Pastor Chad Hoven, lead pastor at the Horizon Community Church right there in Newtown along the banks of the Little Miami River. What a beautiful morning it is, Pastor Chad. How are you today?
I'm doing pretty well. How about yourself?
No complaints, absolutely none. It was very I got a little broken up here talking about that new exhibit that is starting down at the Cincinnati Museum Center about Auschwitz, and boy, if people go to Cincinnati Museum dot org they will see just some of the pictures video. It just tears you'll, okay, I tell you what else tears people up this time of year at Chad. We're getting into the holidays, and it's a time of great joy, of thankfulness, of celebration, hopefully spending a lot of time
with family and friends. It is also, I would imagine you tell me from your shoes, walking in your shoes, it has to be one of the most stressful times of the year for a lot of folks out there.
Well, without a doubt. In fact, if you think about just what we try and accomplish just in Christmas time, for example, you're going to if I told you any other months in the next thirty days, you're going to have five different parties, you're going to buy gifts for everybody you know, you're going to travel to three different locations on and you're going to decorate the house. You can tear everything down. You'd say I would never try and do all that in one thirty day period of time.
So just the nature what we take on, and part of those are all wonderful experiences or attempts to create wonderful environments, but just the amount we take on in preparing for that. And then yes, you're with people that you love and care about, but also people that drive you crazy. And so in what's sense, we're all stressed up, all stressed up, but no place to go. And so I do think learning how to deal with our stress. Having expectations often causes stress too, because you're like, hey,
I know everyone's going to get along. Well they've never given not everyone has ever gotten along ever before. Yeah, it's normal to a misunderstanding. It's normal for you know, one person doesn't want this or wants to eat it this time. So I think a lot of it with stress is setting your expectation. And also I think understanding where stress comes from and how to handle it can
be helpful especial needs dad. One thing I learned over sixteen years, you know, I've had a special needs son with severe autism, is my circumstances weren't going to change radically. You know, I had a stressful situation. I think for many of us, we think stress is something that happens to you versus something happens in you. There's a big difference. Now, that's not to say they aren't triggers when things happen. Yes, those happened to me. But two people can encounter the
exact same circumstance and handle it very differently. Well, that tells you something. That tells you that stress is not primarily what happens to you, is what happens in you. How are you going to process that? I like sometimes the stress of because ongoing chaos of special needs was like driving a car from here to Chicago. And just so when you hop in the car with me, I locked the doors and say, hey, by the way, I enjoy your ride to Chicago. By the way, there's two
wasts here. One of the wasts you can see is right there on your windshield. The other one, I'm not sure where it is. Enjoy your ride, and that's how I feel. Sometimes it's like I know one of the things I need to deal with, there's another one hiding in this car, and I can occasionally hear the buzz. What happens then, is your whole body, your your inner RPM goes up to like, you know, seven thousand rpm, and you're like, well, I need to call myself back
down to one thousand rpm. I can't. There's two wasps in this car. One I can see, and one's going to bite me at any minute or sting me in minutes. So part of what I had to learn is there were often two wasps, one I knew about and one I didn't. Almost every day, I need to learn how to the one and not say my circumstance is going to change to get me distressed. It's something happened in me. I need to learn how to better manage the things I have, how to think about it differently. And then
I had to practice getting that rpm. I could never get it quite down to one thousand rpm, but I can move from eight to five. And part that's what scientists called neuroplasticity, and that's the ability to actually kind of reform your physical brain with your mind. How am I going to think about this? How can I process that. I've mentioned this before, but one thing helps with stress is what I call hippo wrestling. A lot of times you think you're dealing with the real issue, but you're
actually dealing with your hip thalmas. And so when you get triggered for stress, it kind of goes in three stages. Stage one iss a trigger and it could be something happens to you. It could be I think about something that might happen. If I'm a warrior, I could be my own trigger. Well, then what happens is your hippo campus or a hipothalmis kicks in. It begins to release adrenaline and cortisol, and you kick into what's called fight
or fight. So back to my wasp example, You're like, oh my goodness, I think I hear the wasp whatever it's over here? Do I need to fight? Am I gonna have to swing at this thing? Am I going to have to jump out of car? And so that's why your RPM goes up because that hippo campus is kicked in. Well, our hippi campus that can help your mini arenas can lie to you. Sometimes you don't have
a need to be triggered. But you said the gout the stippo squeezing all the stressed into you, seezing squeezing all this this cortisol on you and adrenaline, and then you get stuck there and where top chronic stresses. You don't realize your hippothomas is uh is taken over. And so part of hippo wrestling is learning, am I really dealing with a real issue or am I dealing with my reaction to real issue? How can I think about this differently? How can I process differently?
You know, you use a word that I think that I mean the older I get, and we all try to do things better each and every day. Sometimes we succeed, oftentimes we take two steps back. But it's that word expectations. Give me an example of what you would say to somebody you used, you know, Okay, here comes family. They're going to be staying at our house. Man, We're all going to get along great well. In reality, we probably know, if we're honest with ourselves, which we infrequently are, truth
be told that there's going to be some stress. So, you know, kind of going back to what we talked about, a couple of weeks ago, sort of setting your expectations, maybe having a conversation ahead of time before people come in. Would you suggest things like that?
I do think it's helpful because often, you know, when you have multiple personalities in the room, I'll go in family dynamics, and beforehand, I'll say, Hey, like, what time do you like to get up early? What time do you want to do stuff? And so you're trying to kind of set expectations on how things work. Hey, some people like to sleep in, some people don't. Hey, really would be helpful if you didn't bring up that subject. So I'll even start respectfully though, Hey, you're an adult,
you can do whatever you want. But as I was thinking about who's going to be together, I think it might be helpful if would you be willing to lots of questions, a lot of respectful keeping my tone and down. But I'm also trying to say I'd like to make this the best experience possible for everybody, And I do
think that can be helpful. And I think internally it's almost like I don't know if you remember the old cassette tapes or eight track fires, but sometimes when family gets together, you don't realize that you're playing old tapes in your mind, like maybe your brother drove you crazy. He always talked disrespectful of you. Well, maybe that's still true. But every time he opens his mouth or your sister opens her mouth, you're playing r spect in the back
of your head. And so whatever they say, you're interpreting it through the music, the background noise of feeling disrespected. And if you can instead say, you know, I need to turn down my background music and realize that maybe I'm not reacting to what they're saying. I'm reacting to this old tape from the past. That's where kind of moved from stained glass to playing glass of stained glass.
The Bible says that one way you handle stress is you take every thought captive, and part of those expectations are what was I expecting here? Was that a realistic expectation? Need to have that expectation, you know, is it really that important that I die on every single hill here? And then on the other side, the Bible says, renew your mind, and so you can think differently about this.
You know, is it okay that your family doesn't get along, Well, there's the difference between everyone should be happy all the time, at Christmas. Okay, well you could try that right crazy, or you can say I'd like everyone to get along, but it's okay if they don't, but we're going to have try and have a good time as often as possible.
That's a very different background noise. Otherwise, you every time conflict, and again I'm a person who doesn't like conflict either, but every time you hear conflict coming, the background music starts playing Jaws. You know, Yeahohn, I think you're about to blow up. Done and that blows up because it's the self dolling prophecy versus. Hey, you know what, the kids are going to sometimes disagree on politics or whatever
it is. But I might call in the dance and say, hey, guys, we know those different opinion politics and the family before we get to the kitchen table. I know you've got some wonderful singers about whatever your political side is. Could you not do those at the dinner table if you and that person want to go have a conversation, you know, in the other room later on. Because you enjoy that kind of thing, A lot of us don't enjoy that kind of thing. And I've got a couple of family
members whore like that. They love talking politics and they love engaging in debates other people drives them crazy, So I wouldn't say at the table sometimes, hey, we all know that so and so the politics driver crazy. So hey, let's hold that off till later and just enjoy the meal. Or hey, we put a card on your table for Thanksgiving, we're going to talk with things we're thankful for today, and so we'll do a little guided questions and things
like that. But I do think it's appropriate, and sometimes you can't control it. You know, you can't control people or circumstances. Other times sometimes you can guide it gently, nudget or at least try and ask everyone for mutual respect, so that I think. I think underneath the stress level and the triggers that people have and the hippos kind of get kicked in and a family gathering, I think people would like to enjoy themselves. I think that the
whole world. But of course, when you travel to your travel the kids were upset, yeah, and we got managed to them. So you're not at your best either. You're not sleeping your same mattress. So even then to say everyone is not in the best circumstance, meaning thirty days of trying to do a thousand things. I'm going to give double doses of patience, double doses of grace. I'm
going to assume the best. I think if if we would just come into circumstances with a family and say, more often than not, I'm going to give the benefit of doubt and I'm going to assume the best. And I'm going to imagine that someone is carrying something that
I don't know. Like if I told you, hey, someone got really ticked off at you today in traffic or mad at you or an employee or a coworker, and you were telling me the story, but how inappropriate was and I said, well, did you know they just found out they got cancer. Your whole perspective would change. It still doesn't mean that what they said was appropriate or way the handle is appropriate, but suddenly that stress would be Oh, I can change my mindset, have some compassion
towards the person rather than irritation as a person. Now that's the first one to you know, my instinct is to judge and to you know, realize, you know, they should be handling that correctly. Blah blah blah blah. I would have done that, of course, I would have done that. So I think they have and some perspective can really help you, but everyone around you as well.
You know, I talked about a study that came out not a study, where a former head of the psychiatric division of the FDA came out yesterday and talked about how antidepressants, in his estimation, are so overprescribed. In your job, So much of your job as a pastor is to walk people through some very tough days and nights. You hear all the time, man, I'm so stressed out. Are are we saying we're more stressed out than we are? Or are we really more stressed out now more than ever?
Well, the word is stressed became popular in nineteen seventies as kind of normal vernacular. It's actually developed in nineteen thirties and forties by an endocrinologist and he defined it as a non specific response to a demand for change. And so I think it has become like the go to thing to say, and like to say, how you doing? I'm busy and I'm stressed, the two things everybody does. So I do think it's become the current vernacular for
describing things. And I think it's actually kind of a deficiency of being able to say what's really going on. I'm worried, I'm fearful, I'm angry. It's like stresses, this neutral word that we all accept as appropriate versus kind of being more honest. But I think also a little philosophy for a second. We're living in a culture of materialism,
meaning we think human beings a roly material. So if you're only material, then we just need to give you a medicine that's going to help take care of your material body. If you realize the human beings both material and I material, meaning to have a soul, what you think, what you feel, and what you want, as well as a body, then you say, oh, my spiritual dimension, my
soul is dimension. I can handle this with medicine, yes, but also with learning how to talk about my feelings, learning how to take captive the feelings that are inaccurate, learning how to renew my mind and think better thoughts towards the circumstance. So I think it's a whole philosophical problem that we don't realize human beings are far more than just you know, meat facts that can be medicated. We're souls. And think about it like when you're stressed.
When we're stressed, we talk to ourselves. If you're a worrier, I wonder if this happens, when this happens, What this happens in change, reaction, anxiety. You're talking to yourself even anger fantasies. Right, you're here, I'm guys, that's confidence my boss. And I'm gonna say this, and you going to say that, I'm you know, just see, you're talking to yourself. What if there was another source, a person to talk to, you know, I would call it prayer, You call it meditation.
But instead of talking to yourself when you have a problem, what if you could talk to someone who's the ultimate source of strength and comfort and wisdom. Well, just sare at sound smarter, doesn't it? I know all my resources talking to myself, and I already know my limited resources. If I could have figured this out, I probably would have. I need outside wisdom, outside strength. So God says that
you can cast all your anxieties upon him. You can take every thought captive, you can renew your mind, you can meditate on things that are good and pure in a good rapport, and you can reach out to him and say God, I need wisdom and how to handle the situation. I can't control the universe or my mother in law or my kids, but I do want you to help me control how I'm going to handle it.
It's great stuff, great great stuff. We can continue this topic, I think, for multiple weeks because there are a lot of people that and each and every one of us is one of them. Where we have all these expectations, we get stressed out ahead of time, we get stressed out during and maybe just a deep breath, maybe a conversation, maybe prayer can help dramatically change that. Chad, we thank
you so much for your time and your expertise. I know we're going to miss you next week, but we'll look forward to catching up with you the week after.
Sounds great. I appreciate it all right, mister.
Chad Open from the Horizon Community Church. Great Stuff, Plain Glass, Stained Glass every Wednesday at eight thirty eight