Dear friends, grace to your and peace from Abba-God and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Way back in mid-August, I introduced our Emotionally Healthy Relationships series imagining our spiritual lives as a marathon—a long, long race, or facetiously, a five-year mission to explore strange new feelings, seek new life in Christ’s civilization, to boldly go where Christ has gone before!
Since then, we’ve leaned into our biblical roots and drawn insights and tools from modern psychology, deepening our discipleship and growing in loving relationship with God and each other. And it’s been good!
To varying degrees, we’ve practiced…
· Anchoring ourselves in the love of God by sitting quietly with God at least twice a day, beginning our mornings with God’s voice in scripture and looking back at night to notice God’s touch;
· Then working the program: checking in with each other—staying connected through affirmations, puzzles, what we notice and prefer, hope and dream;
· We’ve stopped mind-reading, clarified our expectations, and expressed our wishes gently and patiently;
We’ve…
· explored our families of origin—Jesus may be in my heart, but how does Grandpa (or Grandma!) still live in my bones?—
· and looked beneath the surface of our lives to recognize the emotions in our bodies, minds, and hearts, letting them move through us instead of stuffing them down to come out sideways as illness or irritability.
With growing awareness of what’s going on in ourselves, our EHR group participants have begun to…
· quiet ourselves to listen more deeply and fully to others;
· clarify our values using a tool for self-examination and awareness called the “ladder of integrity;” and
· put all these learnings together and become peacemakers who “fight clean.” We’re learning to stand calmly, with “patient endurance” in our own God-given places, and to move through conflict in Christlike, calm, healthy ways with family, friends, and colleagues.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality lives the Jesus Way of Resting in God’s Love and Following God’s Lead.
It isn’t easy. But it is life giving and good.
