With & For / Dr. Pam King

Christmas is about the love of God given to us in Christ. Love compels us forward through darkness and light—enabling us to grow and change, connect and relate, forgive and let go, and make a difference and seek justice.

This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• Jesus said, "As I have loved you, you must love one another.”
• “Love compels us forward through darkness and light, with its power to connect and heal.”
• Love for God, love for others, and love for yourself
• You are beloved.
• Breathing practice
• Attuning to sensations of love in your body
• What are these feelings of love saying about you, your values, your beliefs?
• What does love say about your deepest beliefs about what matters most in life?
• Who needs love from you today?
• How do you live out love in the world?
• What is one thing you can do to lean into love or to live out love?

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”

Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then puts our values into action for the sake of living out our purpose.

Show Notes

• Implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
• “What is one thing I can do today to more clearly align my life to those values and those sources of joy and mattering that I thought about when I was considering alignment.”
• An attitude of discovery
• Enacting intentional behavior; bringing our values into real life
• “Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”
• Activating your purpose
• What will get us one step closer to our purpose?
• Stay mindful of the feelings we attuned to in the first step of the 5 A’s.
• Positive, expansive feelings
• Small microsteps forward
• Moving toward what matters most

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

“Meaning making is so fundamental to who we are as humans, and when that’s ruptured, it’s devastating.” (Dr. Pam King, from this episode)

“Spiritual fortitude is different from resilience ... it helps us to realize that we still learn to live in the midst of suffering. ... It helps us metabolize our suffering.” (Dr. Jamie Aten, from this episode)

One of the hopeful things in the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires is how I have seen people within L.A. show up with and for each other. And I'm especially grateful for this audience because I know you are all people who care to show up with people, and for people. Thank you for being light in these hard times.

And I was talking with Evan Rosa. The producer and host of For the Life of the World (Yale Center for Faith & Culture) about the turbulent times that we are experiencing in Los Angeles.

And I was also speaking about experts who deal with trauma, disaster, psychological first aid, spiritual first aid, and also reflecting on my own experiences of watching the community around me evaporate. Evan had the great idea to invite me and Dr. Jamie Aten, the head of Wheaton's Humanitarian Disaster Institute, for an interview.

And I think you'll resonate with a lot of the themes of this episode, even if you aren't living in the midst of a disaster.

We all have challenges, and these are great moments to dig deep and live connected with each other and for each other in purposeful ways.

So what follows is sharing our interview with Evan Rosa. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes (from the episode page of For the Life of the World)

Disaster preparedness is sort of an oxymoron. Disaster is the kind of indiscriminate calamity that only ever finds us ill-equipped to manage. And if you are truly prepared, you’ve probably averted disaster.

There’s a big difference between the impact of disaster on physical, material life—and its outsized impact on mental, emotional, and spiritual life.

Personal disasters like a terminal illness, natural disasters like the recent fires that razed southern Californian communities, the impact of endless, senseless wars ... these all cause a pain and physical damage that can be mitigated or rebuilt. But the worst of these cases threaten to destroy the very meaning of our lives.

No wonder disaster takes such a psychological and spiritual toll. There’s an urgent need to find or even make meaning from it. To somehow explain it, justify why God would allow it, and tell a grand story that makes sense from the senseless.

These are difficult questions, and my guests today both have personal experience with disaster. Dr. Pam King is the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology, and the Executive Director the Thrive Center. She’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, and she hosts a podcast on psychology and spirituality called With & For. Dr. Jamie Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert, helping others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute Wheaton College, where he holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership. He is author of A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.

In this conversation, Pam King and Jamie Aten join Evan Rosa to discuss:

• Each of their personal encounters with disasters—both fire and cancer
• The psychological study of disaster
• The personal impact of disaster on mental, emotional, and spiritual health
• The difference between resilience and fortitude
• And the theological and practical considerations for how to live through disastrous events.

About Pam King

Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. She hosts the With & For podcast, and you can follow her @drpamking.

About Jamie Aten

Jamie D. Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert. He helps others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute and Disaster Ministry Conference and holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College. And he’s the author of A Walking Dis...

Dr. Pam King joins longtime friend, entrepreneur, and inspiring podcast host Nada Jones on for a conversation on thriving and self-discovery in mid-life. Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. She has a regular podcast where women in the middle third of their lives share their journeys of self-discovery.

Together they discuss Pam’s approach to thriving as a developmental psychologist; the adventure of women entering and exploring the middle third of their lives; Pam’s definition of thriving; and what might get in the way of thriving during this challenging period of life.

Pam shares resources from psychology and spirituality that can provide for people to grow and support others, describing three pillars for a thriving life: individual, relational, and aspirational.

“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us.

This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible meanings associated with them. We begin by identifying what's true or what's false in our feelings and thoughts so we can more clearly move toward our purposes.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• “Alignment involves aligning the insights that you gained from taking inventory and attuning to your feelings and becoming aware of their meanings of then aligning these feelings to your ideals, your values, and what you assume matters.”
• What matters to you?
• Taking stock of what we attuned to, and what we became aware of
• How do we align what is with what we want?
• How to practice alignment
• How do you spend your time?
• Reflecting regularly on life goals
• “When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”
• Resilience and stability