genesis 1 — Dave references the creation account, where the Spirit of God hovers over the dark, watery chaos called "the deep" before God brings order and life into being. He references the chapter generally without citing a specific verse.Revelation — Dave references the vision of a new heaven and a new earth where "the sea was no more," and where death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more because the first things have passed away. He references the book generally without citing a specific chapter or verse.Roslyn also references the Genesis account of Adam and Eve hiding from God after their sin, including God's question "who told you that you were naked," without citing a specific chapter or verse.Links & Resources MentionedBook: In the Sea Was No More: Reading the Bible in the Deep by Dave — releasing (shipping) September 22nd, described as part memoir and part Bible studyGeneral reference to EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which Dave went through for roughly three years as part of his trauma treatmentGeneral reference to Alcoholics Anonymous, used as an example of a small, honest community where people can be fully known in a way Dave says "big church" often fails to provideKey Topics & TakeawaysA "high-functioning nervous wreck." Dave describes living with anxiety since childhood while still functioning well in daily life, including through a PhD in theology and a career as a professor. He explains that this changed significantly after the birth of his first child 22 years ago, when his anxiety began to escalate.When panic attacks began. Dave traces his first major panic attack to December 26, 2004 — Boxing Day — while watching footage of the Indian Ocean tsunami. As his son grew older, approaching the age Dave was during a significant childhood trauma, Dave began experiencing panic attacks, intrusive images, and intrusive thoughts, describing himself as coming close to, but never fully entering, psychosis.Getting help. Dave's wife, who is also a therapist, connected him with a trauma therapist. Through roughly three years of EMDR therapy, Dave says he came to understand how much unprocessed trauma his body was carrying separately from his conscious mind, and began learning to recognize his triggers.Faith as a "bag of tricks" that stopped working. Dave explains that his usual coping tools — prayer, Bible reading, and spiritual disciplines — became inaccessible once his anxiety intensified, forcing him to confront how cognitive and disembodied his faith had been up to that point. He describes having to discover what he calls an "embodied Christianity," recognizing that he wasn't just a mind carrying a body around, but that he was a body.Rediscovering scripture through Psalm 69. While attending a retreat and speaking publicly again after years away, Dave opened his Bible to Psalm 69 and found its opening imagery of drowning in deep water spoke directly to his experience for the first time. This led him to trace water and chaos imagery throughout scripture, from Genesis through Revelation, and became the foundation for his book.The theme of "the deep." Dave unpacks the biblical concept of "the deep" — the watery chaos present at creation in Genesis, which God doesn't destroy but instead gives structure and purpose within. He connects this to the flood narrative, where the waters of chaos "undo" creation, and explains that throughout scripture, water and waves become a recurring metaphor for catastrophic, uncontrollable overwhelm — illness, sin, invading armies, and grief.Death as the ultimate uncontrollable force. Dave explains that in scripture, believers are told they can resist Satan but not death, which he calls "the last enemy" — a force with total dominion over creation that only God has power over, paralleling the sea in biblical imagery. He connects this to the closing vision in Revelation, where the sea, along with death, mourning, and pain, is finally removed.Rethinking suffering and God's sovereignty. Dave shares that his crisis of faith wasn't about doubting God's existence or goodness, but about reconciling belief in God's sovereignty with a world that could "blow up on a heartbeat" without clear reason. He describes coming to see chaos and unpredictability as part of God's good creation rather than evidence of God's absence.Community over isolation. Dave emphasizes that humans aren't made to face suffering alone, describing how his wife, his therapist, and eventually others he opened up to all played a role in his healing by consistently showing up and saying "I'm with you." He talks about the need to be able to be, in his words, "naked and unashamed" before other people, not just before God.How this changed his teaching. Dave now speaks openly about his own mental health struggles in every class he teaches, noting that most of his students are navigating similar issues. He also teaches scripture through the lens of what it means to struggle as a human being, and reframes the power described in Paul's writing on the resurrection as something that enables deeper vulnerability and openness rather than an escape from weakness.A critique of "big church" culture. Dave and Roslyn discuss how mainstream American Christianity often emphasizes victory and control rather than making space for vulnerability and shame, using Alcoholics Anonymous as an example of the kind of small, honest community that church often fails to provide. Roslyn connects this to the biblical account of Adam and Eve hiding and covering themselves after sinning, framing shame as something rooted in disconnection rather than exposure.About the book. Dave's book, In the Sea Was No More: Reading the Bible in the Deep, ships September 22nd and interweaves his personal story with a chapter-by-chapter walk through scripture's water and chaos imagery. He describes it as "a memoir in scripture," noting that he spent about a year and a half considering publishing it anonymously due to shame before ultimately deciding to publish it under his own name.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy