• indoubt Podcast
  • ·
  • September 26, 2022

Ep. 189: Back Roads to Belonging

With Kristen Strong, , , and Isaac Dagneau

Powered by RedCircle

Being on the outside looking in is uncomfortable and it’s a place where no one really wants to be. You’ll do whatever it takes to fit in and be noticed. You’ll join in on what’s popular, even if it goes against your own beliefs. Or, you’ll stand still, unmoving, paralyzed with the fear that you’re not important or loveable. But what if there’s another way? This week’s guest on indoubt, Kristen Strong, joins us to discuss a third way to belonging – the back road way. By remaining in Christ and relaxing into the unique role that God has for you, we truly find the belonging that we were created to have.

View Transcription

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of indoubt. My name is Kourtney, the indoubt Coordinator, and it’s so good to have you with us. On this week’s episode of indoubt, author Kristen Strong joins us to discuss a fundamental desire that is deep inside of us. This is the desire to truly belong, belonging reaching further than just having friends. The feeling of belonging is also the feeling of being known and this feeling is something that we all need. It’s how God created us to be. I hope you enjoy this episode with Isaac and Kristen Strong.

Isaac Dagneau:
With me today is author, blogger, speaker, Kristen Strong. It’s great to have you with us today, Kristen.

Kristen Strong:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be here.

Isaac Dagneau:
Before we spend some time discussing your new book and just sort of the themes that it covers, why don’t you just first take some time to share with us who you are because I don’t know you, maybe your conversion story and then also just what you do.

Kristen Strong:
Well, sure. Well, I was a long-time military wife and I grew up in Oklahoma. I grew up on, interestingly enough, O’Neill Lane and my maiden name is O’Neill, and so everybody’s last name on O’Neill lane was O’Neill. I grew up where in a wonderful environment, a wonderful, really deep rooted full of family environment. To go from that to marrying my college sweetheart, who was in the process of becoming an Air Force officer and then moving around quite a bit, that was a bit of a different lifestyle that I had to get used to.
But I would say I don’t really feel like I have a big conversion story because my parents were believers. My dad, some of my earliest memories are from him telling us about Jesus and making God very real in our everyday life. That was a real blessing. I would say, today, I live in Colorado Springs. I’m the mother of three children. I have twin sons and then a younger daughter and we live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the military brought us here. Then my husband retired a couple of years ago, but we stay here, and we decided to put down some more roots here. And so, I work here as a mom and an author, writer in the times when people are at school.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s awesome. That’s great. You know what, when you’re talking about your testimony, your conversion, it just reminds me of something else that someone else said once. They said the best or the most extravagant part of their conversion was actually nothing that happened in their life, but it was what Christ did for them 2,000 years ago.

Kristen Strong:
Yes.

Isaac Dagneau:
Anyways, you have just written a new book called Back Roads to Belonging: Unexpected Paths to Finding Your Place and Your People. As a way to maybe give us just a working knowledge of the content and the aim and the goals of your book, could you just kind of walk us through that title and kind of explain it as you go?

Kristen Strong:
Well, sure. I feel like the Lord just gave me that one day. I grew up literally on the back roads and I’ve always been drawn to a literal back road. I just enjoy country gravel lanes and whatnot. But, I certainly have found throughout my life as a military wife and even just in other areas of my life, whether it was as a mom or a what have you, just often struggling with that feeling of being on the outside looking in, just struggling with finding a sense of belonging. I have tried what I believe is something that … Two different things that a lot of us try.
I have driven the crowded superhighways where I just sort of jump up and down and try to get noticed or try to get in where I feel like I want to be in. Then when I get my feelings hurt or if I feel a sense of rejection then I go the opposite extreme and I kind of think never mind, I’ll just stay at home and not bother. Neither of those are good ideas. So, it just, this idea of taking the back road way to belonging where you are seen less, but you sense your belonging more as you remain in Christ and relax into where the Lord has put you today.
And so, what would that look like to think, okay, my starting place today, where has God put me today? He wants me to belong where I am. Using where I am as a starting point, how can I expand my sense of belonging to the degree that I am feeling called to do?

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s so good. Kristen, you organized your book in these three parts and you’ve titled them as Wandering, Finding and then Inviting. What is the purpose of those and what are you kind of seeking to achieve, starting with Wandering and then Finding, then Inviting?

Kristen Strong:
Sure. Well I organized it this way because I feel like it’s just sort of a natural progression in finding your place and your people, and so first would be the Wandering section. What that relates to is God’s ways are rarely straight paths. He just invites wandering on the journey and I think that’s just to help build our faith muscles. I think about when, in Acts 16, God led Paul and Silas and Timothy to preach the Word and in a particular region. However, as they traveled, doors were definitively closed left and right, and they were following His exact direction, yet it seemed like complete dead ends.
Well, sometimes that’s not the case. Sometimes, the Lord asks us to wander so that we see a door closed is not the end of things. It’s a direction changed. Then as we see in that particular story, they ended up, Paul was told in a dream to go to a more specific area to preach and that is what he did. That door opened and that’s where it was. But he had to wander a little bit first. I think we are called to do the same. That’s why I have that first in the book because wandering is sometimes a part of the journey.
Then, the second section of the book is the Finding section and it is sort of like, okay, I want to find my place and my people. It looks like maybe starting with where I am, like I mentioned earlier. Are there some belonging places that I am already a part of, but because I’m so busy looking over there, I’m not really investing where God has me now? Am I missing the blessing of where I am right now? And so, kind of the book talks about doing some things to really be able to simmer in that and really relish who you’re with and the places you’re in at this present time.
Then, the Inviting section is at the end because I do believe once we feel more secure in what I call our priority places and people. So, our priority places like where we live and people being are the family under our roofs, close friends and whatnot. When we’re secure there, then we feel more confident in reaching out and bringing another in because I do believe bringing others in is how we create an expanded belonging place for ourselves, so the last part of the book talks about that.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s so good. To go back to your Finding part, I think you brought up something really important and that is so much of our issues come from when we don’t recognize where we already are and where we already do belong. We’re always looking at the grass that seems to be greener over there.

Kristen Strong:
Yes.

Isaac Dagneau:
Now in your introduction, Kristen, in your book, Back Roads to Belonging, you mentioned this struggle. Obviously, I mean this is all about in a sense belonging. We have the struggle when we feel like we don’t belong, whether that’s in our family, whether that’s in the “cool group” at university or even in your larger family, whether it’s in your church community, which is a very real thing, unfortunately, in your work community and etc. But I guess, Kristen, why do we as humans have this innate longing for belonging?

Kristen Strong:
Yeah. It’s part of that. We long for our hearts real home and of course we know that ultimately isn’t going to happen until heaven. But I think God has placed in us His image bears. Part of that looks like knowing we have our place and our people. Just having that sense of being able to exhale and relax a little bit and be ourselves in front of and not feel like we’d have to certainly put on any sort of false self. We want to be authentic. We want to be real. We want to like just be able to not be on every moment of every day. And so, I think finding a sense of belonging, it translates that way. We want to exhale and be ourselves in front of a group of people.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Absolutely. Kristen, in the first chapter of your book, you mentioned this phrase a couple of times. You say the way things were had messed up the way things were supposed to be. Yeah. What are you trying to get at in this phrase?

Kristen Strong:
Well, I think, we like to think we know the whole story and we like to think that, okay, things are going pretty good now, then let’s just keep them going pretty good. But the Lord being able to see everything, being able to see the whole picture knows that if we can, I think this comes out of really when a change, a difficult change we didn’t want or ask for renews our sense of belonging. And so the Lord is like, I know your content and you’re kind of just doing fine right here but I have something better for you down the road. So you need to trust Me and know that sometimes we are asked through a change and to have a better sense of belonging. Even if where we are in the moment seems good enough, the Lord has always something better in mind for us.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That, so good. Thanks, Kristen. We can’t deny that the surrounding culture, and this is not just being in our current time in history, but surrounding culture and all types of history has always impacted the church. I’m just wondering as you were writing this book, you have been a military wife for a long time, so you’ve seen a lot when it comes to how war works in that sense, you have children, all this different things. What ways do you think today’s culture has affected our understanding of belonging?

Kristen Strong:
Yeah. Well, I think whether whatever the group is, whether it’s a church or work environment or what have you, in the olden days, like in the 1900s when I was born, I was born in the 1970s but anyway. In the olden days, it used to be that when we would be around classmates or workmates and then we would separate and we would go home. At that time, the only people you were ever around where your priority people, or the people I was talking about early, family members, closer friends, your neighbours. But now with social media, all the people from all the places just follow us right into our living spaces, into our church spaces.
We just get a bird’s eye view of how everybody is hanging out and it’s easy for us to then believe, ‘Oh goodness, we are on the outside,’ when really we’re not. Several years ago, we would never have thought we were out because we wouldn’t have known and we wouldn’t have seen this larger view of what everybody’s doing. So I think that just helps to create that sense of isolation that we feel on the inside and just that culture of bringing everything home. We just have to really definitively and intentionally do things that help keep that out, to be off, to be separated from it a little bit so that we aren’t just taking it all, so that we just don’t feel like we’re taking it all with us all the time.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Absolutely. The struggle too with the whole social media thing is that it’s a faux-belonging, or it’s not real. It can only go so far. Like you said, it’s only a bird’s eye view of other people’s lives, so it’s very distant.

Kristen Strong:
It is. It’s really like a bandaid for like a short term hit of belonging, but it doesn’t really do anything sustaining for your long term sense of belonging and you end up just feeling more isolated and alone than before. Again, just really resting in the real life people that you’re around. That is one big way to help combat that. There’s just different things we can do to kind of fight the culture there.

Isaac Dagneau:
Absolutely. Totally. I think that’s great. Great advice. Kristen, what is the hope for those, and this is men and women, who always feel left out. What is the hope that you provide and you kind of explain in your book?

Kristen Strong:
Sure. The hope is that they very much do belong, that we have a Saviour who put Himself on the outside so that we could always be on the inside. At our most truest level, our heart’s home is in Christ and we certainly belong in Him, so every person belongs. And so I would hope that this book would first of all leave them with a sense of contentment for where they are as they learn to rest and remain in Christ and relax into the roles God has them today and to the people and places He has them today. But I would also hope that, I would think that the hope would come in also a toolbox of sorts of simple, doable actions that the book holds to help encourage people to belong.
I mentioned a couple of those earlier. I think sometimes it has ideas, concrete and abstract, in the book as well and as well as things to do to help increase your sense of belonging. But, again, like we were talking, I think narrowing your focus helps expand your sense of belonging. The more you hone in on where you are today and what you can do to bring another in to just really narrow it down to that. It’s amazing how that really does make you feel like you belong in a bigger way.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s great. Kristen, you and I both know obviously that when there is a physical group of people and we want to belong, it’s easy to understand that wanting to belong because they’re actual people that we want to talk to and relate with. But Jesus we know has gone to the Father and He’s given us His Holy spirit and He says right in Matthew 28, “I will be with you always to the end of the age” and that should cure our need for wanting to belong. Yet, it’s spiritual. It’s not physical. Maybe personally, Kristin, how have you, maybe you can help listeners who maybe feel this longing. They understand like, yes, I understand that my hope is in Christ, that He, I belong with Him, He is with me, but it’s spiritual. It’s not physical. How do we kind of cultivate this spiritual belonging rather than it being a physical, necessarily?

Kristen Strong:
Well, I tell you, I think a couple of different thoughts there. I think we can grow down in our belonging places where we are today, but also I think becoming okay with where we don’t belong. What I mean by that is sometimes rejection is God’s protection for what isn’t in our best interest. We need to be okay with if there’s someplace we were kind of hoping to belong and it’s not working out, we have to just tell ourselves, “Okay, if the Lord is saying no to that, then it is not in my best interest and I need to be okay with it.” However, I do want to belong where I am.
Like you said, yes, we certainly have security and belonging with Christ, but God wants us to belong in our environment. So what do we do to help us with that? I always think even if we’re lonely, even if we’re having a hard time, and in my life I’ve been that. I’ve been there as a military wife. At one point, I joke, I almost made a sign that says desperate woman seeking friends and stood in my yard because we had moved, I had small children, my husband was gone all the time. I was lonely for adults, but what I had to do, and this is hard. But what I had to do was I had to be the one to invite others in rather than just waiting for people to kind of drop on my doorstep from the sky or from wherever. I had to be the one to go first. Yes, it’s kind of awkward sometimes, but as my friend Holly Girth says, awkward is sometimes the price of admission for authentic community, so I went first. I invited people into my home. I met people at coffee shops or I just met people where I knew there would be moms, the park or story time at Barnes and Noble. I had to just put myself out there because sometimes while friends do kind of find you, I think that’s few and far between. I think more often you’d have to kind of put yourself out there to find the friends.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s such a great practical point. Taking that initiative, and like you said, it can be very uncomfortable. It can be awkward. I think maybe in our age, especially in North America, maybe just in Western civilization, we are kind of taught that we’re just given what we want and we’re given what we need. Perhaps, that translates into this idea of friendships and belonging we just expected to come.

Kristen Strong:
Amen. My husband has been in the same boat, too. Yeah, I’m introverted. My husband is really introverted, so it was really kind of the same kind of thing. Him initiating invites and invitations and chances to just hang out with other fellows to build that guy time bonding time on his end as well.

Isaac Dagneau:
Absolutely. Kristen, all the various places you have been, you probably had to step into a lot of various local churches …

Kristen Strong:
Yes.

Isaac Dagneau:
… In those areas. Thinking about local churches, what role does the local church play in this fact of belonging, of being a son or daughter of Christ and belonging?

Kristen Strong:
They have the most important role in regarding those that enter their four walls of seeing them. I think one of the best gifts you can give somebody is the gift of being seen. And churches, just like any group, are not immune from cliques and friends that just kind of naturally gravitate towards each other and get on with their conversation or their day and not necessarily seeing those on the outside. Like I say, I grew up in a … I went to the same church as a kid all the way through high school. Part of it was because I was young, but part of it is I don’t know if I really saw newcomers ever because I always had people around that I knew. I never ever was the new person. I was just always there.
Well, when I got married and we started moving around, I became the new person. And often folks would see me and welcome me in, but often they did not. So, I think that that is a key thing the church can do is look to see who’s new and making a point to get to know them, to have a conversation with them at the very least to say hi to them.
We’ve lived in Colorado Springs now nine years, and so we’ve been a member of our church now for, I think, five years. I see it in myself like I have to intentionally instead of just kind of veering towards the people I know real well. I have to really intentionally look around the room in our community group or in our sanctuary and go, okay, who’s a person or two that are new or that I don’t remember any in any way meeting before that I could welcome in, bring them in because that does expand my own sense of belonging when I bring another in.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Absolutely. Maybe for those that are listening who are maybe like yourself, introverts, and they maybe have been justifying not being as people-friendly because they are an introvert, how would you challenge them? How would you encourage them?

Kristen Strong:
Well, I would say, like I mentioned that quote earlier, awkward is the price of admission and I think for us introverts, like you said, I’m an introvert too. It feels real awkward to just go up to somebody. You think, am I bothering them? Why do they – they probably don’t even want to talk to me, kind of a thing. I’m not saying you need to go up to them and invite them over for dinner that night. There’s just a whole middle ground between being completely standoffish to inviting them to stay at your house for a week. There’s a whole middle ground and the middle ground I think is what we want to explore.
I think it’s also just … It’s hard with this whole back road notion. Back roads often have, they’re not smooth, they’re not the easiest way to get somewhere. Often, they’re really bumpy and not as smooth as a highway. So that along those same lines, when we’re more introverted and we’re more kind of just have a harder time putting ourselves out there, it helps me to think like, “Okay, but I want the back roadway. I don’t want the main highway way.” This may be a little uncomfortable. This may be a little out of my comfort zone, but I’m going to do it because this is really, I think, Christ’s calling for us to welcome others in to look for those on the outside and bring them in. I mean that is what His whole life was about. He brought all of … We were all on the outside and He brought us in. I guess I just think sort of becoming comfortable with the idea that this is just something I need to do.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.

Kristen Strong:
I would say too though, but like with anything, it gets easier with practice. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Some of my favorite people have, we’ve come into relationship because I have stepped out first and introduced myself or struck up a conversation. You just never know what blessings wait beyond the awkward.

Isaac Dagneau:
Absolutely. That’s so good. We talk about belonging and the reality is, is that on this earth, in this world, Christ came and He died and He’s now calling people to repentance and to belief in Him. Therefore, there is this sense of there is the church and there’s not the church. I know that there are listeners today that are listening that have yet to repent and to believe in Jesus. Now both of these groups, we could say, or whatever you want to call them, struggle with the negative effects of not belonging. Perhaps, what would be some of the first steps to help those in both groups move towards a healthy and a true kind of understanding and experience of the fruit of belonging. Maybe, would you encourage both groups differently maybe?

Kristen Strong:
Well, a couple of things come to mind and I do believe these two things. It would be something that both groups could do. First of all, I actually did this at one point. I made a list of all the places I belong right now. That started with the daughter of Hoyt and Luanne O’Neill and the wife of David Strong, mother and then member of the Black Forest Community in Colorado Springs and member of Village Seven Presbyterian Church. I made a literal list and I was shocked at all the places I actually do belong that I just hadn’t been thinking about. I think that can be a wonderful launching pad to kind of figuring out where we want to go to expand our sense of belonging to.
I think something else that we can do is maybe look outside your usual circles and have conversations outside your usual conversations to expand your sense of belonging.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s really helpful and especially when you were talking about writing down, literally writing down the places that you belong. I think we’d all be a little bit awakened to how much we do belong.
Kristen, before we wrap up here, is there anything else maybe from your book, from our conversation that you would just like to say?

Kristen Strong:
Well, I guess the only other thing I would like to say is that if you feel like, gosh, I’m putting myself out there and I’m still having a hard time expanding my sense of belonging and I just feel like I’m doing all the right things and nothing is working out, I would just encourage you to just persevere and just stay on the path. Because you can’t really … The only way to guarantee never having a community, never having rich friendships is just completely stop trying. I would say it is 100% God’s heart for you to have your place in your people and He will bring you there.
But, just stay on the path and prayerfully consider, “Okay, Lord, where do you want me to go next? What do you want me to do?” I do believe that He will bring that to you. I think sometimes we just kind of quit too early. So, that would be what I would say is just keep persevering on the pathway.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. That’s so good. Well, that wraps up our time today. If you’re listening and you want to hear more about this topic of belonging, just go pick up Kristen’s new book. We provided all the links needed for that on our episode podcast page. Also be sure to check out kristenstrong.com. There you can find out more about who Kristen is. You can find out more about her other books. She has a blog on there and there’s much more. Anyways, I want to just thank you so much, Kristen. We really enjoyed that.

Kristen Strong:
Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful to talk with you.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening today. We’ll have the links on the episode page online for Kristen’s book, Back Roads to Belonging: Unexpected Paths to Finding Your Place and Your People. You can also go to www.kristenstrong.com and check out more about Kristen there or you can follow her on Instagram @kristenstrong.
I had the opportunity to read Kristen’s book and I just wanted to share a quick word from it that I found that was really good. “You have the right to exist in this world. You have the right to be a real part of God’s plan for you in your family and community. You can enthusiastically show up for your assignment instead of apologetically shrinking from it. You can courageously own the present and future gifts you hold from God with you and Christ in you. Let that lead you to intentionally listen to God’s affirmation rather than the enemy’s accusations. Let that lead you back to the gospel again and again and again.” Thank you so much, Kristen, for joining us on indoubt.
If there’s anything that you’d like to share with us, feedback, ideas, or critiques, I’d encourage you to send us a DM on social media – we’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter or you can email us at info@indoubt.ca. The other thing that we have available for you is our smartphone app, which you can download in the app store for Apple or play store for Android. You’ll get notifications when a new episode is available and any big news that we have to share. You can also access everything on the app that’s available on the website and it gives you the option to download any episode right onto your phone.
I just wanted to add that if you would like to help support indoubt financially, that would be a great help. All that we do, like this podcast, the articles we write and the events that we host, are done at no cost to you because we want you to have access to tools that will hopefully sharpen your faith in your daily walk with God. All that being said, we do need your help and if you’d like to add indoubt to your monthly giving, we’d really appreciate it.
Thanks again for joining us for this episode. I hope you’ll listen next week where we’ll have guests, Maddie Hardie who is going to share with us about her journey of healing after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.Com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

[/wpbb-if]
Ep189-re-air-_1920x1080

Who's Our Guest?

Kristen Strong

Kristen Strong, author of Back Roads to Belonging, When Change Finds You, and Girl Meets Change, writes as a friend helping you see your current season of life with more hope and less worry. She and her US Air Force veteran husband, David, have three children and live in Colorado.
Ep189-re-air-_1920x1080

Who's Our Guest?

Kristen Strong

Kristen Strong, author of Back Roads to Belonging, When Change Finds You, and Girl Meets Change, writes as a friend helping you see your current season of life with more hope and less worry. She and her US Air Force veteran husband, David, have three children and live in Colorado.