Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

Speaker 1: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Speaker 2: Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. Today is May 22nd, 2020 sixth Friday of the seventh week of Easter. Today's guest presenter is Christy Crotty, a mom of eight and a mental health nurse practitioner. She runs a private mental health practice in Indiana and is the host of Nurse Burnout Recovery, a podcast teaching caregivers how to build emotional resilience.

Speaker 1: Psalm 103 begins with a command that feels deeply familiar to internal family systems work. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Notice the language here. All that is within me. Not just the calm parts, not just the holy parts. Not just the productive, disciplined, spiritual, composed parts. All that is within me. The exhausted carryover part. The anxious part that can't stop thinking. The numbing firefighter that scrolls Overeats shuts down or distracts the younger exile, carrying grief, shame, loneliness or fear. Psalm 103 does not begin with rejection of the inner world. It begins with invitation. Bless the Lord, O my soul. And if we talk about self energy, being calm, compassionate, connected, curious and courageous, as Catholics, we understand that this deepest center of the person is not separate from God, but designed for communion with him. When the nervous system quiets and our protective parts soften, we often discover something underneath the noise, the quiet awareness that we are held by God. The psalm continues. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from destruction. He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. Many of our parts learn to survive through striving, control, hypervigilance, or emotional shutdown. Some learned that love had to be earned. Some learned that weakness was dangerous. And some learned to stay constantly activated because rest did not feel safe. But Psalm 103 reminds us that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He is not approaching your inner world with disgust. He is not standing over your protectors, demanding perfection. He understands why they formed. He remembers that we are dust. That line is incredibly important. God remembers our frailty even when we forget it. What if the wounded places inside of you did not need to hide from God? Because Psalm 103 is ultimately a Psalm about remembering, remembering mercy, remembering love, remembering that the Lord has not abandoned the human person in our weakness and perhaps healing maybe begins there.

Speaker 2: If you're enjoying the content of this podcast, then the Resilient Catholics community might be a good fit for you. We're open to new members only three times a year, and the June cohort is going to open up right around the corner in preparation for the June cohort, which is named after Saint Mary Magdalene. We will be hosting an informational meeting on Tuesday, May 26th, 2026 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern time. There's a link to join the Zoom in the description of today's show. And if you can't make it live, there will be a recording posted for you to view. With that, we'll end with our invocations Our Lady, our mother, Untier of knots. Pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist pray for us.