In Over My Head- Part 1
I sat weeping on the kitchen floor, flooded with sorrow. In the past four months I had been hit with a number of changes and challenges which I mentioned in this previous blog post. I was feeling extreme stress and anxiety daily and was beyond my ability to cope with all that I was facing in a healthy way. To be fully honest, I was falling apart.
Some seasons of our lives take us beyond our max and reveal the limitations of our emotional capacity. For me, this was that season. As I sat in a puddle of despair, my four-year-old walked into the room and said, very matter-of-factly, “Mama, you need Jesus!” Realizing that my ability to competently care for my kiddos was on the line if something didn’t change, I replied to her and said, “I do baby, I do need Jesus!” That day I prayed in the kitchen and told the Lord He had to come through and help me. While this might sound like a bossy prayer, in truth it was a faith-filled one. I had no idea how Jesus would come through for me, but I knew He would – He had to!
The reality is that the circumstances which expose our weaknesses and the gaps in our emotional maturity will be different for everyone, and there is no judgment in that. But what is the same for all of us in the moments when we are overwhelmed and falling apart is that God deeply cares. He is tender toward us in our weakness, and He has what we need to not only get through these times but to also grow through them. Although at the time I knew nothing about the 19 Relational Brain Skills taught by THRIVEtoday, looking back, I see that God brought me through this season by teaching me a few of the relational skills Himself.
One of the key reasons we can get stuck in emotions of fear, despair, or sorrow, is that we don’t have a pathway back to joy from those emotions. Just like a bridge can take you from the mainland to an island, our brains need well-developed pathways from negative emotions back to the security of finding peace and joy in God (Skill 11). My problem was that my brain had very rickety and unstable bridges from fear and despair back to joy. The results were that I felt overwhelmed and thus unable to remain relational and function in a healthy way. I needed a rewiring from the Lord!
Stay tuned for part two, where, I will share the process God took me through to rewire my brain and expand my emotional capacity.
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