You are a masterpiece that you are perfectly created everything about you by your perfect creator. And God is that perfect creator who considers you a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful gifts to go serve Him with. We're going to talk about the story that gets distorted, right? We have this beautiful story that God has written for you. And then in this fallen world, things kind of can smack into us sometimes and they can smack into us with lies about us. They can smack into us with things that hurt emotionally or physically. They can smack into us with doubts and fears or neglect, right? There are all kinds of things that could have happened, and your story gets impacted by those unique things that happened in your life.
When the Nervous System Goes Astray
Ideally, God has designed the nervous system so that you can shake it off and regulate and be okay. You've survived and made it through the pain, and you go on. But our nervous systems need to get the timestamp that says that's done. It's not happening anymore; it's no longer going on and we can relax. Instead of that timestamp, what often happens is that if we don't have enough in the way of supportive resources for what we need to be able to process these things, then our systems still hold on to the memory and the energy of it. And we might interpret messages about ourselves like we're not good enough or we should have done this or what will people think? Or maybe God's mad at us or what's wrong with us, we don't deserve anything better, whatever it is, okay? We get messages that lie to us, and we need to challenge those in light of God's truth. But our systems, because of being smacked into are kind of trying to get our balance back and we're trying to figure it out. And then the way we feel sometimes after we've been smacked into makes us think these messages are truer than they are and then makes us feel defeated and then scares us. And then we end up in a cycle that we don't want to be in, but we repeat cycles of fear or anxiety or patterns of defeat and believe the feelings and the lies that we'll never get out of this. We can't break free. Happiness is for other people. We'll never be good enough to please God. We're always going to be anxious or have panic or worry. There's so much that lies to us because it's like the enemy smacks into us. And then when we're wounded, those wounds get even further, kind of infected and messed with. And we're so exhausted from being messed with that we kind of just do the best we can to lick our wounds and try again. But we never get the chance to really heal unless we really heal. What happens is those wounds keep getting triggered or recycled over and over again, and we lose some things.
Aligning with God's Design for You; I Can Help You
Instead of the wonderful story that God designed for us, we end up getting sidelined and licking our wounds and trying to hope for better the next day and things just repeating again and again because we don't have nervous system healing from what happened to us. And so that's why I have the Empowered Freedom Framework in the Empowerment Oasis program that I'm launching in October. Because I want you to have all of the tools possible the spiritual, the mental, the emotional and the physical. Tools to give you peace, to get you off of that hamster wheel and living the life you really want to live, the life you know you can live, the life you just don't know how to get to yet. I want to help you get there. I've gotten there in my own life on a day-to-day basis. I am living my best life, my freest life, my most just, beautiful life with God, because God has done this for me. But He's not just done it by some one-time miracle. He's done it by giving me a healthy marriage and good people in my life. He's done it by teaching me new principles. He's done it by therapy. He's done it by education. He's done it by practicing tools that regulate my nervous system and help me to be calm and more relaxed, less anxious, less fearful. Ways to think that can soothe my nervous system and tell me the truth so that I'm aligned with God's original story being that Masterpiece award winning, unique peach pie, so to speak, rather than a peach pie that's trampled into pieces on the ground and doesn't know how to get back up. And I've been there, but I'm now back on the picnic table. I'm up on the winner's stand where everybody's like, let's see that pie shine, right? I want you to be back up there, too. There's no reason you can't. I want to see you shine for God in the truth of his story about you not constantly beat around in cycles of licking wounds from what the enemy's done to your story. Those are lies. You can close those chapters, and my Empowered Freedom Framework can help you to close those chapters. And I want to work with you and help you if you've been praying for something that can help you get out of the cycles to get really deep in a short amount of time so that you can get back to living and freedom, ultimately saving time and money over the long haul. Because these skills and tools will stay with you for a lifetime. You just have to practice them and use them. It's no fun to struggle, and we certainly don't want to have the enemy holding anything over us. We're daughters of God. We got work to do. All right, so I'm going to tell you when our stories get skewed by what's happened to us, and we get negative messages about ourselves, about how much power we have, about who God is, about how we feel about God, about our abilities to make change or do something about it. There's a lot of struggle that happens and a lot that's stolen and taken away.
10 Ways to Recognize If Your Story Has Been Tainted
I'm going to give you ten ways that you can see if your story has been tainted with and if you're still struggling with things that can be healed and need to be healed.
- Absence of Peace: Do you feel that you have peace on a daily basis? Like really stable peace in your body? Or has your peace been stolen?
- Nervous Tendencies: Do you feel like you're a bundle of nerves in everything you do? Do you feel like it's hard to go out and meet people or go to things, maybe even going to the grocery store? It just gets you all shaky? Do you feel like speaking up in a group is hard, or defending yourself is hard, or having an honest conversation with somebody is too difficult? Do you lack confidence in your capabilities or confidence that God will come through for you?
- Untrusting: Do you find yourself not able to trust God or yourself or other people very, very easily? Do you find your decision making is kind of something you struggle with and difficult? Maybe even something you avoid out of fear of making the wrong decisions?
- Anger and Frustration: Do you find that you're harsher than you want to be? That your coping skills are either nonexistent or pretty well shot that you're more critical to yourself. You yell more at your kids or your spouse. You kind of have frustration or anger just spilling over onto others. Lose your temper, get passive aggressive, get resentful, feel like just giving up, being hopeless. Those are other ways that indicate that your story has been tampered with.
- Feeling Hijacked: Do you feel like you have been hijacked, like the ability to control the way that your body and your mind work together seems disconnected. Your self-control to be able to go, no, this is what I think, and my feelings can go along with that. Seem to be at odds. You might realize with your mind, I don't want to be acting this way, but then have some emotional or mental stuff going on that you're just observing, sort of like, what is that about? That seems so out of my control. I just don't feel like I've got a handle on this. Why am I acting this way? Or if you've ever had yourself, say something like, why did I say that? I don't really mean that. What is going on here? If you felt hijacked, as if your body or your emotions or your thoughts don't belong to you, that can be another indicator that your story has been intruded upon.
- Unstable Relationship with God: If you feel like your connection to God isn't solid, feel like you'll never be good enough or feel like you can't trust Him again, that's another indication.
- Physical Response: If you feel like you cannot relax your body. Your muscles are so tense you forget to breathe. You breathe really shallow or rapidly. You feel disconnected from your body. Find yourself zoning out, not quite present when you want to be present. Maybe you're playing with your kids and you're thinking about your to-do lists and everything else, but not actually where you are enjoying it. That's not a guilt, that's just these are often indications that our nervous systems are overwhelmed.
- Wasting Time: Do you find yourself wasting so much time that you want to be using for other stuff, but that your mind races? Or you've spent so much time going over conversations in your head that are long over, that your focus is not where you want it to be? Or you've wasted so long hoping that you'd finally get past this, and now it's months or years later and you're still struggling.
- No Sense of Power: Do you feel like your sense of power has been taken from you and that you don't have any power to get over anything, to even take the next steps? That's a lie. But you might feel that way if you've had your story trampled on.
- Riding the Hamster Wheel: And then the other thing is that you want to make an impact. You have a desire, you even have a calling. But this thing that you keep returning to, like you're on the hamster wheel and can't seem to get rid of keeps pulling you back in, and you need to get out is taking time, power and impact as well away from you.
These are the ways the enemy steals from God's story for your life. And the thing is, Jesus defeated the enemy. Jesus has already given you the victory. Now, what's happening is we need to know how to soothe your nervous system, how to equip your mind, how to strategize as a whole being, body, soul, spirit, mind, feelings, relationships, goal setting with the tools that you need to be able to manage it well. And I would be honored to come on that journey with you. I want you to go from surviving to thriving. Because survival is great and a good gift from God. Thriving is joy and where daily power comes in and it is possible.
So today I'm going to give you four tips for managing your life with a much more relaxed, peaceful, holistic kind of perspective. Knowing the stance that you're coming at life from is really important, and it's important to understand these concepts so that you have the power to interact as you wish in life, rather than being reactive and letting things happen to you such that you need to feel a certain way because something happened or didn't happen, or that your life is at the mercy of certain circumstances or situations. That's not true! Sometimes there are situations beyond our control and sometimes there are things that temporarily we can't get out of, but we have a choice in so much of our lives. How we look at things, the actions we take, the ways that we view things...those are things that are in our power.
So, the other day I did a meditation about having discipline which isn't always pleasant at the time, it does produce righteousness and peace. That is absolutely true. What I said in there was I was planning on going to the gym, and I totally was until I went to an eye appointment, and they dilated my eyes more than I've ever had my eyes dilated in my whole entire life. So, I had my eyes dilated, and my pupils were so big, you could hardly see the color of my eyes when I looked in the mirror, like an hour later, it was that bad. And I just had to sleep like the rest of the day. I kept waking up, trying to see if I could have better sight and more energy, and my eyes weren't having it, my body wasn't having it. It was like, no, this was too much, and you need to go to sleep. So that's what I did. I napped throughout the day. I finally got my second wind towards the evening, but it really knocked me out. As much as I wanted to do things that day, like I had planned, going to the gym right after my appointment, I didn't expect to have my eyes dilated. Even with sunglasses, it was too hard to take care of, so I couldn't drive. Once I got home, it was like, it's not safe for me to be on the road. I can't go to the gym today.
So, did I beat myself up about it? No. I did look back at the episode and wonder if I promised I was going to the gym because I want to be someone of integrity, but at the same time, when I said that I wanted to be disciplined, to go to the gym, that wasn't assuming that I was about to not be able to see or to drive safely. So, I had to give myself grace. And also, I didn't say I was definitely going today, although that was my intention. I had to shift because I had a need that was necessary. It was more present for me to rest my eyes and to not risk other people on the roads nor myself by going with these eyes that were just totally seeing blurry stuff and not able to really focus well. I had to notice my need.
Make Life Less Stressful = Less Anxiety
- You Have Needs! Often as Christian women, we forget that fact or we conveniently push it aside because we're trying to meet other people's needs and we think, that's okay, I can handle this. We push it aside and push it aside. Really, we can't afford to push it aside. So, there are some things that we do need, like to be able to see, to drive, for instance. We need to be able to set the way that we pace ourselves during the day because the way we live each day determines the way we live our lives. When we are able to take control of our schedule, to acknowledge our needs and to sufficiently meet them, as well as to live out the values that we have and what we believe and what we're called to, we can start building a successful life. As Christian women, it's okay to know that we have these higher callings and these higher values and also that we are humans with needs. So being able to recognize your own needs and that you don't have to apologize for that. I'm bringing it up today as an example. But I didn't have to come on and say, hey, I actually didn't go to the gym on Monday because I wasn't lying. I wasn't doing anything that didn't have integrity to it. I simply had a different set of circumstances come up that made that not the course of action I thought I was going to take. I wouldn't have to owe an apology or explain myself or anything just for meeting my needs. There's nothing wrong with meeting my needs. I had to rearrange some things with my kids, too, that I had planned and that I had said, yes, I would do, and then I just couldn't physically do, and that's okay. We have to realize that our yes being yes and our no being no is absolutely integrity and biblical. There's also truth to the fact that there are things that, when we said yes or no, may have come up that we weren't considering at the beginning. If we can follow through, great, but something like being unsafe simply to keep our word and put other people at risk would not have been wise. So, we're talking about these real needs that, just as human beings, they do come up, sometimes conveniently, sometimes inconveniently, and we need to be aware that, wait, there's a real need here that I have right now. I am grateful for grace, and I am grateful for God's kindness and His understanding. If it weren't for this, I would have gone to the gym. I would have kept those appointments with my kids, but this was basically an emergency, and the need was that I take care of what I had right in front of me that needed to be done because it was urgent and it was important and it was necessary, and it was wise and it was safe, and it was good for all concerned. I want you to think about those things in life that you need because they're good for all concerned. The things that you need that are good for all concerned. You need to be able to be healthy or to the best of your ability, because if you don't have your health, your physical health, your mental health, your emotional and spiritual health, that is something that rubs off on others and affects them. Just as if I had driven with those dilated pupils, it would have affected other people, for sure. Not only me, but we often think, oh, I'm just sacrificing my own comfort, my own needs, and that's okay. But I want you to really flip it and see how when you minimize the fact that you have actual needs, you're actually potentially hurting other people, spilling your stuff over into their lives, causing them to have hardships because you didn't take responsibility for your own stuff. So, the first thing is to recognize your own needs.
- People don't have to understand for it to still be okay, to recognize that you have needs. So, to make up for not going to the gym today, I went to the park, and I walked for my half hour because that's my goal, is to walk for half an hour. I walked, and it was beautiful, and it was a great time, and it was refreshing, and I had time with the Lord, and I had time to think. As I was walking, I passed a woman who did not want to talk. The way that I knew that she did not want to talk is on both passes. coming and going, we were at a place where we passed each other, and on both passes she put her head down, walked a bit away, and she had sunglasses on, and she was not engaging. Both times I was willing to say hi. She was not engaging. There were other people that I passed who looked right at me, "Hi, or how you doing?" Really nice greetings. I'm not judging the woman who had her head down. She most likely had needs. Maybe they were to not have to extrovert, not put herself out there for people because she's been having a house full of company all week. Or maybe she just got sad news and needed to walk it off. Or maybe this was her time to pray and she wasn't paying attention to what was around her. I don't know. For whatever reason, she needed not to engage with the people walking by her. And that's okay. I didn't need to understand why. I just needed to allow that she may be somewhere else than where I am on the journey. She was walking, and I was walking, but where she was on her journey was a place where she wasn't capable or choosing to speak to anybody else. On my journey, I was in a good place where I was able to do that. I was able to reach out, and whoever wanted to say hi, I was able to do that. But there have been times where I have not been in that place. And it wasn't necessarily because I wanted to be mean or rude or unfriendly, anything like that. It was because I wasn't in that place. We're all on our own individual journeys, and to be able to honor that for ourselves as well as for other people is really important, because no one gets through this life on the exact same path. Every person has a unique path. And you have no idea. I have no idea. Only God knows what a person is fully experiencing, even of ourselves. We don't know what we're fully experiencing. Haven't you ever prayed and found clarity after you've prayed? All of a sudden stuff the Lord knew and was able to reveal things that make so much more sense than what you could figure out in your own mind? I know I have. And that's the kind of thing that we need to realize. None of us has the corner on all of this knowledge, but God does. So, if somebody is not aware of where you are on your journey or you're not aware of where they are on theirs, that's okay. Out of those values of being Christlike, caring about people, loving people, serving people, it's okay to do those things, to pray for them, to see if you can help someone. Also, maybe you're the one who needs help sometimes. Maybe you're the one who needs someone to minister to you. Even Jesus took time to step away to rest and pray. He had so much that he was doing as both human and God on this planet when he walked around in a human body, and he took time away to meet the needs that he had with himself and the Lord. So why would we be any exception? So, allowing that grace to ourselves and allowing that grace to others is really important. Another is the needs, and then the other is that others don't have to understand.
- Other people do not have to understand where you are on your journey for your journey to be valid; you don't need to be validated. How many times I've heard these people on cooking shows and such, oh, I won this. It was such validation. Well, yeah, it probably is, but is that validation really needed? If it is, then there's some work that could possibly be done inside to know that, wait, I'm validated by God, or I'm proud of myself. External validation does feel good; I'm not going to deny that, but people don't necessarily need that validation if they have it from God and from within themselves. Sometimes you're not going to get that validation from the people around you. Sometimes they will not understand. They won't get it because they've not been on your journey, and you can't expect that they can get it or that it means they don't care. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't care, or they don't love you. It may just be they honestly, in their capacity, do not understand. That doesn't change the fact that you do have needs, and you don't need to have people understand you for those needs to be valid.
- It's important be flexible as well as have a routine. When I was in college, I went to Messiah College before it became so big and became a university. I still have a hard time calling it Messiah University because it's like Messiah College, and that's the point. It's a small, private, liberal arts Christian college in Pennsylvania. It's no longer so small, and it is now a university. During my time at Messiah, we had a class called life fitness, and life fitness was where we had to track how much exercise we did during the week. During the semester, we would track types of exercise, and today, as I was walking, that half hour walk that I'm trying to set into a routine, you're catching the theme here of I'm on my journey, doing what I need to, to take care of my own health, my own wellness, to continue to be true to the routine and the commitments I've set to work to be healthy, to take that time for my physical body as well as spiritual and mental, because all of that works together. I feel better when I'm out in the fresh air as well or go to the gym. So, the emotional, too, it's a really healthy thing to do. I have set an intention, a commitment, and now I'm trying to set a routine around this. And at Messiah, they had us learn how to make it life fitness. It wasn't gym class. It was life fitness. It was something that could be incorporated into our lives, so that it was sustainable. And as I was walking today, I'm thinking, they knew something. These people, these professors in this life fitness class knew something, and they taught it to me. Now, I haven't used it much over the years, only periodically, but it really hit home today where I realized there were people who knew how this worked. They knew that if you set up a routine to do something physically that you enjoy, and I happen to like walking, that it is something you can stick with. It can be a part of the habits, the acts, the things that you do on a day-to-day basis or a weekly basis or whatever makes up the quality of your life.
Being able to meet those needs, set up a routine, carve out time for yourself, your needs, whether other people understand it and validate it or not, allowing awareness that other people are not necessarily where you are on your journey, are those things that I wanted to talk to you about today.
Think about These for Yourself:
- What are the needs that you have?
- Are they being recognized by others, or are others incapable at this point, of recognizing those individual needs? And is that okay? Are there still things that you are committed to, things that you will find a way to get met because they're healthy and important, godly, set according to your values or your needs, or your health goals, or whatever it may be?
- Are you able to hold space for yourself and where you are, as well as where someone else is on their journey?
- It is important to be able to be flexible. We're not saying to say sin is okay, but we're saying to have grace and to be flexible, because things come up and people aren't always where we are, we're not always where we expect to be.
Just like I expected to be at the gym the other day, and instead I ended up on my couch with my eyes dilated, having that ability to go with the flow and really just have an open mind for other possibilities of good things when needed. Such as I can meet my needs and someone else can understand and have grace with me, that something was a more urgent need, and if I didn't meet it, it would have caused more problems than good. Again, that's not saying don't let your yes be yes or your no be no. That's simply saying that when we make our yes's and no's sometimes in our humanity, we don't see the whole picture. God does, and He knows our hearts. And as we set our journey in line with God and we do our due diligence to steward, well, whatever the circumstances are, whatever the walk of life is today that you're on, you can steward it step by step with God's help and recognizing that it's okay to have needs to notice them, to notice other people's needs, to understand when you can meet them and when you can't, what you're called to do and what can be left to someone else. An awareness that we're all just trying to do the best we can with what we have and how we see it and how we know how is a really important way to be able to gain flexibility and a sense of ease in life. It doesn't always have to be only this one way. There are so many things in life that are variable.
Go take on the day!
