We are halfway…

We are coming to the end of the first half of Grace and Truth In Your Story. This is also a busy time of year, and a time where emotions and wounds are close to the surface. We have done a lot of work so far and it can be emotional draining, uncomfortable, and we’ve talked about the natural feeling of running right about now. Things in our lives start spinning out of control, both from the outside world and our internal world. Everything inside us might start screaming, “I need to run far away. I don’t want to do this anymore. What am I really getting out of this? I am feeling worse instead of better.” This week, let’s take a walk through the lessons and everything you have gained from being here the last few months, because the thing about growth is that the person growing can hardly see the progress she has made until the lens zooms out a little.

The first week we started to learn the pattern each of us has inside: Thought -> Feeling -> Behavior. This is crucial in understanding why we act the way we act, why we feel the way we feel, and why we think the way we think. Understanding this simple pattern can give us the key to unlock several prisons or bonds we have found ourselves in.

Then we moved on to an understanding of our own heart and the hearts of others. We learned that not one of us as a heart without holes and wounds. Understanding this concept can bring so much grace to our lives, for ourselves and others. Beginning to put words and stories to these holes is a tool we can use to make sense of our lives. Making sense of our story and our lives, is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and our children and our children’s children. Please don’t miss the importance of this, it can’t be emphasized enough.

We learned about the important healing equation: Grace + Truth + Time + Relationship = Healing. When we ask ourselves: how do I get better? How do I grow? How do I become the best version of myself? How can I be the best disciple I can be? The answer is in this equation. We can use this as a tool to check ourselves regularly against it and ask the question, where am I needing to focus more? Which part of this equation has gone off the rails?

We learned the importance of nonjudgemental observation in ourselves (and others). This means instead of automatically judging whether we think we did something “wrong”, or “bad”, first we just step back and look at what happened without judgement. This is a skill that takes time to develop, but its value cannot be overstated. This is the door to insight into ourselves, into our lives. This is the gate we must walk through to receive and usher in God’s abundant grace that is constantly waiting for us.

Next we moved into understanding community. We learned that God created us for community and all the guilt, shame, or punishment we give ourselves for taking time to be in community comes from the enemy not from God. God rejoices when we take time for community and relationships (where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst). The Bible ranks healthy relationships as the most important thing in life. When we are not in community, we suffer. We need loving people around us. We weren’t meant to walk this live or this path to healing alone. 

We had to stop and take a look at hurt we encountered from community at church in our past, so that we could see this place, this class was different. We had to give those thoughts and feelings a place to be and a voice, so that we didn’t unknowingly bring those thoughts and feelings in to this place. We talked about the different types of relationships at church and in community, so that we can better understand our expectations for people and the relationships we have.

Next we moved to understanding the fruits of the spirit and how they relate to relationships. We learned this as a tool to be a red flag when this isn’t happening in our lives. This was not meant to bring shame in any way, but to be an alarm to the nonjudgmental observer to say “something is off here. Let me stop, take some time for myself, and understand what hole I have been thinking, feeling, and behaving from.”

Then we moved in to the hard task of looking at our character flaws, or defects. This took real courage, vulnerability, and honesty. This was so important for many reasons: it started us on the path to humility, it helped us practice nonjudgemental observation of ourselves, and it was confession to ourselves, God, and another person. All of those elements are necessary to move toward healing.

Next we learned about our feelings and the importance of understanding and naming them. Some of us didn’t know we had feelings. Others knew a small handful of emotions. We all learned the depths and breadth our feelings could go. We learned new words for things we have been dealing with or trying to escape from for many years. We explored two major emotions: shame and anger. Shame causes so much destruction, death, and negativity in our lives. We learned the physical sensation of shame, the thoughts associated with it, and what to do when it arises. This can be a tool we constantly run to in our everyday lives. It can free us from so much suffering and pain. We also learned about anger as a secondary emotion used to alleviate our feelings of guilt, hurt, or fear. This information may have totally turned our world upside down and activated those feelings of wanting to run again. Going to depths we haven’t been to before is scary and we are reminded once again why community is so important. Understanding our emotions can be a huge tool for us in making sense of things in our lives on a daily basis. When things go crazy in our lives and we need to slow it down, we can start writing out: I feel ______, I think _________, I want __________, I need ________

We can eventually learn to stop fighting or running from the feelings we experience and start to use them as a tool to move us toward more insight into ourselves, and what is actually going on inside of us under the surface.

Next we moved into attachment and learned that we have a specific dance we bring into each relationship we have. We learned what the different attachment styles were for ourselves and others. We did this so that we can start to recognize our own tendencies and see patterns both in ourselves and other people. 

From attachment, we explored boundaries and started to get a sense of what they were and how healthy ones they can protect us, and help us on our healing journey. We started to discuss the tool of the hula hoop and how it can help us in our daily lives filter out the messages that are false and let in messages of hope and love. 

Finally, we came to Step 1 in our journey of finding Grace and Truth in our story. We started to explore the idea of powerlessness and how it can be a comfort and a tool to use when our world gets shaky. In Step 1, We admit we our powerless over our addiction/ sin/ stuff apart from God. We realized we just can’t do life without Him - the big stuff nor the little stuff. This step requires us to be in a humble posture, which is the ONLY way to receive grace, which in turn is the path to healing and overcoming our holes.