Conversations with Cinthia

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There are a lot of ideas about truth. Some people think it does not exist; some think it cannot be known. Some see it as personal and encourage speaking “your truth” as if the word “truth” were the same as the words “experience” or “perspective.” This is not a new phenomenon; when Jesus told Pilate that He had come into the world “to bear witness to the truth” and that “everyone who is of the truth listens to [His] voice,” Pilate dismissed His statements with the philosophical question, “What is truth?” and went on to hand Jesus over for crucifixion.

But truth does exist, and it is powerful. In John 14:6, Jesus calls Himself “the truth.” In John 8:31b-32, He said, “If you abide in My word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” These are powerful statements that say much about the identity of Jesus, the purpose and destiny of human beings, and the relationship with Him that God offers. The latter also tells us that one of the qualities of truth is its ability to free us – lies can relieve the pain of our chains for a little while, but truth can set us free.

There is nothing more painful, freeing, cleansing, elevating, or grounding than the truth. We love the truth and hate it, need it and run from it. Truth can be hard to hear, hard to say, and hard to accept. The freedom it offers is not necessarily a freedom from pain. Have you ever had one of those moments in which you realized something was true and could not deny it, and it was tough, and it hurt, but it also gave you relief because you knew it was real? The pain of truth is better than the numbness or temporary satisfaction we get from self-deception.

It is true that we all have our own experiences, and these can be very powerful. We sometimes need to understand the reality of one another’s experiences. These experiences can include feelings and thoughts that are very real, but acknowledging the reality of our feelings and thoughts is not the same as saying that they are true, or that the messages they give us are true. Our feelings and thoughts do not always tell us the truth. And, while validating our feelings as real can give us a certain amount of freedom, believing all the messages that can come with those feelings only binds us again—that, is if the messages are not true. God tells us that truth sets us free. As painful as it seems, it always feels better. It’s the lies that bind us up. When we are in truth, we realize God is not trying to beat us up. He is trying to help us.

Cinthia discussed her own experiences of this. There were things she believed about herself that seemed so real, but they were not true. She did not want to face the truth about some things in her life, and she even lied out of fear. Admitting what was true was painful, but, when God brought her face-to-face with the things she had not wanted to admit or acknowledge, she found it set her free. Many of these truths were about who she was and how He made her. She advises, “Do not be afraid and push back when God is telling you the truth.” God never lies. He is for His people, not against us. He is a good, gracious, patient, kind God Who never fails and is always available. When He brings us into contact with hard truth, it is because He loves us. He made us to live in the truth. When we walk in the truth, we are in clarity and reality—actual reality. We see more clearly. We make better decisions. Finding out who we each are and contending with all the proclivities we each have is important. The truth is always our best friend; it is not created by God to harm us. We think it will kill us, but it makes us free.

Truth is not painless. God’s love for us does not mean life will be easy. Think of Jesus on the cross; He died naked, bloody, beaten, scorned. He did that so we would not have to face the judgment that was ours to face. God knows what it is like to feel afraid to the point of sweating blood, to be completely misunderstood and dismissed, to do the right thing and have nobody care. He is closer to us than a friend or family member. He goes with us as we face truth, and we have His strength on which to lean when truth is too big for us.

Truth needs no other supports -- it can stand alone, does not have to be expressed or experienced to be real, and does not need help in any way -- but it is at its best and most powerful when infused with love. There is an old saying that “truth without love destroys, love without truth deceives, but truth with love develops.” Jesus showed us the truth, giving His life for us and demonstrating His love for us. Truth can be sharp, and it is not meant to be a weapon we use for our own aggrandizement or vengeance. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves why we are verbalizing particular truths at particular times. We are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), not to throw out mean, thoughtless, or spiteful comments in the name of “just being honest.” We should speak words that set people free and give them courage, not words that use pieces of truth to put others underneath us. We must consistently ask God if we are supposed to speak truth to particular people at particular times rather than simply speaking every piece of truth that comes into our heads.

If the truth makes us free, why are we afraid of it? Fear is normal for us, and it makes us want to protect ourselves. But avoiding the truth keeps us from being true to ourselves. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is to lie to ourselves. The truth wants to be found out. It likes to be seen so it can set us free. We can either work with the truth or fight against it.

Part of the truth is making friends with your own body. Our bodies work so hard for us, but we often harm them. God made your body for you. Cinthia learned this when God finally said to her, “Who are you to talk back to me about how I made you?” You are a created being. He did not consult you about how He made you. He likes how He made you, and He loves interacting with you. You can be truthful with Him about not liking what you are experiencing, but you are ultimately going to have to accept how He made you. As He told Cinthia, He tells us, “I made you for ME. I knew you before you were formed. I like how I made you.” We belong to Him because He made us, and He made each of us on purpose because He wanted to do so. God knows you down to the very, very depths of your soul. He knows every neuron in your body. He is happy that He made you. He wants to be with you forever. He wants you to care about yourself as much as He cares about you. He really loves His people. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. This is seeing from God’s perspective. We do not know how long He will give us on the earth, but when Truth sets us free, we become able to help others in the ways we were meant to do while we are here.

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oday’s topic is the neuroplasticity of the brain and how we can use it to take charge of our own thought processes. Cinthia opened today with a quote usually attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” We see the problems that occur with repeating behaviors that are not working, but what about our thoughts? Our brains create what are called “neural nets,” or networks of brain cells that learn to fire in succession in response to outside stimuli; these are often compared to superhighways in the brain. This creates habits of thought that we often do not even notice because we are so used to them. For example, the phone rings, and you see a particular name on the screen. What thoughts go through your head automatically? The stimulus happens, the thoughts begin… and, before you know it, you are traveling down that old familiar superhighway with its familiar assumptions and other habits of thought. And every time you travel the highway, it gets reinforced, becoming more entrenched and powerful in your brain and your life. Thus, our brains create these “crazy-fast” reactions to stimuli, but we can take control of this process and retrain our brains to respond differently.

Sarah Gibson has written about this concept with the old computer-inspired idea of GIGO: “Garbage in, garbage out.” We can, she emphasizes, decide what ideas to feed ourselves. We can decide which thoughts to dwell on. We can reroute the garbage truck, so to speak, and actively work to take the “trash” out of our brains. We can create bypasses to help us stop traveling the superhighways that are not helping us. God made our brains to work for us, not against us. Are you a lazy thinker? Challenge your own thoughts and feelings. Update and maintain your own roads. Take responsibility for the roads you travel. Clean up the negativities, the lies, the assumptions. Reroute the garbage truck. All of this is easier to say than to do, but it is well worth the work.

First, start to notice the neural nets that exist for you. In what areas do you quickly find yourself starting down a familiar thought/feeling/reaction path? Cinthia discussed her own struggle with mental “superhighways” related to an eating disorder that began early in her life; for her, there are still triggers to follow a mental track related to fears of being fat, triggers she has to consciously and intentionally resist. We may have perceptions about why other people do what they do, and our thoughts on this reinforce our judgments and assumptions about others. Some people have superhighways related to fears of trusting anyone. Sometimes we think we know what will happen in a situation because we believe that is what “always” happens, but we may actually be overgeneralizing. What are your superhighways? What are your triggers to jump on those ramps, and what thoughts and feelings occur in response to those triggers?

Once you identify some patterns, the first thing to do is learn to pause. To continue our superhighway analogy, pull your mental “car” over into a safe spot and take a minute to examine what just happened and where you are now headed. Question your immediate emotional response. Seek different information. Find out what else there is to know. Clarify with the person who made a comment; what did they mean by that? Remember, our brains create these “crazy-fast” reactions based on emotional response. Remember, feelings are very real, but they are not always true. Don’t believe everything you think!

We can retrain our reactions, but it is also important to recognize that some superhighways in our minds are so entrenched that we may struggle with them for a very long time, just as Cinthia described still having to resist eating-disordered thoughts decades after she has stopped living as an eating-disordered person. Especially when we are dealing with roads that were formed when we were young or roads that were formed through trauma or deep wounding, roads we have traveled for years or as a way to avoid other painful roads, there may always be a first reaction, an impulse to get on the “ramp” toward the series of thoughts and behaviors the brain has learned to enact in response to parts of life. The brain may still go to the old road automatically, but, remember, you can teach your brain to hit the brakes before heading down the superhighway. Work on construction of the new bypass system. Every time you travel the old roads, you make them stronger, but every time you take yourself down a new path, you help to construct and strengthen that new route. We have more control over our own thoughts than we give ourselves credit for.

One thing that can help us as we try to build new roads is a back-to-basics approach toward what is important. This approach stresses simplicity, focuses on the essentials, and proactively moves us toward the things that make the most difference. It helps us do what matters instead of getting bogged down in unnecessary complexity. If you think simplifying life could help you, consider these practical steps:

Identify the things that add unnecessary complexity, busy-ness, and overwhelm to your life and work. What really matters to you, and what hijacks your time and energy away from those things?
Create a plan to reduce or eliminate those things. (This may involve some grief and loss.)
Identify things that are most efficient and effective, the things that make the most difference toward helping you accomplish what really matters.
Create a plan to maximize those things.
Put boundaries in place to protect these changes.

Cinthia shared several verses from Proverbs that offer simple principles we can use to identify what is helping or hurting us, including Proverbs 10:9, 10:17, 14:15, 16:25, 27:6, and 27:12. She also offered some questions to ask ourselves, such as the following: Have I considered the possible outcomes for my course of action, or am I just excited about an idea and hoping that it works? Do I think I am the exception to a rule in some area? Sometimes we need to relearn basic truths about God in order to be able to let go of things that are getting in the way of what is best for us. God’s heart is never geared toward depriving us or taking away what is truly good; He wants the best for us. But sometimes we hold on to what we think is best, and it keeps us from enjoying the gifts He really wants to give us. So find some verses or sayings and implement them into your life. Remind yourself of what you know. Don’t just let life happen to you. Be committed to yourself—to your actual good, not your immediate gratification. The more committed you are to yourself, the less it will take to maintain and care for yourself over time.

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How do you approach the issue of trusting others? Every human being is a risk. This does not necessarily mean that we are all dangerous at deep levels, but it does mean we are fallible and that we have the capacity and potential to hurt and fail one another. We all yearn for acceptance, accept ugly things, and are still trying to figure out who we are supposed to be.

We have trouble trusting God because we forget that God never lies. He is perfect. He loves His creation to the point of death. He has experienced more harm, offense, and pain than anyone else has ever experienced, and He continues to experience our selfishness, greed, and immaturity. In many ways, we are not a good risk for God, yet He risks relationship with us. Jesus is the Word Who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1); He brings us back to God the Father. God is a good Father. We can hold Him accountable for His words, and we must not disrespect Him.

As difficult as trust can be, we are wired for it. We cannot help but trust in some way. We trust that the sun will come up each morning. We trust our safety systems and the people around us enough to fall asleep, which is an almost completely vulnerable state. We trust the chairs in which we sit, the cars we drive, etc. Trust is the biggest problem we have because life requires trust. Even our pets have to deal with the issue of trust.

Some people are better risks than others. Are you a good risk for other people? Do you lie to them? Do you return phone calls, gossip, etc.? Before you judge others --family, friends, even the government -- recognize that we all have the abovementioned yearning for acceptance. We also want to feel trusted and want to feel safe. Developing and maintaining trust in a relationship is an ongoing process. Sometimes we need to qualify our statements so that we can be clear in developing trust instead of making sweeping generalizations, etc. Sometimes we need to explore rifts and apologize when we mess up. Sometimes we need to acknowledge challenges to our trustworthiness.

Jesus is our model of trustworthiness. He is kind and strong. When He was on earth, He did not judge inappropriately but always held the line, so to speak. Even so, people had trouble believing in His love until He died for us, and, even now, we often struggle to trust that the One Who was willingly tortured to death for us and then overcame death is trustworthy. Like children, we continue to question His love every time we experience pain or simply do not get what we want. We constantly want Jesus to prove who He is, even though He has already done this.

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Today Cinthia noted just a few of the many Bible verses that indicate human beings are supposed to be in relationships with God, ourselves, and others. These included John 15:1-2, Proverbs 27:17, and II Corinthians 1:3-7. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 talks specifically about this, as well. These verses do not indicate that we should all be extroverts or that solitude is not valuable. They do mean, however, that we are not meant to do life alone. Genesis notes that God said it was not good for Adam to be alone, and so He made Eve. This does not necessarily mean everyone should be married, but it does mean each of us needs other human beings.

Relationship helps us to experience the worth God gave every human being; it is innate in our status as His human creations and does not depend on our performance. Intimacy is the sense of knowing another person deeply and of being deeply known, and of being wanted and loved even as we are known; the term can have a sexual dimension but does not always imply this. While we cannot safely have emotional intimacy with everyone, we do need to have emotional intimacy with some. should go first to God with our needs and know that He is the only One Who is fully and completely dependable, but we must also learn to take wise risks in relationship with others, even though it means we will be disappointed at times. Jesus demonstrated this perfectly. For example, in Matthew 26:36-41 He asked three of His disciples to watch a pray with Him in a time of crisis; although they failed in this, He both asked for help and forgave them when they did not deliver perfectly.

Learning to be in relationship is complicated but necessary. Human beings need to be seen, and we each have things to offer others. We must learn to share parts of ourselves with others, but not everything needs to be shared all the time. Most of us learned how to interact with others from our parents, but we do not have to copy their styles indefinitely. Maturing in our relational functioning requires that we take our “inner children” on a journey of learning complex skills. Cinthia expounded on this with a poem by an unknown author called “The Paradoxes of a Child of God.” The poem offers a look at ways that developing traits in one direction can make us more fully able to function in the other direction, as well. We continue to work on ourselves and take responsibility for our mistakes, becoming more trustworthy for ourselves and others.

Another of the many reasons human beings need each other is that we can help one another to develop into the best versions of ourselves. No human being can see himself or herself perfectly. Cinthia discussed the Johari Window, a tool well-known in the field of counseling psychology; it offers a look at the interaction between who we are and the awareness we have of ourselves, as well as the awareness others have of us. It looks like this:

The me that I know and that others know

The me that I know but others do not know

The me that others know but I do not know

The me that neither I nor others know

The Johari Window reminds us of several important relational concepts: that we may not always see ourselves accurately, that others may know parts of us but not all the parts of us, and that there is a part of us (i.e., the me that neither I nor others know) that only God knows. God understands, loves, and protects that box. He is the One with Whom that box is safe and Who can be trusted to help us navigate all the boxes, growing in our own self-awareness and in our willingness to be seen and known in healthy ways. Ask God to help you see the parts of yourself that He wants you to see more clearly, and be open to helpful feedback regarding the places in yourself you may not see clearly right now. Feedback is important. Therapy can be one way to help us strengthen different facets of ourselves and our self-awareness.

Our healthiest selves will not all be the same in relationship, though we will have certain things in common. Everyone has a different style. God made introverts and extroverts; He made people who are loud and open and people who are quiet and reserved, though it is sometimes hard to know the difference between His design for us and the ways we have learned to approach life because of our experiences. We can talk to God about how He created us. We may have to learn to accept who He made us and the doors He opens for us. Just because something is not what we wanted it to be does not necessarily mean it is not what we need or what God intends for us. He wants good for us and pays careful attention to timing. Talk to God about who you are and how to manage it. He is able to engage with you in relationship and to help you in relationship with yourself and others, and He offers to do this.

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Feelings are very real but not always true. They are real because they are actual sensations that are really happening in your body, often related to the chemicals your body is creating and releasing. However, the thoughts that often come in tandem with our feelings can be untrue. Feelings do give us information, and some of it can be true. However, feelings are not reliable to give only true information. Because of this, we can experience a sense of emotional flooding that makes us kind of emotionally “drunk,” struggling to use good judgment because we are overwhelmed by sensations that seem to support ideas.

Because of this, we sometimes want to get rid of feelings altogether. Feelings, however, can be seen as trying to help us. Feelings are not bad or good; they are morally neutral tools that require skill and discernment for proper use. We decide what to do with them. We are responsible to consider what each feeling indicates and to ask whether the messages we are receiving from them are true. Feelings can go awry, as in the case of anorexia, and we can misinterpret the information they present. Make friends with your feelings, and recognize them as tools in your toolbox, rather than as your god or your guide through everything in life. You have to decide which messages to believe, whether and how to express them, etc. Learn how to use the tools well. You do not need a sledgehammer for to accomplish a gentle nudge. Do not simply allow the strongest feelings to make themselves most heard without discerning what is real. We have more control over our feelings than we think we do. They are just feelings; we are the people who manage them. Be the grownup in your own body.

God made human beings to develop something we call an observing self as we grow toward adulthood. Ideally, the observing self is like an internal coach, cheerleader, friend, and helper. Ideally, it is not critical but speaks the truth in love, telling us what the rules are, what will help and hurt us, etc. The observing self can help us become more what God made each of us to be. However, sometimes we develop an internal critic that overrides the helpful function and is shaming instead; this can be especially true for people who have grown up with abuse, neglect, or other trauma, particularly trauma involving central adults in their lives. Do you have an internal critic that is hurting you more than helping you? How much is it costing you? Where did it come from? Think about the term critic; it usually connotes an outsider with ambitions of his own, one that has a job when more material is produced. A critic is not there for the person producing and has no responsibility to that person. However, our internal critics are inside of us; we can fire them if they are not helping us. A critic simply offers an opinion, however educated that opinion might be. We do not have to believe or agree with everything that comes from a critic; we do not have to accept a critic’s opinions as facts when they are not facts. In this context, Cinthia discusses a blog written by Anne Midgette for The Washington Post about the need for art critics to be responsible; this can mean doing one’s best to convey a sense of what is happening in the field by describing all the many sides of it, fostering dialogue, etc. Is your internal critic helpful? Does it foster helpful exploration inside of your mind, or does it simply disparage you?

Strong feelings can arise when dealing with the internal critic, and breathing is critical for managing these. Therapists know that the shallower our breathing, the more we will tend to believe all our feelings. Feelings can spike our adrenaline, but oxygen helps the body lower adrenaline. Relax your shoulders and breathe; then decide whether to engage with feedback from the internal critic. You do not have to believe everything it says. Just because something sounds or feels true, comes from someone you like, etc., does not necessarily mean you should accept it as fact. You choose which things to believe; what are your criteria for this? Perfectionism makes it hard to believe praise.

As an alternative, Cinthia discussed Dr. Kristin Neff’s concept of self-compassion, which has the potential to move us out of our own threat systems and into safety. She also encouraged learning how God thinks of us, likening him to the “kindergarten cop” in the movie by that name. He wants us to explore, learn, test, and discover how He feels about His children; He allows us to play. But He is strong in the midst of our explorations.

In American, individuals frequently dislike themselves and try to change who they are in more and more radical ways. We have to learn to accept that we are created beings. We did not make ourselves, and God did not consult us when He made us. God puts so much thought into what He creates, and He likes the way He makes us, though sin can warp our expressions of that creation. We must learn to respect God’s creative authority. It is incredibly arrogant to tell God we do not like what He made and are going to alter it ourselves; He put thought, love, and creativity into the design of each person—including you. He alone has the right to define us and say who we are; what artist would be okay with someone telling him his or her work should be changed from the artist’s idea to someone else’s? Romans 9:19-20 asks who we are, as human beings, to talk back to God, like clay vessels demanding of the Potter, “Why did You make me like this?” God is brilliant and does not need us the way we tend to think, which frees Him to love us the way He does.

You are a created being. Somebody had to come up with the idea of you. Explore, learn, test, play, and discover how He feels about you; respect the Creator and the fact that He created you. Consider that there may be Someone bigger and smarter than you are and that He loves you. He is the only One who can tell you who you are, and He overrides your internal critic.

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Do you let people love you? Do you let them know you? Love takes time. There are some acts of love, mercy, grace, and kindness that require very little and can be accepted without any commitment. When someone opens the door for you in the store, smiles at you, or lets you have a parking place, you can generally accept it without trying to interpret their motives. There are others acts of love that are more reaching and involve covering a multitude of sins. We want to run from our proclivities, but God in His perfection is willing to be with us and cover for us while we work on repentance and change. Accept the love and mercy that is being offered to you; do not reject goodness. Do not insult the person who tries to give you something good. It is okay to be uncomfortable while you practice receiving graciously.

Do you worry about accepting anyone’s niceness? Do you reject their little gifts of grace to you for fear that there will be strings attached later? It can be so much easier to accept good things from people we do not know, people who are unlikely to be there later, because we see little chance of having to repay them in the future. But in most cases we do not have to read minds and interpret motives; we can simply say, “Thank you,” authentically without trying to read between the lines. If we find later that there were strings attached, after all, we can simply say, “I wish I had known that you were wanting that in return. What can I do now?” Usually, continuing to live as a changed person in response to the kindness is the best repayment. If you think that you do not deserve it, take a deep breath and say, “It’s not about me.” This can help you not to steal from others the reward of being kind. Work on accepting compliments, even if you do not believe them right now.

Love covers a multitude of sins. It is not the same as enabling. Love does not expose our ugliness while we are working on repentance and change. It is a gift of grace that comes from God. God knows the depth and darkness of our thoughts and actions, and He does not put time limits on our changing. We do not have to get it all figured out before we go to God; in fact, He would rather we come to Him messy. (Our own attempts to clean up the mess without Him generally just make things worse.)

And, remember, you can show love to others, too. You do not have to love perfectly in order for someone’s life to be changed. Loving someone is not always an ongoing commitment; you can start with small acts of kindness throughout the day. Practice I Corinthians 13 on yourself. The more you are willing to engage with this kind of love, receiving the love of God and loving yourself well, the more you will be able to love others. Practice love. Do not wait for perfection. You can apologize when wrong. God is the Father that is with you.

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Do you struggle with letting others love you? Today Cinthia reviews some important concepts about letting others love you. We all need grace, kindness, even smiles; you can receive and give these things. The better your boundaries are, the more loving you can be. Extending grace does not mean the person owes you something. I Corinthians 13, as well as other verses about the love of God, give us a picture of what love means. God is kind; you be kind. Practice kindness toward strangers and toward those close to you, honoring appropriate boundaries; receive kindnesses in the same way.

Kindness shown does not necessarily mean that one person owes another something. Deciding for others what they are expecting in return is a boundary violation. You do not have to read the minds of others. Don’t allow suspicion to steal from you or from those who try to give you something. It is okay to ask or to offer payment, but, often, the best repayment for someone’s kindness is continuing to live as a changed person. It is okay to just say “thank you.” Don’t insult the giver of a gift because you believe your own negative feelings. If it turns out someone has attached strings without telling you, you can always say, “I am glad you told me. I did not know that you were expecting or needing that. I can/cannot do that.”

Another piece of love is covering. Covering is a gift of grace; it is different than enabling or keeping harmful secrets. God covers us while we let Him change us, while we work on doing the things He gives us to address. Covering can minimize the damage and allow the person to fix what he or she has broken; it refuses to expose the person while he or she is working on repentance and change. This does not mean that we have to make long checklists of ways the person has to prove themselves and that we have to expose them otherwise. In close relationships, we may need to address situations in which people are not trying to change, but, in general, it is not our business. God is with us as we change and is infinitely patient with our mistakes. Allow those who love you to support you as you learn to be the best version of yourself.

Love can be scary because we need it so badly. We are wired to attach. But trying to read the minds of others in order to protect ourselves is not as effective as we might think. Learn to be a safe person and to love who God made you to be. Extend kindness and grace to yourself and others, and receive it from those who offer it. There is no promise you will not get hurt, but God is with His people and will take care of you through it.

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Humans deeply need love and acceptance, so it may be surprising that they can have so much trouble accepting it. People may turn away compliments, shut down attempts to get to know them, or reject others before they can be rejected. How can beings who so desperately need relationships with other humans fight so hard against it? Why do people shut down, keep distance, run at the first sign of disagreement, dismiss compliments, or refuse help that would truly make a positive difference in life?

The fear of acceptance is often closely bound with the fear of rejection. Accepting the acceptance of another person can feel wrong to someone whose negative core beliefs include beliefs in their own worthlessness, etc. It can feel threatening to someone who fears having the newfound love and acceptance pulled away from them later when more is revealed and vulnerability is increased. Acceptance can also trigger fear of being overwhelmed by another and losing one’s own identity.

Good boundaries can allow us to accept love from others more readily. For example, when you know that accepting a compliment does not mean owing the one who gave the compliment, you can simply say, “Thank you!” and take the compliment. Without fearing undisclosed strings, you can reasonably accept appropriate help, gifts, or encouragement; if strings turn out to be attached, you can communicate your wish that this had been made known earlier and can discuss ways to settle things in the present. You can use the information available to make the best decision possible regarding the acceptance of love and help from others. In contrast, constant fear of obligation can lead to dismissing truly well-intentioned and beautiful gifts from others. Knowing yourself and having a foundation for your own identity can enable you to enter relationships with others without that you will lose who you are.

Two relationship styles that are rooted in early attachment experiences are avoidant, which involves avoiding intimacy or obligation, and ambivalent, which involves maintaining complicated mental dances and giving “come-here-go-away” messages. A third, known as disorganized, can involve even more extreme defenses against vulnerability and can even become more offensive than defensive. All of these can happen when we learn early to fear the very thing we need: human relationship.

If you have difficulty accepting the acceptance of others, begin by accepting yourself. Difficulty accepting yourself can make it hard to trust others who accept you. Engage with God, and ask Him for help to accept the way He made you, as well as to allow Him to change things about you that are not what He originally designed. Regarding the way He made you, accept that you are a created being and that God did not consult you about the way He made you. Nor should He have done so. He likes the way He made you. You can resist it, or you can learn to love what He loves about you. Satan influenced human beings not to revere God as our Creator, but, when we reject the plan of our Creator, we reject ourselves. Accepting God’s will gives us grounds to accept who we actually are, but this can be so difficult to learn to do. So say to God, “I don’t understand why You love me, like me, know how to do this, etc. I need Your help.”

We all get hurt. The healthier we get, the more insight and options we have. Be aware of your feelings when you get scared, and be gentle with them. Take a breath. See how it feels to experience acceptance. Recognize your fear of not being able to keep the acceptance. Accept that you are not God, and recognize that the One Who is loves you. Notice the shame operating and remind yourself of the truth. Shame blocks us from seeing and honoring our true feelings. It leaves us thinking we have to be better, and under its influence we may strive to be perfect to avoid drawing more shame. Courageous self-acceptance begins with believing that God is happy with how He made you, and that He paid for your failures with Jesus’s death on the cross, after which He rose from the dead, defeating the shame and death that the cross entailed. The enemy of our souls tries to undo and redo truth, but real truth sets you free. Pursue the truth. Say the truth. Choose to believe the truth. As an adult, you get to choose whether or not to believe the shame.

Perfectionism can make it difficult to accept yourself or to trust others who accept you. Remember, perfectionism is not just a quirk or the legitimate pursuit of excellence. Satan was made by God in a way that was perfect, but he did not want to be at the level of a created being. He wanted to be like God, and he harmed everyone with the perfection that had been gifted to him by God. When we indulge in perfectionism, we also harm ourselves and others with our pursuit of being something more than the human beings we are. We try to be more than human.

So allow the feelings that come with all of this, but manage your behaviors and teach yourself new thoughts. Learn to be happy with who you are and to accept God’s happiness with you. When you do this, those who love you will be happier, too. Accept God’s acceptance. He wants you to enjoy you as much as He does.

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The word “discernment” can have a lot of different meanings; today Cinthia discusses it as the process of determining what God is calling you to do. This can apply to vocation, marriage or singleness, and so many other important questions, and a given person can have several different callings at once (e.g., being married, working a particular job, etc.). Cinthia emphasizes today that God wants us to know what He wants for us and has given us tools for making these decisions. Discernment may seem mysterious at times, but it is more about awareness than any kind of weirdness. God has a call on every life, and He wants us to find that call. He wants us to know why He made us and what we are supposed to be doing on the planet.

Discernment is a gift that God gives us, so the first step is to ask God for wisdom, guidance, and help to follow His lead. James 1:5-6 (ESV) says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” God made us, so it is important for each of us to ask Him who we are, why we are here, and what we are supposed to be doing. We need Him to help us know where to go and what to do. Those who crave and revere humility can become like majestic horses in tune with their riders (or, in this case, the Rider), responsive to the least amount of pressure in the desired direction.

God has made us with different parts that work together to help us discern where He is leading us. Cinthia discusses these as “the three brains:” the head, the heart, and the gut. The head is our rationality, our logic, the ability to think logistically, practically, and sensibly. The heart is more about emotion and passion; it involves feelings and may give us a sense that we just “have to” follow a particular path. We need to consider both the head and the heart as it can be unwise to trust one without the other. The gut is the third “brain” and tends to be “where truth lies.” It often brings our thoughts and our feelings together and gives us a sense of what to do in the midst of conflicting information from the other two. In fact, Cinthia notes that there is even research that confirms our “gut sense” as an important factor to consider when making decisions. Being aware of one’s own body signals is important because our “three brains” function inside our bodies, and our bodies often give us messages.

While there are times when we must act quickly, it is often wise to take time when it is available. The process of sifting through signals from our three brains and understanding what they are saying can take time. Time also allows for the gathering of outside information and experience; there can be clues in our lives that lead us to recognize God is calling us in a particular direction (e.g., things that happen when we were not expecting or looking for them to happen). It may be helpful to talk to others, especially those who are wise. Sometimes it helps to try moving cautiously in a particular direction and see what happens, then re-evaluate.

Examining one’s own personal value system is important in this process. We each have a value system, whether we recognize it or not. Each person has a set of principles or ideals that drives his/her actions and decisions. The value system needs to come from all three “brains,” acknowledging the information that comes from them and guiding them further. Cinthia emphasizes, “Your values define your character.” Being intentional about your value system and making decisions that are consistent with that value system will reduce the amount of choices you make purely from impulse or simply for instant gratification.

Sometimes we do not like the callings God gives us, at least at first. Cinthia experienced this and found that God had different and better plans for her than her own dreams would have given; she states, “The calling God has on my life was not the one that I chose, and it wasn’t one that, in the beginning, I was very happy about… I would have never known how much I loved it if I would have said no to God.” Living in line with the purposes our Creator has for us is ultimately far more fulfilling than insisting on our own dreams and desires. While there are certainly times when our dreams and desires turn out to be clues to what He wants for us, there are other times when He calls us to surrender those dreams and desires and hear Him say, “I’ve got something for you. I want you to step out and be brave and try it.” Sometimes being grown up means we accept that our fantasies are not meant to happen the way we hoped they would, and we learn to embrace the dreams He has for us instead. Jesus allowed Himself to die on the cross because He was motivated by God’s heart; He trusted God the Father enough to accept a path He did not want to embrace from the vantage point of Gethsemane. This plan ultimately brought (and brings and will bring) Him glory and joy forever, but it came by accepting the Father’s will over His own.

Discernment is for everyone. God is very good at opening doors, and He wants us to be able to discern His will. Discernment can be cultivated. It can also be made in steps. Take your time. Examine your value system, and then use all three “brains.” Reflect with your head; notice the feelings in your heart and the sensations in your body. Acknowledge what your gut is telling you. Ask God for wisdom, and be brave enough to seek the truth, even if it means you have to change. Discernment guides us to recognize wisdom and follow it, regardless of the cost, knowing that following any other path will ultimately cost us more.

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Do you acknowledge the choices you have? You may not always have the choices that you wish you had, but you always have a choice. Today Cinthia discussed what it means to take ownership of your life and the choices you have. Acknowledging your own choices means giving up the option to blame others for the entire direction of your life (although it does not mean accepting blame for things that were not your fault -- In fact, sometimes one of the choices you have is whether to accept and affirm that someone else’s choice was not your fault, however deeply it may have impacted you.). Even people in very tragic situations (e.g., POWs) have choices within their situations, though those choices may be more limited. Victor Frankl wrote about his experiences in German concentration camps; he observed that prisoners who chose to accept their situations but also find meaning in their suffering were more likely to survive the experience. They chose not to accept full victimhood by owning the choices that were theirs; they did not fully surrender their internal freedoms, even when their outward freedoms were horribly taken away and their mental states were affected.

When you choose to abdicate your own choices to others, this is also a choice. For example, do you abdicate your mood to others, to society, etc.? Think of all the choices you have in one day. How many do you abdicate?

Cinthia discussed the “Wise Choice Process” which involves using a template for the decision-making process. What is your decision-making process? How do you choose? One example has the following steps, which Cinthia illustrated with an example from her own life (i.e., deciding what to do about her anorexia when she was younger):

Define the problem. (This step impacts all the others. It includes owning the problem and can sometimes be very uncomfortable. It requires acknowledging reality honestly, as well as separating the symptom from the underlying problem. For example, Cinthia had to recognize that she needed to gain weight in order to stay alive and become healthy. She also had to recognize that this was problem was actually a symptom of a much deeper problem, which was the hostile relationship she had with herself. She did not feel good about herself and was very angry at her own body. She was using food/weight loss to try to mimic feelings of self-worth, gain a sense of power over her own life, get accolades from some others, and manage family dynamics.)
Identify limiting factors. (For Cinthia, these include her intense fear of gaining weight, the impossibility of being objective about her own body at that time, difficulty trusting others to help her, not liking various aspects of reality and wanting to create her own, reliance on anorexia nervosa as a kind of empowering friend, enjoyment of the positive social rewards she got from continued weight loss, her own self-talk, aversion to eating around others, etc.; on the other hand, the possibility of death from anorexia represented a much more permanent limitation, one she would encounter if she did not overcome the other limitations.)
Develop potential alternatives. (This can involve brainstorming and may sometimes involve others. The proposed solutions may not be perfect but have some kind of potential to move you toward health, though it must also be acknowledge that quick solutions may not ultimately solve the real problem. The discussion must focus on potential solutions to the specific problem, the real problem as identified in step 1. For Cinthia, options included trying to fix the problem on her own, beginning to eat with trusted others, and going into treatment.)
Analyze the alternatives. (This may involve getting more information about costs and benefits. It is also a good time to notice any resistance within yourself and what this may tell you about your attachment to the problem; as much as you may hate the problem, it may also be providing you with some benefit or meeting some underlying need that will need to be met in other ways if you make steps toward solving the problem.)
Select the best alternative. (Again, you may not have a perfect alternative and may have to decide among imperfect options.)
Implement the decision.

Cinthia discussed Adam and Eve as the human beings to make choices. God gave them choices, allowing them free will. Adam knew what he was doing even though he could not fully comprehend the outcome. But God also made choices in response to their choices. As Cinthia says, “We fell to hell, and God stopped the drop.” He could have let it go, leaving us to our own destruction, but He did not. Meanwhile, Adam’s sin brought fear, the first negative feeling. We were not originally designed for negative feelings. God also experienced negative feelings in response to our choices, but He was willing to accept different feelings to be in relationship with us, much like parents are willing to feel feelings to have their children and be in relationship with them. Adam’s choice brought knowledge. Knowledge is what brings fear and shame. However, God continued to offer them the opportunity to make good choices with their knowledge. Consider Deuteronomy 30:15-20. He offers us life and death. Sometimes our choices do not lead to immediate physical death but to the death of other things, like the dreams God has for us. We need to repent when we choose death, taking responsibility for our choices and turning instead to God. We can use our free will to submit our self-will to God’s will so that He can undo the damage of our sin. Consider also Ephesians 4:21-24.

Another decision-making model involves the following questions:

What is my present situation? (What is and is not working? Am I ok with it? We need to be truthful with ourselves. Go for objectivity here. Get feedback as necessary. Consider dreams, hopes, necessities, experiments, absolutes, etc.)
What would I like my situation to be? (What would be the perfect scenario? It’s ok to fantasize at this point. This is not a guaranteed outcome; it is a direction for your brain.)
What choices/options do I have?
What is the likely outcome of each option that I have? (You may need to get more information to answer this question.)
Which choice(s) will I commit to doing? (Do not pick them all at once. Limit the initial choices, but give them your all. Remember that not all choices are mutually exclusive, but some are.)

You can use your choices to pursue the dreams God has for you, the purposes for which He made you. Sometimes our mistakes are just as valuable as our good decisions if they help us make better choices in the future. You always have a choice and, therefore, have a lot more power than you may give yourself credit for. Nobody really wants to change. Actually doing it, however imperfectly, is something to be proud of. It is owning your own life, and your life is a gift.

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Do you reject compliments, explaining why you don’t really deserve them? Do you get nervous when someone does something nice for you, turn down offers of help even when you could really use them, or hate the feeling you get when someone forgives you or extends grace and kindness your way? Today’s show is on letting other people love you.

It can be scary and humbling to let someone love you and give you grace. The enemy (i.e., Satan) will try to exploit this by encouraging you to think that you are in a one-down position. Sometimes it is easier to accept good things from a stranger because we do not worry there will be an ongoing obligation in the relationship. But grace, kindness, forgiveness, and help are meant to be gifts of honor. Do not insult the person trying to honor you by rejecting that honor.

So how do we honor the gifts of love others give us? Well, if we are gifted forgiveness, grace, and covering, change is the best response. Grace helps us have energy to get up again and do it right, to fix what we have broken, to undo what we have done. Allow people to love you when you mess up. Love covers a multitude of sins (I Peter 4:8). Covering often sounds negative to us because we confuse it with toxic secrecy or enabling. The kind of covering that God does for us, however, is not like this; it is a gift of grace meant to protect us while we are working on repentance and change. Think of covering wounds while they heal; we do not just bleed all over the house and allow the wounds to be open and exposed to further harm. We cover wounds appropriately to help them heal. Covering or hiding as a gift of grace means that those who love us choose not to expose our ugliness while we work on repentance and change, knowing that change takes time. God gives more because He has endurance people do not. Covering is not permission to keep deepening the wound; covering is beautiful.

If we are given courtesy or help, we can offer a sincere thank-you. Do not insult the person offering good because you are uncomfortable. Give courtesy and graciousness in exchange. Accept the gesture and be grateful for the thought. Good boundaries will help with this; do not try to read the person’s mind or assume their expectations without knowing them. If there is a motive, you are not obligated to recognize it unless they tell you. Unless you have real reason to believe they want something in return (e.g., the person has a history of trying to put you in his/her debt, or there are clear signs of a scam in play), then you cannot read minds to figure it out. You can, however, be nice. You can be polite, gracious, forgiving. “Our Father is kind; you be kind [Luke 6:36, The Message version].” Cinthia continues, “Kindness supports peace, and peace loves to linger. See, peace is a quality that expands. Kindness is a quality that is catching. God is a God of peace. He’s always going to war with the people that are harming us. And there needs to be that protection, and He’s able to restore and protect and to save those that are oppressed, harmed, wounded, injured.” So be gracious in your responses to others, and do not allow suspicion to steal the joy of the gift. If you find later that someone had ulterior motives (e.g., wanted something in return), you can say “no” then. You can say, “I wish you would have told me you were needing/wanting something in return. What can I do?” And if you cannot do what they want, you can tell the person that you will not be able to accept help from him/her in the future.

Cinthia discussed I Corinthians 13 and encouraged little ways to give kindness and spread mercy and truth. She also encouraged self-forgiveness, explaining, “The only reason for having baggage is not having attended to it; move on,” and, “You’re going to be able to love deeply if you also forgive yourself.”

Finally, Cinthia discussed Attachment Theory, which therapists use to discuss how humans attach, and how the motives behind a tendency to reject love often have to do with fear. She discussed the messages people with avoidant or ambivalent attachment styles can send others, such as, “Come here; go away,” and, “I could take or leave you.” She discussed both fear of rejection and fear of acceptance, explaining that God has made humans to need connection and that our defensive structures try to protect us from the pain of not being connected, as well as the pain of being connected, which is also threatening. Our defensive structures protect us too well; our radars give us false readings. We try to protect ourselves from harm, but we protect ourselves from what we need. There are scary implications for acceptance – fear of relationship, commitment, being loved or wanted, fear of the future, coming to depend on someone and then getting rejected, etc. – But the attempt to avoid this pain and loneliness tend to encourage a constant level of pain and loneliness. Are you ambivalent about relationships? Some part of you really wants connection, but it really frightens another part of you.

Cinthia recalled the “False Evidence Appearing Real” definition of fear and encouraged identifying the core beliefs behind our fears of accepting good from other people. For example, one might say to himself, “I’m not a good risk. I’m not going to do this -- all I’ll get is let down. I’m just going to keep working on myself by myself until I feel confident enough to put myself out there.” Cinthia recalled struggling with her own core beliefs about herself and realizing that part of acceptance was accepting herself. She explained that God finally said to her, “Cinthia, I didn’t consult you when I created you. I made you for me. I’m happy with you. I like the way I made you. I’m excited to spend eternity with you, Cinthia. So you can either get on the same page as me, or you can be miserable until you come home.” This led her to work on accepting the things she could not control, picking battles differently, getting stuck on fewer things, letting things go, etc.

We need to know the God Who loves us and to begin to accept ourselves. The more I accept myself, the safer I am to other people. The fears of acceptance and rejection never go away until heaven, so we need to let people love us.

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Today Cinthia talked about the costs and value of pleasure and virtue. In our culture, pursuing pleasure seems to make sense, to be part of living our best life. And pleasure can be a good thing; sometimes it can help us enjoy good things, mitigate pain, etc. But pleasure always has a price. Sometimes pleasure is worth the price, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes pleasure costs us more than we anticipated or acknowledged it would cost, both for us and for those around us. Sometimes, in our attempts to mitigate pain with pleasure, we create more problems and pain. Being willing to cause pain to others in order to secure pleasure for ourselves is called selfishness. Being willing to cause harm to ourselves in order to experience pleasure is problematic, as well, particularly for those who believe human beings were created with value by something bigger than ourselves; harming ourselves also ultimately harms others, as well.

Virtue also has a price. Pleasure and virtue each cost us something. Good character understands and respects the price of each. Consider the price and payoff of an addiction, whether a substance addiction or an over-attachment to some other form of pleasure/pain relief, as opposed to the price and payoff of sobriety. Pleasure often masquerades as being exactly what you need in the moment. To what do you cling? Are you addicted to fear, to a feeling, to indulgences like lying? These things collect other things. Virtue is more lasting. Are you willing to pursue virtue? It really matters.

What does your presence bring to others? The way we interact with each other matters. God partners with us perfectly even though we do not deserve it. Thank Him for that and for the people who partner with you; learn to be the kind of person you should be even when other people are not doing what they should do. Pay attention to the feedback of those who let you know how you are affecting them; the one who tells you the truth may be your friend.

In your relationships and human interactions, do you primarily deduct or deposit? Do you drain the people around you? Do others have to compensate for your emotional draws on a regular basis? Do you primarily take energy or give it? Do people have to recover from being with you, or do you help them recover from the world? Are you part of the harshness in the world? Do you take for granted that others will make up for what you take? Do you show up to the party empty-handed, expecting only to take and never thinking to give?

If you tend to take energy from others without realizing it, work on recognizing cues like facial expressions, breathing, etc. Notice what other people are experiencing instead of taking them for granted. We expect children to take without understanding the cost to others because they are learning to participate well in relationships, but we expect adults both to give and to receive. What are you doing for someone else? Do you hijack the conversation and hold it hostage? Do you require constant reassurance from others? Does your presence bring peace, happiness, calm, refreshing? When you show up somewhere, do the people leave feeling better because they talked with you? How do people typically feel about themselves after talking with you?

When we consider what to give others, remember that small gestures of kindness or courtesy can give people so much. It is not your job to fix, correct, or “help” everyone around you regardless of whether they want that help. We can do so much for others simply by being kind and courteous to them, which requires managing our own behavior. Start by simply not offending people with coarse words, etc. Consider the words you use and whether they are building or destroying. Remember, words have power to build and destroy. Are you saying the things that need to be said? Are you saying lots of things that are simply unnecessary and unhelpful?

For those of us who are Christians, it is especially important to reflect the generosity of God in the way we approach others rather than walking selfishly through the world, taking but not giving. While our salvation comes through believing in Jesus Christ -- His identity as the Son of God, His death on our behalf, and His resurrection – God does want us to do His work while we are on Earth. At the end of our lives we want Him to tell us, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” We are to be like Him, and He came to serve rather than to be served.

Our culture tends to emphasize focusing on what we want our own lives to be like. We can start to think that “being all you can be” means gathering as much pleasure and/or prestige for oneself as possible. II Timothy 3:1-5 describes what people will be like in the last days; are you one of these people? Selfishness is a problem here in our country, and we often justify it or even glorify it. Selfishness messes up the world and will harm you if you do not get a handle on it.

Moral virtue or excellence is closely concerned with pleasure and pain, with what is base and what is noble. Virtue has to do with actions, passions, and affections. Every affection and every action is accompanied by pleasure or pain, and pleasure and pain form our character. Virtue is able to accept both pleasure and pain, to do good things and deal with feeling bad. Vices make us feel good while we are engaging in them, but we generally know that regret will follow. Plato stated that man needs to be trained from his youth as to how to find pleasure and pain in the right objects and that this is what sound education means. We must train our brains, hearts, and minds to want goodness and virtue, which will always be with us to help us.

Cinthia referenced the poem “I Walked a Mile with Pleasure” by Robert Browning Hamilton. In this poem, Hamilton describes enjoying the company of pleasure but recognizing that he had not learned anything from it once it was over. Sorrow, however, taught him deep lessons. When we are able to learn from sorrow and choose wisely even when it means we give up some pleasure and accept some pain, we are maturing. Maturity helps us to say, “Yes, I could do that and get away with it, but then I would have to live with myself.” Freedom is not having to worry about what you have done; it does not come from being able to do whatever you want but from learning to do the right thing.

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The phrase “good vibes” has been around for a few decades now, and it is sometimes associated with cultural eccentricity. In fact, however, the phrase can be associated with electricity because the human body has electrical currents that travel up to 120 meters per second. The electricity in our bodies is real, and it is impacted by our habits, particularly those that involve mental hygiene. If you want to boost your positive vibes quickly, here are ten things you can do. Some of them may sound similar, but the nuances are different.

Think positively. This does not mean brainwashing yourself to believe what is not true or ignoring what needs to be fixed, but it does mean you look for what is really, truly good instead of automatically assuming the bad.
Strengthen your memory for positive information. Your brain wants to help you by detecting threats early, so it often holds onto the negative memories. But you can purposely direct your brain to remember the positive things, too. Use recall for good.
Stop minimizing your successes. Often we do this out of an attempt to be polite or humble, but dismissing what is good is not really either one. Your successes are important, and it might not look like anyone else’s successes. What is big for you? Wins are different for every single human. Do not push away compliments.
Exercise control of your thoughts. Thinking changes the brain. Take control of your own mind. Think of your brain like a self-driving car: it can do lots of cool things and definitely has an autopilot function, but you still need to be at the wheel to be safe and use autopilot effectively.
Use negativity wisely. Some things are truly bad. Some negative thoughts are true and need to be acknowledged. This is different than using negativity as your default. Acknowledge reality, and move in the best direction you can in response to it.
Practice gratitude. Your brain and body love it; gratitude does wonderful things for them.
Accept and validate your own feelings, but don’t believe everything they tell you. Remember, feelings are very real, but they are not always true. Gather the information they offer, but sort it through before making decisions.
Accept that pain is inevitable and that you can choose gain in the pain. Many of us today want to avoid pain at all costs, but pain is often part of achieving important things.
Control your behavior. Adults do this. We accept that children are learning to control themselves and will not always succeed, but, if you are an adult, hold yourself accountable as an adult.
Judge yourself in a helpful way in order to determine what to do differently, rather than a condemning way that uses past mistakes to self-shame or beat yourself up. Acknowledging reality allows you to forgive yourself and move forward, making right what you can and accepting that you cannot change the past.

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For many of us, the harshest litany in our lives is the stream of self-evaluations running through our heads. This can seem harmless and even necessary to control our behavior; it is easily confused with appropriately holding ourselves accountable. But the way we deal with ourselves reveals a lot about our views of reality, and it tends to leak out into our relationships with others, though we may not be aware of that. Today Cinthia looks at two big (and related) reasons we are so hard on ourselves: unforgiveness and perfectionism.

Cinthia states that the following is an important rule of life: We accept forgiveness, and we offer forgiveness. These two actions often seem separate to us, and most of us find one easier than the other. The two are bound together, however, as Jesus showed in Matthew 6:9-13, often called “The Lord’s Prayer,” and in Matthew 7:12, often called “the Golden Rule.” (This last has reflections and corollaries that are found in every major religion, indicating that God has written it into our hearts at a deep level.) Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” He told us to do to others what we would want them to do to us. And He told us that the second-greatest commandment is to love others as we love ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Our relationships with others and our approach to ourselves cannot be separated; this is why unforgiveness on either side of the equation produces sickness and disease in our bodies and souls.

Giving and receiving forgiveness both require an understanding of what forgiveness is not, as well as what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not minimizing the offense, dismissing it, condoning it, or saying the offense was understandable or okay. Forgiving a bad thing does not mean calling it a good thing. It does not mean we will allow the harm to keep happening or will pretend the harm never happened; remember, trust and accountability are often separate issues from forgiveness. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean we will forget what happened; in some cases, that would not be safe to do. Forgiveness means that we turn the debt over to God and let Him handle the accounts. We stop trying to exact payment on our own, whether from ourselves or others. We give up the roles of prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. We see ourselves and others as valuable in spite of the choices made; we see people (including ourselves) as more than just the sum of actions committed.

For those who struggle with self-forgiveness, self-forgiveness can seem wrong, as if it dismisses the seriousness of the choice or the harm done by it. It seems too easy to let ourselves walk away from what we did. The problem is that God is the Judge, not us. He has made a way to forgive us because of what Jesus did on the cross. Receiving and embracing His forgiveness is not a dismissal of the seriousness of our actions or the harm done; after all, any choice that requires the blood of God’s Son to pay for it is serious. But adding our own mental self-punishment to Jesus’s sacrifice is not the same as taking our sin seriously; our self-flagellation cannot add ever equal the horror of the punishment He took for us. If we take our own sin seriously, we must also take seriously what He did about it.

Self-forgiveness means that we choose to live at peace with ourselves because God has chosen to live at peace with us. We may still attempt to repair damage done when that is possible (e.g., acknowledging, apologizing, making attempts to restore what we took from someone else when that is possible, etc.), but we recognize that refusing to forgive ourselves does not repair anything or help anyone. We choose to walk away from the mental torture of holding onto our sins and mistakes. We choose to see ourselves as more than our offenses. Cinthia models a statement like this one: “I am not proud of what I did, and I do not condone or minimize it. But I am choosing to move forward for the sake of my own health and well-being, as well the health and well-being of those who love me and those I am meant to impact.” You see, forgiving ourselves affects our relationships in ways we may not expect until we see it happen.

We are to forgive ourselves and others as we have been forgiven. But, if you struggle with this, remember that forgiveness is a process. Be patient with yourself, but do more than just resolve to forgive. Take steps to back up your forgiveness. When forgiving yourself, this may mean using some kind of meditation or affirmations to work on the way you talk to yourself and cut off the litany of mental self-harm that has become wired into your brain. It may mean choosing positive self-treatment even when you do not feel deserving of it, choosing to show love toward yourself with some kind of action that makes things better and not worse. It may mean seeing a therapist or life coach, keeping a diary, or engaging in your faith in a different way. Sometimes the refusal to forgive yourself becomes so entrenched that releasing it entails a loss of identity; without the self-judgment and orientation around our mistakes, you have to go to God and find out who He meant you to be and where He wants your life to go. Until now, you have been focused on your sins and mistakes; where will you go when you release yourself from this?

For some people, though, self-forgiveness is difficult even when the offense is simply being human or failing to meet unrealistic expectations. This is perfectionism. If you struggle with it, consider therapy or counseling of some kind because perfectionism will impact your life and the lives of those around you. Living our lives in self-loathing often involves making too much of the judgment calls of others, mentally echoing their negative evaluations of us again and again; if we try to get all our good feelings from other people, we will live in constant fear or regret over failing their expectations. Remember, you do not have to forgive yourself for being what God made you to be, though you may need to forgive yourself for not being what He meant you to be. Again, find out from Him who He made you to be and what purpose He has for your life. Make the changes needed to follow the purpose for which you were made. Have the conversation with God, "Why did you make me?" Base your self-assessments on the intentions of your Creator, not those of the people around you or your own ideas about who you should be. If you see yourself as needing to meet a higher standard than others, you probably need to look at this; it can, in fact, be quite arrogant to insist on being better than others. If surpassing others is what protects you from shame attacks, this is unstable. God made you a person. You are unique, even in the ways you mess up. But if you are evaluating your mess-ups by your own need to avoid the messiness of being human, you will not be able to face your life effectively. Martha Beck said that "welcoming imperfection is the way to accomplish what perfectionism promises but never delivers."

Incorporate appropriate self-acceptance into your lifestyle, and remember that acceptance does not mean agreeing or condoning all the choices. Laugh more; laughter is truly the best medicine. Give yourself some freedom to stop taking everything so seriously. Living in a state of being unable to forgive requires a lot of energy -- the constancy of hurt and blame is exhausting. Forgiveness allows you to live in the present instead of in the past. The only reason we revisit the past is to learn from it, not to beat up on ourselves. Self-forgiveness and self-acceptance increases our kindness to others. It allows us to live in the present, which opens the future with purpose; we can build instead of being held back. Practice accepting your emotions. And remember, you have no control over what people say and do, but you can choose whether to base your own life on the mixed-up feelings of others. Someone was hard on the people who were hard on you; break the chain by refusing to be hard on yourself and others. Learn from the past, and be grateful that you get to move forward. Take care of yourself. You are important to God. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. Accept this reality, and act on it.

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Today Cinthia continues a topic she started earlier in the month: how to know whether someone loves you. Relationships are complicated, whether they are romantic relationships, friendships, or family ones. When we are most vulnerable, sometimes the wrong things get exaggerated, and the things that are true get minimized. So how do we know when someone loves us – or, at least, how to know when someone loves us in a way we can trust?

People are imperfect. A person who loves you in a healthy way can humble himself or herself when wrong, ask for forgiveness, and accept forgiveness. That person can also forgive you quickly, though he or she may need time to heal; needing to rebuild trust over time is not the same as denying forgiveness. A person who loves you with a healthy love will be committed to getting over your wrongs as quickly as possible, but acknowledging the depth of the wound and the time it takes to heal is part of what makes healing happen. Continuing to heal is necessary, but keeping a record of wrongs for the sake of power over another person or out of bitterness is a different thing.

If you are the one who has been harmed and the person who loves you is giving you time to heal, it can help to express appreciation for this. Do not say you are fine and pretend to be over it when you are not, but don’t over-complicate the transgression, either. It is ok to be where you are and let the healing process happen. Secretly nursing wounds, ruminating, etc., does not further your healing process; healthy grieving does. Healthy love is honest and merciful at the same time, and it does not take humanness personally. Similarly, when someone forgives you, appreciate it and do not overcomplicate it in return, getting more stuck on your offense than the other person is. It is not the offended person’s job to help you get over yourself.

A person who loves you is courteous, polite, and gracious to you and not only to others. A person who loves you will honor what you need, even if he or she does not understand it. It may be inconvenient or uncomfortable, but the person will care about what you need because he or she cares about you. When someone shows this care, it is appropriate to express appreciation.

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For every person in the world diagnosed with an addiction or mental disorder, there is at least one other person trying to help someone in this condition. Families are deeply impacted, and these situations can be ripe for misunderstanding, misinformation, and stigma. Today Cinthia explores how to love well when a loved one struggles with a mental illness or addiction. She began at the beginning of Luke 10 and explored issues related to boundaries and codependency in several passages leading up to the parable of the Good Samaritan. She then looked directly at the parable and discussed what he did and did not do to help the wounded man, as well as whether he might have had to respond differently if he had been trying to help his own relative. Cinthia noted that the Good Samaritan offered simple help, not judging or lecturing, not becoming over-involved, but valuing the wounded man and helping him by giving what he could with appropriate expectations.

Sometimes humans complicate it when God asks us to help others. Cinthia encouraged self-reminders that kindness is free and can be given to anyone. Kindness is not validating inappropriate behavior or trying to teach someone how to change, though it can model a different lifestyle. Kindness does not mean assuming best-friend status and does not leave the recipient owing anything. It is simply kindness. Part of how we know whether we are practicing good boundaries is that we are able to give freely without unrealistic expectations; we do not gain identity from helping the person get better or become resentful if the person rejects or disappoints our efforts. Good boundaries help us not to take everything so personally.

If someone close to us struggles with an addiction or mental illness, we generally have two choices: We can interject ourselves into their situation or be simply a compassionate observer. A compassionate observer does not take responsibility for figuring out, fixing, teaching, reforming, etc. A compassionate observer can be aware of problematic behavior while acknowledging his/her own inability to comprehend all the internal and external factors involved. A compassionate observer can value another person regardless of his/her behavior but does not give past the point of being able to release expectations his or her own expectations for the results. A compassionate observer can accept that people’s lives are messy and that getting involved in the lives of human beings is a messy business. A compassionate observer can offer some help, particularly when it is requested, but must have good boundaries when doing so. Boundaries can be most easily understood as awareness of “where I end and you begin.” When we do not know where we end, we often become way too involved in the lives of others and end up hating or despising the people we were trying to help when all our attempts to help them change are frustrated or disappointed. People have problems that aren’t solved for lots of reasons, and we don’t always know all the reasons. Without appropriate expectations, we develop compassion fatigue, which leads to resentment.

We can easily overestimate our own ability to understand a given situation. Sometimes, as we watch a loved one struggle, we say to God, “You could fix this.” Cinthia reminds us to take a deep breath and remember Who God is. Remember the cross, the beatings, His entire creation turning against Him. God knows how humans can be, and He understands factors we cannot know. He knows what it is like to offer someone help, only to have that person reject it in favor of his/her own best ideas. He actually does know what is best for us and has the right to have plans for us (something we cannot say about ourselves regarding the people we are trying to help), and He still experiences our resistance and rejection of His offers. One question to consider in determining what you can give freely in a given situation is how educated you are regarding that situation. Do you have experience with the relevant issues? Do you have training? If you don’t, you might seek general education to help guide your attempts (Make sure to use reputable resources, such as the National Institute for Mental Health [NAMI] or the Mayo Clinic.), or you might simply collect names of professionals, etc., to whom you can refer the person when they want help. This can be helpful, but don’t try to be the resource or treatment professional. Be careful about ruling out options for the person. For example, sometimes Christians are nervous about the use of psychotropic medications and may even discourage loved ones from using them when prescribed. Psychiatrist Dr. Harnish notes that the devil uses various weapons to attack us and that, as such, it often makes sense to use a variety of weapons in response. He describes physical interventions such as medication, emotional ones such as counseling, and spiritual ones such as prayer and Scripture reading as different branches of the military. He encourages using each of these weapons as needed as a country might use different branches of its military to combat different tactics brought against it.

Humility is crucial when dealing with addictions and/or mental illness, whether we are the ones struggling or the ones loving someone else as they struggle. Just the person struggling must humble himself/herself to accept needed help, the person trying to help must humble himself/herself to accept that the loved one is free to reject his/her help and suggestions. Sometimes phrasing helps: “I have an idea, and I’m wondering if you’d be interested,” may be a helpful start. Telling the person all the ways he or she has failed or should have done things differently typically does not help. When making a suggestion, consider your timing. Remember that you are not the person’s parent (unless you are and that person is a child), lawyer, doctor, or boss; you are not God. You are a compassionate witness; see and offer help only within appropriate boundaries.

Remember not to define people by their disorders. Don’t walk on eggshells. Let them lead the way. Help when they ask for help unless such help is not helpful, and then say that you don’t feel comfortable doing that. Keep it simple. God honors weakness and really values honesty. Also, remember that most diagnoses have a continuum of severity. One person with Diagnosis A may experience it very differently than another person with the same diagnosis.

Make sure your own life is working. Tighten down your own self-care. This gives you strength to help the person when he or she wants help, as well as to love the person when he or she falls, and it models what good self-management can be like. Get sleep, rest, recreation, and support. Consider going to a supportive group such as NIMH, Alanon/Alateen, etc.; go to at least two meetings before you rule it out. Mental illness, addiction, and even recovery are all processes that are easy to “get lost in,” and this is as true for loved ones as for the person who struggles directly with the problem. Boundaries are hard to maintain in these situations, but they are crucial. Pray for the person, be a compassionate witness, and “do your side of the street.”

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Today Cinthia discusses motivation and inspiration, two concepts that are related but not identical. She uses a variety of quotes and offers a number of questions to ask ourselves as we examine our own ongoing motivation and inspiration. The first was the following by Thomas Carlyle: “Let him who would be moved to convince others be first moved to convince himself.” You cannot motivate others if you are not motivated by your own mission or vision. Motivation and inspiration are contagious, as are negativity, skepticism, and cynicism.

The relationship between motivation and inspiration is somewhat cyclical; Cinthia says, “We motivate to inspire and inspire to motivate.” Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic, but it culminates in an inner drive to do something and behave in a certain way; it is what moves us from desire to will. Inspiration makes us want to do something or gives us an idea about what to do. Both are important, and both can be helped by resources from the outside. But, as Cinthia emphasized, at the end of the day the best motivation and inspiration are the ones we have internalized, the ones that now come from inside of us.

As an example, Cinthia described her own passion for therapy, which was her life’s work for decades, and its related services, such as the life coaching and pastoral counseling she now offers. Cinthia explained that, although she initially did not want to be a therapist, she has come to believe in the process so strongly that no one now needs to coerce or talk her into doing it; she has seen it work so well and so often for so many that she is self-motivated to help others through these methods. She also noted that her engagement in this broadcast/podcast is intrinsically motivated. Because she has come to believe in these things so strongly, her deep belief overrides her aversion to having to “sell” things like counseling, psychoeducation, and other passions. She reports having learned the following: “I can’t produce or sustain outside of me what is not inside of me,” and, “The outside emanates from the inside; we work from the inside out.”

So how do we take responsibility for our own motivation and inspiration? External resources (like this show!) can certainly help, but, in the long run, adults need to take responsibility for their own motivation and inspiration instead of just waiting for the world to inspire and motivate them. This is especially important for those who lead since motivating and inspiring others can be part of the job.

So here are some questions to consider:

-What is the purpose of your life? If you have listened to the show for long, you will know that Cinthia regularly encourages asking your Creator why you were made since He did, in fact, make you uniquely for a reason. Because you were created by God, you have intrinsic value regardless of your actions, and no one else can fulfill the unique purpose for which you were made. Are you clear on your life mission and the gifts only you can give?

-Are the things you are doing aligned with your life mission and values? Are you able to explain why you are doing what you are doing? Do you have passion and desire for what you are doing? What are you trying to accomplish through it? Remember what Charles Hummel said: “The need itself is not the call.” You cannot meet all the world’s needs. What is your piece to address? (Such passion can exist at different levels, by the way. You may not have passion for your current job but have great passion to take care of your family, and the paycheck from this job may do that. While it is great to seek out ways to eventually move into a job about which you are more passionate and which gives you greater enjoyment, motivation and inspiration do not necessarily have to wait until every task in your life is one you find exciting.)

-Are your ways of promoting what you believe simple and authentic to you? It is okay if people do not like your ideas; sometimes this helps you screen out unrealistic or less-than-optimal ideas, while other times it is important to move forward despite the opinions of others. Are you communicating your ideas in ways that flow naturally from your own passion, or does it feel forced? Telling your own story is not the same as selling, but it often helps people understand the value we see in particular methods or ideas. On a related note, are you willing to receive feedback, and do you know how to sort the feedback you will embrace and the feedback you will ignore?

-What motivates you? What demotivates you? Often extrinsic motivation does not “stick” as well as intrinsic motivation does, but knowing what internal and external resources are inspirational and motivational to you means you can take ownership of both.

-If you are a leader, do you know your people? Are you committed to them, and can they tell this from your actions? What are their needs and gifts?

-What is the story of your life? How are you managing the pain and struggles it involves? Do you exercise good boundaries, good self-care, not taking others’ feelings too personally, forgiveness, and letting the relational process cause you to mature and deepen? Do you struggle with perfectionism and control, or are you like the starfish that, when it loses a leg, grows a new one?

-On what do you rest your faith? Is it something that is bigger than you are? Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” People are too mistake-making for the pressure that comes with getting all our motivation from one another. Your faith is far too valuable to be guarded by another person. What is the foundation of your life?

-What is your kryptonite? Are you sabotaging yourself with habits and behaviors that are unhelpful, or is the good in your life being the enemy of the best? How do you talk to yourself in your head? Are you caring for yourself well enough to keep from having to think about yourself all the time? How do you interact with others? (Remember, sometimes it’s better to be in relationship than to be right. It’s one thing to know what is important enough that you will not compromise it; it is another thing to be obnoxious about proving yourself right all the time.)

-Am I having fun? Not every task in life can be fun, but some things should be.

Adults cannot depend on the external world to meet their internal needs. Adults have to own the task of motivating and inspiring themselves, including the task of selecting the external resources that help with this. Adults who interact with children have to help children create internal worlds in which they can live safely and well, and adults cannot do this well without having learned to do it for themselves. How is your internal world? What motivates you? What inspires you? How will you incorporate these things more helpfully into your life?

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Today's broadcast had two parts. The first was an interview with Kevin Sorbo, a well-known actor who has played many roles, including that of Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and that of Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda. He is currently promoting a movie that will be coming out in August called Firing Squad, in which Sorbo acts along with James Barrington and Cuba Gooding, Jr. The movie is based on a true story about three men facing execution in Indonesia and the hope and redemption that broke out in a terrible place. Sorbo also discussed a book he wrote about his own experiences nearly dying from an aneurism and having four strokes as a result; the book is called True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life and details what it was like to go so quickly from being in Hollywood shape to being unable to get himself out of bed. Like the movie discussed earlier, the book offers hope and redemption. The book also describes Sorbo's understanding that God has not promised us easy lives and that blaming Him for the trouble on earth is counterproductive. He reports that many people have told him his book inspired them to stop feeling sorry for themselves in the wake of legitimately difficult experiences and life changes, and to move forward with hope.
Sorbo and Cintiha discussed themes of accepting the work of the Creator in our lives. Cinthia stated, "He thought you up. He knew you before you were born," and she compared the destruction and harm we sometimes level at our own bodies with going into the Louvre and starting to destroy the works of art. She spoke of the work it takes to undo and redo much of the damage that has been done and that continues to happen. Cinthia also praised Sorbo's example and portrayal of masculinity as a positive thing. She stated, "We really need our men to be men... When you emasculate men, everything falls apart... [Men are] made for a reason, and that reason is to take care of the world." Sorbo also has a book coming out on this topic called The Bare Essentials of Fatherhood, which can be explored through Brave Books.
After the interview with Sorbo, Cinthia continued the broadcast, discussing Matthew 19:13-14 in which Jesus told His disciples not to hinder the "little ones" from coming to Him since the Kingdom of Heaven "belongs to such as these." While acknowledging that Jesus was at least partly speaking about actual children, she also suggested that His meaning went beyond this, that the "little ones" are all those whom we should be protecting. This includes all those who are vulnerable, including ourselves. She urges us not to "get in the way of God finding and saving every single human that He has made." Cinthia points out that we are all little children next to God, that we will never become His contemporaries but become His children when we come to Jesus. As adults, we often come to rely on ourselves and emphasize independence. We may get in the way of the "little ones" by shaming them, speaking harshly to them, scorning their dependence in our rush to make them independent. We may shoo away those whose faith is weak by arguing over biblical interpretations unnecessarily instead of befriending people and allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work. We may get in the way of our own vulnerable selves through harsh, shaming self-talk or scorning our own dependency needs that lead us to Jesus.
Children were brought to Jesus because He was safe, and He insisted that the children be allowed to come to Him. The vulnerable are very important to God. He is a loving Father. He has died and resurrected because He loves us so much. He would never harm His children. We need to remind ourselves of His goodness and join Him in His endeavors by being good parents to our own inner children. We need to handle each other gently. In heaven's economy, the little ones matter. The Message version of these verses says that people brought children to Jesus "in hope that He would lay hands on them and pray for them," and He did. Jesus intervened when the disciples tried to stop the "little ones" from taking up His time. He did not move to the next thing until He had taken the children on His lap, laid hands on them, and blessed them.
The disciples who tried to shoo the children away thought they were helping Jesus. They thought they were honoring the Lord, and sometimes we think that, too. We think we are standing up for what is right when we argue fruitlessly about less-crucial doctrinal issues with people who are struggling just to come to Jesus. We think we are aiding in our own sanctification when we internally shame and speak harshly to ourselves. We minimize the importance of the least of these instead of laying down a red carpet for them to run to Jesus. We minimize our own need for Jesus because we think as adults we should have it together.
Don't discourage others' hope or minimize your own. If you can't support others in coming to Jesus, then (as Jesus told the disciples) let them alone. Jesus said it would be better to have a millstone hung around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea than to cause one of these "little ones" to stumble. Sometimes God would rather we be quiet than say the things that we do, things that cause each other to stumble. We must be more careful how we treat God's children--- including ourselves, since we also are vulnerable. It does not help God to be mean and harsh to ourselves and cause ourselves to stumble.
Let us come to Him like little children, for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Lay down your ways of supporting yourself, and allow yourself to come to Jesus with the hope that He will touch your life, that He will lay His hands on you and bless you. Ask Him to lay hands on you, and acknowledge your need for Him. Don't add requirements on yourself that He does not place there. Just come to Jesus and let Him hold you.

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Is attraction something that just comes and goes, completely beyond our control? Today Cinthia explores attractiveness as a responsibility we have to others, one that is not primarily about our physical makeup. While she introduces this topic in terms of spouses who are no longer attracted to their spouses, she explores it further as it applies to our interactions with society in general. How attractive we are has to do with what it is like for others to be around us. This is why men often appear more attractive when they exhibit “confidence contained.” In all of us, qualities like kindness, gentleness, mercy, flexibility, nobleness, health, willingness to work hard, etc., tend to be attractive, while disrespectfulness, immaturity, vulgarity, being unaware of your audience, refusing to cooperate with others, and selfishness in general make us less attractive to others. We are more attractive when we adjust ourselves somewhat to others by learning to “check the temperature of the room;” for example, we can notice whether other people find their jokes humorous and when they do not. They notice how their behavior is impacting others and adjust to those with whom they interact.

In our society, many people expect that others should be attracted to them unconditionally, as if all of society is obligated to offer them the unconditional acceptance they needed from their parents and continue to need from God. Sometimes people today expect that their showing up should be enough for everyone else. However, this is not a realistic expectation for adults to hold. We offer babies unconditional goodwill no matter how much they scream or how many bodily fluids they deposit on us because we understand that they are babies. We accept that teenagers are learning to deal with others maturely and may sometimes be difficult to engage; this is because we understand that they are teenagers. Adults, however, have the ability and the expectation to recognize that their behavior impacts other people. Our behavior can make us unattractive. Our hygiene practices can make it uncomfortable for people to come close to us. To refuse to recognize this is immature, and it is draining for others who have to deal with it on a regular basis. It takes courage to own the experience others have of us when we interact together, but maturity knows that its decisions matter. Selfishness and immaturity are exhausting for others. Pushing boundaries for attention gets old. Creating awkwardness or discomfort just to get a reaction gets tiresome. Selfishness, withholding, refusing to share or fill in the gaps for those who cannot do it themselves – these things are burdensome to others. Don’t confuse assertiveness and selfishness; they are not the same thing.

Owning your impact does not mean being someone that you are not, hiding your feelings all the time, or constantly seeking to meet everyone else’s expectations, no matter how unrealistic or unwholesome. It simply means recognizing that you are not entitled to show up without showering, use whatever language you want, and expect everyone to be thrilled that you are there. It means acknowledging that others are allowed to have feelings about the impact of your decisions on them.

As an adult, you can learn to be an attractive person, regardless of whether you possess physiological beauty. This does not mean our appearance is irrelevant, however; the ways in which we care for ourselves are relevant to the experience others have of us. The way we dress indicates something about our own willingness to contain ourselves instead of expecting others to deal with the rawest versions of us. Going to the grocery store in pajamas, for example, may to communicate to others that our own comfort is our highest priority and that we have little concern for the atmosphere we are helping to create. While the 1950’s had another set of problems, one positive aspect of that decade was the expectation people embraced to show some respect for themselves and others in certain ways, including pulling themselves together when going out of the house. Our clothes tell a story about us; this is why politicians dress differently when speaking to different groups of people. (Please note that not everyone needs to work harder at looking good in public. Some people need to “lighten up” while others need to “tighten up.”) Taking care of our physical appearances also impacts us personally. Cinthia discussed an article from Getty Images that addressed this through the lens of play rehearsal in professional settings; it explained that the costumes actors wear impact their embodiment of a character, that the way we dress sends messages to our own brains about who we are and impacts the way we perform. A study found that increased formality in students’ clothing increased the students’ abstract processing. This is why people who work from home are often advised not to do so in their pajamas but to put on some level of professional clothing. People’s brains really do pick up on clues subconsciously, and we really do send messages to others and ourselves. (Of course, appearance is not the whole story; while a tie may make you look and feel more reliable, you still have to actually follow through and be reliable in order to maintain that impression.)

So, returning to the arena of spousal attraction, a similar principle applies. Expecting your spouse to be endlessly and unconditionally attracted to you regardless of how you look, behave, relate to them, etc., is selfish. We should not take advantage of those who commit to us in sickness and in health by using their commitment as an excuse to be lazy or thoughtless, to become the worst version of ourselves. This applies in the way we talk to one another, handle our emotions, communicate about important issues, maintain self-care, and address problems. Ongoing attractiveness is not about achieving or maintaining physical perfection, nor does it mean we will not go through seasons of change. Rather, it is about taking responsibility to be pleasant company for those with whom we travel through life, just as we want them to do for us. And, when we know that we are struggling, we can show consideration for those closest to us by thanking them for their patience and acknowledging the impact our struggles have on them.

We honor ourselves and others by taking responsibility for our choices. Our choices matter because we matter and because those around us do, too. Be someone whose presence benefits others, including those closest to you.

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Today Cinthia discussed what it means that we as human beings are made in the image of God. We say all kinds of things about ourselves, and not all of the things we say are true. We work hard to define ourselves, to figure out who we are and grasp some kind of identity for ourselves. But these attempts will never make us free until they line up with the truth about ourselves, which is rooted in Who God is and who He says we are. We look around for those we can emulate, but, until we know and emulate our Creator, we will not figure out how to be our unique selves. The more we know God, the more we will want to be like Him, and the more we are like Him, the more we will be the unique creation He meant us to be.

Cinthia discussed some of her own struggles to figure out her identity. She was adopted into a family with which she had little in common in terms of appearance, giftings, etc. She felt, she says, like she was on a train called “life” and did not know how she got on it, where it was going, or where she was supposed to get off of it. She even perceived herself to be on this train fraudulently, to be on the planet by some unplanned accident so that God had to figure out what to do with her now that she was here. Living under the weight of this, Cinthia worked hard to “be something” to justify her existence. But one day, after many, many conversations about this with God, after repeatedly telling him how she felt and what she thought about it all, Cinthia heard God say to her, “Now you know where you came from. You came from Me.” Learning to see God as her reference point and to ask Him who He meant her to be changed life drastically for Cinthia, although it has been a process.

While Cinthia’ particular struggle may be most resonant for those who have been adopted, all of us struggle with identity. Some of this relates to family issues; we may not see ourselves as having much in common with our biological families or may identify with them strongly, happily or not. We are adopted into God’s family through Jesus, and we don’t always know how to relate to this family. But, regardless of our experiences with those who reared us or those around us now, human beings struggle to define ourselves (and some might say our society has particular difficulties with this because we are so concerned with defining ourselves individually) because each of us was created by God to be something we cannot understand without Him. Each of us was His idea, and He was happy that He made each of us. Regardless of connections with family members or similarities and differences with them, we are still one-time-occurring creations, and there is no one like anyone else. Until we connect our identities to their Source, we will lack the information and power we need to be who we were meant to be.

In our society, people seem to be struggling with this more than ever. People are even changing their bodies at drastic levels, but we are not our own creators. We are not able to create who we want to be, whatever our society may tell us. Human beings simply don’t have the tools to create themselves. We have to learn to accept our status as created beings who were not consulted about who we were meant to be, but who are far more amazingly-designed than we realize or know. Learning to trust our Creator with who we are is difficult because trust is difficult and because we tend to have ideas about who we are, some of which are not accurate and may cause pain. But we start by learning to trust God when He says we were beautifully and wonderfully made and that He was glad when He made us. Until we believe Him and ask Him what He had in mind for us, we will not find peace with who we are.

You have to find out who you are, and you have to do it by going to your Creator. Ask Him why He made you. Even if you identified with your family or were like them in many ways, you are still the only one of you. (Even identical twins do not have the same fingerprints!) You are truly original, and you have to find out who you are. You came straight from God, from His heart, soul, and mind. He wanted to make you, and He did. That is where you come from. He wants to be with you forever. Think about that: God made you because He wants to be with you forever. Although He has taken great care with the particulars of your life, God created you for eternity, not just for this life. He wanted to get you here more than He wanted to make it “the right time” for everyone else. He used this fallen world to get you into existence, and that for Himself. The first step in knowing who you are is to know Him; the second is to know the level of value He places on you.

Cinthia explained, “If I know God, I know myself better. If I act more like God, I like myself better.” Cinthia offered several verses (Revelation 22:13, Colossians 1:15-17, Isaiah 44:6-8) to help us begin looking at this. He is the First and the Last. We look at the Son and see the God Who cannot be seen. We see His original purpose that He started in Him and holds together in Him. He is the God of Angel Armies. He is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. God is the Doer. Then she discussed Genesis 1:26-7, which explain that we were made in His image, in the image of the Trinity. She likens this realization to what it was like for her as an adult who had been placed for adoption in infancy to meet her biological family, to have an “aha” moment in which she realized she looked like them, shared traits with them, and suddenly made sense to herself in ways she had never understood.

God is behind relational success. God wants us in relationship with Him first and then with others. This is why relationships impact us deeply whether we are engaging in them or avoiding them, and it is why our relationship with God is foundational to our self-images and to the health of our other relationships, while our self-images other relationships are significant concerns to God. He made us like Himself, and we can borrow His ways of doing relationship. Unfortunately, sin makes us less and less like Him. We are left with our reference point. God wants us to be like Him, not the other way around. This is why verses like Matthew 19:4 actually give us permission to be who we are. God did not miss something when He created you; He made you the way that He made you on purpose. What you have learned about who you are, what you believe about who you are, what others think about who you are -- those things can be mistaken. But God is not mistaken about how He made you.

Cinthia elaborated by listing some specific ways God made us to be like Him. We are creative, wishing to continue, expand, and express ourselves. We are relational. We are spiritual with a desire for spiritual connection, knowing there is more and desiring to question. We are emotional beings. (Yes, God has emotions! We see that He has always had the capacity for happiness, sadness, and anger, though we do not see Him experiencing the emotion of fear until He became human as Jesus. God is very emotional and not at all insecure, but, as a human, He opened Himself to this experience. Even Jesus first indicates fear at facing the cross. What a brave and strong friend we have in Jesus.) We have choice. And there are more ways!

Go to God. Ask Him Who He is and how He wants you to learn this, and be willing to pursue knowing Him as He wants to be known. Ask Him who you are, who He meant you to be. Then get to know yourself, to be yourself more fully based on the design by which you were made. This is what it means to be yourself, and it comes not by performance for Him but through relationship with Him. Walk with Him, and be everything He dreamed of you being.

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Today’s title is one that requires some definitions. First of all, what is an addict? What is addiction? Addiction has more than one definition but usually involves becoming physically or psychologically dependent on a substance; it can sometimes apply to compulsive involvement in behavior, such as gambling or sexual compulsions. Not all habits necessarily qualify as addictions.

At some level, we are all prone to addictions, but some people are much more prone to them than others. Genetics plays a key role in setting up proclivities to addiction. Trauma also influences addictions by taking away someone’s ability to regulate his or her internal world. Anxiety and depressive disorders can create or increase vulnerability to addictions. Chronic pain and severe injury including head injury, can set up a person for addiction, especially if treatment for these ailments involves narcotics or other controlled substances. We cannot tell just by looking at a person all the factors that may put that person at risk for addictions, and shaming them for being addicted is generally not helpful. Addiction is an affliction, not something people plan to have.

There is a difference between dependence and addiction, though one can lead to the other. A person who depends on a particular medication is not necessarily dealing with an addiction. Sometimes the body cannot do for itself what it needs to do, and medications can be used appropriately to help with this. Some people become dependent on medications that make their bodies function properly without becoming truly addicted, and sometimes we do not know all that is involved in another person’s medical care plan. However, dependence can lead to addiction, and signs of this can include lessening attempts to find other coping skills and ways to be healthy. At this time in history, we have an unprecedented opportunity to use pharmaceuticals in life-giving ways, but it can be very difficult to know how and when to do this. Medications that were originally meant to help people can sometimes work their way into hearts, minds, souls, relationships, and lifestyles so that they destroy the people they were meant to help and harm others in addition.

Another term in today’s title is the word “judge.” The phrase “do not judge” is frequently cited as coming from Jesus, though not always with proper understanding of the context in which He said this. In Matthew 7:1-6, Jesus told us not to judge lest we be judged. The compassion He showed and shows to sinners like us shows us how important a statement like this is to Him. In our society, however, we sometimes misuse the phrase “Don’t judge,” using the authority of Jesus’s words to mean, “Don’t tell me I’m wrong,” or to imply that all behaviors must be accepted as equally moral. But Jesus went on to tell us not to give dogs what is sacred or cast our pearls before pigs. A few verses later He warned against false prophets. How are we to obey the latter verses without making some kind of judgments? In fact, the Bible says not to judge ourselves. How, then, can we make behavioral decisions for ourselves?

The answer lies in the difference between judging behavior and judging a person’s heart, between determining that a behavior is harmful (or potentially harmful) and making negative assumptions about what is happening inside a person, between setting boundaries and shaming people. Jesus says in John 7:24, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” So, in the verses in Matthew, “do not judge” does not mean that love should be blind or undiscerning; on the contrary, loving well requires even more discernment than the kind of judging Jesus forbids. It is healthy and right to recognize that some behaviors are harmful and wrong. It is loving to want someone to be the best version of himself or herself and to encourage this in appropriate ways. Wisdom often sees where particular behavioral patterns are leading, and love can motivate us to set limits with ourselves and others to avoid or minimize the harm that may be approaching. Sometimes boundaries are necessary and healthy, and they can be set in ways that are not inherently shaming (though, for some people, encountering any kind of boundary activates their own inner shame). Even deciding at last to walk away from an unhealthy situation can be done in kinder ways than simply ignoring or avoiding the person.

So today’s title and message can be expanded to the following: “Don’t judge the addict; judge the behaviors.” Judging behaviors well may lead us to encourage someone to get help or make changes, to pray for them and encourage them. Judging behaviors well may sometimes lead us to accept that another person has free will and that the only healthy option we have is to walk away from a situation we cannot change. Other people may sometimes confuse these things with judging in the way Jesus said not to judge, and, truthfully, it is often hard to keep our behavior judgments from intermingling with our sinful tendency to judge people’s hearts as if we were in the place of God. But loving well requires that we learn to support one another in being the best versions of ourselves, not in using our freedom to justify doing things that cause real harm.

There is a difference between an excuse, which attempts to justify inappropriate actions and make it okay to do things that are not okay, and an explanation, which simply attempts to help us understand the struggle. Explanations may help us understand one another’s backstories, biologies, and battle strategies. Exploring the root may help us find a solution.

The Bible is clear about truth. Truth is inseparable from God’s character. Anything that contradicts the truth is a lie. To call something a lie or a sin is to pass on that thing, but only God can pass judgment on the person engaged in that thing. Sometimes we don’t want to know or act on the truth God shows us, but that doesn’t mean we can redefine truth.

If you are struggling with an addiction, do not stop trying. Don’t give up. Don’t stop reaching out for help. You have the rest of your life to live, and it honors God to continue seeking Him and accepting the help He provides in our struggles. It can be hard for humans to deal with our own freedom; we are free to choose our behaviors but not necessarily to choose their outcome. Sometimes the things we choose are more powerful than we realized they would be. Jesus does not break bruised reeds or snuff out smoldering wicks (Isaiah 42:3, Matthew 12:20), and His desire is not to shame you. But neither does He want you to use phrases like “Don’t judge me” to dismiss the reality that you are more than the addictions that haunt you. Jesus took our sins, sicknesses, and afflictions on Himself when He died for us; He knows better than anyone how heavy they are and how much they hurt. If you are His (or if you turn to Him now), He will not leave you to struggle by yourself; He will be with you.

If you are not sure whether you are struggling with an addiction, consider some of the following questions: Are you habitually breaking God’s law by doing things He says not to do? Are you breaking human laws? Are your relationships suffering, or are you becoming more isolated? Are you lying, hiding, or deceiving to avoid having your behaviors criticized or limited? Just because something feels valid or justified does not necessarily make it healthy. Is there a pattern to what you are doing or when you are doing it? Is it harming your physical or psychological health? Is the thing that was intended as a solution actually causing more distress or impairment? Are you doing more than you used to do?

If someone you love is struggling with an addiction, remember that there is a difference between judging a person and judging behavior. Jesus gives us permission to make judgement calls on doctrines and deeds, and we are responsible for setting limits accordingly. Judging whether to hand someone your keys, or even judging whether you can continue to be in relationship with a person in his or her current state of decision-making, is not the same as judging the person’s heart. But negative assumptions about the person’s heart, etc., are. You can set boundaries in response to the person’s choices, and you can set boundaries in your own mind regarding how you will think about the situation, what conclusions you will draw, etc. Ask God to help you deal with the hurt without resorting to hatred. Accept help from Him and from wise others in determining what limits you need to set. You are not God, and this means both that you are not the person’s judge and that you have your own limits. You cannot rescue the person any more than you can judge the heart. Compassion and codependency are not the same thing.

No matter what role you currently occupy in these scenarios, remember that we are not even the judges of ourselves. God the only Judge. But He does give us plenty of wisdom for evaluating our own behaviors. Ask yourself the question, “Who is going to parent me?” You have freedom to make your decisions, but you cannot choose the outcome of those decisions. We are held accountable for what we have done. God wants to make you into the kind of person He wants you to be. He made you, and He also understands the ingredients He put into you. He gives us the free will and the strength to say “yes,” “no,” or “wait” to ourselves. Learn how to judge your own behaviors for your own benefit. The adult part of you should gently question the wisdom of your actions at times. Be kind to yourself and others as you do this because God is kind. Humans are a risk. Take the risk of being the best version you can be. You are a one-time occurring person, and you only get one life. What meaning does God want to create with that life?

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Twilight seems like a wisp of time; it comes and goes and is gone. It occurs twice a day, bookending the days and nights. Is this simply an accident of the Earth’s rotation and revolutions around the sun? Nothing God creates is without meaning and purpose, and twilight, Cinthia explains, is a beautiful gift to us.

Cinthia explored dictionary definitions of twilight as (for example) “the diffused light from the sky during early evening or morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth’s atmosphere.” Twilight is a time of transition; it gives us time to reflect on the day we have had and to move into night, or to come awake and move into the day. It is the in-between time when things are ambiguous, obscured, winding up or winding down. It can be calming, and it can be invigorating. Imagine life without twilight, life in which darkness fell suddenly as we were driving and dawn broke all at once on our sleeping eyelids. Twilight gives us the time to adjust, to prepare, to change with the rhythm of the day.

Photographer Jacob Lucas has written about the under-appreciated and under-utilized light that comes through the atmosphere at twilight. This is not just one type of light, either, but breaks into three phases in each twilight. Civil twilight happens when the sun is just below the horizon and allows for seeing the brightest stars and planets and well as the horizon and objects on earth. The light is mostly gold and pink. Nautical twilight is the time when the sun is a bit further from the horizon; light dissipates more quickly, making details harder to see and silhouettes more realistic for capturing on film. Astronomical twilight is the closest to darkness, and capturing handheld images is nearly impossible in its light.

The concept of twilight can extend past the natural, however. Spiritual and emotional or psychological twilights can exist, as well. can be natural, spiritual, emotional/psychological.

Cinthia explored the twilights involved in the Passion of Jesus. It was likely sunset as He moved into the Last Supper with His disciples, a time when He washed the feet of His betrayer and tried to tell His friends the last things He wanted them to know before His death. Twilight led Him into the dark night in which He would sweat blood in Gethsemane, receive His betrayer’s kiss, face the soldiers and officials, and begin six grueling trials that included periods of torture and went through dawn (the second twilight of the Passion). That morning He carried His cross to the Place of the Skull and was nailed there, but a different kind of twilight came when the darkness of night fell at noon. That afternoon, another strange twilight came when He committed His Spirit into the hands of His Father; the earth quaked, the veil in the temple was torn in two, and Jesus died. The darkness was over, but twilight returned as His body was buried at sunset.

This is what God does with us everyday in little and big pieces. We go through hours, days, seasons, pregnancies, job trajectories, the raising of children, the nurturing of relationships. We experience process after process; we live in process and go through a multitude of transitions. These twilights include times it is really dark and times when we see things in clearer, more beautiful lights than we have previously done. God walks us through these processes with great intentionality. He

Jesus was fully present every moment of His life on earth, though we are usually not. Twilight is an especially important time to be present because it eases us into the next phases of our life. Twilight is a gentleness from God, a kindness He gives us even though we resist it at times.

What twilight are you in? Is something beginning? Is something starting to end? Is there a transition on the horizon? Stop and hear God saying that He is with you in the process. Accept God’s grace as He leads you into the change. Be present in twilight.

Twilight is God’s kindness to lead us into change gradually. There are some changes that are more abrupt, but don’t skip over the transition time He gives you. Don’t refuse His kindness in leading you through the process His way. God is creating this process for you to be able to get to the other side safely.

Human beings were designed to need rhythms of work and rest, expansion and contraction, sleep and wakefulness, obscurity and discovery. We need times of preparation and times of repose. God knows His creation and its need for seasons and rest. Even He rested on the seventh day after He created the world, showing us this pattern and giving it to us for our sake. The work was good, He showed us, but the rest was holy. The Sabbath commandment gets transgressed more than any other, and it has been distorted in every direction. But its original intent was to strengthen us, and it will still do this if we allow it. God even gave laws to the Israelites that allowed the land to rest so it could produce more later.

Rest is vulnerable. Rather than trust the Lord, we often want to keep working and pushing. But breaking natural laws brings consequences. When we fight against the physiology of our bodies, we will lose. We will weaken ourselves and miss the healing, the restoration. We will start too soon, end too soon, or not start or end at all. Cinthia explains, I need to trust the One Who died for me. If I resist doing my day, my life, I may miss some hardships but also steal from myself the blessings that are waiting for me.

Twilight often requires us to go through the grief and loss process. Sometimes this is because we are experiencing deep loss. Sometimes we even have to grieve the loss of something good for something better.

Just as we did not create twilight, we cannot depend on ourselves to travel through it. Cinthia explains a practice she uses to focus herself and experience her position with God more fully. The Jesus Prayer, which is more than 1,500 years old, goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Cinthia is one of many believers who have practiced repeating this inside her heart and mind, inhaling during the first half of the sentence and exhaling on the second half. She wholeheartedly recommended this practice, not because God needs our repetition to hear us, but because we need the repetition to humble ourselves, to ask unceasingly for the mercy He has already given us. God’s destiny for us is always good but not always comfortable. We need His mercy to come through it.

God has not forgotten us when we are in twilight. He knows what He is doing even when He allows something good to end or allows us to go into dark nights of the soul. He leads us to surrender as Jesus did: “Not my will but Thy will be done.” Often we find that surrender initiates morning twilight, but He is with us the whole time before that, too. Read Psalm 23. He will walk us through until we are ready for the full light of day. Then, after such a night, it is time to rise. When that time comes, we can trust Him for that, too. When He raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus made sure the stone was rolled away and then shouted for him to come forth. There is a time when the cock crows, signaling dusk or dawn. Hear the voice of the Lord calling you to come forth, and know that it is time.

Where are you in this process? Have you been in the tomb too long? Are you refusing to come forth? Are you needing to stop and reflect but wanting to do something to feel better instead? What twilight are you in? Are you ignoring it, lengthening it, trying to get out of it too quickly? Honor God’s timing, and return to the natural rhythm of how He made us to be. Twilight is the transition that moves us into the next phase of our calling. It makes us slow down and find Jesus. Twilight is crucial. Don’t miss it.

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Have you ever told the truth and yet not been believed? Have you ever struggled to know whether to believe someone else? Distrust can be painful on both sides, but knowing what to believe can be difficult. Today Cinthia tackles the dual topic of trusting and being trusted, starting with the statement that everything is a risk.

Trust is necessary for life, and trust is always a risk. Belief in anything is a risk, but no one can take a step without putting his weight somewhere. Even our day-to-day tasks require trust in objects, systems, and people. Relationships require trust, and all of us have had variable experiences trusting others.

That said, some people are better risks than others; some people show us that they are more trustworthy, while others show us that they are not. Are you a good risk for other people? What do you show others with your life? First, make sure that you are a good risk. Don’t pretend. If people are trusting you, they are risking on you. If people are talking to you, they are risking on you. Be a good risk.

Wanting to be trusted is a risk because it hurts to want trust and not receive it, especially when one has worked hard to be trustworthy. God takes that risk with us. He is completely trustworthy; we can take Him at His Word. He even engages with us as we challenge Him, though we should not disrespect Him. But still we question Him over and over, struggling to believe He exists, wondering if He loves us, grasping for control of our lives because we trust our own plans more than we trust His. Jesus’s disciples did not really understand or trust His love until after He had died for them and come back to life, and even then they struggled with doubt, confusion, and the need for reassurance. Human beings have a tendency to think in terms of “If (fill in the blank), then I would really know that he/she loves me.” We keep trying to figure out the real test that will finally hold down our fear. But this is dangerous because it is based on our own imaginations; the things we think will satisfy us often do not do so.

It takes humility to continue to engage with someone who struggles with trust when you are not the one who wounded them. In this situation, focus on kindness and try not to make the person’s other-inflicted wounds worse. The person may have hurt from the past; maybe the person does not know how to get the help he or she needs. At some point, if the person consistently refuses to risk trusting you no matter how much you demonstrate that you are trustworthy, it may become hard or impossible to have a relationship with that person. Relationship requires risk.

Sometimes, however, another person’s mistrust in us comes from our own actions. When we have lied to someone, been untrustworthy in a relationship, neglected someone, wounded or harmed someone in some way, etc., it may take a long time to regain trust—perhaps much longer than we hoped. It may take longer than seems fair to the one who committed the offense, and the one who is trying to trust again may become more comfortable, only to start questioning again and need further transparency and amends. Sometimes trust has to be re-earned minutes, days, and again years later. If you have wounded someone deeply, you may have to keep demonstrating your trustworthiness until that person is ok again.

In the absence of glaring reasons not to trust another person, how can the average person decide whether to risk trusting that person? Cinthia cited the old proverb, “Trust but verify.” At some point, we all have to risk trusting someone, just as we have to take reasonable risks trusting our brakes, our chairs, our food, and so many other things. It is impossible not to trust someone or something, and that always involves risk. We only get to decide in what directions we point our risk-taking. Believing in someone means that we can be let down, and that is very scary. But we cannot have relationship without risk. So we trust while waiting to see, and we increase trust as someone or something continues to prove trustworthy. Consider how you would feel if you had to prove yourself time and time again without ever being believed, or without the person being able to hold onto his or her belief in you once you leave the room. Do not keep your loved ones forever in limbo, always trying to earn your trust and never able to do so by any reasonable means. Look for evidence of trustworthiness, but do not think any human being is going to be risk-free.

So what does it mean to be trustworthy? When the object of our potential trust is a flawed human being, perfection is not one of the options. Unless the person you are trusting is Jesus, that person is going to mess up. (And, for that matter, even though He never messed up, Jesus’s followers were repeatedly surprised, confused, and disillusioned when He did things differently when they were expecting Him to do.) With flawed human beings, believing in someone does not necessarily mean you are shocked when that person messes up. Trustworthiness in a flawed human being is more about whether the person is willing to acknowledge an error, take responsibility, and work to make things right. Expecting perfection from other people will always disappoint us and will eventually drive others away from us. Who wants to keep trying to gain trust when that trust is simply unattainable?

So pay attention to glaring red flags, but also pay attention to the positive traits of the people in your life. This will strengthen both you and them. It will not necessarily make everything feel like it is going to be ok, but it can keep you from having to miss out on relationship entirely. Look at the evidence as objectively as you can. Find a good risk, and risk trusting. Acknowledge that there is a level of risk and decide to go forward. It is often the inner child that keeps demanding further proof, that keeps imagining he or she will finally feel secure if only the person does [fill in the blank]. The inner child is not the one to consult about these kinds of decisions. Find the adult part of yourself, and go through the grief and loss process. The adult part has to decide if another human is a good risk, and this involves risk to find out. Sometimes we find out we were wrong. You are going to be let down; we all are. Trust is hard for everyone, and no one wants to be hurt. But practice being an adult. Acknowledge who you are trusting. Distinguish between childish wishes and adult acceptance of reasonable risk. Don’t just say no first and make others coax you into relationships. Trying not to trust anyone is not a good life. You have choices. You can say yes, no, ask questions, etc. Otherwise, you deprive yourself. The fact for all of us is that, when we refuse ever to risk, we become problematic risks ourselves.

There are situations, however, in which we do well to learn not to trust a particular person. Sometimes people show us evidence that trusting them is not reasonable. When this happens, we can acknowledge it and respond accordingly but still move forward in life with joy. You can be ok, even if it takes time. God made it possible to move through things, to heal, to keep moving. You do not have to let that person’s choices tell you what everybody is like. Are you letting the least-trustworthy people from your past tell you what all human beings are like? If you have already discovered that those people were not worthy of your trust, they may not make good lenses through which to view the rest of the world.

Ironically, despite the flawed nature of human beings and the perfection of God, we often trust people more than we trust God. We view people as more of a sure thing because we can see them. Do you have history with God? Do you engage with Him? Do you have reason to believe He is trustworthy? Do you believe that He wants a relationship with you and that He is patient with your doubts? Engage with Him. He knows trust is always a risk, but that refusing ever to trust is always to risk even more.

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Practice makes perfect, right? Well, that depends on what we are practicing. Habits are powerful, and repetition makes them stronger. This can be a huge advantage when we form and reinforce positive habits; it means we automatically do positive things without the decision fatigue that can come with making so many conscious decisions. Habits are useful and efficient because they allow us to engage in our day-to-day lives without consciously engaging in a conscious decision-making process for every move we make. Without them, it would be difficult to get through the day. But this process can backfire when we form and reinforce negative habits because they become part of our automatic approach to life; they become natural to us. Our bad habits are powerful and hard to change.

Humans develop habits of the heart, habits of the mind, and habits of the body. Each can be positive or negative, and some can start as positive but become negative as they reach extremes or take on roles they were not meant to play. Habits of the heart can include patience or impatience, forgiveness or unforgiveness, acceptance or obstinacy, kindness, cruelty, indifference, truthfulness, lying, and so many others. Habits of the mind can include taking every thought captive (II Corinthians 10:5), policing your own thoughts, self-hatred/self-criticism, judgments of others, lying, and more. Habits of the body can include reaching for a seatbelt or a cigarette, eating habits, use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, or other drugs, engaging or not engaging in healthy behaviors like exercise or taking appropriate medications, and physical violence. Each of these can be positive or negative, and our brains engage with each of these by forming neural nets that become triggered by context and lead us more easily into enacting that habit. This means that each time we engage in one of these habits, we reinforce it for the next time.

Regarding thought habits, Cinthia cited Proverbs 23:7, which states, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.” She also recommended a book written by James Allen in 1903 called Dealing with the Power of Thought. We become what we think. What do you think within yourself? Into what is it making you? God’s thoughts are higher than ours.

Habits can be changed, broken, and built, but doing so requires real commitment. Starting is often the hardest part. So first, consider your “why:” Why do you want to change this? Intense change requires powerful motivation. Incentives and rewards can help reinforce new habits, but engagement in the idea in the first place makes things much easier. Next, consider the context and dynamics of the habit you want to change. Put yourself in situations that make it easier to repeat the new habit and resist the old one. Use your body to get where you need to be. (For example, if you want to go to the gym but also do not want to go, just stand up. Standing is not the same as going, and you can still not go once you stand up. Then walk toward the door. You still don’t have to go; just walk toward the door. Perform one part of the process at a time without committing to the next step yet.) As you progress in your habit formation, find a way to give yourself small rewards such as praise from an accountability partner. Remove the barriers to success, and get some distance when you need it. (For example, if you need to get away from the refrigerator, walk around the block, etc.) Remind yourself that following the new path will get easier. (Often new habits gain more power after about twenty-one days of consistent repetition.) Be sure not to shame yourself; remember, your brain thinks it is helping you by trying to direct you toward old habits. There are costs to new behaviors, such as paying more for vegetables than for unhealthy foods, so find ways to adjust to the costs. Surround yourself with encouraging messages. Speak a Bible verse into your phone and play it for yourself throughout the day. And share the gift: help your children form good habits, positive routines, and healthy self-talk.

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The past is hard for everyone. Some long for the past, while others want to erase or avoid it. Many of us want to erase parts of our pasts while holding onto others. But the key to dealing with the past is not romanticizing it or avoiding it; it is learning from it. Cinthia states today that “time is either a guide into your future or a tormentor that can’t be changed.” Which will you allow your past to be for you?

One of the reasons learning from the past can be tricky is that lots of factors impact our memory of it. Neuroscientists have found that people rarely remember the past with perfect accuracy. Sometimes family members seem to genuinely “remember” the same events very differently. How do we know what is fact and what is simply our experience or perception? One key is to be gentle with your past. Remember, the goal is not to live in the past or use it to judge ourselves or others. We do have to resist what we know is untrue. Rewriting the past is not helpful. We can face what we know and find the options we have with those things, like forgiving ourselves and others. Without facing our pasts, we tend to try to redo the same things over and over again. What do you need to learn in order to stop repeating the same mistakes and dynamics? You can borrow from the past, but don’t live there.

We honor ourselves and the past when we learn things that help us going forward. Are there things about your past you can clarify? Time is something that we experience and observe. It relates to sequential events and changes. Memory of the past is useful when we learn from it but detrimental when we use it for self-flagellation. The past is not for beating up ourselves or others. Who do you need to forgive, including yourself?

Address the past, but realize that you are in the present. Repeating the same mistakes and dynamics, continually trying to get what we needed but did not get in the past, contaminates our future. Resist the compulsion to redo everything; allow the past to be over, even while you face it. Don’t ignore the past. Do the work of self-forgiveness. Judging our past actions and judging our past selves are different things, just as judging others’ actions and judging other human beings is different. Be willing to learn and forgive.

Remember, rules without relationships produce rebellion, and hypocrisy happens when we cannot live up to our own standards. God wants to work with you. He has seen your sin, your mistakes, your errors. If He Who is perfect can face what you have done, He can help you to face it. God has power and wisdom to work through all of this. He is not torn between acknowledging the reality of your evil actions and loving you; He has solved that problem. So how is God revealing Himself through you or to you? Is He doing it through your strengths or weaknesses? He wants us each to ask Him about what He is doing with us. We all have things in our past. But we don’t have to let that get in the way of what God wants to do through us. Don’t let shame get in the way of having a relationship with Him. Let Him lead you into being the version of you He intended you to be when He made you.

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Today’s topic is the neuroplasticity of the brain and how we can use it to take charge of our own thought processes. Cinthia opened today with a quote usually attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” We see the problems that occur with repeating behaviors that are not working, but what about our thoughts? Our brains create what are called “neural nets,” or networks of brain cells that learn to fire in succession in response to outside stimuli; these are often compared to superhighways in the brain. This creates habits of thought that we often do not even notice because we are so used to them. For example, the phone rings, and you see a particular name on the screen. What thoughts go through your head automatically? The stimulus happens, the thoughts begin… and, before you know it, you are traveling down that old familiar superhighway with its familiar assumptions and other habits of thought. And every time you travel the highway, it gets reinforced, becoming more entrenched and powerful in your brain and your life. Thus, our brains create these “crazy-fast” reactions to stimuli, but we can take control of this process and retrain our brains to respond differently.

Sarah Gibson has written about this concept with the old computer-inspired idea of GIGO: “Garbage in, garbage out.” We can, she emphasizes, decide what ideas to feed ourselves. We can decide which thoughts to dwell on. We can reroute the garbage truck, so to speak, and actively work to take the “trash” out of our brains. We can create bypasses to help us stop traveling the superhighways that are not helping us. God made our brains to work for us, not against us. Are you a lazy thinker? Challenge your own thoughts and feelings. Update and maintain your own roads. Take responsibility for the roads you travel. Clean up the negativities, the lies, the assumptions. Reroute the garbage truck. All of this is easier to say than to do, but it is well worth the work.

First, start to notice the neural nets that exist for you. In what areas do you quickly find yourself starting down a familiar thought/feeling/reaction path? Cinthia discussed her own struggle with mental “superhighways” related to an eating disorder that began early in her life; for her, there are still triggers to follow a mental track related to fears of being fat, triggers she has to consciously and intentionally resist. We may have perceptions about why other people do what they do, and our thoughts on this reinforce our judgments and assumptions about others. Some people have superhighways related to fears of trusting anyone. Sometimes we think we know what will happen in a situation because we believe that is what “always” happens, but we may actually be overgeneralizing. What are your superhighways? What are your triggers to jump on those ramps, and what thoughts and feelings occur in response to those triggers?

Once you identify some patterns, the first thing to do is learn to pause. To continue our superhighway analogy, pull your mental “car” over into a safe spot and take a minute to examine what just happened and where you are now headed. Question your immediate emotional response. Seek different information. Find out what else there is to know. Clarify with the person who made a comment; what did they mean by that? Remember, our brains create these “crazy-fast” reactions based on emotional response. Remember, feelings are very real, but they are not always true. Don’t believe everything you think!

We can retrain our reactions, but it is also important to recognize that some superhighways in our minds are so entrenched that we may struggle with them for a very long time, just as Cinthia described still having to resist eating-disordered thoughts decades after she has stopped living as an eating-disordered person. Especially when we are dealing with roads that were formed when we were young or roads that were formed through trauma or deep wounding, roads we have traveled for years or as a way to avoid other painful roads, there may always be a first reaction, an impulse to get on the “ramp” toward the series of thoughts and behaviors the brain has learned to enact in response to parts of life. The brain may still go to the old road automatically, but, remember, you can teach your brain to hit the brakes before heading down the superhighway. Work on construction of the new bypass system. Every time you travel the old roads, you make them stronger, but every time you take yourself down a new path, you help to construct and strengthen that new route. We have more control over our own thoughts than we give ourselves credit for.

One thing that can help us as we try to build new roads is a back-to-basics approach toward what is important. This approach stresses simplicity, focuses on the essentials, and proactively moves us toward the things that make the most difference. It helps us do what matters instead of getting bogged down in unnecessary complexity. If you think simplifying life could help you, consider these practical steps:

Identify the things that add unnecessary complexity, busy-ness, and overwhelm to your life and work. What really matters to you, and what hijacks your time and energy away from those things?
Create a plan to reduce or eliminate those things. (This may involve some grief and loss.)
Identify things that are most efficient and effective, the things that make the most difference toward helping you accomplish what really matters.
Create a plan to maximize those things.
Put boundaries in place to protect these changes.

Cinthia shared several verses from Proverbs that offer simple principles we can use to identify what is helping or hurting us, including Proverbs 10:9, 10:17, 14:15, 16:25, 27:6, and 27:12. She also offered some questions to ask ourselves, such as the following: Have I considered the possible outcomes for my course of action, or am I just excited about an idea and hoping that it works? Do I think I am the exception to a rule in some area? Sometimes we need to relearn basic truths about God in order to be able to let go of things that are getting in the way of what is best for us. God’s heart is never geared toward depriving us or taking away what is truly good; He wants the best for us. But sometimes we hold on to what we think is best, and it keeps us from enjoying the gifts He really wants to give us. So find some verses or sayings and implement them into your life. Remind yourself of what you know. Don’t just let life happen to you. Be committed to yourself—to your actual good, not your immediate gratification. The more committed you are to yourself, the less it will take to maintain and care for yourself over time.

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Human beings are locked in time while we live on the earth, and we used to know it. The sun went down, and people could no longer see to continue working, which meant they had to end the day’s work and rest. Time used to pace us, just as our bodies used to do. Now, however, we seem to be in a game against time. Our technology allows us to multitask at unprecedented levels. We move faster and are not even aware of the moments in which we exist. We regret the past, reliving what we cannot change, and we rush ahead into the future, planning and conquering moments that have not yet arrived -- and, when they do arrive, we are already in the next set of moments. Our minds can go places that our bodies cannot go, and our bodies are exhausted by struggling and being left behind. We watch each other dissociate, splitting ourselves and failing to be present where we are; this is hard on our psyches.

Time is a set condition, albeit one we fail to honor in the modern era. Time is on its own journey and has its own calling. It is bound by Something much bigger than we are. We are under the impression now that we manage and control time, but, in reality, we can only respect or disrespect it. We are arrogant to think that we can control time; this is a containment issue. It is tragic to die without having lived, but how can we take advantage of time when we do not respect it? Time is on our side, in a way; its existence means that we each have time. Would you find it easy to waste what you knew was yours, or would you capitalize on it? The existence of time gives each of us time to change, time to live, time to seek God, time to spend. God does not often tell us how much time we each have, but we only have so much. Time is like a Rubik’s cube; no matter how we work it, we never seem to be able to get it the way we really want it to be.

Learning to respect time involves learning to accept the past as something we cannot change. We must learn to forgive our parents and others who made mistakes that hurt us, and it often helps to recognize that most of them probably wanted to do well by us. The present can be changed, but the past has to be faced, healed, forgiven, accepted, etc.

There is a difference between living and existing. Learning to respect time means learning to appreciate the amazing fact that God uses us to reveal Himself. He may do it through our strengths or our weaknesses, but there is no greater purpose. He is a God of paradox, though not of moral contradictions. God can work through all or none of what we have. He is a God of relationship who deals well with the gray areas and the complications, despite His own perfection and faithfulness.

Cinthia discussed an article by Steve Bloom in which he pointed out that we often go through our days as if we had no power to change our lives for the better. Drifting through life can seem like less work, but it is quite lonely and, in the long-run, more difficult than using time well. Have you ever tried to dance with someone who will not dance? The difference between living and existing has a lot to do with how much control you have over your own life and from where you see that control coming. There is a difference between hoping and steering. We do not get to determine everything that comes our way, but we do get to decide whether we show up and how much control to give to different emotions, etc. Merely existing can involve staying in lives we dislike simply out of a lack of hope. Cinthia stated, “I would rather you mess up and have a story about how you messed up than to have no story.” Coveting others’ lives and blessings can also be a way of wasting our own time.

Time is always going the same way, and there will be a day when it stops. Time is something you own in a sense; it is your time. We can think of our days as tickets we spend. Are you learning the lessons that time is trying to teach you so that you can move on to the next lesson? The hallmark of a fool is that he never hears; he is so caught up in his own way of thinking that he repeats his own folly and just blames others. Each of us dies as a sole person.

Time is a gift from God, and using time wisely is a way of honoring the Giver. Do you love the gift more than the Giver? Do you want His blessings more than you want Him? What does God have to show you about time? What most tempts you to waste time? You cannot know how much time you have, but there is a limit. Time is a friend; it paces us, directs us, shows us the next steps. There will come a day when there is no time; we will be timeless. But right now you have today. Do the things that need to be done in time.

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When we do not take responsibility for being the best versions of ourselves, we often move toward pleasure to mitigate the pain. Now, pleasure is not bad -- it’s great, actually. But pleasure always has a price. Sometimes the price is worth paying, but, when we are using pleasure to mitigate pain, we often pay more than we acknowledge ourselves to be losing for our pleasure. Not only that, but we inflict a cost on others, sometimes without even being aware we are doing it.

A primary concept in today’s broadcast is that good character understands and respects the price of pleasure. Furthermore, good character qualities actually produce emotional, intellectual, spiritual, relational, and physical benefits. Consider the price of an addiction to yourself and to others versus the cost and eventual benefits of sobriety. Becoming a sober-minded person also has a cost, but, in the long-run, the gain is larger and the cost (for you and for others) less than that of continuing to be dominated by addiction as a way to deal with pain.

Pain is real. Pain management, when done morally, is the best antidote and possible cure for pain in this living world. It isn’t easy, though; that’s the problem. What do you need to do to deal with your pain? How do you do that? And what is your alternative? How much does it cost you to constantly be wanting to feel good, to need pleasure and propping up at all times? Pain is real, but is your antidote too costly for you and others? Consistently moving toward pleasure, especially pleasure without work, causes you to be a deductor rather than a contributor in others’ lives. Do you show up at the party wanting only to receive, or do you show up expecting to contribute in some way to the overall positive experience that people have there? We can even have this attitude about salvation, appreciating Jesus’s death and resurrection for our salvation but not doing much to help others experience His love since our salvation is covered.

Cinthia read II Timothy 3:1-5 from the New Living Translation, which includes a lengthy list of disturbing character traits that would become prevalent in the last days, and an encouragement not to invest our time and energy in relationships with people who primarily influence us toward those things. Human beings influence one another. We teach each other by example, give license to each other by what we do. We learn from each other all the time. In the modern era we tend to reject the idea that we each have a responsibility to society, confusing it with codependency or carrying the world on our shoulders. But we each have influence, and we each have a responsibility to own that influence. We all lead and follow, teach and are taught, even when we strive not to do one of those things. Doing any of them well requires humility. Your life really matters. Even if you don’t want to be seen, that sends a message. Bad behaviors weaken the person we were meant to be. You are a once-occurring person in the history of the universe, and you are responsible for the version of yourself that you choose to be and for the ways that influences those around you.

Discernment is important, and we can learn to be more discerning. Discernment involves learning to see what is beneath the surface, judging well, seeing past illusions into the reality that underlies them. It involves seeing things that are easy to overlook, things that appear to be inconsequential. It also involves knowing when to ignore the loudest part of what is happening when that part is only a distraction from more important pieces. Discernment is considered a virtue in Christianity. It gives us the ability to identify the voice of Wisdom and follow her at any cost. James 1:5 says that, if anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God. The Holy Spirit can give us wisdom. One way to practice discernment is to pay attention to information from all three “brains:” the head, the heart, and the gut. The head helps us with factual information, logic, making sense of things. The heart experiences feelings, which give us information our brains may not have noticed and help us sort out levels of importance. The gut can alert us to warning signals of which the head and heart were not aware. Discernment requires time; it works best when you do not rush into judgments.

Remember, discernment helps us recognize wisdom so we can follow her regardless of the cost. Crave discernment. Take your time, and don’t rush into judgment, even of yourself. Ask God for wisdom, and let your Creator help you to become the version of yourself that He meant you to be.