Tim and I recently completed a difficult week of training; however, it was also a week of tremendous growth.  We completed the first track of a three-part track from “Thrive Today” regarding how brain science and theology work hand in hand.  We did assessments before we arrived on our capacity for joy and our emotional maturity.

Neuroscientists are now discovering that the brain can, indeed change, and that God can use relationships and skills to fill in the gaps for our maturity.  We are all at different levels in our emotional maturity and hopefully we will grow throughout our lives.  There is no shame in the place you find yourself. More than likely your caregivers could only give you what they knew.  No one is ever stuck at the level of emotional maturity that they find themselves today.  Everyone can grow!

Our flight to Michigan ended up taking 14 hours due to delayed and rerouted flights.  I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I started off the week sleep deprived. We finally arrived at our hotel after midnight on Saturday, and collapsed. Our training began Monday morning.

The classes started during the day and insomnia arrived each night.  After the third night of Tylenol PM not working, I took a prescription that I did not like to take.  I got one full night of rest and then the prescription did not work anymore.  The classes were amazing and we were learning so much, but I was struggling.  A lot!

I know this may seem like I’m changing the topic but hang with me.  Did you know that we can learn a lot from watching a baby develop?  It’s amazing.  Have you ever noticed a baby’s eyes in a public place looking at you with the baby smiling?  And of course you smile back, right?  The baby’s capacity for joy only lasts a few seconds before the child will look away.  Their brain needed rest.  If a person continues to force the baby to continue smiling and playing, they will get irritable.  Our brain needs to synchronize between joy and rest.

Let me tell you how I am defining joy.  Joy is when someone is glad to be with you or you feel like you are the apple of someone’s eye.  Do you know who is ALWAYS glad to be with you?  Jesus will NEVER leave you or forsake you.  Also, appreciation or thoughts of gratitude help your brain increase its capacity for more joy.  If we do not have enough joy in our brains, we cannot process trauma.

Our brain also needs to learn how to quiet.  This was where I was severely lacking.  I jokingly tell people I do everything at 90 miles an hour.  Well, most things.  Because of my history, my nervous system needed a lot of help.  Yes, I have healed and grown enormously since going to counseling for the first time at 24 years old, but God has shown me more of where I needed to grow in this current season.  I love the way He leads me.

NOTHING will trump how God has shown up for me through the biblical counseling I have received and offered over the years.  Being taught my new identity in Christ revolutionized everything!  Discovering my distorted concept of God, and seeing who He really was brought an intimacy between me and Jesus that I had never felt before.  Choosing to forgive those who hurt me transformed my wounded heart.  Learning about walking in the Spirit and not walking after the flesh was important.   Learning that my behavior did NOT determine my identity was incredibly life changing.  My union with Jesus and my new birth determines my identity.

I’ve also had years of secular therapy which brough tremendous healing.  God does not have a cookie cutter plan to bring emotional healing to His children.  Allowing God to minister to the little girl that was inside of me definitely brought more healing!  EMDR therapy brought about a freedom I had not experienced before.  But now God has led me to learn more about how He created the brain and this training has been priceless.

I could never write one blog that could explain what all we learned, but here is some important information.  Lots of scientist have been studying the brain for years and agree that we all have relational circuits in the brain.  Chris Coursey with “Thrive Today” explained it this way in a recent e-mail I received.

“Think of your relational circuits as the “ON/OFF switch” in your brain for connection.  When our “RC’s” are ON, we can see people as unique individuals to love.  When they switch OFF due to stress or fatigue, our brain goes into survival mode, treating people as tasks to manage or problems to solve.  When our circuits are OFF, we’ll feel resistant to even a well-meaning invitation to pray or connect.  But when they’re back online, connection feels more natural and we are better able to feel joy.”  And it’s easy to fall into enemy mode when our relational circuits are off.  Did you know there are ways to get your RC’s back on?

Isn’t connection what we all want?  A healthy connection with ourselves, with others and with God will make all the difference in the world.   We were created with a deep need for connection.  If you struggle with connecting, let’s talk. We would love to give you hope!   In the next blog I will be very vulnerable and share about a time on our trip that my relational circuits were off and how God used this incident to grow me.