Podcast Episode 44

Full Transcript

Jessie Evans (00:01)

All right. Well, thanks for joining us today on the steadfast podcast. I’m here with three of our therapists from the team at steadfast and we’re just going to be talking today about what to do when something bad happens. Like how do we care for ourselves? How do we parent through those types of things?

How do we even understand what’s going on inside of our bodies? And so I’m here with Christie and Tiff and Annalise and we’re just going to kind of bat this ball around a little bit and just have a short discussion that we hope will be helpful to you guys as you listen. So whoever wants to jump in, I think let’s start with just some education around trauma and

and those types of things.

Tiff Holdgate (00:58)

Okay, well I’ll start then. ⁓ Let’s start with kind of, you know, when you go, when we go through an event, ⁓ something that’s, you know, traumatic that might have caught us off guard. ⁓ You know, the first thing our bodies want to do is protect us. So a lot of times these things happen kind of ⁓ out of the blue, where we’re not, you know, ⁓

we haven’t been able to prevent it. when a crisis happens and then it’s over or a traumatic event, our bodies have registered that the crisis is over. So an example that I like to give is, we’re here in Charleston, if we go swimming and you see something floating in the water past you, you’re like, you start getting, your heart rate starts going, you start.

you know, whatever happens, there’s a shark. It looks like a shark fin. And then, so your nervous system starts preparing you for the threat of what am I going to do if there’s a shark? And then when you see, that’s just a piece of trash floating by, your nervous system will start to calm back down. So, ⁓ that’s kind of the normal response. Now, sometimes when we have traumas, there is an actual shark. And so, ⁓

let’s say we end up seeing a shark and they swim and we get out of the water and we’re safe, ⁓ it’s going to take our nervous system a little more time to calm down because there’s a fact to that reality. But what sometimes happens though is our bodies don’t get to that spot of normalcy again. It stays if there’s continuing effects from, let’s say there was a shark.

And let’s say the shark did bite you, you know, there’s lingering effects that happen even though the crisis is over. So the prefrontal cortex of our brain tries to come in and say, okay, everything’s fine now. But underneath that, in our subconscious, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff, the fear, the sadness, the loss, you know, the ongoing ⁓ difficulties of like surgeries and

you know, fear of going in the water, you know, all those things, ⁓ our body trying to come back online, even though our prefrontal cortex is saying you’re safe now. So as parents, let’s say this happened to a child of ours, ⁓ and we want to pay attention to that for them, you know, of are they… ⁓

We want to help them kind of come back to this state of safety, but also create space that they can go through this, the feelings that are underneath, if that makes sense.

Christie (04:06)

Yeah, I just want to add to like just the whole piece that God made our bodies and everything about us so intricately and with purpose and just to kind of go on what you were saying to like, I think it’s important and helpful to understand what is going on in your body when ⁓ it when your body is on high alert, there could be

an actual perceived danger or there could actually be something that you a real danger there and that God given part of us in our brain, ⁓ he gave us anxiety, just that anxiety piece and what ⁓ that piece does is it alerts your body that there’s danger. ⁓

way back there was lots of bears chasing us, right? And so that part of us that says there’s danger, there’s danger, it would give you that way to fight or flee when you need to. And nowadays, just to kind of talk all around, nowadays that part of us is overactive where a lot of times we feel like we’re in danger, but we’re not. And then if we also do… ⁓

go through a traumatic ⁓ experience of real danger, later on things that even remotely ⁓ are similar to that moment can cause your body to think it’s right back there in that same moment. ⁓ And so I think it’s important to recognize that piece of us is a good piece, but sometimes it is over-activated and to understand what’s going on in your body, whether there is real danger or perceived danger.

⁓ It was explained to me in this way that I found very helpful and I’ll tell my clients this and they find it helpful too because we can all relate. So when your body sees a real or perceived threat, your brain is going to tell you you’re in danger. And in that moment, there is that fight flight freeze response that happens. And what brings that on is your body becomes flooded with chemicals, dopamine, cortisol, adrenaline. It’ll just flood your body.

When ⁓ I’ll ask my clients, when I say chemical dump, do you know what that is? They usually are like, yes, they understand it. There’s just this ⁓ restlessness in your body and this feeling that you have in your chest. And so once that happens, knowing that’s what’s going on is really good to help you because once you feel that flooding, your prefrontal cortex shuts down in that moment because ⁓

your body is using all that energy to run, to flee, to flight. And it’s important to recognize that in that moment because, sorry, I’m getting, I’m call of cord. It’s important to use or to recognize at that moment what’s happening because in real danger, you wanna run, but if it’s perceived, you just need to,

Tiff Holdgate (07:04)

Thank

Christie (07:18)

learn how to recognize, okay brain, you’re not in danger. And you try to coach yourself through it once you’re aware of this going on. And once there’s this chemical dump that happens in you, ⁓ normally it takes 15 to 20 minutes for all of those chemicals to flood through your system. And then once that does flood through and you’re able to breathe through it and calm yourself down, then your prefrontal starts working again. That is that part of you that’s the logical part of your brain, the decision maker.

the one that can ⁓ act and step out and do what it needs to do. ⁓ When you are going through hard things, I think it’s important to recognize that. First of all, for that perceived threat and that real threat. But just having that understanding can be very helpful in the moment because when there’s danger, you do need to run. But then when there is not, you can recognize that it’s okay and you can kind of calm yourself down.

Tiff Holdgate (08:17)

Yeah, and I’ll jump back in, Christy, as you’re talking, it’s when we have gone through something in our body, when we have experienced something, a real danger, a real threat, a ⁓ real trauma, sometimes post that there are some symptoms that creep up, we would call it acute stress or PTSD even. And these are things to start paying attention to ⁓ if they creep up, such as ⁓

Jessie Evans (08:18)

That’s great.

Tiff Holdgate (08:46)

avoidance of things that remind you of the event. It could be actual things from the event, but it could also be if you’re a parent and you have children, if there is something that happened to you when you were a kid, when you were seven, and then you have children that are around seven, that could trigger some things in you again. ⁓ And that’s very common. It’s very common for me to see clients that say, thing happened to me so long ago, why is it showing up now?

because we call them repressed memories. Our body sometimes doesn’t know what to do with things that have happened to us, so it suppresses it, but life situations will bring that back up. So that’s also, that’s very normal. So trying to avoid things that remind you of the event. Another thing to pay attention to is post an event is some negative cognitions.

that sometimes creep up, ⁓ such as I should have done this, this is my fault, or the world is all bad, or sometimes we get religious cognitions in there, right? This is God punishing me. I disobeyed and this is God’s punishment on me. He’s judging me. And those are, there are ways that our body is trying to protect, but it’s not protecting us because…

It’s stuffing down and it’s preventing us from dealing with what’s really hard from an event. But it is common, a symptom of ⁓ PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. ⁓ Some people do get flashbacks where you feel like you’re back in the event. And sometimes people don’t get symptoms for a while after an event. So not everyone will get PTSD or we’ll get them in the same amount of time, but all that’s

post-traumatic event. But those are real things that happen to real people. ⁓ And we, of course, as therapists, recommend that if any of those start popping up, that you just become aware of them, but also, you know, seek help. Go talk to someone. We kind of decided that, you know, around four weeks, you know, I think doing a two-week check is important. And then a four-week, like, okay, this is not resolving. Let me get in. Because our body…

holds all of that and our bodies can get stuck. Sometimes our bodies can resolve it, sometimes we just get stuck and it’s okay and there is help to get through that.

Annalise Lind (11:26)

Yeah, and from a parenting perspective, you know, we think about if your kids are going through something, how do we help them? And then how do you help yourself? Which we’re going to talk about more about helping yourself is putting your own oxygen mask on first so that you can help your kids. But one thing I’ll say, you know, when your children are going through something and it could be a traumatic experience that they’ve had, or it could just be that they’re

a toddler and they’re dysregulated or they’re a teenager and they’re dysregulated. When we’re talking about this chemical dump that Christy mentioned like flooding you, that’s what we call dysregulation. And so being able to be aware for kids that we are the more regulated brain. We know that our prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully form until we’re 25. So anything under that.

It’s not fully formed. And that’s the reasoning center that Tiff was talking about that goes offline even more so when you’re dysregulated. And so if you have a kid that is really struggling, think of it as like if they’re in a swimming pool and they’re starting to drown, you’re not going to start teaching them how to swim in that moment. Like they’re not going to hear anything you’re saying. What parent would do that? Right? No, we’re going to give them a life raft or we’re going to pull them out of the pool.

and help calm them. And so the way that we do that ⁓ is a lot of different ways, but when we talk about grounding, love like, Jesse always talks about just hugs. Like that’s an easy way to help your child ground is to feel your touch, to be squeezed by you and loved on by you. We also talk about speaking to them low and slow. So we get down on their level. ⁓

depending on how tall they are, that might be lower than others. But we speak with them slowly to help them calm and regulate to get to that 15 or 20 minutes that Chrissy was talking about past the trigger. And so we are kind of this container for them. And we talk about it, I’m stealing a lot of y’all’s terminology here, but this pillowy bowl that we are for them.

so that they can feel safe because they are co-regulating with us as they’re dysregulated. But how do we do that if we ourselves have been affected by trauma, right? Or if something that our kid is doing is triggering us like Tiff mentioned, maybe we were seven when this happened or something like that. So we ourselves have to…

be regulated and taking care of ourselves is the most important thing that we could do for our kids. That often seems to go out the window when we are in high stress situations, but it really is the most important thing. And it is so important for us to get that help that Tiff was talking about, but also just a few different things for us to do. And maybe Jesse could speak to this more, but Jesse talks about like…

a lot if a kid is coming to you with something and it is triggering you saying, me more about that. We’ll talk a little bit later about grounding techniques, but yeah, I wonder if you all have other suggestions of how we regulate ourselves in this.

Jessie Evans (15:01)

I love that picture you gave of the swimming pool analogy. That’s really good. But I think ⁓ what’s coming up for me as you’re talking is like we kind of have to parent ourselves in these situations also while we’re parenting our kids. And so to recognize like I’m flooded. I’m like, we have to start getting a recognition of those things, which is

I think what the education piece is just so powerful to do is to realize like, okay, like I, I have just been kind of like side swiped by like this feeling or you know, and honestly what we can do a lot of times as believers is we can just start like, we got to, we got to like

quote scripture over it or we got to like but that’s that part of your brain isn’t even online right now. And so to be able to in that moment slow down get without getting to like internal family systems, but to get that part of myself out of the pool and hold it for a second to slow myself down to ⁓

not feel like I have to fix it so fast to be able to like whatever it is for you. I know for me, I love when I am flooded walking outside and just like breathing for a little bit looking up at the clouds going over top putting my hands on the railing of the front porch like sitting down.

outside like those types of things for me ⁓ help to ground me so that I can then get back into my thinking brain but to give yourself like permission to take a time out and do those types of things and parent yourself for a second in that moment ⁓ is I think really important.

Christie (17:22)

That’s a good point, Jessie, because I think, especially as Christian women and just moms and just the way God’s made us, we want to take care of everyone else and we neglect ourselves in order to take care of other people. We have to take care of ourselves. And so one thing that I do and I recognize, ⁓ here comes the chemical dump, is I’ll just do the belly breathing. ⁓

to calm my system down. ⁓ And if you’re unsure of what that is, that’s just when you inhale, instead of expanding your chest, you expand your belly. You just poke your belly out when you inhale and you can hold it for a few seconds and then exhale and just do that a few times. I know for me, I can automatically feel physiologically a difference in my body and it helps calm me down. But I think it’s important just experiment with different techniques to.

to help you, number one, you recognize what’s going on inside of you and then experiment with ways to calm yourself down so that you can help and be present with who you’re with.

Annalise Lind (18:31)

Okay, I’m putting you on the spot Tiff, but I love what you talk about.

of having boundaries during sort of a season where you’re recovering maybe from trauma. And something that Christy said made me think of that, that we often want to take care of everybody else. And then especially when our bandwidth is smaller, I think we tend to go into either fight or flight or one that they’ve talked about recently and literature is fawning, like people pleasing, saying yes to everything can be even a trauma.

response so I wonder if Tiff you could talk a little bit about the boundaries within that.

Tiff Holdgate (19:11)

yeah,

yeah, yeah. You know, as therapists, like we love talking about boundaries, right? Because we all struggle with boundaries. So if we can imagine our life as in, you know, this series of circles, like we’re in the center, like there’s a circle that is just us, you know, our core self. And then that next circle would probably be if we’re, if, you know, the closest to us, husband, kids, friends, family.

And then ⁓ as we get further out, you know, we’ve got, you know, friends and then co-workers, you know, as it goes out, the further that circle is, are those the people that there’s almost like less responsibility in a sense, right? ⁓ So when we go through a trauma, when our brain goes, ⁓ the crisis is over, we can get back to work, but there’s all that stuff underneath that’s going, uh-uh.

I haven’t finished this. Our brain wants to think that we’re back to operating on a normal schedule. And it tricks us into thinking, you have enough bandwidth to do everything you’ve been doing. But the reality is, is sometimes we don’t. And I remember in the church when you had a kid, there be a meal train. And while I so appreciated it, sometimes it came at an inconvenient time in my day.

And I didn’t know how to predict like the kids nap schedule yet, but I remember feeling like, this is so great, but it’s also feeling like an inconvenience because I have to be home. I have to be awake and you know, what if I wanted to take a nap, you know, and sometimes we feel like, well, it’s okay to say no to some, it’s okay to say no to something like that. If it doesn’t help you in the moment, it’s okay to pull in focus on those inner circles, which is you.

what’s immediately around you and take care of those base needs. It’s not rude. It’s not rejection. saying right now, you know, we don’t want, it’s not helpful for us right now to have visitors every day, you know? And it’s okay to say that because ⁓ we’re not gonna get to that recovery if we’re trying to pour out. Like there’s a time we have to pull in, take care of,

what’s closest to us. And remembering that it’s just a season. It won’t always be like this, but it’s okay to say, that’s actually not helpful for me in the moment. And then on the flip side of that, if we’re on the outside trying to help people, we have to be willing to hear other people’s saying, that’s not helpful for me right now. And us to say, ⁓ when you are ready for a meal train, this is what, you know, I would love to provide you with the meal. Will you let me know? And that’s convenient for you.

and let them reciprocate back. Because that can add on more guilt and more trauma to a situation. ⁓ And it’s all in good intentions, right? ⁓ But we can become really enmeshed sometimes where it feels like we don’t have autonomy to make that choice, which can prolong that healing process.

Jessie Evans (22:36)

Okay, that’s something I think we need to pause and dig into a little bit because what’s coming up for me as you say that is like the importance of like this acceptance piece when we go through hard times as a community, as a family, like I’m thinking about like as you’re talking about these circles. So like if if my family has gone through something acceptance for the way that each of my five kids might be processing this in different ways.

⁓ in a community acceptance for like the way that different members of the community might be experiencing this and to be able to like be okay with how everyone wants to walk through this. ⁓ I’ll stop right there. Go ahead. I think that’s a that’s a big

me best practice when we think about this if we’re going to use that term. just think that acceptance gets a that word gets a bad rep sometimes but it’s a beautiful attachment word so let’s talk about that.

Tiff Holdgate (23:45)

Yeah, I’ll jump in real quick and then you guys speak. Jesse, that’s so true. When we have kids per se, like some of our kids might want to go be social and play with their friends and act like, us it looks like they’re avoiding it. But that might be how they’re processing is being with other people. Other kids might want to go in their room and read, right? Other ones might want to be closer to us. All that’s, you our friends are going to process different, our spouse, our family, you know.

and saying it’s okay and being aware and accepting everyone’s going to process this different and that’s that’s okay.

Jessie Evans (24:24)

I’ll throw in one more because I know you guys are all chopping at the bit, but with that acceptance piece comes, I think, attunement of being able to like kind of lean in and notice like I notice you processing this way. I’m, I’m totally fine with you processing. However, you want to process. Is there any, are you okay? there anything I can help you with? Like, especially as moms like really leaning in and like

being attuned and we’re going to miss things right I mean goodness we are right and to let ourselves be kind to ourselves in those things we’re not this isn’t perfection that we’re after here but we don’t just want to say let people process however they want without bringing that attunement piece into it because I’m noticing and I’m with you as you’re processing however you’d like to.

Annalise Lind (25:25)

Yeah, I think too in the missing things piece, I think being able to take some of the pressure off of yourself, especially if you’ve experienced this difficult thing alongside of your children or if your child has experienced something, you’re going to feel that too, right? ⁓

that there’s no one right way or blueprint to handle this, that God creates our bodies in a protective way to respond to trauma, but trauma is a part of the fall. It’s not supposed to happen. So there is no like, this is how we handle this perfectly. And that we talk about this all the time, but we’re actually made for repair of when we do mess up, apologizing.

and that that is more beneficial to our kids. The research shows that’s more beneficial to your relationship than if the rupture had never happened to begin with. So to be able to take some of that pressure off ourselves when we miss something, when we don’t attune correctly, that we can be open-handed and apologetic when we fail to miss, when we miss something or fail to pick up something.

Jessie Evans (26:39)

And I mean, we will, think just coming in knowing that like we’re not perfect, we’re going to. And also with that piece somebody mentioned before of like, when we go through hard things, even as kids, like they’re gonna be parts of that thing that like, I’m not.

like my brain is not ready. My life experience is not ready to process it on that level until I get to that part of my life. So like, you know, I mean how many of us since we’ve become mothers have like I processed way more of my upbringing after I became a mother, you know, because my brain was then in my life experience. I mean there were things that the Lord wanted to like

work me through during that time of life, right? So I don’t want people to think like, okay, if my family goes through a hard thing and then like things are coming up for my child like later in life, like I’ve failed in some way, like that’s not it at all. Like we’re gonna process through things forever, right? Like we’re gonna, and that’s just, that’s part of just maturing as a person. So.

I just want to like say be free like from that feeling of like you have to support your family perfectly.

Tiff Holdgate (28:04)

The word that’s been coming up this week the most in therapy is just, and it’s truth of us getting, and we’re kind of talking around this idea, but our bodies in their desire to protect, they sometimes ⁓ forget to get down to the truth. Like it’s sometimes telling us like, you’re not safe, you’re not safe. And…

The truth of some of this is sometimes we are having these responses because we’re scared. And if something has actually happened, there’s a lot of fear with that. And if something’s happened to our kids, there’s a lot of fear with that because there are children and we want to protect. And sometimes fear gets hidden with these other emotions. I want to fix it or I want to fight or I want to run.

we’re calling our challenges for us to slow down and unpack some of that once we are safe, right? Once we’re in okay, going, man, that was really scary for me. And a lot of these trauma things, impacts our, like the edge of our humanity, right? Things that make us think it was life or death. If it was a life or death situation, that’s the edge of our humanity.

And our bodies, like God didn’t create our bodies for death, right? That’s after the fall. So it’s hard for our bodies to hold those emotions. ⁓ It’s like the edge, we’re getting really real theological, but it’s the edge of our humanity, the edge of what we can control. And as parents, we don’t like to feel like we’re out of control and that we can’t protect our kids. And then looking inward, we don’t like the feeling of what it brings up in us because we can’t control.

that either. sometimes a lot of that response does come from that internal space of, I mean, it’s fear, right? Fear of what could happen. we got a part of the slowing down is recognizing that. And even stating that with our kids. So when they notice something in us, we can say, I’m scared. I was scared when I heard about this and identifying that truth. When I say truth, I kind of mean the

The truth of the matter is I was scared, you know? And it’s okay to be scared. But this is what I’m gonna do about that. We’re gonna address it, we’re gonna look at it, we’re gonna hold it, right? ⁓

Christie (30:41)

where we model walking through hard stuff and help them build a vocabulary for what’s going on inside of them because a lot of them don’t know. We have a hard time putting words to what’s going on when hard things happen and so any little bit that we can do does help them and so ⁓ kind of just what you were saying Tip is I think it’s important as moms and

even as Christians again, like we have to act like we’re okay and we keep moving. But I think it’s important even at least in your smaller circles to let people know when you’re not okay. And as a mom, that fear piece is huge. And I don’t know where I heard this saying, but I use it all the time. And it’s so helpful. You cannot fix or break your children.

we cannot fix or break them. We are not that powerful. And when I share that verse from Isaiah comes to mind where he, the Lord gently leads those with young. Like God is with us and he’s gonna help us walk through this. He’s going to help us know what to do ⁓ to help our children. And he’s gonna cover the ways that we fall short because he gently leads us. And so I think there’s a huge piece there of

releasing that fear and not overthinking, but just doing our best to model and be honest.

Annalise Lind (32:09)

That’s so good, Christy. I think too, just as y’all are talking about this, what’s coming up for me is often the ability to be able to give ourselves grace can feel hard when you are kind of in an autopilot.

Jessie Evans (32:10)

Yeah, so good.

Annalise Lind (32:25)

Trauma response, right? So for some of us like we all have different responses based on attachment and triggers and things like that but if your Response is too often just okay. I’m gonna double down I’m gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps and work harder and I’m gonna you know, kind of Force my kids for lack of a better word to just get over them like recognizing within yourself like okay that is anxiety

That is a response that was probably developed in me ⁓ from things that I’ve been through and that it’s okay to not just white knuckle it right now. It’s okay to be able to lean on the Lord. But that can feel hard and even asking for help, asking for somebody to check in can feel like something that is hard to do when you’re not in your, what we call window of tolerance, when you’re not feeling yourself, when you’re in that fight.

flight, freeze, fawn, like actually asking for help or being willing to have those boundaries is much harder. So I just want to call that out too, that that can be a part of the response.

Jessie Evans (33:40)

That’s great. ⁓ I was I had the opportunity to go speak at a women’s conference last week. And one of the things that ⁓ came up was like we have this idea that and we do it like a lot of us do it as women, but this kind of like bootstrapping ⁓ thing and like we just bootstrap in Jesus name all the time. And like we’re just not supposed to do that. Like I don’t show me where that is in scripture. ⁓

Let’s just stop bootstrapping in the name of Jesus, you know? Sorry my dog’s here.

Tiff Holdgate (34:15)

you

I love it. And know, and Jesse, my brain goes to like, and I, cause I talk about this a lot of, you know, about Jesus and the cross. And I’m like, do you guys, in my mind, I read scripture, it’s like Jesus knew his calling, but he also made a choice to do it. And it was, but it was a stressful choice. I mean, we’re told in the garden when he was praying, like he was trying to get the cup passed from him, right? He was so stressed, like blood, you know, like,

he was in a state of stress and he faced it and he still made a choice and

And that to me is a whole lot more powerful than thinking, yeah, he didn’t have any choice. This was his calling. He just had to do it. But no, like he struggled. I think, mean, that’s what scripture says when I read that. said, it was a struggle for him. It was going, he knew it was gonna be hard and ⁓ he still made that choice. ⁓ So it’s okay to struggle with things. It’s okay to feel that ⁓

insecurity of I can’t fix it, I’m not going to be able to fix it. ⁓ But I can still be here, you know, it’s be still and know that I am God. And Jesse, you we you’ve talked about that concept of knowing, right? It’s like, it’s a deep, like knowledge, right? It’s not an IRS auditor saying, I know bad things about you, but it lower calls us to rest and to be still and know who he is. And ⁓

we can know who God is and still feel pain, you know, and still feel hurt.

Jessie Evans (36:12)

Okay, where do we want to go from here ladies? We’ve been talking for probably about 25 minutes. What do we want to say that we haven’t said?

Annalise Lind (36:31)

thinking just of a couple things. One is something that you brought up, Jesse, before about just this part of you. We use language in internal family systems often, but a part of you that might be fearful or even what y’all were just talking about, a part of you that might think you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and that Jesus is asking you to do that. And that

might not actually be the Holy Spirit within you. That might be a protective part. And what does it look like to invite Jesus, that Jesus who is the same Jesus that was in the garden struggling to invite him into our pain. And that can feel difficult sometimes because a lot of times we hear language like, we should just pray more and then we won’t have mental health struggles or different things that are

also not actually in the Bible. ⁓ But what does it look like to invite Jesus to be our perfect container, to be our perfect attachment when we can’t be that? ⁓ Yeah, and I think even just on some practical levels, like being able to spend time doing that, but also we’ve talked a little bit about grounding things, about going outside.

One I love is talking through your five senses, why you’re outside or even if you’re at school or at home with your kid, like what can I see? What can I hear right now? Anything that’s bringing you into the present moment. So I don’t know if you all have other similar things, but I just think getting really practical can feel like kindness in this season.

Jessie Evans (38:26)

⁓ I’m gonna put a blog it’ll be on the website by the time this podcast goes out so you can go over to steadfast christian counseling comm and click on blog and then there’ll be a blog in there with just several grounding techniques and so some of the things that we’ve talked about today and then I’ll put the script for a calm safe space prayer activity that a lot of us use ⁓ And that’s just a really cool ⁓

activity that you can use ⁓ and you can do some of these things that Annalisa is talking about ⁓ just inviting those parts of yourself. ⁓ Sorry, my child right here. What’s this? Okay, let me finish this. Okay, and then we’ll then we’ll get going. Okay. Okay. But it’s an activity that you can use during your prayer time ⁓ to just ⁓

just to welcome those parts of you that feel scared or that feel hurt or angry or whatever ⁓ and just bring them close to the Lord ⁓ and just use your curiosity to see what what he does in that moment. know, ⁓ oftentimes like I just get pictures of him holding different parts of me or ⁓ you know just looking and

at me and just saying things like it’s okay. Like normally it’s not a bunch of stuff. It’s just like that calm. It’s okay. So I just invite you to be curious and you know during that time and just see what comes up for you. But we’ll put all that stuff on the blog. ⁓ Is there any yeah go for it. Yeah.

Christie (40:11)

Can I speak up real quick? I’m sorry. just,

with what you’re saying, I just want to encourage people to lean into the uncomfortable, being vulnerable with the negative emotions that they might be feeling. ⁓

you know, just be vulnerable with God about it. I think a lot of times we’re like, I’m feeling this, but I can’t go to him. I’ve got to fix it before I can go to him. But that is the complete opposite of what you need to do. You need to take it right to him and just talk to him. Be completely honest and not afraid. He already knows what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking. And he just wants you to take that right step towards him to invite him into it.

Tiff Holdgate (40:51)

And all that on that, Christy, it’s sometimes ⁓ we forget that lamenting is a very spiritual and spiritual thing that we need to go through. And it is OK and probably even necessary at some level for us to get to a point where we can lament over what’s been going on, what if, you know, it’s for something happened to allow our souls to just to fully grieve.

and take that to God. ⁓ I think, I know for me personally, I hear that I’m like, it sounds great, but what does it feel like? But ⁓ there’s something healing within our soul when we can, I think of that verse that talks about, the spirit knows our groans. We don’t have to have the right language, right? We don’t always have to have our feelings wheel and know exactly what we’re feeling. Sometimes it’s just groans.

It’s just groaning in front of God and just that lament. it’s a custom that we don’t do well as Americans. It’s not a part of our society like it is in some other societies. But that can be a very important part of this process of slowing down.

Jessie Evans (42:16)

Great. Anything else before we wrap up?

Annalise Lind (42:21)

Just as you all were talking, two verses came to mind. One is in the Psalms, I believe it’s Psalm 13 that talks about how long, Lord, will you forget me forever? And we see throughout the Psalms this category of lamenting, right? ⁓ And then also was thinking of when Jesus says, to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. And I just love that, that we don’t have

to have the words or have it all together, but he is asking us, just come to me.

Jessie Evans (43:00)

And it just makes me think too, like as a mom, you know, and I just, I think the gift of parenthood is so that we just get like a little microcosm into like how loved we are by God. But just think about like if one of your little ones was running to you with, you know, they wouldn’t have to name their what they’re bringing to you, you know, just their arms are up. You swoop them up and you hold them.

you got you are you hold all of their stuff already right and it’s the same on a much grander scale that’ll take us a long time eternity to like you know mine the depths of but it’s it really is like ⁓ it’s difficult and it’s simple so

Alright, well let’s, we’ll land it right there. I’m sure we’ll have more discussion about this. We’ll, like I said, we’ll throw a lot of resources on the blog for people who want to grab some of these things and be able to start using them.

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GET IN TOUCH

GET IN TOUCH