Thoughts Create Feelings
Our lives can be disrupted by our thoughts. Our thoughts can pull us down. Our thoughts can be intrusive. Our thoughts can lie to us. Our thoughts can tell us things that are not true about God or make us fear ourselves or fear other people. Fear is not of God. And when our thoughts are wonky, that's just really, really hard because that's one of the things that if the brain is the part that governs our thoughts, right, then if that is giving us thoughts that are unhelpful, it's really hard, and it's really challenging. When we have these thoughts, we have these feelings. And feelings are just indicators of our environment. They're not right or wrong, they're just feelings.
"It's Time for No More Crazy, Lady!"
But then those feelings if we go with them too much or tell ourselves lies because we feel the feelings. Feelings aren't actually facts, so we can get confused there and then our bodies start to take those thoughts and those feelings as if they're real. And so the actions that we do or the way we feel in our comfort level in our bodies, I mean, it's just this whole thing, right? And as Christians we know that there's this whole spiritual being that we are and it's like what are we even dealing with? Like is this a spiritual thing? Is this a physical thing? I'm confused as to what I need to do here. Do I need to pray harder? Do I need to take a vitamin supplement? Do I need to exercise more? Do I need a nap? I mean, someone help me cut through the chaos. That's why I like to say, "It's time for no more crazy lady" because I have been there. I have totally been there and sometimes it's still unclear. But I have ways of discerning now. I have ways of understanding.
No Condemnation for Those Who Are in Christ
One of my key takeaways is that if it is something that is condemning or it is something that is fear causing or judgmental or tying you in knots, it's not of God. It's not of God. God is peace. God is peace. His Holy Spirit one of the fruits of the Spirit is peace, gentleness. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that's the first tip, is that God's ways are indicated by who He is, by His Holy Spirit. If you aren't feeling love, joy, peace, self-control, patience, having kindness with yourself, gentleness, I mean, those are things that God has for us, and I don't want them to be stolen from you.
And that's what the enemy tries to do. So if you're wondering, am I in a spiritual battle? Well, yes, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Right? It's a spiritual battle just to be a living human being on the planet Earth. And also, I think I don't want to say this in a wrong way, but it's also a practical battle, too. It's a physical battle. It's an action battle. It's a thought battle. It's an emotional battle.
It is pretty much that we can help when we have these spiritual battles by also having tools for very practical things. Just like if you have a broken arm, you put a cast on it to heal. It was something that was meant to harm a broken arm. But a cast can help it to heal and mend. And I mean, yes, the spiritual is that God gave us wisdom and bones that can heal. So he gave medical wisdom to put it in a cast, and he gave bones that can heal. But also it's a practical skill that allows us to have movement again without pain, that allows us to immobilize the arm until it's totally ready for use again, and then to build up the muscle strength again. Right? So it's practical and spiritual, and sometimes we get the lie that we're not spiritual enough or we're not good enough, or God's mad at us because we're having some more practical, physical, or mental or emotional issues, and we're thinking, what is wrong? I'm praying to get out of this, and I'm trying. And I don't understand why I'm still here and still stuck.
Empowered Freedom Framework: Perfect Peach Pie
So today I'm going to give you the first part of what I have put together with God's great grace and help, and that is the Empowered Freedom Framework. So, God and I have worked on this together through the years. I didn't know what it was called. I didn't see it all laid out until this summer, where I've really been seeking God's direction for showing me kind of the next steps with the podcast and helping people and the next steps for my family and all of that. And as he's helped me put this together, it is a framework for you to get freedom. It includes things in the way of how I got free. It includes things in the way of education and science and biblical truth and practical skills and spiritual identity. It's a comprehensive educational program that will give you the tools, insights and skills to be able to heal, to be able to take back your power that is rightfully yours from Jesus.
To start we're going to talk about peach pie. I don't know if you like peach pie or not. If you don't like peach pie, I want you to insert whatever pie you do like. If you don't like pie, insert cake. If you don't like sweets, insert soup. Insert a recipe. I'm using the peach pie metaphor because I like alliteration and they both start with the letter P.
To have a peach pie, we need a baker. That baker is someone who knows exactly how to design this peach pie. This baker knows what to put into the peach pie. To make it a peach pie, they might put in some peaches, and they might put in some cinnamon, and they might put in some flour, and they might put, I don't know, whatever else they put, butter or nutmeg. Whatever they put in there, they have a recipe, and they know how it's going to turn out because they followed the recipe. The unique ingredients are in there for this perfect peach pie. See what I did there? More alliteration for the perfect peach pie, okay? And that perfect peach pie is priceless. I mean, that perfect peach pie is so priceless because it is just perfectly made, perfectly designed by the baker. And that peach pie has everything it needs to be successful in delighting people's tummies in delighting their taste buds in filling a need for a sweet after a satisfying meal. It's inherently perfect as a peach pie, and its purpose is from the baker.
You Are the Perfect Peach Pie
Now, as you probably have figured out, you are the peach pie, right? And God is the baker. He has perfectly put the ingredients into you for the purposes and outcomes that He has for you to do in this world. You are a beautiful, perfect peach pie in every way, and you are made to shine and do your job as you were designed with the unique ingredients for the perfect purpose and just it's spectacular. You are a unique creation, and the world needs you.
When the Enemy Messes with the Recipe
And God destined you for such a time as this. So that's the first part of my empowered freedom framework is realizing the story of you, of who you are, and that you are made by God, fearfully and wonderfully as a masterpiece. Here's the second part, though. Sometimes the story gets messed up. Someone tries to rewrite it, rewrite the recipe, they start to mess with the ingredients. These things that were good, like trusting, caring, showing vulnerability, connecting, being real, praying, trusting God, having a sound mind, a restful body, gentle emotions that are easy and light came along and messed with the recipe. It was like an evil person who was jealous and wanted to stop the recipe from being perfect. And what happened is the pie was perfect and all the ingredients were perfect when this devious thief came and stole from the baker, stole from the pie, put some ingredients in there that caused pain or that contradicted the good stuff, or that left some space for doubt as to whether they should be following the right recipe or not, it caused chaos.
Just like in a peach pie, if you put something else into it or not enough of something into it or too much of something into it, you're going to get different results. That didn't mean the original recipe was wrong. That didn't mean the original baker was wrong. That means that someone tampered with the ingredients, someone tampered with that perfect story, that perfect recipe, and that's the enemy. And the enemy can tamper in the lives of God's creation, through hurtful relationships, through bad experiences, through tragedy, through trauma, through gaslighting, from parents, through abusive marriage relationships, through bullying or insecurity, through hardships. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.
Turning Icky into Goodness
But God, through Jesus, has already overcome the world, and we have the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living in us. So the death that the enemy meant for evil, God will turn for good and redeem. And that peach pie will now be like a super peach pie. By the time God gets done with this, the original baker with the original recipe, He's taken those original ingredients and gotten rid of the muck. With all of those things that were not wanted, or additives or things that were stolen, the icky, God comes along and takes what the enemy meant for evil and turns it for good. Now, maybe the peaches are too sweet or not too sweet, but now maybe the peaches are so sweet, and God adds praline topping to it or some caramel sauce or some whipped cream, and it's like, even better than before. God makes it look like He had it planned all along well, because He knows what's going to happen.
He knows he's not going to let anything happen to you that He can't redeem, because He is a redemptive God. And He didn't want that junk to happen to you, but He wants the victory of you being who you are made to be. And sometimes those things that happen to us are the very areas where we overcome and shine and do even more than what the enemy was trying to stop us from doing in the first place.
That's why you're hearing from me today. I never thought that I would be able to get through my low self-esteem, my anxiety, my panic, my post-traumatic stress disorder, my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I mean, if you had seen me 30 years ago in my 20s, this would have been a whole different person you would have seen. And yet I was still the same person with all the right ingredients. But I had had some very toxic experiences in relationships, and I needed healing.
I needed the original baker, the one with the original recipe, to come in and supercharge my recipe by putting in even more of the wonderful things he had put in me through his power. The pralines and the pecans and the caramel sauce and the whipped cream. And it almost makes it worth all of the struggles that I went through. I don't know if I could say that I'd prefer to have still gone through them, but I am so glad to be on the other side. And I am so glad God redeemed it. And I am so glad that I am now here to help you get that extra recipe, that extra special sauce. As you break free from that awfulness that was trying to distort your recipe, you are fearfully and wonderfully, made a unique masterpiece no one compares to you. God has good for you.
God will redeem what the enemy stole, and He will make it all work together for good. So it'll look like it was part of the plan all along, because God is a good God, and He has got you. And He has got you with pralines and caramel sauce and whipped cream and even a cherry on top with a dash of cinnamon, I mean, God is that good. And if you're suffering right now and your story is more like the recipe of things that were tainted or stolen or harmed, where too many dashes of something bad were added in, or maybe someone dropped your pie on the floor and it crumbled, so to speak, God is a God who restores.
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.
