Hunting for Manna | EP 176: Meredith McDaniel, Licensed Counselor & Author

It’s hard to fight the false narrative that working harder, making more money, and acquiring more stuff will bring happiness and fulfillment. My guest today is here to debunk that myth and help us discovery what’s truly most important to us. Get ready, because Meredith McDaniel is going to share her incredible wisdom about what we are truly searching for as humans. Meredith is a licensed professional counselor and owner of her own private practice, Milk and Honey Counselling. She is a graduate of the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and has served on staff with Young Life and worked as the lead counselor for Inheritance of Hope. She has a new book coming out next week on January 21st, 2020 called In Want + Plenty: Waking Up to God’s Provision In a Land of Longing. I highly recommend you preorder it right away. I’ve already had the chance to read it, and it is simply incredible. Meredith says that she feels called to sit with and listen to the stories of women and men, helping them discover who they are and experience life more fully. She enjoys entering into the quiet places of people’s lives in a safe setting to offer hope and help others taste of the Land of Milk and Honey. It was so refreshing, encouraging, and challenging to speak with Meredith today. Join me for this serene moment with Meredith McDaniel.



3:07 – The Meredith 101



Meredith is a licensed counselor who also went to seminary. She completed her Master of Christian Counseling program at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. She studied core bible classes, but her main focus was integrating Christianity and Psychology. It’s so important for the Church to care not only for people’s spiritual lives, but for people’s mental health as well. About half of Meredith’s clients in her private practice are walking with the Christian faith and half of them are not. Her goal is to provide a safe space for people to process their lives. She doesn’t approach sessions from an evangelical mindset, but questions like “Who Am I?”, “Why Am I Here?”, and “What Is My Purpose?” often come up naturally in sessions with people who don’t identify as Christians. Meredith has been encouraged that the stigma with mental health has started to wane. There are far more organizations speaking about anxiety and depression, and more conversations are happening on podcasts and social media. In the near future, Meredith will work with a local school to provide counseling onsite so that students don’t have to worry about missing as much school to get to appointments. 10:08 – A Universal Feeling: Purpose & Meaning



There’s a common story that brings us all together: We all want meaning and purpose in our lives no matter what our beliefs and backgrounds. Meredith calls it a yearning. Some feel it deeper than others, but we all feel it to some degree. Meredith began to notice a pattern that no matter what season of life people are in, many different people feel as if their lives are unraveling and they’ve lost sight of their purpose. Many people feel stuck in that space and don’t feel like they can pull themselves out of it. The key seems to be finding movement and seeing our lives in a new way while being at peace with knowing there are a lot of factors out of our control. This is what gave Meredith the ideas for much what she wrote for In Want & Plenty: In Want + Plenty: Waking Up to God's Provision in a Land of Longing. 13:40 - The Exodus Provision



Meredith compares our modern lives to biblical characters who wandered in the wilderness for years. Our mouths are dry, and our stomachs are rumbling, and we are wandering. Think about it this way: We wake up, we scroll through our phones, our minds are running with to do lists, we don’t stop to breathe, stretch or sweat, and we have trouble connecting to each other in a real way. If you take a closer look, we can relate to the people in the story of Exodus and other parts of the bible. Meredith talks about the idea of “manna” both in her book and often on social media. If you’re not familiar with that term, the Hebrew translation is literally, “What Is It?” The dictionary definition from biblical context is “the substance miraculously supplied as food to the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16).” Meredith summarizes the feeling of a “manna moment” to be a moment where God has provided for her in a way that she was surprised by that she didn’t quite fully understand. Sometimes “manna moments” come in the form of things we may not like or prefer. We may not know why certain things happen, but we can surrender and trust that God has the big picture that we can’t see. We want what we want, and we want it right now, but if we can unearth the manna that is in every single corner of our lives, it completely changes our view and we start recognizing it. 21:13 – How to Hunt for Manna



In her book, Meredith equips readers...

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