Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2 (NIV)

**Transcription Below**

Questions We Discuss:

What are ways to pursue health holistically, including physically in our bodies, mentally in our thought life, emotionally in our feelings, and spiritually in our souls?
What are a few of your tips to enhance our closest relationships?
How would you describe the "why" for pursuing health in all these areas?

Debra K. Fileta is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in Relationship, Sex, Dating, and Marriage issues. She is a passionate author and national speaker who travels across the country spreading the message that healthy people make healthy relationships. Her work has been featured by numerous media outlets from national television to church ministries such as Saddleback Church, FreshLife Church, Focus on the Family, ChristianMingle.com, The 700 Club, NGEN Radio, KLOVE, and many more. She, her husband, and three children live in Lancaster, PA.

Debra is a regular contributor to publications such as Relevant Magazine and Crosswalk.com, with well over 250 articles across the web about love, marriage, dating, sex, and relationships. Her articles have also been featured in magazines and websites such as Today’s Christian Woman, Verily Magazine, Anne Voskamp blog, Proverbs 31 Woman, IAmSecond.com, ChurchLeaders.com, Converge Magazine, Charisma Magazine, Christianity Today, and many others.

She’s also the creator of the popular relationship advice blog, www.TrueLoveDates.com as well as the Love + Relationships Podcast reaching millions of people each year with topics of love, sex, marriage, relationships and emotional and mental health. Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram to get your dating questions answered and to learn more!

At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Are You Really OK?

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Other Savvy Sauce Episode Mentioned: Brain Science and Spiritual Abundance with Ken Baugh

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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”

Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”

Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”

Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“

**Transcription**

[00:00:00] <music>

Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.

[00:00:17] <music>

Laura Dugger: The principles of honesty and integrity that Sam Leman founded his business on continue today, over 55 years later, at Sam Leman Chevrolet Buick in Eureka. Owned and operated by the Bertschi Family, Sam Leman in Eureka appreciates the support they've received from their customers all over Central Illinois and beyond. Visit them today at Lemangm.com.

I hope you can trust me, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Debra Fileta is a counselor, podcaster, and best-selling author, and she is my knowledgeable guest today. Consider this your one-stop shop for actionable steps to implement as you pursue a more fulfilling life.

Debra is going to teach us helpful lessons from a recent best-selling book of hers entitled, Are You Really Okay?

Here's our chat. [00:01:18]

Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Debra.

Debra Fileta: Thank you so much for having me.

Laura Dugger: Well, will you just first start by telling us more about yourself and the work that you get to do?

Debra Fileta: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a homeschooling mom of four kids. That always surprises people. My youngest is eight months, and my oldest is 10. I'm also a licensed professional counselor, and I've written five books. I just love being able to teach the message that healthy people make healthy relationships. Sometimes we focus on the healthy people part, other times we focus on the healthy relationship part, but they really just go hand in hand.

Laura Dugger: I think one of your most quoted lines is that "just because we're a Christian does not mean that we're healthy."

Debra Fileta: Yes. Yeah, that is definitely something I say a lot. I think if you're the kind of person that resonates with that statement, then you're my kind of people. [00:02:22]

Laura Dugger: Well, can you elaborate? How do you view our health holistically as a four-legged chair?

Debra Fileta: When we look at health, I think a lot of times Christians tend to zoom in on spiritual health, all the while neglecting all the other components of health. But as a counselor, I know that health is not just focusing on spiritual health.

In fact, Scripture points us to the same thing. When Jesus' disciples asked Him, What's the greatest commandment? He said to them, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And when I look at that, I see a deliberate outline that Jesus gave us of what it looks like to love Him with our heart, which represents our emotional health; soul, our spiritual health; mind, our mental health; and strength, our physical health.

When I look at health, I'm not just looking at your spiritual health. I'm looking at all the other components: How you're doing mentally and emotionally and physically. [00:03:23] And oftentimes, those are the areas that really get neglected, specifically in the Big C Church.

Laura Dugger: That Scripture from Mark definitely requires us to holistically worship and come to God with every layer of our being. And I just love that you teach loving God and loving yourself are not mutually exclusive.

Debra Fileta: That passage goes on to say, "The next commandment is this: Love your neighbor as you love yourself." I think a lot of times we focus on the "love your neighbor" piece. But Jesus could have said love your neighbor more than yourself or love your neighbor, don't love yourself. But He actually just said it, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I think there's power there. When we love ourselves, we are loving who God created us to be, we are loving God's workmanship. And I think there's something really beautiful to the process of seeing ourselves as something valuable because of who we are in Christ. [00:04:29]

When we value ourselves, we begin to treat ourselves in a positive way. We don't neglect ourselves. We learn to fill ourselves up. And I think out of the overflow of a healthy person, we can then love the people that God has placed in our life even better than when we're not feeling full, when we're feeling empty.

Laura Dugger: Just going back to that four-legged chair analogy, I'd love to unpack each of these legs a little bit more fully. You've mentioned them, but I'd love to cover pursuing health holistically, which includes physically in our bodies, mentally in our thought life, emotionally in our feelings, and spiritually in our souls. So let's begin with this. How does pursuing physical health benefit us in all other areas as well?

Debra Fileta: Well, you know, science shows us that there is a body-mind connection that cannot be underestimated. [00:05:31] When we're fit physically, when we're focused on our health, it impacts the rest of our bodies, including our mind, including our brain. I mean, brain function is a huge part to the rest of the components of health, our emotional health, our mental health.

So things such as diet, exercise, sleep, even such as boundaries — I spend a whole chapter talking just about boundaries because I think boundaries really protect our physical health — they keep us from burnout.

There was a study where people who walked 20 minutes a day and they were diagnosed with clinical depression... they kind of put them in two different groups. They took a group that had clinical depression and they had them walk for 20 minutes and then a group with clinical depression and they just had them not walk for that period of time.

Fascinatingly enough, the people who were active and walking had a decrease in symptoms of depression. And that's because physical fitness and physical exercise releases these feel-good chemicals that we call serotonin and dopamine. [00:06:38] And those neurochemicals are what help us stabilize our mood, stabilize our thought life, our anxiety, our depression. So it just goes to show you the power of focusing on our physical health as part of the equation of being healthy people overall.

Laura Dugger: Wow. I love that you bring that one to mind, even the specific 20 minutes. I think it's crazy because this morning... I now go on a walk every day and have for about a year and a half. And I keep a list on my phone, I call them my anchors, but things that make it like an exceptionally great day. What are little repeatable habits or behaviors?

I've been doing this walk consistently, but I was thinking even on days when time is crunched in the morning or the kids have something extra in addition to school, just 20 minutes, I've noticed, is the time for me that makes it so much better. So thank you for sharing some of the reasons. [00:07:39]

Debra Fileta: There you go. You were following science and you didn't even know it.

Laura Dugger: I also want to just read a little glimpse of your book about another physical health benefit. So here's a quote from you. It says, "A lack of sleep or disruption of sleep can severely impact a person's emotional well-being and can be an early sign that something is going on underneath the surface. If you find yourself struggling more than usual emotionally, it's important to recognize that the lack of sleep hygiene could be a potential trigger. So often, sleep and emotional struggles go hand in hand, and dealing with one often brings stability to the other."

I just think, Debra, that we undervalue sleep's impact on our health. So can you elaborate on that quote of yours and teach us a little bit more?

Debra Fileta: Yeah. You know, sleep is really the reset for your body. It's the time when your body gets recharged. [00:08:39] When you're struggling with sleep, there's two things that are usually at play. Number one, a lack of sleep hygiene. When I talk about sleep hygiene, even my editor in the book was like, "Is that a real word?"

Like we hear about hygiene as in like showering and brushing your teeth and taking care of yourself, but there's actually a term called sleep hygiene. And that's about the rituals and rhythms and patterns that you have that help you sleep. You know, you can condition your body to get sleepy based on the things that you do before bedtime.

In Are You Really Okay?, I talk about things such as decreasing screen time or dimming the lights or having a certain ritual that you do before bed. All of these things signal your body, your parasympathetic system. That's the system that's in charge of calming you down, getting you relaxed, decreasing your heart rate, getting you ready to rest. It signals your parasympathetic system that it's time to rest. [00:09:41]

And so sometimes not having good sleep is simply a lack of sleep hygiene. Like you haven't prioritized sleep. But sometimes a lack of good sleep points to some emotional struggles that maybe you haven't addressed.

Have you ever had one of those nights where you can't sleep because you're just anxious about something? You're just thinking about this thing over and over again. Maybe it's something you have to do the next day, something you're anticipating. It's one thing when that happens, you know, one night, maybe there's a big thing coming up the next day. But if you begin to see that as a pattern in your life where you can't seem to shut down, oftentimes that indicates there's something going on underneath the surface emotionally. Maybe some anxiety, maybe some depression, maybe something that you haven't addressed.

So sleep can really be our signal to how we're doing emotionally. And I think it's important to be in tune to how we're sleeping.

Laura Dugger: We're just giving little tastes of each of these because the book goes into so much more detail. [00:10:43] But if we move to the leg of the chair, that's the mental part with our cognitive functioning or our thoughts. Can you elaborate on how thoughts impact other areas of our health and our life?

Debra Fileta: Yeah. Scientists used to believe that when you felt bad, you started having negative thoughts. So maybe you woke up feeling depressed, and then you started having depressive thoughts, and it kind of just spiraled.

But the most recent research shows us that it starts with a thought. Thoughts lead to feelings, which then lead to our behaviors. So maybe you have an underlying thought, feeling like you're not good enough. "Oh, I'm never going to get this done. I'm just not good enough for this." Well, all of a sudden, then that thought leads to feelings. Feelings of frustration, feelings of disappointment, feelings of insecurity. And then you act out of those feelings, your behaviors that you do. [00:11:44]

Maybe you interact with somebody, and you're feeling insecure, and you don't speak up like you should. All of that stems from your underlying thoughts.

So a huge part of mental health is taking inventory of the health of your thought life and getting to the root of where some of those negative thoughts come from. In Are You Really Okay? I list out what I call these negative filters. They're called cognitive distortions. And they're unhealthy ways of thinking that many of us kind of pick up throughout life without even realizing that we're doing it.

So when I talk about mental health, I kind of want to divide it into two components. One of them is our thought life, but the other component is our experiences. And for many people, they've been through hard things like trauma. Trauma begins to write over your healthy thinking with unhealthy thoughts. For many people, they've been through something in the past, and they think, "Well, it's in the past. The past is in the past. Let's just move forward." [00:12:44]

But they don't realize that when you don't deal with those things from the past, they can begin impacting how you act and think and feel in the present. And all of that lumped together is really what I would call our mental health.

Laura Dugger: I love how you explain this because all of these areas overlap. And so spiritually speaking, when we look at the Bible, and it talks about renewing our mind, and it gives so much time devoted to our thought life and what to do with our thoughts. It reminds me of a previous guest, Ken Baugh, and how he was elaborating that we can't really control our emotions. But with our free will that God gives us, He gives us tools to renew our mind, like you're saying, starting with our thoughts. And so this is very biblically based. And I love the science mixed in as well.

Debra Fileta: It is. It is. In counseling, we call it the process of training your thoughts. It's a big, important piece of therapy. We call it cognitive behavioral therapy. [00:13:48] When you come see me in my office, I'm going to help you rewire your thoughts, retrain how you think, get to the root of it. But really, when we look at Romans 12, God calls us to renew our minds and transform our thinking. God thought of this long ago. We're just now catching up. We're just now learning. "Oh, wait, this really does work. This really does impact our mental health and then our spiritual health, our emotional health." They're all kind of linked. Like you said, it's kind of four legs to a chair. It's this holistic process of healing. When you pass through one, it leads you to the next.

So what I really want people to understand though, is that these things don't just happen with time. They happen with intentionality. You're not just going to become emotionally and mentally healthy just because you've become a Christian. You have to work at these things.

When we come to Jesus, all of a sudden our blood pressure isn't exactly right, our cholesterol levels don't just bounce back to exactly what they need to be. Like we don't magically become physically fit when we come to Jesus, and we wouldn't even expect that. [00:15:01] But many of us in the faith, many of us who are walking with Jesus, make the assumption that all of a sudden those things in our past are gone.

All of a sudden those negative ways of thinking are gone. But that's not how it works. The process of sanctification means that Jesus is helping us heal all of these areas one step at a time. So it really requires us to be intentional as we're looking at all these components of health.

Laura Dugger: And now a brief message from our sponsor.

Sponsor: Sam Leman Chevrolet Buick and Eureka has been owned and operated by the Bertschi Family for over 25 years. A lot has changed in the car business since Sam and Stephen's grandfather, Sam Leman, opened his first Chevrolet dealership over 55 years ago.

If you visit their dealership today though, you'll find that not everything has changed. They still operate their dealership like their grandfather did, with honesty and integrity. Sam and Stephen understand that you have many different choices in where you buy or service your vehicle. [00:16:03] This is why they do everything they can to make the car buying process as easy and hassle-free as possible.

They are thankful for the many lasting friendships that began with a simple "welcome to Sam Leman's". Their customers keep coming back because they experience something different. I've known Sam and Stephen and their wives my entire life and I can vouch for their character and integrity, which makes it easy to highly recommend you check them out today.

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Laura Dugger: When it comes to getting healthier mentally with our thought life, one practical application is called cognitive restructuring. [00:17:04] But just to demystify this part of therapy, will you explain what this is and how it can help?

Debra Fileta: Yeah. Cognitive restructuring is really identifying the old negative patterns of thinking and then replacing them with new ones. The thing about your thoughts is they are always going to do what's easiest. So if you've had a pattern of negative thinking your whole life, guess what, that's going to be the easiest thought process for you. It's going to require some work and some intent to identify that negative thought and say, "Wait a second, that happened so automatically. I'm just so used to thinking that way, but now I recognize it and I'm going to replace it with the truth. I'm not going to allow myself to think that negative thought about myself because it's not the truth. Here's the truth. Here's what God says. Here is the truth of who I am in Christ." [00:18:01]

And we begin to replace those old familiar thoughts with new healthy thoughts. And that takes some work but we call that cognitive restructuring. And really what it means is learning to renew our mind. But we can't do that until we start to recognize the old patterns, the familiar patterns.

Have you ever gotten into the car? I do this all the time. I have young kids. They have their kid's music playing all the time in the background. And sometimes I go somewhere by myself and I turn on the car and all of a sudden their kid's music is playing, but I don't even notice it because I'm so used to hearing it that it's just kind of like the norm.

So I drive for an hour or two... I'm running errands. I'm going to Target, I'm going to the grocery store and an hour or two later, I'm like, wait a second. Why am I listening to kids' songs? I could be listening to anything I want. That's just kind of an example of how our thought process works.

Sometimes we're so used to the old ways of thinking that we don't even recognize them. [00:19:03] So it takes us to stop and take the time and energy and effort and sometimes help of a professional counselor to begin recognizing those unhealthy thoughts so that we can begin replacing them with truth.

Laura Dugger: Sometimes this is best seen in examples. So just to personalize this a little bit, could you give us an abbreviated account of your trip to Egypt, both with the dark side and the light side for contrasting how this cognitive restructuring can play out?

Debra Fileta: Yeah, I always talk about how we have a tendency to kind of see life either in a negative lens or a positive lens, even when they're both true. The question is, which side do I focus on more? In November of 2019, we took our kids to this big family trip to Egypt. It was this 12 hours on the plane.

In Are You Really Okay? I kind of summarized that trip in two lenses. The first lens I'm focusing on the negative. [00:20:05] One of my sons gets motion sick and here we are on a 12-hour plane ride with him. Not only that, but you get to Egypt and it's dusty and dirty and you can only eat certain foods so that you don't get sick. The traffic is crazy. My 5-year-old almost got hit by a car at one point because there's just no rhyme or reason to the traffic. It's so hot and dusty and humid.

You can see your trip through the lens of the negative. And all of those things that I just said are true. But you can also see it through the lens of the positive. The positive was my son who gets motion-sick was able to take some medication and got through the whole flight and did really well. We got there, it's a brand new world with new experiences, new foods. The sun is shining all the time. It never rains.

So for the kids to experience the culture, get to see the pyramids, go to the museums, ride a camel, all of these different things that we got to experience as a family, it was just a trip of a lifetime. [00:21:13] We had so much fun.

Both of those stories are 100% truth. But the question is, which side do I tend to focus on? And for each of us, our lives have the dark side and the bright side. And each of the sides are 100% truth. But we have the power to decide which side we want to focus on and which side we want to live out of. And part of training our mind and our thoughts is learning to live out of the truth of who we are.

Laura Dugger: Goodness, Debra, that is so powerful. Thank you for sharing that. When we move to that third leg now, you teach that ignoring our emotions doesn't make us spiritual, it actually makes us unhealthy. So can you give a few examples from scripture of emotionally healthy role models?

Debra Fileta: Yeah. When we talk about emotional health, I think we have to realize that emotions are not just a gender thing. [00:22:12] I think sometimes we assume that women are more emotional than men. But the truth is, when we look at scripture, we get the exact opposite. We see that men and women are just as emotional.

In fact, two men in scripture who were very in tune to how they felt were Jesus, number one. I did a deep dive study into Jesus in the section of emotional health and specifically the emotions of Jesus. Biblical scholars have identified over 39 different emotions that Jesus experienced and expressed just through scripture. And we know that there's more than that because according to scripture, if all the things about Jesus' life were written down, it wouldn't fit into all the books in the world. So we know there's so much more to Him than we can even see.

But one thing that we definitely see is his emotional awareness. He was compassionate. He was sad. He cried. He grieved. He was in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. [00:23:12] If you think, well, Jesus was emotional and He handles his emotions well because He's God, well, let me just point you to another man, David, a man after God's own heart. The Psalms are full of the emotions that David experienced.

Each and every one of us has underlying emotions. Maybe you haven't learned to express them or identify them. Maybe you come from a family where you didn't really talk about emotions and you kind of stuffed them. But one thing is going to happen. When we don't deal with our emotions in a healthy way, they will find the point of least resistance because emotions are kind of like a volcano. There's all of this pressure building underneath the surface.

And just like a volcano, when the pressure gets too much, when it gets too high, it will find the point of least resistance and come up through an emotional explosion. Sometimes that explosion looks like anger issues, anxiety, depression, addictions, maybe relationship issues. [00:24:15] You know, maybe we have conflict with our spouse or tension or issues that come up in our life.

But I think the underlying issue is, have I identified what's going on underneath the surface? Have I dealt with it in a healthy way? Or do I just continue to ignore it, to stuff it, and to think that is the way that God wants me to handle my emotions? But again, when we look at scripture, Jesus offers us a beautiful model of what it looks like to handle our emotions in a healthy way.

Laura Dugger: You also recommend getting a journal. How would that tie into pouring into our own emotional well-being?

Debra Fileta: Well, emotionally healthy people do three things. Number one, they can identify their emotions. They can name them. You know, like, this is what I'm actually feeling. It's not just I feel good or I don't feel good. But what am I actually feeling? I'm feeling frustrated. I'm feeling embarrassed. I'm feeling insecure. [00:25:16] I'm feeling hurt. I'm feeling overwhelmed. Identify those things that are going on underneath the surface.

Number two, emotionally healthy people express their emotions. I give you an entire journaling activity. Actually, Are You Really Okay?, as you've probably noticed, Laura, is not just one of those books you read. It's one of those books you work through because at the end of each chapter, there are journaling prompts, activities, homework assignments to help you check in on your health in each of these areas.

And in emotional health, one of the things I have you do is keep an emotional journal. We call it expressive journaling. But really the point is to get your emotions out on paper. Get them in front of you. Begin to express them. Because just expressing them begins to help them lose their power, help take away some of that underlying pressure.

So healthy people express their emotions. And then lastly, healthy people question their emotions because though our feelings are all real, we always feel real feelings, but that doesn't mean they're always true. [00:26:24] You might feel insecure and not good enough, but that doesn't mean it's the truth. Learning to question our feelings and align them to God's truth is a really important part of being emotionally healthy people as well.

Laura Dugger: You also write, emotional health and wellbeing are often influenced by our closest relationships. It's important to remember that and ask yourself how your closest relationships and interactions have influenced you. So, Debra, do you have a couple of practical tips for all of us to enhance our closest relationships?

Debra Fileta: I think it's really important to first take inventory of the relationships that we have in our life, especially the people who are closest to us. Look at the five people that are closest to you in your life and think about the type of engagements you have with them. Are you able to express your emotions freely and share what you're really feeling and experiencing? [00:27:24] Or is it a relationship where you kind of feel like you have to hide some of those things and not really be authentic?

Because the type of relationships you're engaging in currently, in the present are shaping you. Not only that, but the relationships you've experienced in the past have shaped you. When you look at your emotional health and your journey toward health, so much of who you are today has to do with where you've come from.

So many of the problems you face in the present are oftentimes rooted in the pain, wounds, experiences you've had in your past. And a lot of times that's our family of origin, the people who've raised us, how they taught us to handle our emotions or to express our feelings or to deal with the things that we're going through.

So I think first and foremost, it's really important to kind of take inventory of the people in your life today and ask yourself, are they helping me become healthier or are they holding me back? As we kind of begin to process those next steps in our relationships. [00:28:26]

Laura Dugger: I think that's such a great reminder just to be deliberate about who we're surrounding ourselves with because it does impact a lot of areas of our life.

Thanks to our friend Joy, thesavvysauce.com has been completely updated. And if you follow The Savvy Sauce on social media, you're already aware that we launched a new tab on January 1st titled "Articles". I hope you check out these new Savvy Snacks, which are articles full of quick tips for intentional living. Check out these articles today or join our email list to have them directly delivered to your inbox. Enjoy.

As that final part of the chair, the spiritual leg. Spiritually, let's just look again at Jesus as our model. How did you see Jesus setting limits and boundaries that filled up his soul in order for him to then be able to pour it out on others?

Debra Fileta: You know, Jesus is such a good example of taking care of His soul. [00:29:28] He took the time to say no. He set boundaries. Sometimes He said, It's not the time, you know, right now is not the time. Sometimes He went to rest. I love the story of Jesus going after a long day of ministry, getting on the boat with His disciples, and going and falling asleep on the boat because He just knew his body needed to rest.

We see Jesus eating. We see Jesus making the time to get away and be with the Father, to pray, to fill up. He really took care and nurtured His soul. I look at that and I think, you know, sometimes Christians think the word self-care is a selfish, bad word. But what it really means is taking the time to allow God to fill us up in order that we can then overflow that fullness into the lives of the people around us.

I think there's a really important thing to be said of being full people who are overflowing into the lives of others rather than empty people, because empty people cannot love and serve in the way that God calls us to love and serve.[00:30:39]

So if we really want to be effective with our families, with our ministry, with the things God has called us to, a big part of that starts by making sure that we are feeling full and setting boundaries to keep us in a healthy place.

Laura Dugger: Your book, like you mentioned, it's so interactive. And I really appreciated your questions. And one of them that you challenge us to ask ourselves is do we go to the Father to get filled? And if you can hang with me here for just a second, in my quiet time today with the Lord, this old truth somehow made more sense to me today. I think it's in John, is it John 15, where it's talking about abiding with Him. And then John 1, where it says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

And so when you tie that into abiding, one way to abide and fill our souls and come to the Father is simply by reading scripture with Him. [00:31:42] And for some reason, that was just very profound to me today. So I wanted to share that.

Debra Fileta: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so much to be said in those spiritual disciplines of reading God's word, spending time in prayer, and memorizing scripture. But I also think we have to start a couple steps before that in the "why". Why do I do what I do? Why am I reading scripture? Why am I praying?

Because if we're doing it with wrong motives because we're afraid of God or we feel like if we don't do it, He's not going to love us or we've got to fill some sort of spiritual checklist, then maybe we're doing those things, but we're not actually using them to fill us up. I think the key is getting to the why. Do I really do this because I want to spend time with Him? Do I want Him to fill me up? I want to increase and enhance my relationship with Him. I see Him as someone who is good and who is for me. [00:32:42]

I talk about in the spiritual health chapter. Sometimes our view of God is actually tainted by the hurts we've had from the people who've represented Him in the past. Sometimes we see Him through the lens of people instead of seeing Him through the lens of Jesus and his word. When we change our beliefs about God and see Him for who He is, it makes the process of going to Him and spending time with him and praying so much more meaningful because it comes out of a place of positive connection with Him rather than a place of fear or shame or worry. I think it really fills us up all the more when we come to Him and our why is in the right place.

Laura Dugger: That is such great clarification to go one step deeper and ask why. As we even tie all of this conversation together, how would you describe the why for pursuing health in all of these areas? [00:33:49]

Debra Fileta: You know, Jesus calls us to live life abundantly. And I think at the end of the day, when we're healthy people, not only can we live our life more abundantly, but then we can more abundantly and with more intent and power and purpose pour into the people that God has placed in our lives. We can be more effective when we are healthy.

Healthy people make healthy relationships. And when we begin to get healthy standing alone, it starts to impact every other relationship and ministry, our family, our marriage, our children. And we can just live out the calling that God has put on our life in such a much more effective way.

Laura Dugger: Wow. I could not agree more. But now just for fun and to make this a little bit more personal, how do you actually juggle homeschooling and working and pursuing your own health in all four of these areas? [00:34:54]

Debra Fileta: Well, let me start by saying this. First and foremost, God's grace. I think God takes the little loaves and fish that I have and he multiplies it. I feel like he helps me accomplish so much more in an hour than I normally would be able to without his help.

But secondly, I've really learned... and my husband and I are both on the same page. We call ourselves no people because one of our favorite words is no. Maybe that doesn't sound very Christian, but let me tell you this: we've learned that we can only do a few things well. And so we focus on just the few things that God has called us to and say no to everything else.

So there's a lot of other ministry opportunities or kids activities that they could be involved in or our activities that we could be involved in or even some of our hobbies. But in certain seasons, we have to say no to so many things just so that we can kind of streamline and be efficient and focus on the few things that God has called us to do and do those things really well. [00:36:02]

When you look at my life and I think I talk about this in one of the chapters, all the different things that I say no to in order to be able to say yes to the few things that God has called me to. I think being able to say no, you realize that for people who struggle to say no and say yes to everything, they end up feeling like they're spread too thin. They end up feeling burnt out. They end up accidentally and unintentionally saying no to the things that matter.

Like maybe you say yes to that extra meeting, but you're saying no to having dinner with your family that night. Maybe you say yes to that early morning interview, but you're saying no to quiet time with the Lord that morning. So for every “yes” you say, there's a “no” built-in, but it's unintentional. It's passive. It's passive. And learning to kind of take ownership of that and set boundaries around your life is one of the things that has really been life-changing for me.

Laura Dugger: And I think that's a way that you're living out. [00:37:01] I'm just going to paraphrase that there's the scripture from the Old Testament that says, do not turn aside to the left or to the right, but walk in all the ways that the Lord has called you to. That sounds like exactly what you're doing and we're benefiting from all of your work and your wise yeses and no's. So if people want to learn more, Debra, where can they find and follow you online?

Debra Fileta: My favorite place is Instagram right now. So you can find me at Debra Fileta. I'm also on Facebook. And my website is a relationship advice blog for every age and stage, from singleness to dating to marriage. It's called truelovedates.com and you can find more information about me, my books, my resources, and counseling practice there as well.

Laura Dugger: Wonderful. We will link to all of that in this episode's show notes. We are called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge or insight. And so as my final question for you today, Debra, what is your savvy sauce? [00:38:08]

Debra Fileta: I'm going to go back to a phrase you heard me say earlier. Healthy people make healthy relationships. For me, it's really, especially in this season, 2021, I say is the year of healing. You know, 2020 might have been the year of exposing all the things, but 2020 is the year of healing. For me, I continue to look in. I continue to work on my own personal journey of anxiety or depression or identity and seek to get healthy, as healthy as I can standing alone, knowing that when I work on myself, it's not in vain and that it will impact every other relationship in my life, including how I relate to my husband, including how I relate to my kids, including how I do ministry. So it's the best place to start because it's the one where I actually have some semblance of control over myself.

Laura Dugger: Well, Debra, I admire your gentleness and authenticity and just the way that you daily live out the recommendations you suggest to others. [00:39:13] You are clearly a woman of integrity and you really have benefited all of us by sharing this knowledge today. So thank you very much for being my guest.

Debra Fileta: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.

This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.

This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. [00:40:15] That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus.

We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen. [00:41:15]

If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him.

At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started?

First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John.

Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.

We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process. [00:42:15]

Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.

If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

Welcome to The Savvy Sauce

Practical chats for intentional living

A faith-based podcast and resources to help you grow closer to Jesus and others. Expect encouragement, surprises, and hope here. Each episode offers lively interviews with fascinating guests such as therapists, authors, non-profit founders, and business leaders.

They share their best practices and savvy tips we can replicate to make our daily life and relationships more enjoyable!