Out of Religion, Into Relationship: Part 1

By Dorothy Mitchell

This is the story of my journey to wholehearted healing and connection.

The Setup. I grew up in a very small evangelical church with liberal leanings relative to the rest of the Church of Christ denomination. They embraced women as capable leaders, deacons, teachers, and servants within the church partly out of necessity because of their small population, but also out of general Bible study and local professional attitudes. The church denominational theology was organized around the cessationist premise that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the time of the first apostles. My congregation neither endorsed nor repudiated that belief directly, and I had no experience or knowledge that would cause me to question that premise or its effects.

Dorothy drinking from the old church fountain

Although the church hesitantly leaned in the direction of the Holy Spirit more and more as the years went on, the endeavor was of the cautious-blind leading the cautious-blind. We didn’t know that agreements in the spirit stick around until they are explicitly refuted or put down. We had very little grid for God’s heavenly kingdom and great fear of passion, mysticism, and the unknown.

Deep in my heart, I knew the spiritual world was real. I knew some people heard God and had a personal relationship with Jesus. Yet I could not seem to grasp it for myself. I grew increasingly disenchanted and frustrated with the evangelical world’s flat take on a seemingly one-sided relationship with a Jesus who could not talk back. Though I agreed in theory that such a relationship was crucial to my Christian walk, I could not make mine come alive, and no one seemed equipped to teach me how to make it bi-directional and real. Prayer felt very close to useless. But Holy Spirit had plans to guide me deeper.

The Commitment. I had always known I wanted to be baptized someday, but I felt I could not make the commitment in good conscience until I felt that I was willing to give my whole life to follow Jesus. One night I had a dream that I knew came from the Holy Spirit. I saw a white and purple flag featuring the dove of the Holy Spirit waving in my dream. In the dream, I was teaching some children about Jesus, who stood behind them. The children confronted me and asked me how I could teach them about him if I had not committed and was not baptized myself?

When I woke up, I knew it was time.

I felt nothing in particular during the baptism event, but Holy Spirit began to show me things. One time he even downloaded an entire parable to me. While I was applying to college, I would idly ask God where I would be in the future and I would receive faint glimpses in the blink of an eye. Later in the year, I recognized myself in those places he showed me. This brought me reassurance about my purpose and my destiny. I did not want to assume I knew where God wanted to send me. Eventually, I settled on Hope College in Michigan where I could pursue creative writing, art, and Japanese in an environment that encouraged its students to grow in their Christian walk.

Finally, finally, I would be allowed to nourish my passions with people who also wanted to be in school, with people as motivated as myself! I fully expected to flourish, but instead I attained accolades and success without thriving. I was frequently too anxious to enjoy my freedom. I made many acquaintances but struggled to make strong friendships, which came lowest on my priority scale. I felt chronically battered and exhausted. I realized I had absorbed toxic expectations and habits from twelve years of school that I did not know how to unlearn. I continued to do my work and enjoyed my classes, but outside of class I felt something was dreadfully wrong. I did not know how to live as a whole human being.

Have you also experienced such an existential crisis? Stay tuned for the conclusion of this story of hope.

Pranked by the Wine of Jesus' Blood

By Dorothy Mitchell

Jesus is hilarious, and this true story is too good of an illustration not to share. I wrote the original draft on September 29, 2016, not long after I reached legal drinking age.

I woke up early from a dream. For the first time ever, I had been prompted to intercede on my own for another family! My heart was full of joy. After praying for them and praising God, I didn't want to go back to sleep, and I had hours to use at my leisure, so I waited until my parents got up and made pancakes. This process went suspiciously smoothly...

What I didn't know: Mom (that is, Susan) had replaced the bottle that has always held fruit syrup with some kind of fermented grape juice or wine. I poured some onto my pancake. Unlike syrup should be, it wasn’t viscous, and it sank in more than it should have. I cut off a slice, and sniffed. It smelled fermented. I took a tentative bite. It tasted very wrong and maybe a little...iron-y? What is it??? In the worst possible case it could be...blood?!!!

Oh no! I panicked! As I raced to the sink to spit it out and pray for cleansing, I could hardly get the words out and in the back of my mind I could hear Jesus laughing. I mean. Jesus. LAUGHED. (I found myself chuckling, too.)

Mid-turn of the water-faucet, I got ahold of myself and stopped. “Why are you laughing at me?!!” I asked him.

In a faux-hurt voice, Jesus said, “Well, why are you spitting me out? THAT’S my blood! And my body!” In other words, Relax. It’s just Me.

“I did what? Oh no!” My jaw dropped. “Oops! Jesus, I’m so sorry!!!”

Of course. The wine is his blood. The bread is his body. I had inadvertently taken the wine and the bread together. God knew exactly what I would do with my extra time and energy that morning. This had been a TOTAL SET-UP by the face of Jesus known as Yeshua Yayin ha’Dam, the Wine of Jesus’ Blood.

After recovering my wits, Mom confirmed that the bottle held wine. And I did finish my pancakes. Maybe the wine/blood link was stronger than I thought...

So that is how I accidentally took communion this morning. Thank you Jesus for your perfect sacrifice; I will never forget how you pranked me! >.<

At Estuary Courts, we love the practice of communion and we always take it whenever we enter his courts of Heaven. It is our way of reminding ourselves and the spirit realm: “Jesus is in us, and we are in him. We rely on his New Covenant…”

Hard-Wired for Love

By Dorothy Mitchell

Do you ever wonder, “Why don’t people feel safe around me? Why can’t we all just get along?”

Everyone wants to be loved. We are built to respond to and seek out love. Why then, in our desperation to be loved, do we push others away? How do things go wrong before a single word has been exchanged?

It’s because our heart, the largely subconscious parts of our mind, is divided and trying to protect its own integrity. Our heart gets wounded. In response to traumas experienced in relationship or in community, our heart may develop deep insecurities. These insecurities are held in our emotion parts, and they rouse the guardian parts of our heart to step up and protect us. Guardians that are on hyper-alert or easily triggered can create a hostile and unpredictable context for friendship. Insecurities also affect the way the function parts of our heart walk and talk and act.

Your intention of friendship may be pure, but others may perceive that the relational safety they require cannot be guaranteed should they make a mistake. Some people are good at reading into others’ words or body language, and other people may be forewarned in their spirit, and may even subconsciously step carefully around you or avoid provoking you. It takes a mature guardian and a mature heart to be able to approach an insecure person with an immature guardian and relate and minister to them. Even then, some boundaries are needed.

Tensions. Sometimes two people have guardians with mutually incompatible ways of protecting the heart. One person’s penchant for yelling when upset is not compatible with another’s need to process conflict in silence. One guardian’s alarm is fed by seeing alarm in another guardian, and the two guardians’ hackles begin to raise at the same time—like two suspicious animals circling and readying for an imminent fight! When this happens, we could follow HeartSync founder Andrew Miller’s example in admitting, “my guardians don’t like your guardians.”

When I was at my most wounded, I had a habit of saying, “I would hate to meet myself. I don’t think we would get along.” At the time, this was probably true. One of the first people I was assigned to receive HeartSync ministry from was very much like me, and she was very competent at facilitating a HeartSync session while her ‘Original Self’ was in charge. But outside of a session, I could not understand why I was so nervous and tense around her, and I hoped someone else would be assigned to help me. She was a very complex person; I was a very complex person. We respected each other, but we just didn’t get along without accidental ouchies, like two hedgehogs trying to hug. But the more healing we both get through our synchronization to Jesus, the more likely we are to be able to get along on this earthly plane.

Shortcuts. Another reason why instant fear or dislike may take place is because of the patterns that guardians have picked up on over time. Human beings have a natural ability to analyze, categorize, and sort experiences and encounters with people, animals, and objects, and associate “these things” with “those things.” The amygdala in our brain, which is associated with the guardian parts of our heart, is particularly devoted to assessing whether these experiences put you in contact with something good, bad, or scary. Instead of approaching every situation as if it were absolutely new, your brain will try to read into it according to the patterns it has perceived in the past. While undergoing trauma, using shortcuts like these may be vital for survival.

This is easy to see in abused animals, who react with fear or anger to people who match the profile of their old abusive master in their memories. These animals must be re-homed carefully. So too can our fear be easily transferred from one person to the next or from one context to the next. But here’s the good news: so can joy. When you have a memory of someone you trust who has been devoted and good to you, that joy, love, and trust can be transferred to people who remind you of them. Your guardians like their guardians, and you get on like a barn on fire!

Society has a way of instilling stereotypes into us; you may hear us call this “programming.” What you see, read, and hear on the news, or in the paper, in books, in movies, on social media, or from friends and family informs us about the world we live in. But these stories are not necessarily true or retold at a frequency that reflects reality, and they can erode our innocence over time. When feeling threatened or scared, we make a lot of snap judgments based on these stories. At worst, we inflict harm and perpetuate phobias and bigotries through these snap judgments in the forms of sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, paternalism, and so forth.

Although it is good to question stories and pursue education about the diversity of cultures, I believe that the ultimate deliverance from all these -isms can only be found in Christ Jesus, in whom we are enabled to see each other as the Father sees us. We cannot return to dovelike innocence or embrace an unencumbered snakelike canniness by our own strength. But if we repent and submit our biases to the Lord for judgment, he will surely help us.

Interrelated Parts. In a nutshell, we get wounded (heart/identity/original self), and then our insecurities (emotion) fuel our guardians to come out, which can create a hostile or unpredictable context for relationship, affecting how we act and talk (function), and how free or cautious our friends (guardians) feel around us and react to us. And when the world consequently feels unsafe, our hopes and dreams (original self) gets relegated to the backburner so that we survive instead of thrive. But Jesus called us to an abundant life. If you feel stuck, let us help you in a HeartSync appointment: https://www.estuarycourts.com/book.

My Big Break: Surrender

By Susan Mitchell

God looks for every opportunity to break you out of stuckness. We can do a lot of things — therapy, prayer, journaling, talking with a friend — to give God that opportunity, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like much has shifted. If we keep chipping away at it, those small steps will pay off one day when the simplest thing breaks it all open. 

Control. Sometimes we get stuck because we are actually trying too hard without knowing how to unclench, attempting to wrest control over ourselves or our situation. That’s how it was for me, an irritable, self-described control freak.

My heart had already been softened and lightened through a few sozo sessions, in which I was led back to sad memories, saw God in the memories, and got his perspective on the situation. Although I felt more peace about that particular situation, my life in general wasn’t affected. Then a sequence of events built up to my culminating moment: (1) I received my first HeartSync as a demo in front of a “live studio audience.” Amazingly, I was able to release a lot of pain that I had been carrying and began climbing out of a negative mindset of painful irritability, reaching a more neutral zone. (2) I was blessed with a hopeful prophetic word from a friend. (3) I attended a conference of artists learning about human trafficking. I was relaxed, not expecting anything.

Surrender. At the end of the conference, we were invited forward to get a prayer to release us from a pattern of abuse. I seized the moment, and my life changed suddenly and permanently through the minister’s 2-minute prayer:

“Lord, I invite you to tear down the 'abuse me' sign over Susan, so that every word out of her mouth going forward is good and pure and wholesome, and every word directed toward her is truthful, clear, and loving. Sever the ungodly soul ties between her and all abusers, and retrieve all parts of her soul, washed clean in the blood of Jesus. Send back to her abusers all parts of their souls, washed clean in the blood of Jesus.” 

I am normally a pretty stoic person, but as she was speaking, I felt my spirit grieve, and my body reflected that grief with shuddering, crying, and deep exhalation. I could have shut it down, but I went with it — the first surrender. While the minister left me to continue the process on my own, I felt an invitation in my spirit to release and surrender more. Maybe that’s overstating it. It’s actually rather boring to just stand there crying. With my get ‘er done mentality, I decided to cooperate by going through a standard process I'd been taught since childhood: Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess, and Be Baptized.

So I heard the minister express the Lord’s desire to heal me. I believed my spirit wanted to receive his healing, as evidenced by the turmoil in my body. I verbally repented (did a U-turn) by ceding my control to heaven and declaring that I was surrendering each part of my body. I worked my way down from head to toe, pausing between each part to see if I the Holy Spirit wanted me to do anything else before moving on. I confessed all sins I could think of that I had committed related to that part of my body. I forgave people related to those sins and let go of the resulting bitterness I had held. I asked Jesus to sever all attachments to all spirits that were chaining me to sinful behavior patterns (spirits of anger, control, vengeance, grief, etc.). Over the course of about 20 minutes, I slowly yielded each body part (head/brain, eyes, ears, mouth, shoulders, abdomen, hips, knees, feet) and ended up face down and flat on the floor, until I felt the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was the peace that comes from having nothing left to surrender. This is what it means to be washed clean in the blood of Jesus. 

That was the watershed moment jumping me past zero and into positive numbers. My family noticed positive effects immediately even though I don’t think I was behaving any differently or striving to be a better person. But the reality confirmed by many people’s external observations is that I have not been the same person since that moment, and abusive verbalizations toward me ceased. 

Love. That’s my personal story. Your story may be very different. But the common thread is that God loves you and longs for you to truly experience the “abundant life” that Jesus promised. Don’t wallow in the negative zone of pain. Don’t be satisfied with the neutral zone of meh. Go for it, and work out your “sozo,” your very own salvation path into the positively charged life you were designed for. 

How Can I Get On Track?

By Susan Mitchell

Even when you are at your stickiest impasse, here are some things you can do on your own to break through or at least survive. 

Cultivate friendships. We all need people who give us time and attention, love and affirmation, a respite of fun and humor. Find those people and cherish them. Practice the art of appreciating them. Exercise or camp outdoors, eat and drink together, pray for each other, borrow things from each other, join a service group or small group together. 

Gratitude journal. Watch for and capture in two sentences the good that you find in every day. Focusing on these moments and verbalizing them has been shown to rewire your brain — in a better way! The Greater Good Sciences Center (link to https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/major_initiatives/expanding_gratitude) agrees, noting that "people who practice gratitude report fewer symptoms of illness, including depression, more optimism and happiness, stronger relationships, more generous behavior, and many other benefits.” This is not a new suggestion. 2000+ years ago, Paul told the church, “Keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always” (Philippians 4:8 TPT). The nice thing is that when you appreciate God, you open yourself to hearing him speak back, such as in dreams.

Dream journal. As soon as you wake up, write down any dream or images you remember while sleeping or drowsing. Personally, I don’t believe in pizza dreams. Just about every dream I’ve interpreted had significant meanings attached. In fact, I get a lot of life direction from my dreams. I started practicing the decoding of my own dreams by using an amazing, Bible-based compilation of symbolic interpretations called The Divinity Code. (link to http://thedivinitycode.org/) This gave me a way to start tuning into God's voice, to learn the good plans he had in store for me. It’s also helpful to discuss solve these together with a friend and your helper, the Holy Spirit.

Music and art. We will talk more about the parts of our heart, but for now let me say that some of us need music or art to get past our own guarded walls that block out tenderness and intimacy and keep us numb and hard. Music and art somehow bypasses all that to speak directly to our emotions. So spend time at art museums, concerts, and lengthy worship experiences where you can just relax and soak. If you’re in worship and you sing all the time, let the functional/doer part of you take a break so God talk to you through the music and lyrics. You might hold a question for him in your heart or a problem you can’t solve. Just hold it and let him highlight truth or show you images as you wait on him. You can draw your feelings and questions and his answers, too. Listening, writing, drawing, painting are all modes of discovery and connection.

Life! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

By Susan Mitchell

A friend of mine who is both a doctor and an engineer once told me, “It’s not a surprise that people are born deceased in utero or with defects. The miracle is that with all the complexity involved in the nine months of gestation that they ever arrive into the world with all their organs and appendages intact and able to kick, breathe, scream, eat, and poop!” 

And it shouldn’t be a surprise that we end up as tweens, teens, adults, and seniors with an ever-growing list of life-altering traumas. 

Even in the womb, some fetuses can absorb the trauma of hearing parents yell and believe they’re unwanted, or suffer from alcohol, drugs, or poor nutrition coming through the umbilical cord and feel the world is an unsafe place. If you resonate with that kind of rejection, abandonment, mistreatment that goes back even longer than you can remember, you might want to learn more from the https://cfreedomlife.com/freedom-quest.html psycho-theological videos on Conception, Intra Utero Development, Birth Part 1, and Birth Part 2. 

In infancy and toddlerhood, there can be all kinds of attachment issues. These may not even be what we consider abuse, that is, Trauma B for BAD things people do, like physical, sexual, or verbal abuse. They could be all the ways we simply didn't get what we should have gotten, that is, Trauma A for the ABSENCE of good things like hugs, affirmations, good nutrition, attention, and so on. Professionals believe Trauma A can be most confusing and damaging for our self-image because it’s harder to realize that the absence of good things is not normal, especially when people dismiss the pain: “Oh, that’s not so bad. Suck it up!"

As tweens and teens, life can feel so emotionally charged that we almost universally make some sort of vow of stoicism, and then as adults we wonder why we don’t feel anything. Then there’s the sense of FOMO fueling a brand of anxiety that is afflicting the current generation as never before, and leading to inwardly self-destructive behaviors or outwardly damaging attacks on their social spheres. 

Then adulthood brings on all sorts of responsibilities in various circles of influence. If we haven’t properly addressed the issues of the first 25 years, we may relive it and inflict it on others, or receive continued traumas that perpetuate the patterns we still see as normal. As adults, we have more power and resources to hurt each other, so betrayals and unfairness may be perpetrated on us if we don’t learn how to dismantle the structures that keep us in stuckness. 

Finally, retired seniors have time to kill, freedom to do whatever! But so often in the transition from the structure of work to the openness of home, our identity, purpose, health, resources, or connections get compromised, and we lose our way and our momentum. 

So, lots of things can go awry in life, and we have experience with tools, processes, and resources that address many of them. You can get unstuck. You can learn new ways of living in freedom. We can help.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

By Susan Mitchell

We are people like you. 

We have been wounded by life events and people. Our hearts have shattered, and we have responded with all of the human emotions of helplessness, hopelessness, grief, fury, revenge, pride, bitterness, disgust, fear, and self-loathing. We have made vows to avoid this or that person, situation, place, or time. We have looked for ways to escape the pain, seeking comfort in entertainment, food, drink, and other mind-altering substances and processes. Over time, we have borne pain, trauma, negative expectations, crushing responsibilities, and overwhelming fatigue. We have replayed some of our worst experiences over and over obsessively. Our guilt and shame have weighed us down. We’ve made up stories and embraced lies in an effort to make our world make sense. 

But it didn’t come close to making sense until we met people —

  • Who understood. 

  • Who actively listened to us. 

  • Who honored and respected our views. 

  • Who help us lay down some of the heavy things we carried.

  • Who helped us get additional perspective and release blockages and constraints.

  • Who gave us tools that allowed us to feel love and gratitude, which led to peace and joy, which blossomed into patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and faithfulness. 

People now tell us, “I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you’re a lot nicer than you used to be. What happened?”

We will be sharing our personal stories to answer this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! For now, suffice it to say that we have been actively working for 7 years to lean into this healing and absorb the strategies for sharing it safely and effectively with others. Are you ready to let go of the things that used to give you purpose and momentum, but now just seem to keep you stuck? Let us cooperate with you to get unstuck. Unstuck is what we do.