This is post 37 in the Living Fully Alive blog series. Please consider reading the posts in the order they were published for the best learning experience.
The first key to transformation was rather involved, as the length of the previous post showed. You may feel like that is plenty to work on for the time being, and I agree. No need to overwhelm ourselves with checking off every key and rush the process. I am posting the other keys not so you feel like you have to rush on, but just because I am processing what I have learned in class, and so it’s here for anyone when they are ready to tackle more.
Renewing the Mind
The second key to transformation was renewing your mind. The steps about replacing our lies with truth were already doing that. Renewing our mind is a huge part of changing a belief system, and it is often not understood correctly.
Abi explained the concept of renewing the mind with the visual of snow tracks. Imagine your life is covered in five feet of snow, and there is one plowed path to your right. It represents the path you have been taking every time you get triggered. It could represent your coping mechanism. Every time you are triggered you will go to the path of least resistance. For me this is the path of isolating, of withdrawing because I don’t know how to change the dynamics. In the snow analogy, this would be the plowed path. Changing the dynamics would be like walking through the five feet of unplowed snow. Walking through the five feet of snow is a lot of work, it is exhausting, and it is easier to go down the default plowed path. It is likely that having chosen that coping mechanism when a response was called for was already then looking like the easiest way. It makes sense to someone without tools, that you go where the work has been done for you already. So I walk this path of isolation, of learning to cope without meaningful connection, because it is what is easy and quick and I have always done it that way. And every time I thought I had a breakthrough it didn’t last and so I went right back to the plowed path. Apparently according to Abi it takes a good 3-5 years for some deep core issues to become natural in the new healthy renewed thinking. Caroline Leaf teaches from a neurological standpoint and the studies they have done that you can change a thought in 21 days. She is rather intense about it though, according to her the new path needs to be trodden seven or more times a day. That becomes quite a task. I don’t know if Abi had dealt with her issue with that much focus. Dr. Leaf also says it takes two more cycles to solidify it. That is a lot of sticking with it. She does make the case that if you are not sticking with it rigorously it will not become as effortless and natural. She also says herself in her program that if we are dealing with an issue that has been unchallenged for decades, it may take many more cycles to solidify the new belief. It really depends on what we are dealing with. I have a feeling mine will take a bunch of persistence.
The new path takes a lot of work in the beginning, whether we are patting the snow down by walking or whether we are beginning to shovel a path. Instead of going down the path of isolating, withdrawing, finding ways to compensate for the absence of connection, I choose to say no, I don’t want to isolate and withdraw any more. I will pause and listen and learn to understand what is really going on. It would be much easier to keep going down the other path. Every time I choose the new one it will be hard, it won’t feel easy or effective, because it is different from what I have been used to. But every single time I walk this pathway, I am plowing it. Every time I walk down that new path, the snow gets packed down a bit more, and every time after that is going to be a little bit easier than the previous time because I am traveling it often and creating a path. Not only will this pathway become easier to travel, the less I travel the other one, the more snowed over it gets and the less likely I will be to want to go that pathway again in the future.
I believe in God’s grace for acceleration here. Every time this default of isolating comes up, I say no. Every time I want to stay home for reasons attached to the old belief, I say, no. If I want to just sit in a corner and read, if it’s for the purpose of avoiding, I say, no. As I keep walking this path I say, I want to learn how to press in. I am finding out what I need to create healthy connection and I am going to do it. On and on. Eventually the thought of withdrawing will fly over my head every once in a while, but like Luther said, “you can’t stop birds landing on your head, but you can certainly keep them from making a nest”. So the thought might still come every once in a while but it is not going to stick around because I am not giving it permission to nest any more. When the thought comes after having walked the new path for a long time, the thought will just be flying over, and I will not be owning it as mine any more. When pain happens, when needs come up, I now have learned to hear my heart and feed it the way it needs, and the old path is closed by the snow or overgrowth or whatever.
This is not for the passive. Be fully aware of the work required for the long-term transformation. Breakthrough can come, but the new paths still need to be made so you don’t default back to the old path after things go back to normal. This is why we were figuring out what the cost would be in key number one, if we didn’t change the belief. If we don’t see the long term pain doing nothing would cause, we will likely give up here. This leads right into the next point.
A life-long journey
Key three is accepting it’s a lifelong journey. We have this idea that everything should be fixed now. The previous step shows us it doesn’t work that way and if we think it does, we are not going to stick it out. The path to freedom is a lifelong journey. It is really very similar to the mandate the Israelites had in the promised land. They weren’t just supposed to drive out the previous inhabitants, they were to occupy the land and maintain it. Every time they got lazy or lost sight of the life-long concept, they got in trouble, because they let their guard down, and the enemy pounced on them, setting them back for decades, usually. I think the verse about working out my salvation with fear and trembling really applies here. It’s a progressive discovery of God, his love, and what it looks like in our lives. God is so vast, I can’t possibly uncover all of it in my life time, so I will be on a journey of discovery for the duration of my stay here. But it is going to become progressively more fulfilling and enjoyable as we move along the journey and make progress.
Abi shared a great picture to help us not get discouraged with the journey. She likened the journey to chains around us, tightly wrapped all around bottom to top. You are wrapped up tightly in long chains. Someone is starting to unravel you. You go in circles, seeing front, left, back right and it looks like you are going in circles, like you are constantly seeing the same four places, and it feels like you have been here before, like you are stuck, making no progress at all. You might even say, “I thought I had already dealt with this”. But it’s not actually the same exact thing. It’s just different pieces of it. It’s ok. According to Abi and Justin, we couldn’t handle it all at once. But each time you turn, one more round of chain is coming off, and before you know it your arms aren’t as tight, then you can wiggle one arm out, then the other, and you are getting progressively freer. It sure has felt like this on my journey with relationships. I remind myself that the circles have been productive, not unproductive. The work I have already done is not in vain. It has purpose and is getting me closer to the place of freedom. Each time a round of chain comes off, it gets a little easier. Just like with the truth being a stranger first. Maybe the first year it’s a stranger, then the next ear an acquaintance, then a friend, then a close friend. So the entire journey is getting easier as we progress, but it is a long journey. Hold on to hope, keep walking it, don’t give up.
As much as we would like instant results it helps to know some good things can take a long time. We will never get whole if we are beating ourselves up for how long it is taking. Our expectations of how long it “should” take is the voice of shame- which keeps us in self-hatred and defeat. Patience, compassion and grace are necessary friends on this journey. A lot of us feel like love will be removed if we are not perfect, so we want to hurry stuff along so we can be fixed. But loving myself in the middle of the mess will allow me to get the most breakthrough. If I love myself in the middle of the mess I can connect with patience, compassion, grace and kindness. It is so important not to hold out on these things until I am well. Jesus died so we could be loved in the middle of our messiest time. Stick with it and things won’t take you out the way they used to.
I am not really sure how to apply this to my belief. One thing in embracing that it is a lifelong journey has to be that I need to embrace that building solid relationships is going to take time. I need to be willing to put in that time and not put a burden on myself and others to rush anything.
Trust the process
Maybe you worry about how you can be sure that any of this is going to work. Maybe you have tried other things and they haven’t produced what you were looking for. Step number four is for you. Trust the process. Trusting the process means I give up control. I don’t know how long this journey will take. I don’t know how it will look. But I trust there is a journey and a transformation in it for me. I trust this process of wholeness will work itself out. Trying things and finding they don’t work, as long as I stuck with them long enough to give them a chance, are simply a stepping stone on the path of following the process where it leads. Wasn’t it Edison who said he found a thousand ways that don’t work? If he had not trusted in the process of experimentation, we might still be without a lightbulb.
God is at work on our behalf. The process works, because he is faithful. Let the following verses encourage you whenever you are feeling discouraged.
Philippians 1:6 I pray with great faith for you, because I’m fully convinced that the One who began this glorious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you and will put his finishing touches to it until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Galatians 4:19 Oh, my dear children! I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives.
Philippians 2:13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
I would really like to get it all done in an orderly and complete way, but as Abi and Justin say, different pieces will come in at different times. I have heard other health practitioners say that even when they do emotional work with their clients, that some things just don’t come up until their psyche is ready to actually handle it. That part is frustrating to me, because once I smell an issue, I want it dug up and dealt with. Trusting the process involves me also trusting myself, giving myself grace that some stuff just isn’t ready to be dealt with and processed. I mustn’t be scared that I am not doing enough. I have wiped myself out so many times because that is exactly what I have been doing.
Knowing God is for me, I just need to create the intention and the invitation. I have done that. I have said, God show me how to access your love. Teach me what I need to know. Show me what my fears are. Help me learn how to love myself like you do. So many more. I have certainly invited, said yes to this journey with God. I am open to feel the pain and learn how to deal with it. Saying yes is the most important work I can do.
For instance, now that I know I have issues with connection because I never had it and therefore created some form of bunker to keep the need from coming out, now I have called out to God to show me how to get out of it. The next thing to do is to keep my eyes open for divine moments, such as a book being highlighted, or maybe feeling the urge to start fasting, or a LFA lesson reminding me of something to do, sermons and the timing of them, testimonies, prophetic words, songs that speak, dreams. All these are like stepping stones. Just today as I am writing this, I felt God calling me to pursue learning about joy. This ended me up listening to a sermon on the unexpected pathway to joy through mourning, which validated my sense that I just had to mourn some things and allow the sadness instead of pushing it away. A stepping stone. Following up on new people I have met and allowing depth to happen there, and there are many more I haven’t even listed yet.
While I trust in the process I can and need to focus on being loved now as I was before I became aware of the problem. Not give in to the pressure of feeling like it has to be solved and fixed yesterday. It has been with me a long time, it won’t make a huge difference if it is around a bit longer. That is so easy to say. This relationship thing has been festering for most of my life without me being fully aware what subconscious beliefs I carried all this time. Now that I am aware of how much these beliefs have robbed and how much I have not understood, I yearn for resolution and redemption in the now, I don’t like the thought that it will take years before I have the relationships the Bible talks about having. But until the dreams materialize, I can work on the heart front. I can learn how to do internal work on my own until the breakthrough comes. I can thrive by giving my heart what it needs while waiting for the process to work itself out. Some of that will be mysterious. Some of it won’t make sense. I will do my best to embrace it anyway. The mystery of the journey is that it includes people I meet, sermons I hear, topics I read about, issues I hear others talking about, books I read, movies I see, teaching opportunities that pop up out of the blue. I don’t have a clear syllabus set out for me but it is ok, the next thing will come when the time is right.
Healing is a relational pathway. I need to give myself permission to embrace the mystery, the unknown, take the time limit off and enjoy the ride. If that is even a good term for this.
It is also important to remember the destination is heaven. Until then, it is a journey. I will continue to be on that journey whether I do much or little, whether I stress over a time line or don’t. The journey is not going to go away. It’s ever changing and growing. Pieces come into place in different moments and in different seasons. Revelation is continual.
When you are ready, come join me in the next post where I process the last keys for transformation covered in this class.
To learn more about the Living Fully Alive class, please click the hyperlink.
