Keywords

spiritual journey, church orphans, alternative practices, community, faith, Christianity, personal growth, mental health, self-care, storytelling.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Sensible Sessions
01:52 Amber’s Spiritual Journey
07:10 The Concept of Church Orphans
13:35 Exploring Alternative Spiritual Practices
24:16 A Divine Encounter and Community Connection

Summary

In this episode of the Sensible Sessions, Amber Wardell shares her personal spiritual journey, discussing her experiences with faith, the challenges of being a Christian in today’s world, and the concept of being a ‘church orphan.’ She explores alternative spiritual practices, including tarot and meditation, and recounts a significant encounter that highlights the importance of community and divine connection. Amber emphasizes the need for open-mindedness in spiritual exploration and the value of finding one’s own path in faith.

Takeaways

Amber discusses her evolving content focus over the years.
She reflects on the challenges of being a Christian in today’s society.

The term ‘church orphan’ resonates with many who feel disconnected from traditional church communities.

Amber shares her experiences with alternative spiritual practices like tarot and meditation.

She emphasizes the importance of community and connection in spiritual journeys.
The conversation highlights the need for open-mindedness in exploring faith.
Amber’s story illustrates the significance of divine encounters in everyday life.
She encourages listeners to seek out their own spiritual paths.

The episode underscores the value of personal growth and self-care in faith.
Amber’s journey is a reminder that faith can be a personal and evolving experience.

Transcript

Amber Wardell, PhD (00:01)
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Sensible Sessions. I’m Amber Wardell and this is gonna be just a regular good old story time. I don’t know. I’m experimenting with what I’m doing with both this podcast and with my YouTube channel. If you’ve been here for any time at all over the last 10 years, you know that this channel has been through a lot. It started off as my place for promoting my business, The Sensible Mama.

It was where I did packing videos and all things motherhood and baby related. Now it like a transition to doing a lot of roller skating content for a while. and then I started focusing on mental health and then I just stopped altogether and, I would make the periodic oopsies. I stopped posting. Here’s what I’ve been up to and I’m going to start posting again video. And then I would not post anymore.

And now getting back into it. And I think that the way I want to go about doing this is have my periodic posts that are just me, where I just give you story times, fun little tidbits, things I’m thinking about, you know, kind of the long form version of what I do on TikTok and Instagram. And then otherwise we’ll have guests on. I have a very, very, very packed lineup for you.

And in fact, the thing that I’m talking about today is going to be somewhat related to a guest that I have coming on. filming later this week. and I’m very excited for her to come talk about this because. Well, the story I’m going to share with you today has something to do with her expertise. So why don’t I just get into it? Cause I’m, I’m just sort of, this is, this is a lot of foreplay for a for a. It’s a lot of foreplay. Okay. so.

I’m going to share with you a little story about my spiritual journey.

For those of you on the podcast, you could see.

I’ve been on a spiritual journey. If I can find it, I will put a clip in here of a few of my videos, ghosts of Amber’s past on this channel, where I’ve talked about my faith and my spiritual journey. and, and I think that, I think it’s good throughout a lifetime to confront your beliefs over and over again, kind of test your beliefs, see where they stand. see if your beliefs hold up.

your current value system and see if your current value system holds up to your beliefs and whatnot. And so a lot of my life has been about doing exactly that. And I’ve had a few crises of faith. have at one time completely departed from my faith. I grew up Christian, spent most of my 20s being pretty much an atheist. And then in my late 20s, I found my way back to Christ in a very radical way, not radical as in

you know, some of the ways we think about radical Christianity now, but a radical rescuing, if you will.

back to my faith in God. And it was very special, a very wonderful, beautiful thing for me. And since that time, my life has always been guided by Christ and by the Bible. But also it’s been a little difficult for me because just to be really honest with you, a lot of the discourse today, no, you know what? I’m whitewashing this a little bit.

I’m watering this down a little bit because I don’t want to say what I want to say. So I’m just going to say what I want to say. A lot of the way that Christians are showing up in the world today, in my opinion, doesn’t really reflect Christ all that much and doesn’t reflect the Bible all that much. And I find it really difficult to move through the world as a Christian without

without by the mere mention of mentioning the fact that I believe in God, potentially pushing people further away from him because I mentioned his name.

And the reason why I say that is that I spend a lot of my time online trying to encourage and uplift people. My content is all about healing journeys and self-love and self-care. I know that I’ve done a lot of good work helping people love themselves more, helping people heal, helping people finally get themselves to therapy and work on the things they need to work on. And people have come to trust me in that. And sometimes when people learn that someone is a Christian,

that immediately feels unsafe. And I understand why. To be totally honest, I even often find Christians to feel unsafe. And I am one. So I don’t often love talking about the fact that I’m a Christian. And therefore, it has made my Christian walk sort of strange.

On the one hand, there’s been a little bit of trying to figure out how to live out my faith in the public realm without alienating people. How do I live out the person and personality of Christ in a way that would bring people to Him and not push people away from Him? How do I bear witness? How do I share a testimony?

How do I make people feel safe and loved?

How do I even let people know that it’s safe to get close to me as a Christian?

And a lot of times that has meant just not letting people know that I am one. So there’s been that route. And then there’s also been sort of the internal journey, which has been, man, I really, really am not liking how Christianity is showing up in the world today. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that in some ways that has had an impact on.

my faith

I can’t say that it’s had an impact on my relationship with Jesus, but it has for sure had an impact on my relationship with religion. I wrote a blog recently where I called myself a church orphan and the term kind of took off. I’ve seen a lot of people using it since then. And I’m so glad that that term resonated with people because I feel like that is what a lot of us are feeling.

It’s this idea that not necessarily that we have left the church, even though that is functionally what we have done. in my blog, I discussed how I have left the church. I’m not currently attending a church. And so yes, I have left the church and many of us have, but it feels more like being orphaned than like leaving.

And the reason why is that when you’re orphaned, you are left by your parents. Your parents leave you and they move on and they’re like, hope someone makes sure you live. And that’s how it’s felt. I think it has felt like a lot of us Christians feel as though the church has left us. It has gone someplace so far apart from Jesus and the teachings of the Bible.

that it just took off and left and we don’t, we’re still here and we’re like clutching our Bibles and going, where are you going? Where are you going? Well, I guess, well, we’re still here. What do we do? And so that’s where the church orphan thing came from. And that’s been difficult. You know, we’re called to have community with other believers and that verse gets slapped on me every single time I talk about the fact that I’m not in a church and

It always makes me wonder, I’m like, what do you think they do in countries where the Bible is banned? What do you think they do in countries where Christianity is not allowed? What do you think they do in countries where they do not have churches? You know what I mean? Like this is a weird stance you’re making that like the only way to have community with other Christians is to be in an American evangelical church, right? But I would be lying also if I said,

that that hasn’t had an impact, like not being inside of a church, having a community to go to, having a place where I’m around other Christian people. But the fact remains that my husband and I went, my God, we went to hundreds. I’d had to have been hundreds of churches over a many years span looking for a church home. And you could say,

If you want that we were too picky, you could say that the problem is us. You could throw any number of things at us that you wanted to explain how it’s us that’s the problem and not the church. But what I would argue back with is that there are so many people who are having this same experience, who are looking for a church home and they are being met with disappointment. They are showing up and they are receiving political propaganda instead of the gospel.

They are showing up and they are getting racist dog whistles or anti LGBTQ dog whistles or not even dog whistles, just outright bigotry and racism and homophobia from the pulpit.

On the other hand, know, one of the things that my husband and I did is we started looking into Unitarian churches and that was really cool. That was a great welcoming, very affirming experience. But we also began to notice that at those churches that we went to, there wasn’t much gospel there. It was kind of like a love fest. It was wonderful. It felt so good. like the…

There wasn’t much Bible, there wasn’t much Jesus. And so it was kind of like the same problem in a different outfit. You know what I mean? And so we didn’t, we just, we haven’t been able to find a church home. And I’m not saying that we never will, but at this point, not being in church has actually become more about like drawing a line in the sand actually. You know, there are people who say like, you, if you want to change something, you have to change it from within. And I agree, but also.

Sometimes you need people to exit. Sometimes you need people to say, you know what, if all you care about is the number of butts in the seats and the amount of money in the offering plate, then we’re going to remove those. And maybe when you feel that the absence of butts in seats and the absence of money in the offering tray, maybe then you’ll make some changes. And so that’s the route that we’ve chosen to take. And it’s been, it’s been weird. It’s been weird. It’s been.

It’s been a little lonely and it’s been isolating for sure. On the other hand, in some ways it’s been nice. I’ve met a lot of really wonderful people in the deconstruction space. People who are deconstructing a lot of…

evangelical upbringing, lot of evangelical ideologies that have really departed from the gospel. And I think that’s good. I’ve really enjoyed meeting those people. In fact, one of my favorite books of the year was written by a mutual, a friend of mine that I’ve made through this journey. Her name is April Ajoy. I’ll pop the book up here for those of you who are watching, but it’s called Star Spangled Jesus. And it’s all about

deconstructing and trying to find the real Jesus by leaving the evangelical church. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. I will pop it down in the show notes as well as in the product links down below if you want to check those out because I think that that book is amazing. And if this podcast is resonating with you, the book certainly will. So it’s been a journey. And I know I told you at the beginning there was going to be a story. I am getting ready to tell you a story. It’s just.

I needed to, I had to unburden some things first, I guess, that I wasn’t thinking I was going to share with you today, but here we are.

So to my story, part of my journey as I’ve worked on deconstructing and then figuring out what my faith practice would look like while I’m doing this from home, along the way I have kind of gotten into some sort of alternative practices as well. And I know some Christians disagree with these things. That’s okay if you do. I’m a firm believer that as long as as Christians we agree on the primary.

principles, it’s all right if we disagree on some of the secondary ones. And for me, I have found as a psychologist, a, a, I hold a doctorate degree in cognitive psychology. I have really found that tarot cards have been amazing for helping me understand some of my, even some of my religious beliefs, connecting with God and the Holy Spirit. And I’m going to explain to you why before you clutch your pearls, just hear me out.

Even psychologists will use oracle cards and tarot cards. They call them other things. They don’t use those words because those words can be upsetting for some people. But imagery has always been a way to help people plumb the depths of their subconscious, to help them think about things in a different way. And even tarot is designed not to tell the future. I think there are some people who use it in that way, but tarot isn’t

necessarily designed for that. Tarot is just a bunch of cards that have pictures that represent something that represents some kind of meaning. But you are supposed to look at these cards and let your conscious and subconscious tell you what it means to you.

And an interesting little fact that I think a lot of Christians would do well to know is that so much of the imagery inside of the tarot deck is Christian imagery. And that’s because one of the main creators of tarot was a Christian mystic. so tarot actually has its roots in Christianity, which is so ironic to me that Christians find it so offensive. But anyway, I have used tarot as a way to help me

You know, sometimes I’m talking to God, I’m talking to the Holy Spirit and I’m asking questions. I’m asking him what does he want me to do with this certain decision I have to make or how I’m raising my kids or something and I’ll lay out the cards and I’ll ask God to show me through the cards what he wants me to know. And I see it as just another way to talk to God, right? And so I do tarot and I do meditation and I do yoga because yoga helps with the meditation and all this stuff. And so last night,

I was sitting right here on my floor where I have my little meditation pillow set up. And while I was doing the meditation, an image of a crystal came into my head. And while I was kind of meditating on this image of this crystal, a weird thought about simulation theory came into my mind and this idea that everything is being actively constructed in front of us at all times. And so I said to God,

while I’m meditating, I sometimes kind of pray and meditate at the same time. And I said, God, when I go out tonight, my husband Charlie and I were going out for a date night. I said, when we go out tonight, show me a crystal somewhere. I know you can do it. There are people who say you shouldn’t test the Lord, but I believe that the Lord loves when we let him show us how spectacular he is.

I listened to a sermon years and years and years ago where the pastor said exactly this, that like, God loves it when you give him opportunities to show you how amazing he is and for you to show him how strong your faith is, that you will ask him to do something for you and that you believe that he will. And so I said, I’m going to go out tonight and you’re going to show me a crystal out somewhere. And I’m going to believe when I see it that

it’s going to be significant that in that moment, whatever’s going on around me, open my eyes to see whatever is going on in that moment and to take away from that what I’m supposed to know or recognize as a message from you in that moment. So Charlie and I went out to dinner. was wonderful. we get to the restaurant, we’re sitting there eating and, where we’re sitting at the table and where we’re seated is kind of right near the door.

And this restaurant, people keep kind of like poking their heads in and out, trying to decide if they want to come in. And they have a host right at the door who’s telling people, we’re booked until like nine o’clock tonight. So people come in, they open the door and they’re like, we’re booked. And so then people close the door. And so what’s happening is this very, very cold draft is coming in and out, in and out, in and out. And I’m sitting there shivering. And I happened to turn to the woman who’s sitting at a table very close next to us. And she’s also like wrapping her shawl.

around her too. And we strike up a conversation with her and her husband about the cold air coming in, right? And so we end up sitting, talking to them for a while and we learned that they live kind of nearby us. And through the conversation, we start talking about parenting and they were a little bit older than us and their kids are all grown. They just had their first grandbaby. And they said, you know, well, here’s what we’re thinking about doing. What we want to do.

is we just want to buy a big plot of land, like 20 acres, and we want to build just a bunch of tiny homes on that property. And we want all of our children to just come back and build homes on that property. And we can all be together there and live together. And my husband and I, our jaws just dropped because this is the exact same thing that he and I have been talking about wanting to do. It is what we’re saving up for. It’s what we’re praying over. It’s what

We, it’s, is the thing that we are putting all of our life’s work and momentum toward is making this dream happen because there’s, we have a big family. we have our two children, but also his three children from a prior marriage. have big family. know what a big family means. Why am I belaboring this? and so we, have this vision of just.

creating a place where anyone who wants to can come and live on this plot of land with us and that’s what we’re working toward. And we thought it was just incredible that this couple next to us is like planning for the same thing. And in fact, they had just purchased a two acre plot of land that they’re seeing that as like an investment and they’re going to, I guess, use that to when they’re ready to buy their big plot of land, they’re going to roll that into the

bigger piece of property. You know what mean.

And so this couple had just bought this two acres of land because down the road, when they’re ready to do their big commune thing, I guess they’re going to sell the two acres and roll that up into the purchase of the more property. And we just thought it was incredible that this couple is sitting here making the exact same plans as us. And so we asked them that we’re like, gosh, how are you doing that? Like, it’s so hard. It’s just, it feels.

impossible to save up enough money to do that. feels, how do you balance like living an enjoyable life right now while also preparing for that kind of life in this economy and all of this stuff? And the woman looked at me and she said, well, you have to ask God for it. You have to believe that God can give it to you. You have to be a good steward of your money.

Of course. But you have to have faith. You have to pray and you have to have faith that God can do it. And this turned into, I want to say it was probably a good half hour long conversation of this woman ministering to me. Okay. Like I needed, I got a sermon from this woman. And at some point in the conversation,

She kind of, she starts talking about children again and she’s talking to us about, about how, you know, raising our children and being good stewards with this, with these lives we’ve been entrusted. And she says, let me show you a picture of my grandbaby. And she pulls out her phone and I notice on her fingernails, her nails, she has long, beautiful nails. They’re covered, not in gem crystals like this, but in rhinestone crystals. Her phone.

covered, covered in rhinestone crystals. And on the top of her phone, up here, like where, you know, well, you know what the top of the phone is, is what looks like a geode crystal. It looks like a quartz crystal right on the top. And I asked her, said, what is that? What is that on the top of your phone? And it turned out it was something that was meant to make her phone look like it was a perfume bottle.

And that was supposed to look like the top of the perfume, but it looked exactly like clear quartz. But I realized in that moment, I hadn’t noticed this before this moment, but this woman was covered in crystals. Everything she owned was bedazzled in crystals. My hair is standing up on my entire body because I just don’t have any words.

for what this was like. The fact that I had asked God to show me, to show I wanna see crystals while I’m out and help me to have the presence of mind to recognize that whatever is happening when I see this crystal, which ended up being a different kind of crystal, but God likes to sometimes do that to you to keep you on your toes. And here’s this woman who has told me that she is making the same plans that my husband and I are making. She is giving us.

Godly advice about how to do that. That’s not about investing your money. It’s not about making wise financial decisions. It is purely about asking God for what you need and trusting in Him to do it. And then of course, being a good steward with the things you’ve been entrusted with.

It blew my mind. And guess what else? So I tell her this, right? I tell her this whole story about the crystals and everything. And she’s like, her mind is blown. And she’s like, my gosh, I can’t believe that. God put me here today to talk to you. Did you know we weren’t even supposed to come to this restaurant tonight? We had plans to go somewhere else, but for whatever reason, I told my husband to drive past that restaurant and come here. We just needed to come to this restaurant tonight. And that’s where we ended up.

All right then. So as we continue talking, she says, you know what? I’ve sometimes thought maybe I should write a book. Maybe I should write a book because I have all these life experiences that I want to share with people. I have advice I want to share and I know I have a gift. Whenever I talk to people, I can tell that I’m, I’m, I’m helping them. And I’ve always thought I should write a book. I was like, girl, I happen to know a thing or two about that. I’m an author. I move.

in the bookie spaces, you know, I know publishers, know literary agents, I know them all. So we exchanged contact info. She’s gonna reach out to me if she decides she wants those connections and to work in that network. And so it was just God at work, just God at work.

And God’s showing that there is Christian community everywhere. That us church orphans, we can find our people. We can find Christian connection. We can find good, godly advice, good, godly people. Maybe all it takes is just asking God to open our eyes to it. Asking God, Brian, no.

asking God to reveal them to us. Freya, no.

asking God to reveal them to us. And then us having the presence of mind and the intentionality to notice it, to look for it, to look for it. Freya, stop. Hello, can you let Freya out?

I’m just doing my-

to have the presence of mind to look for it.

So that’s my story. If you’re into this kind of stuff, make sure that you go ahead and hit the subscribe button because as I mentioned at the top of this show, I’m not sure when the video will be coming out, but I’m filming this upcoming week with Jackie Faber. She is a spirituality coach.

Her work is all about connecting with our soul’s purpose. And so she’s all about energy.

She’s all about mind, body, and soul alignment, finding one’s purpose through spirituality. And I think that’s so awesome. I’m really looking forward to that conversation. So if you’re not already subscribed, make sure you do that so you don’t miss out. Love ya, mean it, always. And I’ll see you in the next one.