Breaking the grumbling habit can be challenging. If you’re prone to complain and lean towards being a “glass half empty” kind of person, then don’t miss this episode of Untangling Life.
Rachel Wojo and Amber Cullum of Grace Enough Podcast share their best tips on cultivating a grateful heart, no matter the season of life.
If the challenging world we live in causes your mind to get stuck in a negative rut, then these fresh ideas to mindfully practice giving thanks to God will help you gain control over the negative cycle.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Amber Cullum at Grace Enough Podcast
Free Gratitude Practice Resource
TRANSCRIPT
Rachel Wojo: well, welcome to the Untangling Life podcast. This is Rachel, Wojo, and my voice is a little wonk. Today I’m sorry for that, but I did not want to postpone having my dear friend Amber Cullum join us today. Amber. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
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Amber Cullum: Rachel. It’s always the best to come on People’s shows that are my personal friends because it feels so much like we’re just sitting and having a conversation over coffee. So thank you, I know, and who doesn’t want to be a fly on the wall. In our conversation, you never know what you might get. I mean, good, crazy, yeah. Technical. All the things.
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Rachel Wojo: Well, I first met you. Well, I’m trying to remember. Did I meet you at the Christian Communicators Conference? Or did I meet you at Speak Up for the first time we originally met at Speak Up because I kept pestering you guys to have a podcast
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Rachel Wojo: oh, ministries
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Rachel Wojo: for those of you listening. If you’re unaware, Speak Up. Ministries are led by Carol Kent and Amber, and I both work there to lead.
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Rachel Wojo: What are our Speak Up growth groups, which are mastermind groups for authors, leaders, speakers, Podcasters, writers, and amber Co. Leads that group with me for podcasting. It has been such a blessing to get to know you Amber, and to share this work with you. And I’m so grateful that you would come and be a part of the podcast to day.
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Amber Cullum: Well, I’m glad to be here. And I know you are such a giving person. Your, I mean, you’re just a giving person. If you wouldn’t have been so open to welcoming me in, I likely wouldn’t be serving alongside you in this role, and so I really am grateful for you.
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Rachel Wojo: Aww, thank you so much. That’s very kind. So we have some shared things in common. We both have busy family lives. We’re in a
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Rachel Wojo: a family season of growing children. And
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Amber Cullum: all the fun things that go with that both of us have nontraditional schooling happening right now. So I am doing online Charter school with my kiddos, and we are
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Rachel Wojo: working through.
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Rachel Wojo: I am their coach, not their teacher. They do have teachers for their school, but we are definitely in a busy mode of working
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Amber Cullum: in that homeschooling setting. And then I know you have a nontraditional setting as well; would you like to share just a moment of that? Yeah, I mean, coaching is a good way to say it. That’s what I should start
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labeling my role as especially for my sixth grader and my eighth grader. So they go to a university model school.
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Amber Cullum: where K. Through 6, they go to school Monday and Wednesday, and then their home school, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and then seventh through twelfth. They’re there 3 days a week. So definitely with my second grader, I would say, I am a teacher. The other 2. It’s definitely more of a coach or maybe I should say someone who’s well, that is a coach constantly refocusing them back on their work.
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Rachel Wojo: Yeah. Yeah.
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Rachel Wojo: I think the beauty of flexible schooling is that you can do some fun things. And catch up later or work in advance. And I saw a little video of you on Instagram the other day with
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Amber Cullum: your kids at the Zoo, and it was so fun it was just so fun. And I thought, Man, I wanna be home schooled Amber’s house. My kids are not going to the Zoo recently. But we are, we are.
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Rachel Wojo: We’re about to do something fun. Well, I’m so excited to have you on today because I really believe in one of the products that you have on your site. That is such a helpful tool.
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Rachel Wojo: and you call it a gratitude practice. It is a 4 week tool, where you can just walk through and really enjoy soaking in the art of practicing gratitude, the art and habit of practicing gratitude. Would you share just a little bit about that tool and the meaning behind it before we talk about gratitude in general and how we can practice it on a daily basis.
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Amber Cullum: Yeah, I mean, my journey with gratitude started years ago and initially was make primarily journaling. And over time I just saw the transformation that took place as a result of stopping what I call the runaway. The runaway thought train, where, you know I’m constantly just the negative, or grumbling or wishing things were different, or
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Amber Cullum: you know, and it really helped to stop that and put things in their rightful place.
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Amber Cullum: And so I started looking for ways to give thanks to God beyond just journaling. And that’s why I came up with the 4 week. Gratitude practice, because it
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Amber Cullum: points you to different Scriptures that can help spark ideas of what to be thankful for. It points you towards songs or silence. Various things that just helps you to kind of orient your mind toward where God is at work in the world around us. So that’s why.
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Rachel Wojo: And I think. the challenge of that is
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Rachel Wojo: how? Why is it important to do it? How does gratitude make an impact, a daily impact on our hearts?
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Amber Cullum: Yeah, well, I think I want to hear what you have to say about this, too. But
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Amber Cullum: It’s almost what I just now said. Where it’s it reorients our brains and our bodies and all of our senses
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Amber Cullum: to where God is at work in, through and around us in a way that sometimes nothing else can. Because
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Amber Cullum: I’m fascinated with brain science. And I, just when you start to read about the way God designed our brains. It’s like, you know, that idea of what practice makes perfect. Well, I think practice makes progress. And the reason why is because anything we repeat over and over and over again is what we believe and what we become good at right.
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Amber Cullum: And so with gratitude. If we’re not practicing it.
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Rachel Wojo: it doesn’t just show up when things are hard. You know what I mean, like you have to be practicing it, or
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Amber Cullum: that’s not gonna be where you gravitate to when things are really, really bad. So yeah, I don’t know what you would say to that.
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Rachel Wojo: I think some of us have an aversion to the word gratitude, because it has this
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Rachel Wojo: elevated attitude that we feel like is unattainable, and I think that’s where I like your approach so much, because you break it down into little bits day by day, moment by moment. In that moment you have this choice, and you can set your mind towards what God is doing and how he is working, and try to focus on
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Amber Cullum: where the positive is in the situation sometimes. There’s no positive to really focus on, though. And so you have to purposely choose that you’re going to trust God’s characteristics and be thankful for who he is, regardless of what’s happening around you, and remember that he is with you. I’ll just stop and share something that really has been a lot to me.
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Rachel Wojo: This moment was pivotal for me, because I was, as you know, II had a special needs, daughter Taylor, and
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I’ve shared this story before, but I feel like it’s so pivotal to the conversation we’re having today.
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Rachel Wojo: Taylor was so sick and she had a rare metabolic disorder. Gradual neurological degeneration. So her body is gradually failing, and there is no treatment or cure, and nothing we can really do except try to keep her comfortable.
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and there was one day
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Rachel Wojo: towards the the last 6 months of her life where the sun broke through. And I’m such a summer girl, and it was just a gorgeous day outside, and I wanted so desperately to be able to take her outside.
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Rachel Wojo: and it meant bringing her down a flight of steps. There was no one there to help me get her down that flight of steps, and so I didn’t have the ability to carry her at that point she she was no longer able to help move her body, and so it would have been dead way. And so
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Rachel Wojo: I was really mad at God in my heart, and I’m just sitting there going. Lord! It is just such a shame
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Rachel Wojo: that she would be so sick that we can’t even go outside for a glimpse of sunshine, and the Holy Spirit convicted me, and I think this is part of what you were just talking about, where, if you have a
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Rachel Wojo: practice, and you’re purposeful in doing this on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, as part of your lifestyle.
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Then, in those pivotal moments when you really need to hear from the Lord it pops in. And so
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Rachel Wojo: that’s what happened to me in that moment the Holy Spirit said to me.
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Rachel Wojo: You have a choice. You can be sorry that you can’t go outside.
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Rachel Wojo: or you can be grateful for the sun that’s shining in through the window. And it was just a Pers perspective flip. Really, it was just that pivotal choice to say, Okay, Lord, thank you for the sunshine that is coming in through the window. And so what would you say?
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Rachel Wojo: is just another way that you can really practice a thankful mindset. You mentioned journaling, and I know that’s a big one for me as well. But there are so many other ways for the people who are listening who say, Well, I’m just not really a writer. I’m not a journaler. What would you say to that?
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Amber Cullum: Yeah, well, quickly, I want to say.
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Amber Cullum: thank you for sharing that story.
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Amber Cullum: because I also want people, and even you, which we’ve talked about this before.
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Amber Cullum: I think so often as Christians, and and just as people in general, we don’t think that that gratitude and sorrow can go hand in hand. But they can. Yeah.
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Amber Cullum: And that idea is the same idea. It’s actually very pervasive in our culture, where we keep sacred and secular, separate right, whereas God is inviting us to let him be a part of all things, which means you can look at him 1 s and say.
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Amber Cullum: you know what? I’m kind of angry
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Amber Cullum: that I can’t take her out. and it’s not like he comes and strikes you down and says you should be grateful. It’s more of a tender reminder of I am here.
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Amber Cullum: and my gift to you today is that the sun is shining, you know, and that’s a whole different perspective than like it’s got to be this, either, or because life is not, rarely is it either ors. It’s typically all of these things existing together. And that’s what gratitude does, is it? It helps us invite God into every every space.
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Amber Cullum: Yeah. And we’re we’re not very good at that. In America. We’re like, I’m gonna go to work. And I’m gonna go to church. And I’m gonna do this. And I’m gonna do that. And so when it comes to practicing gratitude. What I wanted my favorite things to do is 5 senses gratitude. And so, yeah, and so, particularly when I’m on a walk.
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Amber Cullum: I’ll just, you know, start thinking. Okay, I’m gonna come up with, you know, 3 to 5 things that I may not necessarily see right this minute, but when you’re outside that’s easy. But, God, I am thankful for you know, seeing the bird in the tree and hearing his chirping
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Amber Cullum: thinking about tastes things that I can touch. And
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Amber Cullum: again, it’s not this. Oh, magnificent revelation! As much as it’s just again a reorienting.
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Amber Cullum: James KA. Smith has a book called You are what You love.
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Amber Cullum: and he’s talks all about like where our affections lie
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Amber Cullum: really matter. And I think we all know that, like you don’t have to be a Christian to realize that.
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But if my affections lie at you know, always talking about what’s going on in the news, and all these and those things aren’t bad to talk about. That’s not what I mean.
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Amber Cullum: But there has to come a time where I reorient my affections towards
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Amber Cullum: gifts and blessings, and just the things that God lavishes on us that we often ignore, because honestly, they’re so pervasive we don’t even recognize right that it’s God. And so the 5 senses is probably one of my absolute favorites. When I cause I can do that anywhere.
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Amber Cullum: Right? Yeah, so it’s really, really cool, and you should try. Yeah, I love that one. I hadn’t even thought of it before. I will share. Journaling is is a part of who I am as a writer, and so that one is a very easy one for me. You and I’m both mentioned. There was a book years ago, and Voss Camp’s book 1,000 Gifts.
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Rachel Wojo: And when I was in that season of life I really needed a refocus on giving gratitude and being thankful. And so I started to journal thankfulness and have a gratitude. Mindfulness practice at that time, and I don’t journal separately for gratitude as much.
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Amber Cullum: Currently I do it within my prayer
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Amber Cullum: journal mostly. But
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Rachel Wojo: I think there are some seasons where just practicing
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Rachel Wojo: daily, having that accountability to say, Okay, today I will. And starting the day off with that practice of remembering at the end of the day. I want to be able to note
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Amber Cullum: 2 or 3 things that I’m really grateful for that happened today, and I think that that can really reset us. But there are some other ways to practice. I’ll mention one, and then I know you have some others as well. One of the things that I did with our family over the years.
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Rachel Wojo: Was to have what we called a thankful tree, so we would go out in the yard. We would pick up bare sticks because all the leaves were falling off at this time of year where we live seasonally, and we would just grab these bare branches and bring them in and put them in a vase.
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Rachel Wojo: And then we had these little printout leaves that we would print, and every day we had to write something on a leaf.
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Rachel Wojo: and then we would tie on the tree. So we, we basically were doing the opposite of what was happening outside. But we were all falling outside, but we were bringing our leaves in and tying them to the tree, and at the end we would have this red, orange, yellow, all these colors, with all of our thankfulness all over these branches.
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Rachel Wojo: and it wasn’t super attractive or beautiful, or I’m not sure that it would go far on Pinterest today, but it worked. It helped us remember, and it was really great for the kids.
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Rachel Wojo: so I would love for you to share something that you’ve seen similarly, or or I know you have so many ideas to share in regards to this.
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Amber Cullum: Yeah.
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Amber Cullum: it makes me laugh to hear you say it’s not pinterest worthy, because actually, if you got on pinterest, it totally is not. All things have to be beautiful, and it is beautiful. It just depends on what your, because they have those kinds of things actually. And that’s what that is. One thing that we continue to do around our table. In the month of November particularly, we have these leaves that we tape around our entry way.
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Amber Cullum: And really, I think you and I were talking about this earlier as Christians we have. We don’t observe the church calendar as much. And so it’s really vitally important in our culture as holidays that we do make a part of our calendar like, what can we do to make those,
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Amber Cullum: you know, to to align those with our convictions as believers, and the month of November, you know, focusing in on gratitude kind of reset your heart for the rest of the year. You know, just like Christmas. We focus on the birth of Christ because we want to remember that he came to earth for us, and so we do that as well. Another
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Amber Cullum: fun thing that we do are
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Amber Cullum: high. You know our high of the day or low of the day, something we’re thankful for. And then a question of the day around our table, and that is just a family practice that
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Amber Cullum: is not always well received, right? Because we’re not acting like we’re all always grateful people, or that we stick our head in the sand and act like my family doesn’t grumble, and that I don’t grumble because I certainly do.
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Amber Cullum: But if the goal of practice is to develop a habit to wear again. When things are hard, you go in in the direction of gratitude, or searching out God versus going in the direction of despair.
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Amber Cullum: Then that’s why we do make habits. So that’s another one with our kids, and just our family in general, my husband and I, you know, asking each other at the end of the day like, Hey, tell me, tell me 3 things that you’re grateful for from this day.
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Amber Cullum: and really focusing on saying
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Amber Cullum: the gratitude without the complaint is can be really hard, you know, but it’s so healthy to do that. And again, it’s not an ignoring
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Amber Cullum: of hard things. It’s just we’ve got to train our brains for it. So those are a couple of things. I have a friend who shared that
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Rachel Wojo: she has a friend. So this was not her, but her friend
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Rachel Wojo: took the word Holy HOLY!
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Rachel Wojo: And she wrote it in sharpie on her broom handle on her toilet brush because she wanted to remember that those things activities that she wasn’t so crazy about
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Amber Cullum: should be wholly as unto the Lord. And so it shifted her perspective from being a negative thing that she had to do to being something that she got to offer to God as part of her service to her family.
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Rachel Wojo: and I just feel like that set you up for that gratitude, mindfulness, doesn’t it? When you actually label those hard things as being something that God has given to you. It’s counted all joy, brethren, when you fall into diverse temptations from Paul.
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Rachel Wojo: And so II think that that joy means that very perspective that you’re talking about, where we can flip that switch and make sure that we are
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Rachel Wojo: seeing things with a lens of how God sees us, and how he sees our situation rather than just
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Amber Cullum: looking at at those hard things in in difficulty. Well, and real quick. Hold on, Rachel, before you go. And I’m gonna mention this really quick to one of our my son’s teachers, Kara Gwynn.
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Amber Cullum: at the beginning of her their seventh grade year cause she has had this practice where she has a gratitude journal, but she never repeats anything. And I thought.
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Amber Cullum: what
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Amber Cullum: you’re crazy. I don’t believe you, basically. But if you know Kara, I mean she exudes this just joyful personality
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Amber Cullum: and to the point sometimes where someone like me can almost be like
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Amber Cullum: I don’t believe it like nobody can be that happy all the time, because I am not naturally a glass half full girl, I mean. I wish I was, but I have to really work at it. And so she had all of them, the whole semester.
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Amber Cullum: Keep a gratitude journal, not repeating anything. And oh, my goodness!
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Amber Cullum: So Bennett, like me, my son Lot, like me, was like, it’s impossible. And she started to explain to them what she means by not repeating, instead of just saying, I’m thankful for you, Rachel, instead, laying out something about you or being very specific, like.
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Amber Cullum: I love the trees, but like, what is something you really are thankful for about them, you know, and to this day he’s like. so I mean the way he talks about that experience and how he talks about Miss Gwynn, and just the growth that I saw happen in my 12 year old at the time.
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Amber Cullum: It like was totally affirmation for me of like this matters. Yeah.
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Amber Cullum: yeah. So just a beautiful, beautiful thing.
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Rachel Wojo: Well, and I don’t want to go too far down the trail. But you and I mentioned before we began today about the difficulty of
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Rachel Wojo: being thankful in such a commercial, retail, oriented culture. I was in the store this weekend, and
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Rachel Wojo: there is. It’s only the end of October, not even the end. We still have a week left for the end of October.
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Amber Cullum: As we’re recording this, so when this releases, it’ll be November couple of weeks down the road here.
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Rachel Wojo: but right now there are
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Rachel Wojo: no, there’s no section at all seasonally for Thanksgiving.
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Rachel Wojo: You have. The entire section is filled with with Christmas, and then over in the corner on the bottom shelf there are 2 stacks of Thanksgiving plates or something, and you had mentioned. Well, that’s because there’s nothing to sell for Thanksgiving. It really is the opposite mentality. But I just think it’s
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Rachel Wojo: it’s difficult. It’s a challenge for us
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Rachel Wojo: to slow down and really focus on that day, and my children and I were just talking about it last week, and I said, Oh, I can’t wait for Thanksgiving, and it’s my favorite. It’s my favorite, it really is. And one of our exercises that we do on Thanksgiving Day is, we have an a through Z list of the letters, and every person gets a printout.
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Rachel Wojo: and we’re supposed to list what we’re thankful for by the letters of the alphabet, and then we have to. We have to go around and read our list. And we’ve been doing this for years. So we have several lists. It’s kind of funny to go back and see 4 or 5 years ago what someone said at the Thanksgiving table versus what they’re saying.
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Rachel Wojo: because Bennett will laugh so hard when he reads the leaf he’s like, why would I have put, I mean, who even knows? Like he laughs so hard about some of the things he wrote when he was little. It’s really fun to see the kids grow in that activity even year by year, and I think that it’s a tradition that they will remember in years to come and hopefully implement in their family as well.
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So I
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Rachel Wojo: would love to hear about maybe one of these tools or or ideas that you’ve used, that have impacted you person on a personal level.
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Amber Cullum: Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I really want to choose one of the ones I’ve already talked about. But I’m going to choose. So one of the things that I struggle with is
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Amber Cullum: as a child. I
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Amber Cullum: definitely came from a family where we just I mean, we practice grumbling more than anything like when it and I’m not saying that to criticize my parents, I think it’s super easy to get in that rut, and I can really
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Amber Cullum: get in that rut as well. And so
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Amber Cullum: I realized, as I got older that I also had this mind set in a way that I could lose the love of God.
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Amber Cullum: and I didn’t realize that that was an underlying lie, that I was believing, based on some childhood experiences.
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Amber Cullum: And so
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Amber Cullum: one of the gratitude practices that has really helped me to fight that lie and to replace it with the truth that God’s love is not conditional, and that you cannot lose. It
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Amber Cullum: is Philippians, 4, 8. And so that’s where it’s telling you to think on these things.
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Amber Cullum: think on what is pure, what is lovely, what is noble, and the list goes on.
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Amber Cullum: and so, and in the free gratitude practice. I have this where every word is defined. and then I like to work through like what are noble things that I’m thankful for, and the temptation can be to only say, Well, only Jesus is truly noble, only Jesus is truly pure, right.
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Amber Cullum: But when you really start to hone in and say what I’m looking for is God at work in the land of the living? And if I believe
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Amber Cullum: that what, I pray, which is his kingdom come, his will be done where? Here, as it is in heaven.
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Amber Cullum: then I’ve got to pay attention to where he is pouring out his love, which is who he is, in the little things.
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Amber Cullum: So, for example, you know a baby nursing with its mother that is pure, you know. I mean, that is lovely.
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And so, opening my eyes to all of these little things around me, where it’s glimpses
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Amber Cullum: of what is admirable, what is lovely like a waterfall really has helped me to see that
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Amber Cullum: God is love. He doesn’t, just
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as someone who’s loving when he feels like it like that’s really
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Amber Cullum: who he is. And so I would say that one has probably had the greatest impact on me over the duration of time.
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Rachel Wojo: Sir. My husband, as a medical professional, has a very scientific brain, and he just mentioned last night. He was my friend. He was just mentioning last night how
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Rachel Wojo: the atmosphere and the chemical composition of the air that we breathe
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Rachel Wojo: is the exact right combination that we need as humans, it’s exactly appropriate for our human bodies. If the percentages were off, even by like point 5%,
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Rachel Wojo: even by just a Smidgen. There’s the country girl in me. I definitely see. Smidgen seems so much more doable and understandable.
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Rachel Wojo: But he was talking about just how that little tiny sliver of difference in a percentage would completely throw off our inability to breathe. And he even mentioned how, when you come up from scuba diving, they tell you, rise to the surface slowly, so that your body
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Rachel Wojo: has a chance to adapt in the differences between breathing underwater and breathing above water. And you just think about that small little difference in how God works.
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Rachel Wojo: It really is one of those things that can make an impact when we say, Lord, thank you for breath in my lungs today, and that you know exactly
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Rachel Wojo: the right measurements of the air that I need. And I think that’s what you’re talking about when you get specific and really hone in and think about
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Rachel Wojo: how God has gifted us on this planet, and how He has given us breath, and we have purpose through
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Him, our Creator. It’s such a beautiful thing. Is there anything else Amber you would like to share? I’m excited to continue this conversation with you. I’ve never had a guest on for 2 episodes before, but there’s so much more that we have to cover that we’re going to close out this session. But I would love for you to mention one more time that beautiful 4 week.
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Free gratitude plan that can be a great resource for listeners.
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Amber Cullum: Yeah, you can find that at grace enoughpodcast.com slash, free gratitude, practice. It’s always there and available, because, as you know, gratitude is not just for the month of November, so if you’re just looking for some guide guidance on where to begin. Feel free to download that.
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Amber Cullum: and I often wonder if January should be our gratitude month, because it’s a little more difficult to practice then. So maybe I should remind everyone. Well, we’ll set it out for November, and I’ll be sure to include the link in the show notes. But maybe in January we should revisit this time. Thanks for being with me today. Amber, looking forward to chatting with you on the next session.
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Amber Cullum: See ya.