Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to that makes total sense. A podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis. We setting the Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes alludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Hey everybody. So today I want to do a little solo episode and I want to talk a bit about our feelings and the thesis of this, of this short little reflection is, you know, for some of us, it's going to sound really obvious. And for others of us, we may have had experiences or have heard teachings that make us feel like the statement is a bit counterintuitive.
Speaker 1 00:01:05 But what I want to say is that God cares about our feelings. Like I said, that may sound kind of odd, but, um, but he really does. He cares about our emotions. He cares about how we feel about things and not just about the circumstances that might make us have the feelings about the things he cares. He cares about how we feel. And he cares about our emotions. Now, one of the things that got me thinking about this again, and some of, you know, some of you have like been to our house or our close friends and know that we have a Mastiff, you may have seen her on Instagram. She's super sweet. Her name is Brunhilda. We call her Hildy or bear, bear, or build a bear. Um, and I got her for my birthday about six years ago. And she was a gift from my husband.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 We all went, um, over just a hop, skip, and a jump over to Austin. And we saw these adorable massive puppies. And it was up to me to say, no, we can't bring one home. Of course, we brought one home for my birthday. And depending upon her behavior, you might hear that fact said really affectionately in our best little doggy voice, like, oh, what a sweet, good birthday present, or she's the best gift ever. But when she's doing things that are particularly annoying, like waking us up too early, or when she has sprawled out her massive body on the kitchen floor, making it completely impossible for us to move around her and make dinner. You might hear things from the family like, well, she was your birthday present, or you're the one who wanted to get her, but the truth is we love and adore this sweet pup, pup.
Speaker 1 00:02:58 She is just, she's part of the family. And, um, she's kind of small actually, as far as Mastiffs go, she's only about 130 pounds. Um, but she's got a bark that is a little bit bigger than her. And sometimes she startles people that walked down the sidewalk right in front of the house. And she, she makes herself in front of our little bay window and just, and just lets people know that she's there and that she sees them specifically, if they're walking, you know, a really scary dog, like a Chihuahua or something like that. Um, anyway, so she's a little bit small. She's got a big bark and she is a complete and total scaredy cat. So this is getting back to the God, caring about our emotions thing, but indulge me for a second with this story about my dog. So the, the biggest example that the kids like to cite about Hildy and her scaredy cat NES, is that she's terrified of trash cans.
Speaker 1 00:03:58 So it's like a beautiful day and she's begged to go out for a walk, right? So we do everything that we have to do to get this big dog out in the front door. And she makes it like down our walk. When we start turning toward, you know, the driveway of the neighbors. And then there it is, there's a trash can it's trash day and she physically can not go any further. She will stop mid-stride. She literally will put part of the leash in her mouth, turn her gigantic head a way from where I'm trying to get her to go and insist practically drags. Whoever is taking her back home trash cans. She's terrified, but that's not the only thing that she's scared about on occasion. We will see her or we'll hear her rather like from another room, just this one little tiny bark.
Speaker 1 00:04:59 And we're like, what in the world what's going on with Hilda? You know, of course at first we'll think it's a, you know, a squirrel or a neighbor dog. And then we realize when it doesn't end after a few moments that one of us will go into whatever room she's in and realize, oh, you know, an Ottoman got pushed in this, what she believes to be precarious position. And it's blocking her from where she is to where she is trying to be. Now she's 130 pounds and most of the time it's not actually blocking her. Right. It's just that the narrow pathway that she can see is she thinks not quite big enough for this damsel in distress to make her way to the other side. I promise it's the only time that she is somewhat aware of her enormous size is when something like that happens.
Speaker 1 00:05:53 And most of the time we just chuckle and we, he knew we, we let her out, but the other day, one of these moments of her kind of acting like a security cat got my attention. So we had friends coming over for dinner and I was, I was kind of splitting my day between doing my own homework and, and homeschooling the kids and cleaning house kind of like on this rotation. Right? And so, because all of this was being done on a rotation, I had cleaning supplies, kind of placed outside of the room on the floor and whatever room I was either had just come from or was headed to on my next, um, cleaning stop. And, and that's the way it was outside of my room on this particular day. And I was on the rotation where I was doing my own homework. So I was sitting in my room in the chair reading, and I could hear sometimes we call her shuffle and I could hear her little shuffle feature coming on the floor in the hallway.
Speaker 1 00:06:50 And I expected her to come and plop down in front of me at my feet. And the shuffling stopped. I thought, well, that's odd. So I turned around to, you know, Beck and her to come on in and keep me company. And then I noticed she's just standing in the hallway, like, and so I, you know, I try and cajole her, come on girl. And I, you know, I'm doing the kissing noises and I'm patting my, my, uh, leg and, and she's not moving. And I could tell she wanted to, but again, it was like she was stuck and I was trying to figure out what she was afraid of. Why does she think she was stuck? So as I turned my head a little bit further, I could see that the broom was there, kind of in the hallway, kind of next to her, leaning up against the wall.
Speaker 1 00:07:36 And she's looking at me like she wants to come in and then kind of turning her head toward the broom as if, to make me aware of her obvious situation. That if she tried to come, this broom might attack her. Like, it's, it's going, something's going to happen. And she's going to be attacked by this broom. So I'm thought this, this dog is absolutely ridiculous. She's in no danger, nothing is happening to her. Just come on in, just, just come on. And she wouldn't do it. She wasn't budging. So I know better I've, I've lived through this situation with her before. So, so I get up from my studies. I go over and this time I didn't, I didn't move the broom. I just stood in front of it. I left it leaning up against the wall where it was in that corner. And I just stood in front of it. And I put my body between her and her perceived threat. And I let her know that I wanted her to come where I was and that she was going to be okay if she did. In fact, make that journey. I didn't take the obstacle away from her, but I made a little bridge so that she could pass through freely.
Speaker 1 00:08:53 And as I was doing, I thought, God cares about our feelings, right? This concept, this idea that is so basic, but so profound first hit me like a ton of bricks, probably actually around the time that we were bringing Hildy home. When she was a puppy, we were also waiting to bring home our youngest son from Africa and one who we were adopting and the situation was, had gotten really political. And I was continually just racked with anxiety. When we were waiting for him to come home, there were a couple of years and, and really those, those last few months where it became more and more uncertain, whether or not the situation was actually going to allow for us to come home, um, with him and, you know, thankfully all of that is done now. And, and there's a lot of details I won't bore you with, but you know, even, even conference calls with the department of state, you know, just waiting, um, as they negotiated and, and we were, you know, asking them to advocate on our behalf, um, and, and hundreds of other families waiting for their children to come home. And every day, of course, our family prayed and it felt like almost every day I cried and I was second guessing, you know, what, what were we even doing here? How did we even get here in the first place? In all of this, of course, I can look back years later and see it slightly more clearly all of these emotions came from the same base place in me. I was terrified.
Speaker 1 00:10:41 I was afraid that we were going to lose our child. And during that time I was found myself in the Psalms a lot. And the time that it hit me, like a ton of bricks, that, that God really cares, you know, not just about our obstacles, but he cares about our feelings that we encounter. When we, when those obstacles come up, I was in Psalm 34, and this is one that I had read a hundred times and I'd been continually reading it. And I'm going to read it to you right now. And I'm going to point out where this hit me. So this is Psalm 34. You've heard it. You've you've heard it a number of times too. You've read it. You've you've, you've sang it. Maybe this, this is it. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Speaker 1 00:11:39 My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. Inherit his first four. I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. We're going to come back there, but I'm going to finish this song because it's, it's so good. Verse five, look to him and be radiant. So your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried and was heard by the Lord and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord in camps around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him? Oh, fear the Lord. You his holy ones. For those who fear him have no one. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack.
Speaker 1 00:12:36 No good thing. Come old children. Listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord, which of you desires life and covets many days to enjoy good. Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking to seat, depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against evil doers to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from the mall. He keeps all their bones. Not one of them will be broken. Evil, brings death to the wicked. And those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
Speaker 1 00:13:39 It's so beautiful. But what hit me in that moment was that the Psalmist declares that God doesn't just want to deliver the Psalmist from the danger in that moment that he's writing about, but he feels terrified. And he becomes convinced that the Lord wants to deliver him from that feeling too, that God wants to deliver him from his fears. This is, this is huge. This is massive. God wants us to feel unafraid with him. He wants us to feel safe. So our youngest son did come home and he's the sweetest pie. And for all of you parents out there, whether you're adoptive parent or not, you know that when the kiddo comes home, that's when the real work begins. Right? So the journey to him getting home had been a torturous one, but then we really started the heavy lifting as parents of our fourth child.
Speaker 1 00:14:38 And each kid is different, right? So as we were doing our, I don't know, maybe we'll refer to it as parental continuing education, right. As we do. Um, especially when we feel desperate as I did, um, it was recommended to us that we engage with some of the resources from the late Dr. Karen purpose and the research that she and her colleagues have done out of Texas Christian university. Uh, they're still do amazing work by the way. And I'll, I'll link them in the show notes here. And, and they really ministered have ministered to us over the years. And, um, the work they do for families of, of they say children from hard places, which I love, because I think that's all of us, right? We're all children from hard places. Um, but this one particular idea that comes back to me, probably the most frequently from, from Dr. Purvis and her team is this idea of felt safety. So this is how it's described, um, in, in their literature, felt safety is described when adults basically arrange the environment, this is what she says, adults arrange the environment and adjust their behavior. So children can feel in a profound and basic way that they are truly safe in their home. And with us, she goes on to say, until a child experiences, safety for his or herself, trust can't develop and healing and learning won't progress, we offer felt safety. So healing may begin.
Speaker 1 00:16:15 I want you to sit with that for a minute. It's going to, it'll probably take a minute. It took me a minute. This felt safety, right? And I think doesn't this sound just like the Lord that he wants us to feel safe with him to have this profound and basic feeling of being truly safe with him. We don't know what's ahead of us. We don't know what's in front of us. And really ultimately I'm convinced more and more that that doesn't even matter as much as our learned ability to trust God. We all know by now, things will not always work out.
Speaker 1 00:17:05 God doesn't always remove the danger or the hardship, but he does. I believe adjust the environment and try to get our attention, drawing it to himself so that we can feel in a profound and basic way that we are safe with him, for the children from hard places that Dr. Purvis talks about healing and learning are dependent on this felt safety. And I think it's the same way for us as children of God. I know it goes back to the silly example. I knew that broom wasn't going to hurt my dog, but she didn't. So I moved, I got up and I put myself in between that obstacle and her and I called her to come to me. I know it's silly and it's with a pet, but in that moment, it felt so profound. And I couldn't help, but kind of chuckle as I did it. And as I thought, like, like I delivered her from her fear, right? She got to come over, but this is what God does for us just on a much bigger scale. Right? And that Sama said, he delivers us from our fears that that kind of affirms to me that he cares about our feelings, right? Whether our worries are warranted or not, he wants to draw our attention elsewhere, namely toward him for the sake of our healing so that we can learn to trust in him.
Speaker 1 00:18:41 Jesus tells his followers not to be anxious, right? So does Paul in the scriptures, the holy spirit is often called the comforter or the helper because we need that comfort. Right? As the church, as brothers and sisters were to sit with each other when we're in mourning and when we're experiencing gladness, we set our hope, our hope on him. We're commanded to rejoice. God cares about our feelings. Now. He doesn't want them to own us or to lead us, but he definitely did create us to feel, we can see Jesus feeling. And I think he did this in part because our emotions like, like all of them, if we'll let them, they, the good, the bad and the ugly can lead us to him. When we're afraid, we can look to him and gain trust. When we're anxious, we're reminded that Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow.
Speaker 1 00:19:50 And Paul encourages us to pray with thankfulness and hearts full of gratitude. When we're grieving, we can be reminded of those moments. When Jesus wept, when our hearts are full of joy, waking me reminded of those moments that Jesus, feasted and partied with his friends. When we need comfort, we can hear his kindness. When we feel like everything is lost, we can be reminded that there is hope in him that he is near to the broken hearted. So I know in a way this feels like 1 0 1, but it's good for me. And I hope it's good for you to come back to this every once in a while, the links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music, and podcast production by Seth SETI. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app, you can also visit us at that. Makes total sense.com
