Join Angie Austin as she converses with Dr. Otis Ledbetter about the profound impacts of trauma on our lives. Discover the distinction between traumatic events and trauma itself, and learn how chronic reactions shape our paths. Dr. Ledbetter shares insights from his book, Set Free, revealing the journey from isolation to hopelessness and the transformative power of living vertically.
00:00:08 Discussion on Trauma with Dr. Otis Ledbetter
00:15:04 Conversation with Rick Hamlin on Christian Meditation
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News. Last week, we spoke with Dr. Otis Ledbetter. He is joining us again because we wanted to further discuss Set Free, Released from the Damage of Trauma. Welcome back, Dr. Otis Ledbetter.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for having me, Angie. It’s been a pleasure.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. So for people who didn’t hear you last week, give us kind of just a little lowdown on your book. And I know you’ve written another one, which I want to touch on as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, the book on trauma called Set Free, released from the damage of trauma, damage is the key word, because as we defined it last week, trauma is not a traumatic event. I don’t know of anybody who has not had a traumatic event in their life. But trauma comes after that traumatic event, and that is the constant reaction, the chronic reaction to that event. We can’t get over it, and we can’t make sense of it. And so everything we decide to do is not formed in that event. It’s formed in the chronic reaction to that event. So that’s trauma. That’s why three people can go through the same event and only one suffer trauma. So, Angie, I give part of my life to a nonprofit called Parenting Partners, and it’s nationwide. We’re in public school districts all over the country.
SPEAKER 05 :
Neat.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we provide parental enhancement programs that the government provides. requires school districts to have. And it came to us in a board meeting that what’s coming down the pike is something called trauma informed. And it is a result of COVID and everything that happened and everybody knows what happened there. And it created such trauma. So they wanted the curriculum and everything to be addressing trauma. And also, I was listening to a speaker from Teen Challenge who talked about pastors and that he has never heard a pastor from his pulpit address trauma. And so I decided I wouldn’t be one of those pastors. And so I got into it and preached a five series sermon on trauma. And you could hear a pin drop. There was no reaction from the crowd. It was just You know, I’m here. I need to get the answers that you’re giving. And so that’s why the book. I wrote the book because trauma is damaging people. The event is not damaging people. Trauma and the results, that chronic reaction is what’s damaging people. And you can be released from that damage. And so that’s the book.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, you write about people that don’t really have a reason to put their feet on the ground every morning, who live purposeless lives, that they tend to be lonelier, more isolated. And then some people tend to, you know, withdraw from others when they’re feeling down, even the people that love them when they’ve been through trauma. So let’s talk a little bit about that area.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it will cause you to do several things. And if I can just… Generally, it comes in a series. The first thing will be some sort of fear, and that can come from anything. So I can’t isolate that fear, but it will come from a fear from that traumatic event, which when that fear is not taken care of, then the next step would be anxiety and anguish, looking for answers. And if that’s not fulfilled, then what you’ve got next is a moodiness, a mood swings, that people see in you, and generally people want to get away from you if you’re not predictable, if your moods are very fluid moods. And then when that happens, isolation comes in, and that’s the bad part right there, because when you begin to isolate, you withdraw from people, you become a disconnected soul, and your meaninglessness or your worthlessness in your mind really is heavy on you, and you will get away from everything. And isolation leads to hopelessness, which leads to desperation, which leads to anything else. And that all happens inside the chronic reaction to that traumatic event that you had. So we’ve got to go back inside that to find out what’s happening to you. And the isolation is… that you just feel you have a purposeless and meaningless life. And interestingly enough, from last week to this week, I’m dealing with a young man who has no issue with money at all. He came in and said, money’s not an issue, but I just have a worthless and a meaningless life, and I want that back. And so that’s what I’m dealing with him on. And the issue for him is because he was an achiever and he’s made so much money that generally the achiever, what they will do is they will – see way past you whoever’s in front of them to the goal to achieve that goal and they will run over you to achieve that goal you will see that as maybe anger or something else but it’s not that at all it’s it’s the hunger for achievement and generally the flesh drives us in that achievement to envy and murder by murders i mean we might you know you can kill something besides a human being. You can kill reputation. You can kill a lot of things. So that person in achievement will go that direction. And when they don’t get it, then they feel desperation, which psychologists call existential despair. And that means I’ve lost all meaning to my life. And that’s where they are. It’s within that where we find the suicide rate really increasing exponentially. So that’s where they are. And then after isolation, you will live by life. You will create a safe place for yourself. And if you have to lie and not live by the truth, you will do that. And that’s where you are if you don’t deal with it. And I say this, and I think you will totally understand this, that most of us have chosen to respond to a traumatic event or an injustice in our life horizontally rather than vertically. And our focus is strictly on ourselves and the wrong that’s done against us. We’re living horizontally. I’m sorry. Yes, we’re living horizontally. And we need to live vertically. And so how do you live vertically in a horizontal world? You have that option. You can shift your focus to live vertically. You can choose to set your eyes on God and not the wrong. And for most of us, our first reaction is that that can’t be done. That sounds nice on paper. But out here in the trenches of hurt feelings and ruptured relationships, that’s just impossible. So that’s where a lot of people are. That’s where I find a lot of people.
SPEAKER 05 :
Do you think that people of faith are a little bit more hesitant to acknowledge or admit that they have depression or trauma? I had a friend. And at the time, I had gone through something difficult when I was trying to have children, etc. And so at the time, this is like, I don’t know, 15 years ago, I was taking medication and she said, well, I just hope. that when your faith is strong enough, that you’ll be able to get off the medication. And I was really offended by that. I mean, that seems to be a train of thought that some people of faith have, that if your faith is strong enough, you won’t need this outside help, per se, which is ridiculous. If you have cancer, you don’t say, well, I hope if your faith gets strong enough, that cancer will just melt away.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that is a person that says that that’s living by a lie. Because God created everything, and he created the herbs and everything for us so that we could be smart enough to use his creation, whatever he does, to help us get through whatever it is that we need to get through. But one of my mentors is Henry Brandt, and he was a dean of all Christian psychologists, and I got to spend an enormous amount of time with him. And he asked me one time about this very thing. He said, do you know why people go to pills when they come to situations like this? And I expected some great, you know, deep wisdom from him. And I said, no, doc, why did they go there? And he said, because they work. Yeah. And he said, and that’s we need to do that. The thing, though, we need to watch out for, he said to me. is that you take these pills, and after a little while, the body adjusts, and they have to be stronger, and the body adjusts, and they have to be stronger. So in the process of taking those wonderful medicines that God has shown them how to make, we need to strengthen. We need to begin to live vertically and strengthen our life so that if it comes to when we can get off of that, then we’re released from that, and we don’t need to have it. But until… Those are wonderful things, and I just think a person that says that is not living in reality.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you talk about, I agree, you talk about, and I love this quote, I may have even mentioned it last week, about you don’t stumble across a happy life, you create it. So how do we create it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, first of all, by living vertically. Because if you look into Galatians chapter 5, and you see the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in two lists side by side, and they’re warring against each other. They hate each other, and they war against each other. Well, what you’re going to see is all the laws on the books today are to control the works of the flesh. With the fruit of the Spirit, there is no law to control the fruit of the Spirit because they don’t need to be controlled. So if you’re living vertically, you’re living with the deeds of the flesh, and the deeds of the flesh will… satisfy the hungers that God has given to us, and there’s nothing wrong with those hungers. To satisfy those, he can satisfy those through the fruit of the Spirit, but the devil comes along and says, well, I can do it quicker, and I’ll give you two for his one, and he can satisfy those hungers, and so they will satisfy the hunger. So we think, well, this is working, and then everything breaks loose and you realize you’ve made the wrong decision. You’ve gone to the works of the flesh to satisfy that. And those hungers are ground zero, Angie, in the war between the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER 05 :
So when you say live vertically, explain what you mean by that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I mean allow God to satisfy those hungers vertically. with what he created us for. Can I take a second and give a word picture to the listeners? Yeah, we’ve got about two minutes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. If you take the works of the flesh and you write them on a piece of paper on one side, you take the fruit of the Spirit and you write them on the other side, you will automatically need to see another list. because you will see that there’s something that the works of the flesh satisfies, that the Spirit satisfies. And I saw that. For instance, the first fruit of the Spirit is love. The first work of the flesh is adultery and fornication, which we call making love. And what the hunger they want to satisfy is connection or intimacy. We want to satisfy that intimacy. So When I say that living vertically is you don’t live into the works of the flesh. You live in what God has prepared for you, the freedom of the spirit. You want to walk in the spirit and live vertically. That’s where you live vertically.
SPEAKER 05 :
That makes complete sense to me. We’re almost out of time. Next time I want to talk about your other book about how to be intentional about the legacy you leave and soul hunger satisfying your heart’s deepest longing. I’d love to. So give us your website, would you?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s J O Ledbetter. Those are my initials, James Otis, J O Ledbetter.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that’s L E D B E T T E R. Thank you so much, Otis. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Fort Collins is listening to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey there friend, Angie Austin here with the good news. We are pleased to have joining us the author of even silence is praise, quiet your mind and awaken your soul with Christian meditation. Welcome Rick Hamlin. Hi there. Hey Rick. So, um, meditation, is that what we’re talking about here?
SPEAKER 04 :
Uh, or contemplative prayer might be another, uh, way to say it.
SPEAKER 05 :
I like that. I like that contemplative prayer. Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. It’s this, you know, it’s, it’s, So meditation has become so popular, and we always associate it with the Eastern things, but that word meditate appears in our Bible, I think, 19 times. But what I think the way we people of Christian faith can think of it, it’s a way of quieting yourself to be able to hear God.
SPEAKER 05 :
I like that. Okay, so do you teach us how to do it?
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, you give me a lot more… I’m just a guy who does it. You know, my feeling is that it’s really important to give yourself time every day, even if it’s just five minutes, but that quiet time. And I also find it’s very helpful to have a regular place to go back to. You know, Paul said to pray without ceasing. Well, I To do that in a busy day, I need to set myself up with that quiet time with God.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so, all right, I’m going to back up a little bit. Tell us about you, and then I want you to take us through how you do it, like a sample of how you would do your meditative prayer. So, contemplative prayer. Contemplative, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Contemplative prayer. Contemplative, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, I love that. I’ve never heard it called that. I like that a lot. Okay, so, tell us about you. Who is Mr. Hamlin? Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m a writer and an editor. I worked for Guidepost Magazine. I was on staff there for 36 years. I write for them. I’m a husband, a father, and recently a grandfather. Awesome.
SPEAKER 05 :
You say that last part, recently a grandfather and what?
SPEAKER 04 :
And Gramps. You can call me Gramps.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love it. That’s what we call our Gramps, Grandpa Eddie. We call him Gramps. I love it. Okay, so, and a grandpa, too. Okay, and so, obviously, working for Guideposts, you’ve done lots of writing over the years. And then when did you start writing for yourself, like doing your own books?
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, you know, the first book, I think, that was published, I did a book called Finding God on the Age Range. That would have been 25 years ago. Oh, quite a while. And that was really very much about my prayer practice. You know, quiet my school and get with God. It was on my commute, my morning commute on the A train. I live in New York City, and I rode that train. And you go, what? You can do that in that noisy train? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
With these new earbuds, I bet you could. My daughter got a pair yesterday, and I never knew you could cancel out so much noise with this little thing as big as an eraser you stuff in your ear. So, yeah, I think now with some of the headphones they have out, I could have quiet music and maybe do that on a train.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. But it’s also, my friend, it’s about when it’s your place, any of the external noises, They become internal stimuli for connecting with God. And it’s not the noise outside that’s sometimes tough to deal with. It’s the noise inside, the noise in our heads. Oh, my gosh, I got that meeting on Thursday. And then, oh, gosh, I better send that email. Oh, have I called so-and-so? Oh, I’m so worried about money. Do we have enough to pay or everything? You know, all that noise inside.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so you could do it on the train. You’ve been writing for many years. Father, grandfather, writer, husband, love it. Now, in terms of your faith, have you always been a Christian? Did you grow up Christian? Tell us a little bit about your testimony.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I grew up in a church-going family. And my father said grace at dinnertime every evening. And we would giggle, of course. But what a gift to hear him pray for not only what he heard on the radio when he was driving home, but we heard him pray for us.
SPEAKER 05 :
Nice.
SPEAKER 04 :
Dear God, I pray that Rick, you know, do well on his test tomorrow. What a blessing. What a blessing.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’ll say. I have another friend I spoke to this week, Jim Stovall. He’s written over 60 books, and he runs a narrative television network because he lost his sight when he was, like, not a teenager, but he found out when he was a teen and he was going to play professional sports football. And when he tells me about his childhood, like, I’m slightly envious because I grew up in one of the most dysfunctional families you can even, like, come up with. And so I’m so… I don’t know if I say if it’s envious or it’s great that you understand the blessing of such a great childhood. What a wonderful thing. I think Christianity saved me from my childhood, you know, living in a home that wasn’t my own, living with relatives and in foster care and on different couches and being on my own at 16 and working seven days a week all through high school and college and being a straight A student because I wanted to not be on a Jerry Springer show. To me, Christianity was like a lifeline, like everything. that was thrown from, you know, heaven, a rope that I could try to remember in gym class, you try to climb that rope to the ceiling. I felt like that’s what I got, you know, to escape my childhood was the rope from the Lord sent down to me. So now in terms of something that I haven’t been able to do very well, and I’ve always been, again, envious of people that could is, um, you know, prayer, but prayer in a way that, and then quiet time. I used to have a screensaver that said, be still and know that I am God because I had a hard time being still and knowing that he was God. So take us through, if you can’t teach us, take us through what you do when you’re doing your meditation and your prayer. You said even five minutes will work. So give us just a sample.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, you know, instead of doing it on the train, I sit here on my lumpy sofa and And I close my eyes. And one of the practices, and this goes back centuries, a Christian practice, is to hold a word in your head. Okay. God, mercy, love, peace. And so as you hold that word in your head, you keep coming back to it. And when… The worries intercede, you hear the worry, and then you give it back to God. You catch it and release it. And I use that, just a word or sometimes an image, an image of the Creator, the creation that we’re in. It’s just that time. My mom used to say, I was one of four kids, and she’d say, You got to get quiet to listen to me. Listen to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s so funny you say that, because last night, I’ve got three teenagers. They’re all going to be in high school in the coming year. And as you can imagine, there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say talking back, but the will to speak while I’m speaking to present their point, because their point’s much more important or relevant or true than my point. And I literally have to just like, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody, listen, everybody. So finally, they’ll all stop talking. And I can say something is they don’t hear a word I say, Rick, nothing. I mean, I feel like unless I get them to stop like your mom did, that they don’t hear a thing that I’m saying to them, Rick.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and so that’s what I need to do with God. Because, you know, of course, we have prayers of, you know, urgent, you know, things that we have to pray for. To be silent, to be still and know that I am God, to be still is a chance to receive that love that God is here to give to us.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love that. Okay, so you will take a word or you could take a scripture, like a short piece of scripture or an image. I kind of like to draw or write when I attempt at prayer time. And then I feel like things are given to me that maybe I wouldn’t write myself. And when I reread it, it doesn’t even sound like my wording when I feel like I’m getting direction. And then how long do you spend doing this? You say you give the word, you like release it back to God, you said?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, the worry, I will release the worry, worry back to God. And so when that meeting comes up later in the day, or when I have to write that email, it’s something that I’ve already checked in with God about. So it’s all going to be okay. You know, but it’s a process I would call catch, release.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, I like that. It’s kind of like fishing. I like that a lot.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, yeah. And just think, Jesus knew a lot about Fisher.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s true. That’s true. He sure did. Okay, so what’s the feedback you’re getting from, you know, from the book? What kind of, because you had 71 reviews, and you have great reviews on, I was looking at Amazon, looks like over four and a half stars. So tell us what you’re hearing or what people are getting out of the book.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, yeah. I mean, when I write about prayer, and I’ve written several books about prayer, I always feel like, and if you need to just stop reading and pray, good. You know, it’s not all about me. It’s what I can do to help you get closer to God. And that’s what I like being able to do, because I need to do it for myself. And I might be sitting here by myself. But I feel that there are thousands, millions all over the world who are doing the same.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, you might be alone, but you’re doing it with others at a distance. I like some of your terminology, too, besides what I told you earlier I love. The benefits of, I’m sorry, referring to prayer as a school for amateurs. And then I also liked, you said the practice of meditation is to turn ourselves into good soil. And then this one, you can explain. Noticing what’s going on is necessary to forgetting it. Explain that. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you’re sitting there and there’s a thought that comes and you feel a distraction, if you ignore it, it’s only going to get bigger. Oh, yeah. If you notice it, you can share it with God. You can catch it. You know, you could do that process again and again. So, you know, one of my favorite parables, Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and the two are going up the steps of the temple, and the Pharisee, full of self-congratulations, I thank God. I’m not like others. And the publican down at the bottom saying, have mercy on me, God, have mercy on me. And Jesus points out, it’s the publican who has it right. So anytime you feel inadequate, insecure, humble, that’s rich, full soil. Oh, I like that. When we’re there.
SPEAKER 05 :
I can see why you’re a writer. I just love the way I can visualize some of the things that you say. We’ve been talking a lot this week about busyness with some of my guests who are also, many of them, Christian authors. And you talk about the fatal allure of busyness. And I think so many of us use it to boost our ego that we’re so busy and important. And if you’re just joining us, we’re going to get Rick’s website, uh, Rick Hamlin, even silence is praise, quiet your mind and awaken your soul with Christian meditation. Rick, would you give us your website?
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, it’s just Rick Hamlin.com. Well, that’s easy. H a M L I N. Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Rick Hamlin, H a M L I N. Love it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Uh, you know, you can send me an email, you can, you know, you can find me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, uh, Rick Hamlin praise, uh, And, you know, to continue the discussion or to pray together online, that’s okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m going to find you. Thank you so much, Rick. God bless, my friend.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
