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Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Healing Anger: Insights into Spiritual and Emotional Well-Being
In this episode of 'Becoming Whole, with special guest Aaron Tagert we delve into part three in our mini-series on anger. We highlight the importance of emotional awareness and maturity in recovery, drawing from the works of Brene Brown and Dr. Jim Wilder. Additionally, we discuss practical methods for inner healing through story work, inner healing prayer, and strategies like the 'porch' metaphor. This episode emphasizes the importance of engaging past wounds with curiosity and kindness for deeper healing.
Resources mentioned in today's episode.
Adam Young how to write a story
Awaken 360
Unpacking the Unique Approach of Curiosity
ReMember: a night full of worship, art, dessert, stories of God’s goodness, and an opportunity to partner with Regeneration. We invite you to join us for our annual dessert Regeneration fundraiser. We’d love for you to join us, It will not be the same without you. RSVP here!
👉Men's Overcoming Lust & Temptation Devotional
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
So welcome to Becoming Whole. We're in our three-part miniseries on anger right around the holidays. The holidays are coming up this likely will come out the week of Thanksgiving and you know family and holidays can stir a lot of emotions and we felt like it was really important to talk about this idea of anger and how anger is very deeply connected to our unwanted sexual behaviors and it can also be a big part of experiencing things like betrayal, trauma or even parenting kids and trying to figure out how do I deal with what they're saying about their sexuality. And so I have my awesome colleague, aaron Taggart. Welcome, aaron. Hey, what's up? James, I'm so pumped for this conversation today, man, so good to have you.
Speaker 1:Aaron's one of our spiritual coaches. He's just a great dude and he's also our unwanted leader. He's an unwanted leader. So, despite being a great dude and a loved coach, he's an unwanted leader. Now he leads our unwanted intensives throughout the year and we'll talk a little bit more about those as the episode progresses.
Speaker 1:But, aaron, you know we're in this series about anger and we talked a couple of weeks ago this was actually your image of anger being like a lightning bolt. In other words, you know, these electrons are kind of bouncing around and they need to be pointed somewhere. But when we just try to stuff it, anger often shoots out sideways, just like sadness or other, you know, negative emotions. And often when we say point shoots out sideways, it ends up in pornography for our listeners, unbeknownst to us usually. Are you aware of your of this phenomenon in your own journey away from unwanted sexual behavior? Yeah, that's a that's a great question, you knowing on that image, even a little bit. In light of this, I think part of what it kind of comes down to for us, because we don't have these electrons building up but we have experiences and wounds and things that happen right but to us and maybe by us, but to us and you know, maybe by us, and when those gets kind of stuffed down or we don't really deal with those, that's that lightning bolt, that that comes out Right. So I think it it really kind of comes down to our capacity to kind of be a container, like how much can we hold, you know, before it starts coming out in ways that, and a lot of times we're probably regretful of how. You know how that comes out Right. So just thinking a little in ways that and a lot of times we're probably regretful of how. You know how that comes out, right. So, just thinking a little bit about that, you know too, and and just that idea of you know, maybe even in the moment, or from our, from our past, you know, I think our story is coming to play with that Right Like in, in that any given moment something could be triggered from something that's happened in our past and then it comes out sideways because it's just something that we've stuffed down so very powerful image.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I think you know, when it comes to you know my own journey. You know I felt like the further away I got from unwanted sexual behaviors, the more aware I became of my emotions, the more aware I became of my emotions. I think such a big part of recovery is growing in our emotional awareness and maturity. I know, with the clients that I work with at Regeneration, this is often something that's kind of an aha for them. You don't really think about that. You know they just want to stop, you know, maybe, looking at pornography or stop acting out or want these spurges to go away or, you know, whatever it might be. But I think the reality, a harder part of recovery, is actually growing in that ability to mature emotionally, be more emotionally aware, and that's not something that happens overnight. I think we want that to happen overnight and as quickly as possible, but it's really a journey. That was my experience going through this journey. It wasn't something that was really quick.
Speaker 1:It honestly brings up for me a really powerful quote from Brene Brown. I love Brene Brown. She's done some really powerful work, especially around vulnerability and shame, and she shared in one of her books and I forget what book it was, but in her Vulnerability TED Talk she talks about selective numbing of emotions and how we cannot selectively numb emotions. Because if we try to numb maybe something we would consider something we don't want to feel like a bad emotion, sadness. I don't want to feel that sadness and so I'm going to try to numb sadness, but in the same kind of way, I'm also numbing some of the causative emotions and that full expression and being able to feel things like joy and happiness and peace. And so you know, there's this powerful, you know dynamic, that we cannot selectively numb something bad without it affecting something good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we use an image in our heart modules Awaken360, which actually kicks off in January of a dinner party and your emotions are kind of around the table inside out style at the dinner party and by avoiding pain, sadness, anger, we're staying up in our bedroom hiding. We're actually also missing out on joy and perhaps pleasure, like healthy pleasure, happiness, other positive emotions, peace perhaps. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and even if we feel like we, you know, maybe have some of them, it's it. They're not the that full expression. You know if we're, if we're, you know numbing in other places. You know whether that's by looking at you know things like pornography or acting out in other ways. You know to numb that.
Speaker 1:But when we don't allow ourselves to experience and feel, you know the weight of those emotions it really impacts the other good emotions and it's not that sadness is a bad emotion. I think we probably feel that way. It's good to feel sadness and those things. I think right, but at the same time, it's not one of the ones that we want to feel more of. We want to feel this idea. We just touched on it reacting versus responding.
Speaker 1:So I want to actually unpack that a little bit more here. How can men and women struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, or even maybe those experiencing betrayal trauma, how can they respond instead of simply reacting to anger. Can you unpack that a bit? Yeah, I would love to unpack that. You know, for me, the difference. Here we find a really great example actually with Jesus in the temple, and I know that a lot, of, a lot of us, I think even me, until just, you know, several years ago, I always thought of Jesus going into this temple, just super ticked off, you know, flipping tables, you know, and, and you know Jesus never sinned Right. So he's flipping tables and just getting his anger on, you know, full blast, and it was all good, you know.
Speaker 1:But in one of the gospel accounts of this, it's in three of the three of the gospels, and in John 2, we read in verse 15, I think, something that completely reshapes the way Jesus enters into the temple with his anger, and it's essentially that he in verse 15, it talks about him braiding or fashioning a whip of cords, and so the scholars, you know all that is kind of it comes down to this kind of braided whip, you know. And so before Jesus enters in, you know, to this temple in his righteous anger, you know where he's, you know wanting to get rid of, you know, the defiling of the temple and disruption of worship. He's got this zeal for his father's house. He sits and he braids this whip. So he's ticked off already.
Speaker 1:He's processing, I think, some of his anger in that moment when he's braiding this whip and, based on what we know about Jesus, like he's probably praying to his father in the midst of doing this. You know he just he was doing that kind of thing all the time, you know, always talking to abba, and I just picture him doing that, as he's braiding, braiding this way. You know he's, and he's gone by these money changers for years. This is something that happens almost every Passover. So all the time around Passover, when he's by the temple, this is happening and this particular year it was like I've had enough.
Speaker 1:He braids this whip, probably prays to his father and then he enters into the temple and I think that gesture or that action rather transforms a reaction in a moment to a response to a situation. You know I've got a couple daughters and you know they have pretty long hair. I haven't entered into that braiding yet, but I can only imagine that that takes some time to braid and maybe that's why I haven't entered in, because I'm like I don't want to fail at the braiding. I don't want to look like a fool, maybe I don't know, but it takes time, especially when you're not used to it. Right, and so you know, jesus braiding this whip took time.
Speaker 1:He creates some space between what he's feeling and what needed to be done, and there's something, I think, deeply profound in that. I'm just picturing Jesus as a 12-year-old, jesus as a 18-year-old, as a 25-year-old you know all these years, he's going to the temple for Passover. He's angry because, we said in previous weeks, anger is about protection and destruction protecting what is good, destroying what is bad. And so these money changers are devouring widows' households, to use another phrase he uses, and so he wants to destroy what they're doing. He doesn't want to destroy them, he wants to destroy what they're doing. He doesn't want to destroy them, he wants to destroy what they're doing.
Speaker 1:He does this dramatic thing, but it wasn't like just in a moment, it wasn't like, okay, now I'm really angry, I'm going to do it. It was year after year, and being connected to his father and then making a whip. I mean, what an amazing image of responding and not letting anger. Perhaps, as we said last week with Rebecca, just take the driver's seat and take the car wherever it wants to go. Yeah, I mean, isn't that a game changer? Like knowing that, that you know he doesn't just go in guns a blazing, you know, I think, like we often think about, like this was calculated.
Speaker 1:You know the talking, probably with Abba, right Again, bringing his heart and his emotions and here we are talking about anger, right Like bringing that to his father in that moment as he's braiding that wit, asking for his help as he prepares to take action. It's just a game changer in a situation, you know, I think, where this is a clear example and we don't have many of those in scripture where where he was so angry, and what a beautiful picture of how to kind of enter in with our anger and to respond to a situation. Instead of react to a situation, yeah, jesus only did what he saw the father doing, and so this is clearly on the Father's part to cleanse the temple in this way and to make you know, in some ways, the road for him to be the ultimate cleansing for the temple or the people of the temple. So we're recognizing that God gets angry. God handles anger in a healthy, holy way, obviously, and so one of the things that's really key to recovery. Right, there's this idea of we need maturity, need to keep growing maturity and we need healing. And part of why we need healing is because wounds or trauma creates gaps in our maturity. And so if I was wounded by someone's anger and I decided, hey, I'm never going to express anger the way I saw this person do it, or I expressed anger, it went sideways and I'm never going to do that again and I've become this person who stuffs the anger. There was a wound, that kind of kicked off that decision to stuff anger and to not handle it maturely. And so part of why this is a longer journey is because we need to grow in maturity. That doesn't happen overnight. God can heal in an instant and sometimes he does Different things, can heal us in a moment, but maturity takes time. But I do want to kind of focus on the wound side today. We talked a lot about maturity last week with Rebecca, this idea that it's not always about just I feel angry in this moment. I just need to respond.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of times there's wounds associated with anger, wounds that maybe are the kind of breeding ground of long-term anger. Maybe we call that bitterness. And so how do we begin getting after deeper healing of like wounds that were anger is tied to? How can we see that healed? Yeah, that immediately makes me think of father richard roars quote where he says that if we don't transform our pain, we will always transmit it. Someone else always suffers because we don't know how to suffer our wounds. And that is just such a loaded quote, isn't it? You know, we don't know what to do or how to feel. We start to feel uncomfortable and so, you know, we stuff down, getting back to the lightning bolt, or we react instead of respond. Right, you know, because of these wounds that we carry and that's really what it is it's that we probably have these unaddressed traumas and wounds that we carry.
Speaker 1:I haven't talked to anybody about it. I can't tell you how many men I've talked to that have shared things that have happened to them. Maybe they were ashamed and embarrassed or whatever it might've been, but you know, decades later, you know they're sharing with me for the first time, you know, telling anybody some of these things that have happened to them. You know, and that's a lot to carry and to hold for so long. And so, man, you think about something small that happens right, fairly insignificant, maybe on the outside, looking in would say, but it strikes a chord deep within a memory, it rubs up against that event or that trauma or that wound, and now it comes out. You know, because they've, they're, they're I wouldn't say they're beyond capacity, because I mean you've been carrying something for for so long or something so heavy but right, or even you know, like in in betrayal, or those types of things, like you know these really deep wounds, you know these, these things go really deep.
Speaker 1:Betrayal is a great example, by the way, of that quote, of like if we haven't learned how to deal with our pain and you know we're taking it to pornography or other sexual behavior that now can be transferred onto our partner or spouse, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so it. You know, for me, it kind of invites us then to like what are we? How do we do that? What do we do then? Right? And I think a really important element of all of this is, you know, it's an invitation to engage our stories, our our past and present woundings, as well as our past and present traumas, because the chances are that something that's happening in the present is stirring up something from the past.
Speaker 1:Dr Eddie Caparucci does a lot of work on the inner child healing and I know you know we'll probably talk a little bit more about you know some different things in that, along that line here, in a little bit maybe. But I think there's something profound about you know, something in the moment you know that triggers something in the past and probably the younger version of ourselves that kind of comes out. You know Drew Boa says that men don't get hooked on porn. Boys do so. You think about that inner child and something that happened or that's been going on, that they've been carrying right on a draft, you know, just comes into play, I think, with something you know like this yeah, you know Dr Jim Wilder, who does a lot on the brain and how we develop and mature. He has these five stages of maturity. I think we might have even mentioned them recently.
Speaker 1:But we start out as infants who only know how to ask for like something's wrong, I can cry, and that's really it. We become children who know how to ask for like something's wrong, I can cry, and that's really it. We become children who know how to meet our own needs, or we know how to meet the needs of others, but we can't do both at the same time. That's what defines a child's level of maturity. We're into Jim Wilder. Then we become adults who can then care for ourselves and another. Parents can care then for that plus the next generation, and then elders can care for the community as a whole and maybe even fill in gaps where there has been wounds, you know, and teenagers that aren't even part of their direct family or whatever.
Speaker 1:And so drew's quote there about boys are the ones, or girls are the ones, who get hooked on porn. It's saying there's something that happened that stagnated, that made our maturity journey stagnant at that childlike level where it's like maybe I don't even know how to meet my own needs. Maybe it's the infant level in that category each of the categories, by the way, aren't like you're completely an adult or you're completely a child, but like I might not have learned how to deal with anger, and so I might actually be like an infant or child when it comes to anger, and so I'm not dealing with that. Well, I'm pushing it to the side. I think about in my own story.
Speaker 1:A big part of my journey was healing the father wound and realizing that some of my dad's anger taught me I cannot express my anger, I need to stuff this down and then, of course, again, like by the time puberty hits, this then becomes a clear avenue in my brain and whatever, to go to pornography, to deal with my anger in that kind of way instead of a mature way. And it's really humbling, aaron, to realize so many of us, all of us, really have gaps in our maturity, whether it's, I don't know, how to deal with sadness or anger or shame. Many of us did not have, like, great examples across the board, right, fully mature in handling all of the negative emotions and you know dealing with those, well, emotions and you know dealing with those. Well, yeah, right, and those gap is, I think it's a yeah, I literally get that image of like, you know, I know we've, we've all seen it. You know there's like this, there's a cliff, and then there's this, you know this divide, and then there's the other side, right, and it's like there's this gap. How do we get over to that other side?
Speaker 1:And as we talk about stories and ways that you know we can, you know, see some of these wounds being healed, you know, makes me think about too, like when we do some of the story work we're entering into our stories, you know, as the to process this anger, you know, on on the porch, back to the porch, yeah, back to the porch, yeah, back to the floor is always the porch man, that important place man. It's so strong. But to step out instead of ignore it, you know when it maybe it's it's at the door knocking or we're starting to feel that, right, that's, that's when it's knocking, like we, we feel that like, oh, I don't want to. Okay, this is too familiar, I need to get rid of this. I don't want to feel that right. Instead, you know, stepping out into the porch and acknowledging it. You know, okay, where's this anger coming from right now? How am I feeling right now?
Speaker 1:Why am I feeling right, starting to ask ourselves some questions about that anger, you know, and I and I think that what that does is it begins to, it's, it's just, it's a, it's this curiosity. There's a curiosity to that and, instead of also shutting it down, there's this kindness to ourselves, and I think we can have some more compassion for ourselves too, and we realize that some of the wounds and things that we carry have also kind of set us up to feel maybe hopeless, or when the anger hits, that we want to try to run from that and to. You know, maybe hopeless, or you know, when the anger hits that we want to try to to run from that and to hide from that. Right, there's, there are reasons for that. And so, stepping out on the porch, engaging this with that curiosity and kindness, where is it coming from?
Speaker 1:What bigger picture is this trying to to, to share, to point to right, and asking ourselves is there something more? Is there something? What's coming up in me right now from this separate event? You know why am I having such a strong reaction to this thing? That doesn't seem like that should be the case, right, and so, just kind of approaching those types of things with that curiosity and that question, it also makes me think of another quote from Henry Nowlin. So doing some of this kind of porch work, story work, right. The man who articulates the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, may no longer be a victim of himself but is able to slowly and consistently remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering, he is able to create space for him, god, whose heart is greater than his, whose eyes see more than his and whose hands can heal more than his. It's just such a beautiful quote.
Speaker 1:I think you know, in light of stepping out onto the porch and what that actually does for the whole self, right? Yeah, when we spoke this past summer about the porch, we were actually primarily saying when the fantasy is knocking at the door right, it's like on the porch, go out, shut the door behind you, invite Jesus to the porch. We were actually primarily saying, when the fantasy is knocking at the door, right, it's like on the porch, go out, shut the door behind you, invite Jesus to the porch, talk to the fantasy in Jesus's presence. What are you trying to say here? We're saying there's actually a similar thing we can do with big, hard emotions, like perhaps anger. Anger might be knocking at the door and instead of reacting to it, or whether it's kind of bowing to it and you know go, you know exploding, or whether it's stuffing it and saying you can never come over here, entering the porch, inviting jesus in and getting curious. I mean curiosity is actually. It shows that our right brain is getting online, our relational right brain, kindness, as well as the kindness of god that leads us to repentance. So there's significance. We use those words a lot and I'm just trying to say there's even a neurological significance to curiosity and kindness. And so as we enter the porch as we said last week with Rebecca and even the first week, I think, with Josh anger is often not a primary emotion, especially when we're talking about it as wounds Now in the temple setting where Jesus got the whip maybe it is a primary emotion because it's righteous anger.
Speaker 1:It's pretty pure about protecting and destroying. It's restoring, it's bringing justice. But when there's a wound and we're getting really angry in a way connected to that wound and we're getting really angry in a way connected to that wound, often what we'll find on the porch is that anger was a defense so that we didn't feel sad. Anger was there so that we didn't feel afraid. So that's an example of it being more of a secondary emotion. But if we only are reacting to anger, whether by stuffing it or exploding it, we don't get that kind of insight that we can get on the porch with Jesus by being curious and kind to ourselves in that place. Yeah, exactly, exactly, that's so good.
Speaker 1:So, aaron, you talk about story work and I want to get really practical right now for ways that we can heal anger or see anger healed or kind of participate in that healing process. When you say story work, part of it obviously can be this internal thing of like okay, anger just came up, I'm going to go to my room and just process with God. Have curiosity, kindness. Are there other things in that category of story work, engaging your story or even particular ways you've walked with clients to do what is called story work? Yeah, yeah, you know I think what's so beautiful about story work and it often is something that you really need to do with somebody else.
Speaker 1:You know, kind of guiding and helping us to look at not just at our story but within our story, to step in our story. I think it's really easy to maybe recall some events and things like that and tell about things. Right, but that's the 30,000 foot. You know flyover. You know you can kind of point to some things, but when you do story work, you you actually step into some of those, those difficulties or those pain points or those traumas and and it's something done very carefully. You know having, you know the training from you know, from Jay and his team, to be unwanted. You know guide, unwanted guides. You know a lot of our staff have gone through that and found it just very valuable, and so you do need to kind of do that, I think, with some care and with somebody.
Speaker 1:I think it's really hard to sometimes we just get in our own way, you know, and we just want to stay at that 30,000 foot kind of view. But you know, inviting, you know, clients in to grow in that curiosity. You know, when things come up, you know, ah man, I, you know I had a relapse, you know, last week, you know, okay, well, well, let's talk about that, like, you know, let's explore that with some curiosity. Well, let's talk about that, let's explore that with some curiosity, just like we do. The story there's a thread, more than likely right, and I can't tell a client what that thread is through and almost kind of shepherd them in this field right With through the valley, right, I will not fear the valley of the shadow of death, you know, because the presence right, your rod and your staff come from you. There's a presence of the Lord in that place, if we allow him in those valleys, and so I think that's kind of to me, like that's kind of what story work does? It enters into the valley with the shepherd who cares for our souls, to help us uncover or to make some connections of things that we've experienced, bottled up, didn't even maybe realize that we're there because, again, our brains are so powerful. It can just kind of you. You know, like you mentioned earlier, even with emotions, like you know, I could have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old because, you know, something happened and I shut down my brain shut down to protect me. You know, at that point in my life and now you know, I've got some, some work to do to grow in that maturity. So our porch now has four seats for those following. We've got our own seat. We've got the seat for anger or whatever hard emotion, or even the fantasy Seat for Jesus, and perhaps a seat for someone who can walk with us, a friend, a counselor, a coach, a pastor, someone who can walk with us without maybe trying to jump into a quick fix, but can sit in the grief.
Speaker 1:You can also do story work in a written way. This is something if you guys want to look up from Adam Young's website. Adam Young's a Christian counselor, also from this story work field. Dan Allender actually kind of, I believe, pioneered it. And so Jay Stringer, who wrote Unwanted, learned from Dan Allender. So did Adam Young. Adam Young has a guide, a simple guide, on his website to how to write a story, and there's word limits, there's encouragements to get into the emotions and not, you know, there's certain kind of parameters and whether we're just literally going to write it on our own and kind of engage it on our own. That's one option. But again, a more potent option can be writing a story and bringing it to your session with your coach, or bringing it to your friend or your pastor and reading it, without filling in extra details and allowing them to enter in with you to ask questions like, wow, where was your mom in that situation when dad's anger was really scary? Or, you know, kind of enter in deeper to your story no-transcript, you know.
Speaker 1:Another thing that's come to mind, aaron, as we're talking, is this idea of inner healing prayer, and I know you and I both do this sometimes in our coaching sessions or just in our you know life in our local church. But inner healing prayer, and sometimes even deliverance, can be a part of this healing journey as well. We want to take from the best of the psychological world. You know story work, curiosity and kindness. But we also believe that Jesus is outside of time, that the Trinity is outside of time, and so we can engage.
Speaker 1:I've had clients walk through some listening or inner healing prayer and engage a memory with me, but also with Jesus and Jesus, where were you in the scene, jesus? What do you want to do in this place? And I've seen that be really powerful at times. Yeah, same, you know, I've done that, trained in healing prayer and also, you know, over the last few years, just getting more acquainted. I brought him up earlier, eddie Caparucci, and some of his work with the inner child and you know different seminars and things that he's led and growing in just that deeper awareness of these different, you know kind of inner childs that you know sort of exist, you know, and that concept you know it's like again, that gap you know. You know I had this gap when I'm 12 and this thing happens and now, through this inner healing prayer, we can invite Jesus into that gap and to fill something that has felt so void for so long. And to that, to that memory, to that moment, and and that's that's powerful. There's a lot of great resources on that. There's so many different kind of types of inner healing prayer. I've used a manual prayer with clients before which tries to engage both your brain and your spirit. It's really powerful.
Speaker 1:I've done just kind of more ad hoc, like Lord, just bring us back into the memory and where were you, jesus? And things like that. And oftentimes he brings some resolution and really the resolution isn't he's necessarily making the sadness or the pain just go away. The resolution is actually joy. It's a sense of he's glad to be with me and I'm glad to be with him even in this painful place. I'm not alone even in this place, and obviously, doing that in the context of coaching one-on-one with me, I'm also there. So there's this dynamic of joy even in the sadness, a sense of people are glad to be with me, even in this place of sadness or pain. So I'm going to give Aaron the last word in just a moment, but we're going to wrap up the anger series for today.
Speaker 1:I do want to mention that the new year is the beginning of our next module for Awaken360. And it's actually, like I said earlier, the heart module where we're getting after core emotions and wounds, and it's really one of the most powerful modules of Awaken360. And so if you're a man who's looking for some help with your unwanted sexual behavior and like this whole emotional healing maturity stuff is pretty new to you, consider checking us out. Apply today on our website and Aaron, also in the new year, is likely going to be leading his next unwanted intensive, which again is going to get into story work and get after some of these emotions. Aaron, you want to share anything about that? Yeah, so I think around the beginning of March, sometime around there, we'll launch the next intensive. So you know be be tuned in for for that. But the unwanted intensive is essentially an eight to nine weeks sprint that combines elements of JStreamer's unwanted work with additional resources, some in-depth story work and group engagement. So we'll actually get into some of our stories and share those in group, and other members of the group will ask some questions and different things. So it's just a beautiful way to enter in to some story work, especially if you're new to that and haven't done that before and we'll explore three primary questions how did I get here, why do I stay and how do I get out of here? And the group's going to be capped at about eight men. We're hoping, I think, at some to offer these for women as well, but right now we only have them available for men.
Speaker 1:Friends, wounds happen with people, but healing only happens with others, whether with Jesus, whether with other people around you. We need other people to heal, and so we often encourage people. Get into a space where you're hearing other people around you. We need other people to heal, and so we often encourage people. Get into a space where you're hearing other people, where you're being known and loved and you're not being fixed but you're being discipled. Well, and these are you could even call them really robust, deep discipleship groups around the topic of unwanted sexual behavior and moving toward intimacy with Jesus. So, aaron, I just want to give you the last word as we close today's episode. Thanks, james.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just a couple things as we kind of wrap up today. I think most importantly, identify what the whip looks like for you. Identify what the whip looks like for you. Identify what the whip looks like for you. Now, it's probably not a braided rope, but what is that for you? What can you take away from that story of Jesus braiding the whip? Before entering into the situation, we just need to take a pause and then come back together with our spouse in the middle of a dispute or something along those lines. So just identify what the whip looks like, and this will take some time.
Speaker 1:But practice this, try to grow in this, even little pauses in the moment, to try to become more aware of what you're feeling in that moment and what's going on. And you start to ask some of those questions, kind of those porch questions. And something else I thought about too is that you know, in 1 Corinthians 6, 19 to 20, we read that our bodies are a temple. Thinking about Jesus entering into this temple to clear it because of what's going on, and then I just got this profound sense that Jesus wants to also drive out which defiles his temple in us and distracts us from worshiping him, and he wants to drive that out of us. And I think this includes both our unwanted sexual behaviors as well as the anger that we carry and that we haven't given over to him and that the enemy uses for footholds in our lives. And so I think you know this holiday season, you know Thanksgiving, christmas, maybe we're back in some different difficult areas to be in a lot of familiar memories and places and things and people, and it can carry so much right.
Speaker 1:And so just a couple things to to try to remember this holiday season is some strategies in the moment again, just kind of pause. Um, john eldridge has this really great app called pause and it's just a really beautiful tool. Ranges from one to ten minute little pause prayers just to kind of hand everything over to the Lord in those moments and it's something you can kind of grow in from one minute to up to 10 minutes, but it's a beautiful thing. Box breaths and I know yeah, I think you guys kind of got into some of this you know James and your conversation with Rebecca a week ago, but you know different strategies in the moment to help bring, bring us kind of back down. You know when, when we're super, you know we're hyper aroused or hypo aroused, right Like that fight or flight, and kind of just reground ourselves to some box breaths.
Speaker 1:You know taking a four second count as we breathe in, holding that for four seconds, breathing out for four seconds and then holding, you know air without you know out of our lungs for four seconds, breathing out for four seconds and then holding air out of our lungs for four seconds and just doing a few cycles of that, or one of my favorites is the 5-4-3-2-1, which essentially is acknowledging five things.
Speaker 1:You see, four things that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell and one thing that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell and one thing that you can taste in that moment around you. And some of those might be a little bit harder than others, but that awareness and just kind of bringing there's something about our senses. I think that's really profound to all this. And so and you know that would be another podcast but getting into some more sensory work and different things but I and you know that would be another podcast but getting into some more sensory work and different things but I would say, yeah, just this holiday season and beyond, you know, just try to grow in that awareness, identify that whip and bring your anger to Jesus, because he invites us to do so. Thanks so much, aaron.
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