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July 12, 2022 10:00 pm
Life’s slights and indignities provoke bitterness, resentment, frustration, sadness. But in her Peace Project, author Kay Wyma asks—is there a better way?
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I know that I've got tons of chaos like feel for the people, but because it's all like you just got so much going on and so there's going to be chaos and where in each other's chaos, whether it's in the casts of our thoughts are the cancer of our actions because we all have history, you know we've all had that going on.
Welcome to family life today to help you pursue the relationship that matter most and Wilson Dave Wilson you can find his life today.com or on our family life, family life today. Okay so let's talk about our experience with whole third regarding with you know I'll tell you were going to minute but you'd start laughing. Why do you think I'm laughing. Just go ahead and tell your listeners while you well. We did this as a group like let's all do the whole thing really seriously when I know what are some other people and it just go to us and so we had been text thread going so hard and picking up sugar and flour, and dating is like your whining so Mike is not hard and I'm seeing in it working around the house keys treat Coke days. I only added Diet Coke as I'm not given well everyone's well I write a little bit, but you guys were pure violate a single thing it. I don't know about you, I generated you from our post read. I'm ready to do it again because it was that hard, but I just got edit of the bit. Not the reason I bring it up. It was a 30 day like experiment by the way you feel great. I did feel great that you thought it was just just also really hard but really great. Wish I could do it again and make it enough I could hire you only got in the studio today. A woman wrote a book about better experiment is all yours subtitle anyway KY was in the studio with this back in February today. Welcome back. Thanks for having me edit your making fun of because it was a play for me was a play off the whole 40 to do a soul 30 there was like off here right now going what's wrong with Diet Coke like why I don't get some 30 is a lot easier 31st sure sounds a lot better for you now and so it really was like we do so much for our diet. Like if you're unhealthy you'll do something to change her diet to make you healthier and the whole idea was my thoughts are not always productive and helpful.
Why don't we do something to help the thoughts and that's where the soul 30 came along just like a diet, but this is more event instead of a facets of feast. Is it really is highlighting truth though it is and it's a lot easier because you can drink coffee with sugar and milk and all the good stuff that's my. The books actually called the peace project 30 day experiment practicing thankfulness, kindness and mercy and you know I think all of us love something this 30 days. This is your first book. I didn't realize this but for books yeah and we had you article years ago talking about.
You're not the boss of me anymore. Yeah, well, which was really a for I think it might've been our first week is cohost with so that yeah it was pretty funny. You said you didn't even realize we were walking in the studio that we were going to be interviewing you so much prep work, but it was great and I do remember that now excited to come back and just be with you guys because you're a delight to be with and there's I personally am encouraged with what you do time.
Great. Thank you for including me in your lineup you have encouraged us because as we've been reading your book. The peace project, it can inspire so many talk about that. Let's talk about peace because it is a choice.
What prompted you to do this really a bad attitude. Sorry rotten attitude is not what it all started the morning that I come home from carpool and I have a Bible study that meets my house and has for almost 20 years on Tuesdays. That's just how I have five kids, I do.
I 14 to 25 and even married how many years have to be 26 or more, that's for sure for sure. 26.
Okay, so I'm not very good at math. I signed up one of my kids at camp for the wrong year the wrong person you are in cabin two years older so I don't trust myself with numbers at I used to be an investment banker. I don't know what happened. I think I was a faker the whole time. I can't even then of my children asked for help with math like they quit they would run for the hills. Help them and I just terrible with numbers so I'm not sure what I'll come home yet. So that morning I came home from carpool and I was getting coffee ready for the cows were coming over open the refrigerator.
I think you can probably relate to this.
There two cartons of milk in the refrigerator when it's empty. I pick up the second one I boxes to you. I could go in the pantry and there will be empty cereal boxes and I might just like why is it in their every woman in the world, now I'm sure I get that software was just children still in there.
It was like will keep it. So I sat I was little unhappy and frustrated and I go get in the car to go to the grocery store. I start back and down our driveway because we still have side drives and we are on a street that deadens into a park and so often it's hard to get through the street I see a car coming up down the street who actually pulls aside for me to be able to back out of my driveway and I was like oh I start backing up in this huge black pickup truck. I guess thought the guy was getting over for him and he's like barreling down the road at me and I'm in this little mini Cooper that was site stolen because it was when my kids card whenever they're not there.
I pretend like I'm a kid driving that car choice. Like I've seen it going for real like this is my street and I guess I will be now backing down the street so that you can go through and started doing it. I looked up I don't know what prompted me, but I looked up and it was such a beautiful sunrise like Kirby car with air conditioning. It's a hot summer day in Texas going to the grocery store were there will be refrigerated items and people will more than likely say okay because I go to the grocery store the time and the people that work there and moment, and I like just this actually thankfulness starts washing over me and I instantly physically feel better. Like in that moment I my quick second. I feel better part of it had to do with breathing because when you look up you breeze and hello, my mood kind of changed and I was like okay please like take the road. I'm Debbie is totally fine tune it shifted from being forced into backing up to willingly backing up, which was kindness without me really realizing what was happening his eyes like scout and is the guy past. There was a young man driving.
I genuinely had a moment where I was like I have no idea what's going on in his day he could be racing to the hospital for all I know he could be late to work. He could be a jerk you know a jerk. Some long lines, and I prayed for him in that moment, not in some of your spiritual way. Because really it was a bad attitude that started all of this and I pray for myself and that I would restore. I got the milk I came up and the lady showed up. I was still again, feeling physically so good that I told them about was like the weirdest thing happened this morning. I told him about going to the grocery store and they listened and just was so amazing the next week, they came back in one of the lady said can you tell that story again and the cow sitting next to her go. So I've been doing it because as I told him I kind of a sort of like I think it was thankfulness.
That's what was happening.
Pretty sure it was kindness and it was compassion.
I did not know at that point that it really was mercy that was at play. And so when she said she'd been doing it. We were all kind of like like if you did do that like you actually practice those things and it was one of the things they were it was just like what about for 30 days because it was my soul that was impacted and that's when it was like so 30 owner to assault 30 and my kids are so nice to actually say yes to these harebrained ideas so you brought them into it. I don't like doing things by myself and I am Pollyanna a little bit. Kind of like I do get in trouble with those kinds of things. I started a few businesses that really weren't and I just figured it's always better with friends and if it really is something that is good to be something for everybody and it just was an idea and because they said yes it's kind like you draw the line in the sand and at that point we did and we started it and I got little notebooks for each one of the kids even though a couple of them were adult kids and you still have your group of women were they thinking yeah we want to do this so yeah we did a chunk of people. We did and I played especially the women in the bucket. Of course the kids to their very nice to let me do that, they'll kinda have goofy pseudonyms that they hate.
But it's really about the people more than anything else you know and that's what I always hope that no one engages within it. Thanks.
That's must be her. This must be them because it is and it's for all of us and this book. It is my fourth book, and so the listeners will hear this experiment with something the Lord gave us and we didn't even know that we needed it when he did it and so intimately. I know that he did it for me because in that. I probably did assault 33 or four times and it deeply moves you and there's something about experiencing God through it so powerful and the reason why think it is this because those three things, thankfulness, kindness and mercy.
It's actually the greatest commandment.
And that's what I think the secret sauce is it's because when you do those things. They actually are the greatest commandment for a reason. Especially mercy.
You cannot do that on your own. There's no element of us left by ourselves. That has mercy also talk about what you did, you know, because you're your time at times to identify what kind, mercy part of me sit there going to course I read I know but I want our listeners to hear like what did you do like when I jumped in the P90 X mirror that I know was phenomenal.
But I'm watching Tony Horton and I just feel for always doing as a work out a lot of us do that now. What did you do each day. That's David Wilson with KY mud on family life today will your case response in just a minute. The first guy does some of his most amazing work in homes just like yours.
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We want to send you a copy of casebook called the peace project a 30 day experiment practicing thankfulness, kindness and mercy and get your copy when you give this week. Family life today.com or when you call with your donation at 800-3583 29, 800 F peasant family L is in life, and then the word today. Right now, back to Damien's conversation with KY Ma and what her 30 day experiment with gratitude and kindness look like in her family well. We really did have a little notebook that we pulled together and it wasn't anything special you know I just went to this dollar store got whatever was of interest to them or to me you can do on your phone.
I've done it on the notes of my phone where literally I practice like I do something you know practice gratitude, especially if you're feeling crummy. Like the time and the guy was driving down upon me.
I unsettled and things are disoriented and there's discord and it's like that's the perfect time to not let that discord mess with you actually find something in those moments that you can be thankful for and call it out, you know, I was thankful that I was in a car.
Thankfulness is so overused a little bit.
It seems lame but the reason why there's so many books hunt gratitude. Because of this powerful like what it does for you. It actually does physically make you feel better because the dopamine is actually firing in your brain was fascinating.
It is a fascinating section of your book you are talking about the brain science behind.
It's fascinating because you're actually made for this, like, were created for. This makes you feel better because there are things occurring in your brain that don't happen outside of these things and I thought that was fast.
Think I wanted to know why they made me feel better like this genuinely is making me physically feel better, why, and so with thankfulness. That's one of them. I mean it scientifically prove it for your heart health for it to deal with anxiety and worry because what it does that, so powerful, should shift your perspective. So get your eyes off of whatever the moment is and what it's stealing from you and it put your eyes into another place and I think that's why the Lord said, you know. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind because that's where the thankfulness is going it's off. My eyes are no longer on me there on the bigger picture and the gratitude. As I sat sunrise.
I mean, it was impossible to not for a moment have my thoughts be overwhelmed by the beauty of the sky that was even on a cloudy day, which speaks volumes into our company to see know the sun is always there. It is always shining, it doesn't matter what clouds are in front of it and it's like just take that the extra mile and apply it to your life. And so we did that we practice thankfulness asked them to do something different every day.
I wouldn't do that now like you can be thankful for the same thing every day. It's irrelevant if you genuinely think that you write down your notebook okay today is our thankfulness day. I did, thankfulness, kindness and mercy because I have a T KM inside write down what I was thankful for. And then we legitimately look for opportunities to practice kindness and then we legitimately look for opportunities to practice mercy, which is by far and away the hardest part of the entire process defined mercy rose with yet mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness shown to someone that you could harm okay and I added to it. Even ourselves because I think we harm ourselves a lot.
Here's where it gets complicated because you have these opportunities like forgiveness, we bump into forgiveness and we want to do, but we don't want to do it because if we do it where it seems like were saying that whatever happened is okay and it's not okay. And so the mercy aspect is never a victim role. It is not let someone walk all over you because that is absolutely not what the Lord has for us. I mean we are his treasured possession. You know he calls a sought after he is engraved us in the palm of his hands and so he has no interest in people walking over you, but there's a lot of interest in going into this compassion aspect.
I looked for definitions. One of my favorite was from a Jesuit priest and he said that it was the willingness to enter into someone else's chaos and I love that definition because Abby and I was in a guy I know that I've got tons of chaos like people feel for the people, but because it's all like you just got so much going on and so there's going to be chaos and where in each other's chaos, whether it's in the cast of our thoughts are the casts of our actions because we all have history, you know we all have it going on and the willingness part of what he was talking about is critical because the willingness can either come from me again beating myself rolling over letting you walk on me, which we know is absolutely not what the Lord is talking about or it can come from a place of wholeness and I think that's what I love the most about it is that when you genuinely practice mercy from a place of wholeness.
I am required to be able to believe, just for a second, long enough to put action on the idea that my significance has been settled mean by that, I significance is been settled. I don't have to do anything to be okay, it's done. It's not Plan B on the planet day and I'm coming at it from a daughter of the king because I am a daughter of the king and sometimes I forget about that and I'm not sure I've ever sat lingered in that like I think we shed your son of the king like of the king. Every single thing seen or unseen bowels to our father everything and to be able to come into a situation to have compassion on someone because I'm coming from a place of wholeness. I'm coming from a place of shalom, which is why this landed at the peace project because shalom is peace, wholeness, its completeness, it's the coming together of opposites.
It's where light meets the dark and then to get to live that because you're acting on its insane and so incredible. I me I can't tell you what it does for you because you're putting me on the bones of actually trusting the Lord, not in some idea because you're going beyond the thought process to acting on it. And there's something that happens when we do that you develop that identity peace because I know I love that throughout your your book is you are talking about choosing thankfulness and kindness and mercy and you just said that there's this foundational identity in Christ. I mean I think of Ephesians 210. You know, we are God's workmanship, you talk about that because of it feels like if I don't have that it's so much harder.
But if I do a concert live it out yet okay so be great for you, whether you know it or not. Like if you practice these things. It's good for you.
It's good for any person, any human because it's like we humanizing everybody because instead of like saying someone is a product or an object or anything, you're seeing people as a human I thought in the plane on the way over here. I mean there was a little girl that was drying on a couple of rows ahead of me on these cute things. The stewardess walks by comments on it.
All of a sudden there's like this beautiful connection going on two rows ahead of me to do with the kind little girl who drew and gave the stewardess her pictures and they learn each other's names on a first name basis. The stewardess had even taken her pictures and put them at the front of the airplanes. I really could see when they want that because people are amazing and sometimes in this culture. We forgotten how income will people are.
And so in these actions were actually not cancel any buyer not discounting anybody were not discarding anybody were re-humanizing the entire effort for ourselves, and that identity peace. If we can get there.
What I found through this. Is it actually helped me start to believe that the things the Lord speaks of me might be true. It's so hard to receive, that your masterpiece because that verse. We are his workmanship for llamas.
The other word that she is. That's the Greek word that is right there and workmanship and then the masterpieces another another dictation yes and to actually believe and lean into the fact that you are a masterpiece and a masterpiece is unique. There's not another one like it like the Hope diamond of you been to the Smithsonian insane gel like rocks like that part of this I have no unbelievable will.
It's in a room with shelves around the room, but the Hope diamond is in the center of the room has lights all over it has guards next to it. It has a dome of flight protection over it because no one can get to a small rock for all intents and purposes, and that's nothing compared to you like the blades Angels go before you in the same way that the Secret Service is going before our president you know like whatever's on this earth is exponentially true of what he feels for you. How he protects you how he goes before you how he is the provider every single day in abundance.
It's those things you get to experience it.
Sounds so meticulous that you're doing it when having things like compassion on somebody else, which seems like such a weak place to come from, but it's actually the strongest place to come from if you're doing it out of wholeness. I love that K because you're right.
When our identity is fixed on that on King Jesus of the creation that we are that God created. It takes her eyes off of ourselves and maybe out of the thinking. You know, because we can think highly of ourselves, and often we think very little of ourselves. So I'm either way. Our eyes are on ourselves and our thoughts are on ourselves but there's something about when we have our eyes on the king we start to see the people around us as his children. What is a know I was in line at the grocery store and it's so hard not to keep your eyes on ourselves because were all worried rural stress or losing people anxiety and worries at the forefront of everyone that I was in the self checkout line and I had this overwhelming thought that I needed to pay the groceries for this woman ahead of this just once in a while and I never even looked at the person ahead of me.
I just felt this sense that I should pay for this person's grocery. I do know I'm kind of like oh I don't know this is can be weird and awkward, but I had this sense that had loves this person so much that he wants to care for them through me and so all of a sudden the person it's kind of helping everyone says all your credit card is going through. You've got to be like Jesus because you're always with me and so I go up and she's talking to the attendant and I go up and I just put my credit card in really quick and she was about to come back and she was taking things away and I said oh it's all taken care of and when I looked at her.
I thought okay people were judging her. She didn't smell great. She looked like she had been through a mass I she looked like she had slept in days or showered in days but I just felt in that moment like you're crazy about her, and I just hugged her.
I said kind sees you and knows you and loves you and found that it was this great opportunity so often. I miss those opportunity yet because I'm in my own head's true kindness that you did right there. I know that it made you feel as good as it made her feel and it seems like again that you're giving something away or that you day and it's that what you receive through what is way better phenomenal and it always works that way exactly with kindness I do with mercy on the compassion parts of my that sometimes that doesn't come back we'll see if someone is feeling great.
On the other side, but I can tell you what it does to you individually is so significant and it really is and it can be something small and I love that units like opportunities to present themselves in the grocery store all. Likewise, I have a friend Courtney who they will often just be able to let the checker know that she is a person because people can be so rude and especially now. You're right, it's just like everyone's on and purposefully read the name of the checker and say hello and get candy or whatever it is on the way out and ask her what kind of candy do you like and social say what she has and the girls are girls are picking out that candy so that they can give her that she seen she's known that you know that you heard her, and you listened little baby things like that are so amazing this morning. Again, it's all day every day I get a multiple examples from this morning. Going to the TSA and of course I got stopped in I don't know why and the ring is like checking my arm or whatever because I think you jackets on inside out and I was gone. The whole thing because you know I could've been crabby because it was inconvenient or whatever but I love things like that because people are just people, and people are pretty amazing and it's worth celebrating.
You been listening to Damon and with KY mom on family life today. If you got a preteen, you know they won't stay free for that long. The teen years are coming and life's issues will change and get more complex and conversation can get trickier with things like dating body changes in peer pressure issues that, though totally awkward, make or break. Teenagers and teens to be and we would help you be there for your preteen start talking with resource from family life called passport to purity you take 25% off with the code passport through friday@familylifetoday.com tomorrow. Damon and Wilson talking again with KY mom about changing your neural pathways to be more positive and gracious. That's tomorrow on behalf of David and Wilson. I'm Shelby Abbott. Next time for another edition of family life family like today's production of family life accrue ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most