Hey, friends. It's Jen. Welcome to this bonus episode of Good God Talks. I have a new friend who's joining me today, Jennifer Tucker. So you have two Jens today, one with two Ns, one with one, and we're talking about her latest book, Prayer in Motion. But more than that, we're talking about embodied prayer, and how God meets us in everyday circumstances and all types of seasons, and invites us to go through life with Him. I know you're gonna love this conversation. I'm gonna have Jen introduce herself here in a minute, but a little bit more of her professional bio. She is an illustrator, a lettering artist, and a graphic designer and author, whose work has been shared in multiple places. And her latest book is Prayer in Motion: An Invitation to Be Fully Present, Connect With God, and Pray With Your Whole Self, which I'm sure just by that subtitle, you can tell why I had to have her on the podcast.

I'm gonna jump into that conversation now with Jen.

Jen: Well, Jen, Jennifer Tucker, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Good God Talks. Would you start us off by just sharing a little bit about yourself?

Jennifer Tucker: Sure, yeah. I'm Jennifer Tucker. You can call me Jen. I'm currently an artist and illustrator, and author now, I guess. I have three books that are out. They're little prayer books. The first one was about breath prayer, the second one is about meditative prayer, and this latest one is about more embodied prayer and movement. I was a elementary school teacher for a while and worked in our church preschool ministry for a while. And then, Kind of fumbled into this whole world of now writing books myself.

Jen: I love it. Yeah. I h- have been one of those people where I'm like, "Okay, Lord, someday you're gonna show me how all of these different points on my career path have connected."

Jennifer Tucker: Right.

Jen: It sounds like you can relate to that, of just all the different places you've gotten to- explore.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah. It's, yeah, I loved teaching. When I had my two girls, though, it became a bit more demanding than I could manage on my own. I really admire the women who, who are able to balance all of that. But full-time teacher and full-time mom just wasn't something I could do at that time, and then I fully intended to go back, but life happened and different things, avenues opened up.

But I am writing my first children's book, which I feel like it's brought me full circle now to my teaching days. I'm like, "Oh, yay, I'm writing children's books." So yeah. Oh, that's fun. It's really fun to see how God puts all those pieces that I don't even imagine being possible together.

Jen: Yes. Okay, so I didn't even know about that. My first- Yeah ... children's book is coming out in August.

Jennifer Tucker: Oh, yay.

Jen: So, I know. Another fun similarity. Are you talking about your kids project yet?

Jennifer Tucker: I just got the go-ahead to start sharing about it, but yeah, I haven't formally, so you're the first person I've told.

But yeah, it actually releases in November this year. So it's, Breath Is Prayer for Kids, so it's like a kids version of my first book, so yeah.

Jen: Okay, I'm gonna need to add that to my cart as soon as I can order it and pre-order becomes available. 'Cause one of the things that I love, as we go through life with God, and as a, as a parent, like, that's the heart of everything.

We're like, "Oh my goodness." Yeah. "God is this way. Following Him is this way. It can be this simple. It can be this life-giving," is then to go look to share that with our kids. And so I love that you're doing that with this kids book. Because honestly, growing up, I grew up in a bunch of different denominations. My mom came to Christ Assemblies of God. My dad grew up Nazarene. We were all over the place.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah ...

Jen: Baptist, mostly non-denom. But breath prayer was something I'd never heard of until adulthood.

Jennifer Tucker: Me too. Yeah.  Breath prayer is a form of embodied prayer. Yeah. Um, it was the most accessible one to me. I, and I didn't know anything about breath prayer.

I learned about it actually as I was trying to find strategies to help my daughter, who was dealing with severe anxiety and panic attacks. And through her journey, I came to be really more honest about my own struggles with anxiety. I didn't have panic attacks, but I definitely did not handle them in the, my anxiety in a healthy way.

I kind of ignored it, shoved it to the side, didn't, I didn't want to address it. Because to me, to admit that I struggled with any kind of mental health conditions meant I'm, uh, failing in my faith in some way. I must not trust God enough. I must not pray the right way, or I must not have enough faith.

So I avoided my own struggles for a long time until I couldn't anymore. And so in that process, I just fumbled upon the idea of breath prayer online as I was researching actually breathing exercises and things.

But then to connect that with prayer, it was so simple, but changed everything for me. And when my daughter was hospitalized for an extended time, and I did not have words to pray. I had nothing left in me, and anxiety was so severe that I couldn't catch my breath hardly to even think . And I had begged him for healing, and I felt like he wasn't hearing me, like my prayers are going nowhere.

And so all I had to cling to was these tiny verses of scripture, and I would just breathe them in and breathe them out. And I would walk the hallways of the hospital just inhaling, "The Lord is my shepherd," and exhaling, um, "He is all that I need." And over and over and over, that was my lifeline. Breath prayer continues to be my lifeline, along with other embodied prayer practices that I've discovered along the way that I never knew growing up.

I didn't grow up in faith traditions that taught con- contemplative prayer or embodied prayer. But for me, it kind of was that bridge between, okay, I know I need to do these things for my physical health, for my mental health, but I also, my spiritual health is important too, and it's on this side. But I, I kept those separate for so long.

Like, my spiritual side's over here, my soul's over here, but then my body's over here, and it was kind of not as important as- my soul. And I gotta read my Bible, and I gotta pray every day, I gotta do this.

But no, it's all, God made us with this body so we can experience His goodness and His grace in the world around us, and there's all of our senses.

And all of it's given to us to experience His goodness and to connect with Him. We can pray to Him through movement, through our breath, through stillness and silence. It doesn't always have to be all these formal words. So these books have been my journey to uncovering prayer practices that kind of bridge body, mind, soul, and kind of

That has been a game changer for me in managing my mental health, but also supporting my physical and my spiritual health. And my faith has become so much deeper, and I feel more real because I connect with God all of the time through all different ways. And I think that's how it's meant to be.

That's how we pray continually. Because prayer is not just these words we say, it's the orientation of our heart, and that's an all-the-time thing. And I can pray all throughout my day when I just invite God with me on this journey, and then recognizing that He's there in every moment, and His presence with me.

Jen: One of the reasons I knew I needed to have you on the podcast was we relate in the, the work hard. Oh, yeah. The work hard for God. The checklist prayers, the obligation, the performance. Have you gone through times when it was harder to break that checklist habit?

Jennifer Tucker: Oh, yeah. I am a checklist, recovering perfectionist I like to say, although, that's where I lean toward. And so for me, for so long, my faith was a checklist, and I had to check all these things to make sure I'm a good enough Christian.

But that is so not how God is. We are fully always connected. He is always with us, and nothing I do is gonna change His love for me because it's not dependent on me and what I do, but on Him and His faithfulness.

And when I shifted that, like with my anxiety used to be an enemy. I felt like I had to fight this enemy. I had to overcome this obstacle, or else I would never have the full life that God promised me. But anxiety, clinical anxiety that I experience it's just as much a physical condition as like diabetes or a heart condition, you know? It's my brain and the way I process, and learning that and understanding the physiological side of that and how my nervous system works and how, why I react the way I do in certain situations, why my anxiety revs up, and how to respond in a different way.

Because when I would respond in a, "Oh, no, I'm feeling anxious," and I try to shove it down or I try to hide it away, I spiral,  it just gets worse. Tucking it away, avoiding it, ignoring it does not heal. Bringing it out into the light, holding it before God and saying, "God, I, this is how I'm feeling. This is what I'm experiencing, but I know you, your presence, you are with me even in the middle of this," and the peace that comes through that.

Not that all my anxiety goes away. I still struggle with it. It still flares up. Depression is the same way. I still battle with seasons where it feels hopeless, but I know when I can hold that hopelessness before God, "God, this is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm struggling, but I know you are with me.

Help me to rest in you." And so, yeah the checklist is hard to break, and sometimes even breath prayer, even these embodied practices can become a checklist. Like, "Oh, maybe I should do this. I need to make sure I do this." But there's freedom that comes with releasing that and realizing that it's not about perfection, and it's not about my performance.

It really is only always about presence, God's presence with me and me being present in this present moment, 'cause that's where God is. He is always right here, right now with us through it all. And when I can train my brain and return my thoughts to Him and His presence with me, things change.

Doesn't mean all my circumstances are great, doesn't mean everything is wonderful and roses, but it means that God's with me in the hard things. And when it's really dark, the light of hope is still there because God never leaves me, and that's a comfort and a peace that I can't explain because it comes from the Holy Spirit in me.

Jen: I love the transparency and the honesty in that even of acknowledging how we could take a new area of freedom and let it become a checklist, if we're not intentional about it. I think for some of our listeners, this feels familiar.

Okay, embodied prayer, we can think about it and how it's in church experience, how it's modeled in scripture with moving our bodies in response to God, in prayer and worship- Yeah, I’m also thinking about some of our listeners who might struggle with this because it feels too simple. It feels too elementary, too outside of the normal box of what we have known God invites us to do when we come to Him in prayer.  How would you meet them in that moment?

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah. Well, I'd say I totally understand. I over-complicated my prayer life for so long, you know? And I again, I go back to the breath and how simple that is and how we overlook it so much. But how God gave us, even what we feel like is so simple and basic, and, "Ah, that's not important," but it is critical.

Our breath is what gives us life. Without our breath, we don't continue to live. And I think prayer is similar. Without that prayer, that connection with God, our spiritual life dries up. Our spiritual life can die. And so when we can recognize that in all of our moments, all of our movements, even the things we might set aside as unimportant, God is there, and that makes it important and that makes it significant.

We think that to follow God and to walk this path of faith, it must be, it has to be hard, I mean, it is hard. Life is hard. Dark days come for all of us. Struggles and pain and suffering come for all of us. I think life is hard enough, but connecting with God, He never wanted it, meant for it to be difficult or hard.

Jesus came and gave His life so we could come to God at any time, to make it as simple as can be for us to commune with Him and to connect with Him. Which it doesn't have to be this complicated 12-step, 20-step, 30-step program. You don't have to check every little box. It's not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but sometimes those become the end, when Christ and His presence is the end.

That is the ultimate goal, is just to connect with Him. And sometimes it can be in the smallest, simplest things. As I wash dishes, you know, and as I scrub those dishes, connecting that movement to, okay, when I wash dishes I'm gonna pray for my daughter. And so when I pray, I wash those dishes, and round and round I'm praying for her.

Again, prayer is not so much the specific words we say, although those matter, I know, but it's more the orientation of our heart.

Where are we? 'Cause prayer can become performative very easily. We can say prayers just 'cause we, that's what we're supposed to do, it's what we should do. And a lot of times we'll repeat the same rote things that we say over and over without really making that connection with God who's with us in that present moment. So kind of paying attention to our movements, paying attention to our body, how we're feeling physically and emotionally.

Those are invitations. Because that can connect, "Gosh, my leg really hurts today," and give that to God. Open that up to him. Where does my body need care today? Where do I need to spend some time giving that to God? Or maybe I'm feeling super sad, and maybe I don't even know why, but I'm feeling this.

Or I'm angry. I'm carrying this anger with me today. Recognizing that, not pushing it to the side but taking some time to recognize that and then setting that before God. "God, this is how I'm feeling. I don't even know why I'm feeling this way, but can you help me? Show me." And taking time to invite him into that space.

Even if you don't have the words, even if you don't have the perfect answers, even if you have no clue. But it can be very simple But just because it's simple doesn't mean it's not powerful- Mm-hmm ... and that it can't be transformative. 'Cause I think it's in all those little moments, like the little drops of rain, you know, that fall, like those little tiny things that we do day by day throughout our day, that's what becomes this river that flows through our life, this river of faith, this river of connect- connection that we have with God that keeps us tethered to Him.

So then when those big storms come, when the hard things happen, when that crisis [00:15:00] hits, your automatic response instead of spiraling into despair is gonna be, " Let me turn to God. Let me give Him this too." So if we can give Him the small things, that equips us to then give Him those big things, and come to Him even in small ways when things are just too much, so- Yeah. Yeah ... don't, don't wait till it's too much. You can do it now in the little things. So I don't know if that answered the question.

Jen: No, you did, beautifully. And, and I think it, part of it is just expanding our awareness of- Mm-hmm ... the moments that God will meet us in.

Jennifer Tucker: Absolutely, yeah.

Jen: So I was trying to figure out my favorite of your activities in Prayer in Motion, and I couldn't. I couldn't figure them out because there are so many good ones. But there was one that was talking about, "God, I thank you for my arms, and I thank you how I can use my arms today, and I thank you for my feet, and how I can use my feet today," and the awareness of that. The grounding tools, I think there was one in here that I really loved. So your five, four, three, two, one, which anyone who's watching this podcast episode here on YouTube, these pages are beautiful. You can see them. They're gorgeous. But five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. And that it doesn't just need to be a grounding activity that we do by ourselves.

But it can be this moment that we're sharing with God as we're taking part in our surroundings. Because He is living and active, and He is here with us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And so the tangible can constantly be these reminders of the spiritual. That empowers more openness toward Him, toward the possibility of in this moment too, I could also connect with God. Yeah.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah.

Jen: And so I love the freedom that, that God shows us as we participate in prayer in that kind of way. I’m a fan. I love it. I have chronic migraines. And have for many, many years, various forms of treatment and symptom management and all sorts of things. And I have the practice of thanking God for the moments I don't have the migraine. But also, in the midst of walking through a migraine, not just, "Lord, please take this away," but- Mm-hmm

"God, I thank you for my brain. I thank you for my body." Yeah. "I thank you for, for how- Mm-hmm ... you're meeting me in this." the awareness of him in both the hard and the beautiful. I see that practice in what you're talking about, too, of almost using the beautiful moments to help us connect with God differently and more intimately that carries through in the hard, and then vice versa. Mm-hmm. They feed each other.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, like, and again, I turn back to anxiety. Like, I recognize now that that's my body's way of trying to protect me. God gave us this amazing body, and all these senses, and all these systems that help us experience the beauty and the wonder of this world, all the good and all the hard, and everything in between.

And my nervous system in particular, its goal is to keep me safe. And so when it flares up with these symptoms, and my heart starts racing, or I get shaky, and I'm like, "Okay, what are you trying to protect me from right now, body?" Like, "God, thank you for giving me this body that tries to keep me safe." Now, it overreacts, and it responds to things that really aren't a danger.

But when I can recognize that and take a minute to just slow down, pause, and think, "Okay, what is happening in my body right now? Why might it be happening? And God, how can you come into this with me and help me through this?" Mm. And it might be pain. Like, you go through migraines. I thought about my mom a lot as I wrote this book.

She struggles with a lot of physical health problems, and, You know, even through the pain though, she's... She had a long conversation with me about it, and, um, it's amazing to me how she uses her pain as a pivot point to then be like, "Okay, well, what, what is good in this?

What can I still do? I might not be able to move like I used to, but what can I do?" And she focuses her mind on that and her attention on that. And even in the pain, using that as a way to connect with God and as a way to, bring him into that journey and into that pain, 'cause we're not alone. And that's where I think things have shifted for me, is just that constant access to his presence. And when I find myself spiraling down into that, that hopeless place, that dark place, that, "Oh my gosh, this is just too much and I can't do this," well, maybe I can't, but I'm not alone in it, and God can, and he is with me, and he is in me, and he won't leave, and I can do this because I'm not alone.

Jen: Yeah.

Jennifer Tucker: And so,

Jen: That's beautiful. Okay, I wanna close with this thought. And I'll have links for everyone in the show notes where they can get your amazing resources and connect with you online. Through the lens of even the hard, and the struggles, and the ailments, and the, the pain, and mental health and constantly receiving more health and walking out the health that God gives us.

Jennifer Tucker: Mm-hmm.

Jen: One of the things that really jumped out at me in this book is the constant awareness of the joy that can be experienced.

Jennifer Tucker: Mm-hmm.

Jen: And so there's a part where it made it really tangible for me. You were talking about movement, and so we're talking about prayer as movement. And separating it from appearance-based goals.

Yes. So it's not just I'm exercising to get fit and to get, like, all of those things. Right. Um, which I loved the correlation even to, okay, it's not an appearance-based goal between me and the Lord, and look how creatively I'm praying to you.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah. Exactly, yeah.

Jen: Um, but in this section you talk about experiencing joy in your body right now.

So I would love for you to just speak to that as we close out, about the joy that you have found in praying to God and in prayer in motion in this kind of embodied way.

Jennifer Tucker: Yeah, because my body was my enemy, again, for so long, and I was not always very kind to my body. You know, I think, uh, it's really easy in our culture especially to be very harsh toward ourselves and how we look on the outside, and how we appear to others.

And whether it's our size or our shape or our skin or our makeup or whatever it might be, we can be really hard on ourselves, and we wanna try to fit into this certain mold. And even it can be tricky and sneaky and sneak into our faith too. But the movement that I talk about when, we move and we pray in, In embodied prayers is not based on trying to control our body in some way or to change our body in some way, but recognizing that God gave us this body as a gift.

It is a gift. It is a wondrous, amazing, incredible thing that we have. And to live this life, God always meant for us to have a body. We were never without a body. We were born with a body, and even in eternity we will have a new body. Like, we will never not be with a body. So embodiment is part of how He designed us to experience Him and experience life and experience one another.

And through that we get so much joy. We get to taste, and we get to smell, and we get to touch, and we get to feel, and we get to hear music, and we get to... You know, I get to see my grandbaby, and I get to hold my husband's hand, and I get to eat amazing desserts, and I get to enjoy this life. But if I'm too busy judging my body and being

And trying to change my body, 'cause my body, it is going to change naturally. We're gonna age and things are gonna change, and we have to find a way to Look at our body from a place, that embodiment place, not this, um, self-objectification type of place where we see it as an object to kind of carve and make into whatever we want it to be.

But to look at it as it is right now. My right now body is a gift from God. Yeah. And with my body, He's given me so much access to so much joy through this body even if I live with pain, even if I live with illness, even if I have a horrible diagnosis or if I'm struggling with something. There are still glimmers of goodness.

There is still good that can come through our body. Maybe ... Like, my mom lost her taste and her smell during COVID and never got it back. She still cannot smell or taste- Oh, wow ... anything. But she has found joy in the textures of food. She has found joy in the sight and how things look. She has found more joy in the other senses that she does still have.

So yes, it stinks, and it's horrible when our bodies are suffering and when they aren't ... They feel more like an enemy than a friend. When we recognize this good gift that He gave us, and we can live from a place of gratitude for all the things that He's done for us.

Instead of a place of "Well, God, why'd you give me this body? Why do you make me suffer like this? Why do I have to deal with this? Why do ..." But if we can find the goodness in our body and the joy that is to be had within our body, we can then say, "God, thank you. Thank you that I have hands that can make dinner for my family.

Thank you that I have legs that can walk down the road with our dog. Thank you for, a tongue that can taste this incredible food that you've provided for us and that we get to..." You know, like, I don't know. It's just those small ways.

Jen: Yeah ...

Jennifer Tucker: that I do think it shifts- In our gratitude, it affects our, how we look at other people and other bodies around us and recognize, wow, we are incredible.

Look at all, look at all that we can do. Look what God made humans to be able to do. What gift, how incredible, how creative, how amazing. And so I don't know, it shifts that thinking when we look at ourselves with more compassion and see our bodies as a gift to us.

Jen: Friends, I hope you are encouraged and that you feel empowered to approach God in your prayer life, to connect with him in freer ways. I have links here in the show notes for all of the places where you can connect with Jennifer Tucker and where you can get your hands on all three of her books, including the latest book, Prayer in Motion.

Thanks so much for joining us for this bonus episode, and I encourage you to take this conversation over to God. Ask him what it could look like for you to apply something you heard today in your next conversation with him.

And as always, have a good talk.

 

Ep 394 Why Bother Telling God What He Already Knows?

Hey, friend. Welcome to this episode of Good God Talks. We're gonna be talking with God using the Lord's Prayer today, and taking another look at some misunderstandings or misconceptions that we might have about the Lord's Prayer. And the first one is one that I struggled with for a really long time. I thought the Lord's Prayer was something Jesus gave us to pray, but He actually didn't give it to us for that reason.

I'm gonna read from Matthew 6 for us, starting right now with a little bit from verse 9. It says, "This then is how you should pray." When Jesus is teaching the disciples, He's giving them a context for HOW to approach God in prayer. Now, I grew up in the church, so I memorized the Lord's Prayer at an early age, not fully understanding what all of the words meant, like hallowed, but also not understanding that it was to inform my awareness of how to come to God. And so that's how we're using it to talk with God today.

But I wanna back up first a few verses, starting in verse seven. This is still Jesus teaching, and He says, "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him."

Now, there's a lot there. I kinda used to be a babbler in prayer, and I think it's insightful that Jesus gives a reason for the many words, they think they will be heard because of their many words. I have felt that in past seasons of my walk with God, thinking that if I have more words or more eloquent words or more spiritual words, that God would be more inclined to hear me. But God is already inclined to hear us.And it tells us why, because He's our Father.  You don't have to be like them. You don't have to put on a show or a performance because your Father already knows what you need before you ask.

Which reminds me of something else that I used to not understand. Why pray? Why pray if God already knows what we need? Prayer is not about giving God information. It's about bringing our real selves to Him in relationship. And relationship grows through healthy communication and shared experiences. And so in this moment today, God already knows what happened in your life. He already knows what you need. He knows what you're afraid of or nervous about. And He's inviting you to share it with Him anyway. He's not looking for polished words or to glean information from you. He's looking to engage with you in relationship, and that includes conversation.

God knowing what you need is not a reason to stay quiet. It's a reason to feel safe. And so we can come to Him because He is our good Father.

And this is how the Lord's Prayer begins, going back to verse nine: “This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name."

How we approach God is coming, recognizing who He is, that He's holy. He's set apart. There's no one like Him. He is in heaven and on earth with us, and He is our good Father and longs for us to come to connect with Him. Not to perform for Him, not to share information, but to respond to Him out of relationship.

And so here's a question that you can take to God:

God, what's something you'd love for me to talk with you about today?

And then share it with Him.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

Connect with Jen on Instagram