FamilyLife Today®

Jamie Grace: Realizing that by trying to make everybody so happy, by literally being one of two of the main musical resources for most Christian families in America for like four years that had young girls, by just stepping into that role of being "it," I was completely neglecting who God made me to be.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: I'm Ann Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: This is FamilyLife Today.

So I actually really want to know the answer to this question because I think I know, but I don't think I know. What are the statements you hear most in your head? Almost on repeat.

Ann Wilson: My husband is so handsome.

Dave Wilson: That's what I was thinking. That's what I figured you'd say. I didn't think "handsome," but I thought awesome, wonderful. I can't believe I got this guy.

Now seriously, I know, I don't know...

Ann Wilson: You didn't think I would say that?

Dave Wilson: No, I thought you'd never even thought that one time. Maybe in our first year of marriage, but after that...

Ann Wilson: That's not true! I think that all the time. But it's interesting, the thoughts that come through my head now are different than what used to come into my head.

I feel like my thoughts in the past have been super toxic. "I'm ugly. I'm fat. I need to lose weight. I need to be better. I'm failing. I'm not smart enough. I'm not doing enough." It was just a constant barrage of that negative self-talk. Nobody would have known that. We've been been married 41 years, would you have thought those were my thoughts in my head?

Dave Wilson: Not initially, but it didn't take long after we were married to realize you hear that a lot.

I think a lot of people hear a lot of negative self-talk. Working with pro athletes for 33 years, there was a lot of negative thoughts of guys that are at the highest level. You think, when they line up for a play, they are hearing, "I'm not good enough. I'm not going to be able to make this play." You're like, "What in the world? How can that be true?" That's a real thing.

Ann Wilson: And I worked with their wives. The self-talk that they would share was so surprising because it was, "I'm ugly. I'm stupid." Their lives showed everything but that.

Dave Wilson: The truth is, and we know this, how we think is how we live. Belief dictates behavior. Whatever I'm believing about myself is going to dictate the way I live.

The reason we're bringing this up, we've got Jamie Grace back in the studio with us. Jamie, first of all, welcome back!

Jamie Grace: Hello, it's good to be back.

Dave Wilson: What are you thinking as we're talking about this?

Jamie Grace: This is so great. At the very beginning, I was like, "Guys, I'm right here. You can stop flirting. This is really weird. Super cute, but I shouldn't be here."

All of that resonates with me. Even when you were asking that initial question, ironically, I do often times pre-flirt with my husband in my head because when I try to flirt out loud, it's not always very successful. So I'll practice my flirts in my head.

Ann Wilson: Maybe I should try that.

Dave Wilson: Practice your flirt? But you're good in your head, aren't you?

Jamie Grace: To me, I'm like, "Oh, that's going to do it." Then I'll say it out loud and he's like, "Babe." I think he's used to it at this point, but I'm so awkward. There's families listening, so I won't give any examples, but I'm just awkward.

Dave Wilson: I'd love to know what goes on in your head because you're very successful. In terms of being a pro athlete, you've reached that in the singer-songwriter world.

Ann Wilson: Jamie's a two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and a Dove Award winner for new artist in 2012. Am I right?

Jamie Grace: Yeah, that was spot on.

Dave Wilson: I went on and learned all your songs. I'm going to sing them. You really are successful. As the world looks at you, they would think, "She's made it." You've written a book called Finding Quiet: My Journey to Peace in an Anxious World. In the book, you start talking about those daily thoughts. I still have them. What's it sound like?

Jamie Grace: Very similar to yours. I'm a first-time mom. Especially that postpartum season, that six to 12 months, "You need to lose weight. You're not successful. You're not doing a good job." It's constant and it's frustrating.

I've done a lot of work personally, in therapy, church small groups, me and my pastor and stuff like that. A lot of times what now will start to happen is a lot of pep talk. I'm proud of that. A lot of times, I'll have this kind of in my head like, "You're so dumb. That song is terrible that you wrote." But I'll catch myself and immediately start to be like, "But the song you wrote last week wasn't that bad. And you know what else she did? You swept. Maybe it was two weeks ago, but guess what? You did it. And you cooked dinner and it was awesome and your husband liked it and you guys are probably going to kiss later."

I've definitely done a lot of conscious work to try to override a lot of those negative thoughts. A lot of times, I'll do it out loud as well, even from a spiritual standpoint with scriptures and things like that.

Ann Wilson: It's a journey and it takes a lot of work.

Jamie Grace: Yes. When I catch myself doing that mentally, like "You're this, you're that," I'll start walking through the house, "You are a child of God. You're a daughter of the Most High King." Some people might think this is cheesy, but I mean it genuinely. Sometimes I'll quote my lyrics out loud, and not in a way of like, "I wrote it," not like that, but because everything I've written is genuinely something that the Lord gave to me in a moment of desperation.

Ann Wilson: Give us some lyrics like that you would say.

Jamie Grace: I have this one song called "Daughter of the King." It says, "The maker of skies and the maker of seas, the maker of every beautiful thing, He made you." The first time I ever said something like that, it was during a show and there was a girl in the middle of the crowd that I later processed, but was the outsider in the young adult group that she was in. I just stopped in the middle of my set and the Lord just told me to tell her like, "The maker of skies and the maker of seas, He made your face."

My lyrics aren't necessarily something where it's like, "I gotta write something catchy." They really do come from moments of the Lord really speaking to me. Scripture is obviously way more powerful than anything I could come up with, so I'll just start reading Proverbs out loud. Right now I have a proverb up on my bathroom mirror. If something from Psalms or Galatians or Habakkuk or whatever it is speaks to me in a couple weeks, I'll put that up there too and just try to speak out loud the words of truth, speak out loud the words of wisdom, because it can be so much more powerful than whatever is happening in my head and can help get me into a habit of hearing those things and saying those things instead.

Dave Wilson: Even the song, a very poppy song, and I'm guessing this one was one of your Grammy nominations, "I Love the Way You Hold Me." As poppy as that is, that lyric is in some way very profound. It's said over and over in the song, and TobyMac, the whole thing, but then when you think through what you're singing and you know that kids are singing this, you thought a lot of times, "I don't believe He's holding me right now. I'm saying it in a song but I don't believe the thing I'm going through, He's got me."

Ann Wilson: You're saying "God is holding me. I love the way You hold me." And so often we're like, "I don't know if You are right now."

Dave Wilson: Because the self-talk is "I'm alone. I'm struggling on my own." That lyric, simple lyric, is like, "No you're not."

Jamie Grace: Anybody that knows me knows my big sister is my literal hero. I love her so much. We got for her senior year in college, I was at the same college, and we got an off-campus apartment, so I know we're really cool. It was a Bible college so that kind of stuff was just like, "What?"

Dave Wilson: And you were young. How old were you?

Jamie Grace: We were 16 when we started college. So she was 20 in her senior year and I was 17, 18. We got...

Dave Wilson: Wait, why are you starting college at 16?

Jamie Grace: She's smarter than I am. I don't like to take too much credit for my intelligence, even though I do think maybe I'm smart sometimes. But the thing is, when you're the oldest one, I think you're the smartest. She started reading at three. My mom is just an amazing educator. So she had Morgan reading at three, and I just was younger so I was just doing whatever she was doing. So yes, okay, I think I'm a little bit smart, but I credit a lot to my mom and my sister because I just showed up and they were already doing the work. I might as well help them read stuff.

My sister actually graduated high school at 14 or 13, but my mom wasn't ready for her to go to college, so she just made up a bunch of extra work for her to do for a couple years until she was ready to go to college. We were living in this off-campus apartment and we were supposed to do that until I was done with college. That was going to be our thing. So I was going to live in this cool apartment for three years.

Ann Wilson: And let me add, let's go back a little bit for our listeners that missed our first episode, go back and listen. You were given a diagnosis at age 11. Share a little bit as a reminder.

Jamie Grace: I had already been given this diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, which is a movement disorder, a tic disorder, as well as anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, which is just a quick synopsis, imagine everyday worry times 20, but basically because of neurological stuff. And then obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is OCD and ADHD. I had all of that that I was dealing with on a daily basis.

Ann Wilson: And so that's why I wanted our listeners to know, so now you're in college.

Jamie Grace: The main stipulation for college was that I went where my sister went. I wasn't as far along mental health-wise as I maybe had thought I was going to be to go out of state, which was what I wanted to do. But it's okay because we both graduated from a school called Point University in the southeast and we really loved it and I loved getting to be near her, so that was a huge blessing.

But then my sister went off and did the very stereotypical pastor's daughter Bible college thing and got herself a suitor. She gets so mad when I say that word. She started dating someone who's now her husband. Super cute, whatever.

Ann Wilson: How could she do that to you?

Jamie Grace: I know! So here I am in this apartment that I'm supposed to be watching Cheetah Girls with my sister every night eating pizza, and they're sitting on the couch. She started watching superhero movies all of a sudden. She's like, "I guess they're Christian dating so I'm still in the house." I'm like, "This is just dumb. Be your own accountability. I need to go." I was miserable.

Anyways, that's how I wrote "Hold Me" because I was just like, "This is stupid." All of my songs that sound like I'm in a good mood, I was crying. I was crying my eyes out when I wrote "Hold Me." I was sitting in my room all by myself just like, "I'm going to be single forever. No one's holding me."

Ann Wilson: I didn't know that about that song because it's so filled with joy, and yet you were saying no.

Dave Wilson: Here's the other thing that I find interesting what you just said. You do, I think it's your second chapter, you call it "the noise of feelings." It's almost how you stifle and hold feelings in. When I read that, I'm like, "Oh boy, I do the same thing." I don't like them. I sort of cry at movies, I don't cry in life. But you just shared how you express your feelings. Talk about that.

Jamie Grace: I really do have a love-hate relationship with feelings. I do love to feel feels. I love, especially when it comes to music, it's such a safe space for me to feel whether I'm listening to a heavily emotive song or I'm playing a very emotional song, writing something very personal. I really do enjoy that. But it can often times be difficult around other humans for me to go there emotionally.

With my family sometimes, my mom is so sweet and she'll be like, "Oh, you know, when I'm with your daughter, it reminds me of when you..." and I'm like, "Ugh, no mom, nachos." I just talk about food, just change subject. Our wedding, I laughed through the entire ceremony. Not dissing our wedding, it was just I just thought it was funny. I was like, "This is hilarious that I tricked this really hot guy into marrying me." So I was just laughing the whole time. But then I cried later. I just was like, "I don't want all these people to see me cry." It's just so weird. I've always had a really just challenging back and forth relationship with feelings.

But as I get older, I've just tried to become more and more intentional with choosing to feel and choosing to be okay with feeling. The Lord is not mad at me because of my feelings. The Lord is not upset with me for having feelings. For so long I just wanted everyone to be happy. I just want everybody to be okay, and so I never wanted my feels to interrupt that.

I'm always just trying to be conscious of just, "Okay, I'm dealing with this medical diagnosis." Again, it's a journey that I still deal with really bad days of Tourette stuff or anxiety stuff. Even when I'm having those days, I'm constantly thinking, "Is my husband okay? If I feel too much then I can't be conscious of if he's okay. And if I feel too much then I'm not looking out for my daughter."

When reality is that the Lord has given me a spouse for that's a part of marriage, is me being able to be open about how I'm feeling and the challenges that I'm facing and vice versa. The reality of parenthood and motherhood is that she needs to see me cry. She needs to know that mommy gets sad sometimes and mommy's working through it and it's going to get better. My own relationship with feelings kind of gets in the way of that sometimes and kind of causes me to shut down a little bit and only practice feelings when songs are on.

Ann Wilson: I think that that's pretty big. Dave, I'm looking at you like you can relate to that because you have run from your feelings in the past a lot.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, I think I didn't know it for decades, but it was a defense mechanism to protect myself. I can remember being the father and the pastor doing my sons' weddings. I can remember standing in the chapel looking at my son and his new bride and feeling like, "I can't feel. I should feel this moment." And part of me is like, "Well, I have a job to do. I have to officiate the wedding." But I think I was afraid. I know this from Ann in our marriage, she wants me to feel and emote because I think in some ways you're not fully present when we guard our feelings.

So when I was reading your book about finding quiet and finding peace, sometimes we're afraid to step into those feelings and we never get to the other side, which is peace. If we're willing to go there, it may be scary, it may be uncomfortable, but for me, I feel like, "Man, I want to make the last 30 years of my life feeling years." In a sense where I want to cry in life, not just in a movie theater, and part of that is like I gotta be willing to go into it.

Ann Wilson: One of the things you say in your book is, "I started to realize that it wasn't my purpose to bring people joy. Instead, it was my purpose to live a life full of joy in hopes of directing people to see the source."

A lot of us, I think especially as a mom, I could feel that. I do feel that for my kids, for my friends, "Oh, I want to bring them joy." And you say instead, it was your purpose to live a life full of joy in hopes of directing people to see the source.

Jamie Grace: Every few months I go through this. This is a little bit of my personality, this is a little bit of my anxiety as a human, this is a little bit of my anxiety disorder. Every few months I go through a "I need to fix the world" phase. I've gone to the point now I can talk myself out of it within a day now. So that's a huge step because the first time I tried to fix the world, I was about seven and it took me months to realize I'm doing too much.

I will literally, I'll see brokenness in the world and it starts from genuine pain that I feel. What I don't do is feel the feelings and go to Jesus, which is what I should do. What I instead do, I'm like, "Oh God, You feel sad about what's happening in the foster care system, what's happening with poverty, racism, injustice, all these things. Okay, Lord, you know what we're going to do? We're going to fix this. Okay, Jesus, You sit up on Your throne, I'm going to get on my phone, I'm going to come up with a PDF, I'm going to file for a nonprofit, seven nonprofits, actually 15 nonprofits. I need 33 interns, actually 34 interns, they need to be paid. I need a grant, who can give me a grant?" And then I'm just trying to fix it all.

Ann Wilson: I just have to say, to restate this: "You just sit on Your throne while I get on my phone."

Jamie Grace: I don't think I've ever said that out loud and I'm a little embarrassed, but it's so real.

I have to remind myself that I'm not called to be all things to all people. I think a lot of times as believers we get caught up in words like "purpose" and "calling," especially young adults that they ask, "What am I supposed to do? What college am I supposed to go to? I don't want to make the wrong choice. What career? I don't want to do the wrong job. I don't want to marry the wrong person. How do you know the one?" This grand scale of what is my purpose and what is my calling?

Sometimes it's like the Lord's like, "I want you to wake up tomorrow and extend grace to everyone you see." That's your purpose for today. Just choosing to be more present has allowed me to do that. Even what you were saying a minute ago about your son's wedding and just trying to do the job and not feel the feels, just trying to complete the task at hand. I dealt with a lot of that getting famous at 17 with my music. My job was to make everybody happy. And if I stopped making people happy, I'm not relevant anymore. I'm not famous anymore, and then I'm seen as a failure. If I stop playing 200, 300 shows a year, well people see you as not successful.

That was one of the main things in my life that really took a hit at my mental health and really took a hit at my feelings. I was so much better at feelings before I was famous. I had such a healthier relationship with feelings before I realized that feelings could easily become a currency and that it was just my job to keep all the feelings as high and happy as possible at whatever expense to myself.

That's what happens whether you're a mom or an artist or a dad at a wedding, a pastor at a wedding. When you're so caught up with "let me just monitor everybody else's feelings and create and serve joy on a platter as though it's mine to give," when we're constantly doing that, then we're completely neglecting ourselves.

We've completely avoided every aspect of who God calls us to be and what that purpose looks like. That's really where the book started for me was realizing that by trying to make everybody so happy, by literally being one of two of the main musical resources for most Christian families in America for like four years that had young girls, by just stepping into that role of being "it," I was completely neglecting who God made me to be. I was completely neglecting any kind of feeling. I was just doing the job and there was no connection to my own feelings and my own needs, and Finding Quiet became a literal thing. I walked away from all of it and just sat in a quiet house and healed for a long time.

Ann Wilson: I think that's important, like what you just said: "I just sat in the house and healed." I think men are like this, but women maybe it's a different way where we're fixing, we're helping, we're taking care of so many people that a lot of times it feels selfish to focus on our own mental health.

I talk to a lot of moms and women who are really struggling with that. Jamie, I think it's really wise to say it's not selfish. You need to plug into Jesus. I think that you're saying that therapy has really helped and that can be a great thing, and also to have some other people, your best friends, your sister, have your mom. You have some other women around you speaking life and really walking you through some of those things. Those things are good, but to go to Jesus too, and He says, "Come to me all you who are weary." I think that's the first place to go and He'll give us wisdom.

Well, man, that was so fun just to be with Jamie Grace these last two days. Again, her book is called Finding Quiet: My Journey to Peace in an Anxious World. You can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

Fall is when small groups start back up.

Dave Wilson: No, fall is when football starts.

Ann Wilson: Well, small groups start back up too, and if you're a group leader, you've been thinking about pulling some couples together for a marriage or family study. I hope you're thinking that, and this really is the best time of year to grab material.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, I mean you can get them right now through the end of August at FamilyLife. All the workbooks for our small groups are 25% off at familylife.com/shop. There's no discount code needed, you just go there. You can pick from like The Art of Marriage or The Art of Parenting or Vertical Marriage. They are all video studies and the workbooks are included. I'm telling you what, you want to be a part of a group. It's phenomenal to watch God work in your living room and it's so easy, it's plug and play.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, and I feel like we've done almost all of these studies. You guys, they are so good and it's hard thinking like, "What can we do this year?" We have the answer for you and it's on sale.

Dave Wilson: We've got you covered. 25% off at familylife.com/shop.

Ann Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.