“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 What does it mean to take every thought captive? What comes to mind when considering how to …
I used to be really mean. Seriously, I was an unkind person. And I knew that I was. And it bothered me. But my meanness was not something I had the courage to fully surrender until recent years. What does courage have to do with …
Losing my mom as a little girl has been one of the single most painful yet defining moments of my life. I have faith that God can and does bring good out of terrible situations, but that’s sometimes so difficult to believe when you’re the one going through that difficult situation.
It wasn’t until I began having girls of my own that I realized how much I never fully grieved my mother’s death or realized what a process grief can be. My heart was overflowing with so much love for my girls when they were born while at the same time being terrified to my very core that I was going to die. Every pain, every symptom I had turned into a possibility of cancer. I didn’t realize how much my brain had associated motherhood with getting sick and dying. I often thought of my mother, having two young children and knowing she’d have to leave them. A mother’s worst nightmare but it was her reality. I had many sleepless nights mourning her, crying for her, and so panicked it would happen to me too.
I realized I did a very good job of burying a lot of emotions for a long time and that they desperately needed to come to the surface and be dealt with. And I don’t even think I really knew what that meant. But I acknowledged my feelings. I allowed them to come to the surface, I felt them in their fullness without getting uncomfortable and pushing them back down. And I prayed. I prayed for God to give me faith that He can and WILL turn things around for His good, that He IS in control. That he WILL give us a new song and turn our mourning into dancing. I also realized that I didn’t fully believe any of those things because I held on so tight to my pain and buried it for so long. There was never a release. To really trust God means to give Him our pain completely and trust that He will make all things work together for His good. I realized I never really did that when I lost my mom at such a young age. I really feel that He blessed me with my girls to help me really and truly put my faith in Him.
For a long time I avoided any news stories that had to do with children suffering. It was too much for me and would send me into a panic attack. Now, I can hear those stories and feel sad but not become paralyzed. And I think that’s what healing looks like; our emotions no longer consume us.
Children are my calling. I know that without a shadow of a doubt. And I need to be able to be strong enough to not fall apart every time I hear about a difficult situation involving a child, because then I would never be able to reach out and help; I would spend my life running from my calling. And that’s what happens when we don’t completely surrender and put our faith in God in the midst of our pain. We never get to see the good God can bring out of that pain because we run away from the healing.
As a therapist, I know I was put here to advocate for children. As a society, we are just starting to skim the surface of being able to understand how trauma and chaos impacts a child’s brain and ability to function pro socially. While others see a child who is defiant (I’m really beginning to not like that word), I see a child who may be so deprived for attention, he doesn’t know how to seek it in a healthy manner, and so he acts out and rebels. While others see a child who is disrespectful, I see a child who genuinely, to his core believes that no one cares about him and so he shouldn’t care about anyone else. While others see a child who has outbursts because they’re just “bad”, I see a child who has never learned how to deal with emotions in a healthy way and, because of trauma, perceives threat when it may not actually be there.
Because trauma doesn’t just make you sad; it can make you really mean. It can make you do crazy things just for attention and acceptance. It can make you believe you have to hurt others before they can hurt you because the world isn’t safe and people can’t be trusted. It can cause something called rejection sensitivity… becoming quick to think others don’t like you or are rejecting you, causing you to shut everyone out in an attempt to protect yourself and end up feeling isolated and depressed. But these are simply tactics that an individual has learned to use to survive due to growing up in an unpredictable environment. And if we never take the time to understand this, we are just setting these children up for failure. Imagine what a difference we could make if we looked past the behaviors and instead looked for what need the child is trying to have met… if we stopped taking these behaviors so personally and tried harder to help the hurting child instead of focusing on a punishment. It doesn’t mean excuse inappropriate behaviors and it doesn’t mean give a free pass and ignore consequences. It just means something more than delivering a punishment while ignoring the child.
But this is my calling in life… to advocate for children and to help shift the way we perceive all of these “bad” behaviors and learn to respond with compassion. And I never would have been able to step into it without healing. And I never wild have been able to heal without true surrender… Without asking God to help me have faith in His ultimate plan. That He will make everything right one day so I don’t have to let sadness paralyze me. Without faith, we can never fully heal from our pain and allow God to use us for all that He has called us to do.
There are truly awful and terrible things that happen in this world. We can’t just ignore them. We can’t ignore the suffering. We have to be strong enough to face it head on. Faith is what helps us do that. And that faith comes from giving God our own pain and watching how He can heal us and give us peace like only He can do.
if you have a hurt you’ve been ignoring, pain that hasn’t been dealt with, please, reach out to someone. Reach out to me if you’d like. I’d love to help.
“You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you forever.” Psalm 30:11-12
So, Facebook is great for sharing updates with friends and family and I live for funny memes. There’s clearly a lot of hate being thrown around lately, but every once in awhile some really sad and devastating stories get shared. They catch me off guard, …
I love the magic of the Christmas season and am always sad to see it end, but I have always LOVED Easter. There is just something about the beauty of seeing new life breathed in to things we thought were dead. After coming out of …
Just a couple of weeks ago many of us, myself included, were rolling our eyes at the thought of this virus causing this magnitude of a disruption to our daily lives. I remember when the outbreak first became significant in China and there were murmurings of the potential of this outbreak to become significant to the point of nationwide quarantines, children attending school virtually from home, and adults either working from home or being temporarily out of work. People blamed political motivation, said the virus was “not that bad”. I thought, naturally, “that will never happen to us”, or “it could never get that bad in the United States”… and then it did.
I have found myself in the past few days longing for the things I was once so tired of, things I prayed for a break from. The school morning rush, the safety and security of going to the same job every day, going to the grocery store without having to wonder if the essentials are sold out… suddenly these daily inconveniences seem like forever ago… like they were “the good ole days”. I have found myself wishing and praying for that sense of normalcy to return.
But I have begun to wonder, and to question… has my faith and sense of security been so wrapped up and entangled in the world, without even realizing it?
If you have been a Christian and attended church for any number of years, you have likely learned about the wise man who built his house upon a rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The storm came, the foolish man was left homeless, and the wise man’s house stood strong. The lesson being that Jesus should be our rock, our strong foundation.
We’re in the middle of a huge storm right now, one that many of us, if you’re like me, thought “that will never happen here”. And suddenly I’m left wondering if I’ve been “building my house on the sand” without even realizing it. There is no time like a crisis to sit down and do some true reflection on where our priorities have been.
Most of us have heard of the fight or flight response, but few of us realize how powerful that response can be. Fight or flight is a response that happens in the amygdala of the brain and is sort of a “leftover” response from the days of yore… back when people were put in true life or death situations on a daily basis and needed their brain to go into fight or flight to save their life. The response has stuck around in our brain for centuries even though the need for it has decreased; we are no longer face to face with a bear or have to worry about being killed on a regular basis… we have homes and vehicles with locked doors… we are generally a great deal safer. So, the problem with this response is that it is still initiated when we become afraid, but the nature of the response is overkill. So our bodies are left with an increase of activity in the amygdala and nothing to do with it, hence heart-racing anxiety. For those of us who become afraid easily, and regularly, the regular initiation of fight or flight can lead to a build-up of gray matter in the amygdala, so now our brains have actually become re-wired to panic, fear the worst, and then it becomes much more difficult to shake this type of anxiety.
The thing is, though, we’re not talking normal, everyday fears that can lead to this type of panic and anxiety. We’re talking about fear that takes the form of expecting the worst, thinking the worst, in situations during which we have no logical reason to even believe the worst will actually happen… and it usually doesn’t happen. The nature of the way some of us panic is sending our brain the message that it needs to go into “fight or flight” when the trigger may be something as simple as getting an email from your boss that he needs to speak with you, or perhaps anticipating the worst about your health or a relationship when there is nothing logical or factual to base it on.
So I get back to the true significance of where we place our trust. There are true consequences to fear, on a biological level. And what leads to fear? No, it is not the external stimuli. It is the way we RESPOND to and PERCEIVE the stimuli. Our thoughts directly trigger a response from our brain, whether the thought is “I’m ok, God is in control”, or “I’m afraid, I don’t know what will happen, what if I lose my job and can’t afford to live and will never recover from this…”. Anxiety can and does change the way our brain functions.
If we have truly placed our faith and trust in the promises of God, if we really believe that He will never leave us or forsake us, that we can take heart because He has overcome the world, that we can be strong and courageous and fear nothing because He goes before us… that is where we find that peace that passes all understanding.
Sin impacts our life so much more than what we realize, and God knows what we need on a depth so much greater than we can sometimes even comprehend. Our brains come equipped with what it thinks is the perfect protection against fear… but more often than not it only leaves us paralyzed. Our flesh wants to be afraid, our thoughts want to anticipate the worst in some desperate attempt for self-preservation and survival. This is why faith is so, so important yet so difficult to sustain. With faith we have trust, we have peace, yet our flesh is constantly telling us it would be better to be afraid. How many times do we think we know what is good for us better than God does until we suffer the consequences and wish we had made a different decision?
With the uncertainty happening in today’s world, levels of fear and panic are sure to skyrocket… but they don’t have to. Let’s all use this time as a way to reflect and ensure that we have truly “built our house upon the Rock”, that we truly trust God like we say we do every Sunday. And if we find that we haven’t been, let’s pray, call on our church families to pray with us, and find our way back to where we need to be with the Lord.
If you find you are struggling with fear and anxiety, I encourage you to pray and meditate daily, it is truly one of the best defenses against thoughts who want to turn to fear. Respond to your fear with words of affirmation from Scripture. Find someone to talk to, openly and honestly, without feeling the need to put on a front or a brave face. I’d be happy to be that person for you. This is a time when we need to lean on each other more than ever.
I am so, forever thankful for a God who will always take us back with open arms with an unconditional, everlasting love.
“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” Isaiah 26:3
I’ve gone back and forth so many times on whether or not it would be beneficial or helpful for me to share my heart regarding the highly sensitive and controversial subject of abortion. I mentioned in my “About Me” section that sometimes I may write …