Why We Can Never Move Past Our Childhood Until We Face It

Most of us find little use in dissecting our past and dredging up old childhood memories. We wonder, “What does that have to do with the mess I’m in today?” “What good can possibly come from talking about my childhood?”

For many, their family life growing up was less than ideal, and brings up painful memories that have long since been buried. Or so we thought.

Much of our life today, from how we handle stress, how we interact in relationships, to the things we believe about ourselves, about others, about God is directly shaped from our experiences within our families growing up.

We cannot outrun it, we cannot forget it. We are powerful to heal the wounds from our past and move past them as we learn to come face to face with them. Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares the importance of dealing with our childhood wounds so that we can build a life for ourselves and our children, that is uniquely different, emotionally abundant and peace-filled.

From the time we open our eyes in the morning, we are constantly coming into contact with people—whether they share our bed, our house, our neighborhood, our office, or our church. At the point we make contact, something unique happens. A spark ignites, a reciprocity of energy is exchanged, and a dynamic is created.

Our best understanding of relational dynamics comes from the system of dynamics set up in our family of origin. The family style where we were raised carries a powerful force where individual members learn to connect with one another in unique ways that are mutually affecting. Patterns evolve whereby each member adopts a certain role within the family that allows the system to function as a whole.

Family systems form the basis for all our human interactions and relationships because the role we adopt within the family system is usually carried into all of our future adult relationships. These roles become a stable, though sometimes unconscious, part of our identity. Because family systems are driven by a process called homeostasis, the tendency to maintain stability or equilibrium, they are therefore usually resistant to change.

Have you ever had the experience of going back home to visit after having been away and feeling as though you were fifteen years old again the moment you walked through the door? That is the power of homeostasis at work within the family system. Some people might resist returning home because of the incredibly strong dynamics that leave them feeling child-like, helpless, weak, or even angry. Avoiding home may seem to provide the best solution.

While there are some extreme situations where home was physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive, and being cut-off provides the option of last resort for survival and health, most of us experience the fullness of our relational healing by returning home, figuratively speaking. This means our healing becomes complete the more we can understand our role in the family system, learn how to unhook from the homeostatic force that wants us to stay the same, and begin to differentiate ourselves well enough to interact with others, even our family of origin, from a place of peace and EA. The power of returning home frees us from our historical role in the family system and allows us to carry this freedom—this new, solid self into all of our adult relationships.

Interestingly, we can at any time, from any place, with any person begin to exercise EA in our relationships. No decision for EA is ever wasted. The muscles that we strengthen in one relationship can be translated into other relationships. Please note, the goal is never to change or fix someone else. The goal is to heal, understand, and grow ourselves so we can engage in any relationship and experience peace for ourselves as we connect with our loved ones.

It is never too late to heal and to grow. Our relationships will flourish as we are able to understand our childhood influences as well as feel and manage our emotions effectively so that we are better able to express them in a healthy way to the people around us.

The results are worth it. You are worth it. You don’t have to remain chained to the same old ways of dealing with life that you’ve been using. You are not destined to “be” just like your father or mother or others from your childhood. God has a unique plan and purpose for you. He wants you to be free from those chains so you can embrace your God-given identity and destiny.

In my book, Peace For a Lifetime, I share simple, practical life steps that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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What True Abundance Looks Like In Our Relationships

 There is nothing like spring! After months of endless grey skies and bone-chilling temperatures that have kept us huddled inside, the first green sprigs we see pushing out from the dull, barren tree branches make us want to celebrate with joy.

Those little green buds on the trees mean one thing – winter is over. New life is here.

Yet new life doesn’t just start in spring. Those awesome green buds are simply the outward fruit of growth that has been happening underneath the surface. Without a strong root system growing deep underground, without a strong trunk to give stability and transport nutrients throughout the tree, there would be no vibrant display of life on display each spring.

The same is true for our lives and relationships. Thomas Merton stated, We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

We cannot experience life in our relationships if we are not experiencing life within ourselves; and we cannot experience life within ourselves if we are not experiencing life in our relationship with God.

For so many of us, there is little that is living or vibrant in our relationships.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares what true abundance looks like in our relationships. God wants our relationships to be beautiful extensions of His love and grace at work in our lives.

As I sit down to write this morning, my eyes are continually drawn outside my window to witness the miracle happening before me. Spring is here, and everywhere little buds of green are pushing their way up from the ground’s surface. The forsythia’s yellow blossoms are beginning to explode, and tiny red petals are filling the barren branches of my beloved rose bushes. Before long, tulips in every color of the rainbow will begin to steal the show as they announce their arrival with an unequaled majesty.

In amazement, I wonder how this happened. Yesterday everything was dead and brown, yet today the whole world is being reborn before my very eyes. Spring is my favorite time of year.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I planted some Leyland cypress trees in our yard. Ever since, we have been faithfully watering them and fertilizing them exactly the way we were instructed, yet they have not grown quickly to become the grand towers of shade I had envisioned.

So a few weeks ago when a lawncare specialist was spraying the lawn, I inquired as to why my trees weren’t growing like they should. The man chuckled and began to explain that the trees were indeed growing, but most of their growth thus far was underneath the surface of the ground. He described that during the first two years or so, the trees were establishing a healthy root system and that they needed to grow big underground before they started to grow big above ground. He encouraged me to be patient, knowing they would eventually take off and grow bigger than I could imagine.

At that moment, everything made sense. This new life, these new beginnings on display in my garden are a reflection of where we are on our journey toward cultivating new life and new abundance in our relationships. All of the work we have done thus far has been in establishing and growing our root system underground, so we could have a strong, solid trunk. Now, the final stage is being set to see the healthy new growth reach far and wide into our relationships.

You don’t have stay stuck in under-nourished, barren relationships. The investment you make in cultivating peace with God and peace with yourself will bring forth abundance and peace in all of your relationships.

In my book, Peace For a Lifetime, I share simple, practical life steps that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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How God Can Use Our Wounds To Make Us Whole

Our wounds leave us feeling frail, broken, desperately unwhole. It seems like everyone around us must be living the abundant life, but with our wounds, that kind of life feels like an impossibility. We feel helpless. Hopeless.

I felt that way too, for most of my life. I never dreamed that God’s healing could be for me. I had prayed so many times. I had hoped —only to see my hopes dashed when the healing I longed for never materialized. Then I discovered how God could use my wounds to make me not only healed, but whole.

If you’ve ever felt hopeless, hurt, and wounded, too, God has so much more in store for you! God longs for you to experience peace. “Peace” in Hebrew refers to wholeness, completeness, safety, soundness, and fullness. God wants us to be whole —physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I Thessalonians 5:23-24 (NLT) states, Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares how God can use your wounds to make you whole so that you can embrace a life of hope, wholeness, and harmony.

God created us as physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. All three are necessary and important components to understand if we want to build peace into our lives and relationships. At the time we received Christ as our Lord and Savior; He healed us uniquely and completely. Yet, some of our wounds, burdens, and infirmities remain. How can that be? Because as humans living in a fallen world, though we are healed in the spiritual realm, we may not see the fullness or completion of that healing until we reach heaven.

While at the time of conversion, some individuals experience immediate freedom or healing in certain areas, all of us spend our Christian lives “work[ing] out [y]our salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12 NIV) [Additions mine] In other words, we take the salve of God’s healing and apply that salve to our physical, spiritual, and emotional wounds so we can find freedom and peace in areas of our lives we never thought possible. If we were all completely healed at the time of conversion, we would all be perfect then, wouldn’t we? I find great comfort in hearing Paul describe his affliction in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10 (NIV):

“...because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I wish for the church to be more gentle and compassionate with the weaker, more broken parts of the body so we can experience healing and wholeness too. Sometimes our wounds are the safest place we know. If the church can create a safe place for the broken to uncover and acknowledge their wounds, we, the body, can begin applying the salve of compassion and understanding. The broken can then start to heal.

You don’t have to spend the rest of your life limping along. You don’t have to carry the weight of your wounds one day longer. God desires to take your wounds and give you a life of healing and abundance.

I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

Why Authentic Living is The Perfect Place To Thrive

A wise friend once told me, “Lisa, don’t listen to what a person says, watch what they do; what they do will tell you everything about what they believe.”

All of us have encountered people in our lives who have said one thing and done something completely different. These encounters leave us feeling shocked, disappointed, confused.

We like to be with individuals who live out their values and beliefs. They are consistent. What they say and do matches up. Their attitudes, their choices, their behaviors are natural extensions of their most deeply held principles. We feel safe with these people. We trust these people.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares why living out our values and beliefs is necessary for us to thrive.

Experts have said what you believe (perceive) becomes your reality. You do not believe what you see; rather you see what you already believe. Knowing ourselves requires us to look inside and carefully examine our beliefs and values because they hold the keys to unlocking and creating the reality for which we long.

All of us have an inner system of beliefs and values we have developed over the course of our lives. They are an accumulation of everything we have experienced in our lives from our parents and families, our religious heritage, our friends and peers, education, work experience, and more. If we take the time to identify what we believe, the things we value and why, we are closer to understanding ourselves at a deeper level and gaining insight into what drives and motivates us.

Beliefs are core convictions we generally hold to be true. Our beliefs grow from what we experience, see, listen to, or reflect upon. They can be spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, financial, or political in nature. From our experiences, opinions are formulated and developed.

Sometimes our beliefs are based on truth and sometimes they are not. Nevertheless, they can have a profound impact on our understanding or misunderstanding of the world around us. If we grew up in an abusive household, we might form the belief that love equals pain. Those of us who didn’t grow up with abuse can identify that belief as untrue, but until the abused can recognize that truth and heal from their wounds, that misbelief will impact how they experience themselves and everything around them.

As we appraise our beliefs, we can determine their worth or value in our lives; hence values are a natural extension of our core beliefs. Values are traits or qualities that we deem worthwhile. They comprise our top priorities, and our most deeply felt driving forces. Values can include concepts such as equality, honesty, faith, family, education, courage, effort, determination, loyalty, faithfulness, hard work, integrity, responsibility, excellence, respect, teamwork, freedom, beauty, happiness, empathy, wisdom, security, independence, challenge, learning, compassion, discipline, generosity, optimism, innovativeness, and service.

Emotionally-abundant people take the time to understand historic influences in their lives and begin to identify and develop a clear, meaningful set of beliefs and values. Living according to an internal code of values brings meaning, purpose, and direction to our daily lives. Decisions become easier as our understanding of ourselves becomes clearer. Choices are easier and our stress is reduced. Life feels calmer and more stable.

Do you find your behaviors betraying your most deeply held principles? Do you wonder why you struggle to discover your passion and purpose in life? Do you long to find peace and calm in the midst of the storms in life?

God desires for you to know your identity. He longs for you to find the deep meaning, purpose and direction that come from knowing your beliefs and values and living them out not perfectly, but consistently, day by day.

I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you understand the life God has for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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What Plumbing Can Teach Us About Our Emotions

 Most of us have had little training in understanding emotions or how to effectively deal with emotions in life. What we learned from our families growing up was usually some sort of extreme —families either ignoring, shaming, being completely disconnected from their emotions, or families being entirely consumed by drama and emotion. Few of us have had a balanced approach in dealing with our feelings modeled for us within our childhood families.

We’ve been left to figure out emotions on our own. They don’t teach us emotional health in school, they don’t show us a video on how to manage our emotions well. Yet, studies show that emotional health (or emotional intelligence) determines about eighty percent of success in life.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that explains what plumbing can teach us about our emotions. Plumbing isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think of emotions, but adequate, functional plumbing is necessary for the overall functioning of a house. If something is wrong with the plumbing, the aftermath isn’t very pretty. Likewise, when our emotional plumbing is leaking, or has a stoppage, the aftermath isn’t very pretty either. When our emotional pipes are aligned and functioning well, they allow us to find the balance we need to build a strong foundation for abundant living.

When I was growing up, my dad was a plumber. Talk of flappers, traps, valves, drain fields, seals, connections, and fittings was normal conversation at the dinner table. My dad loved his job and was devoted to excellence in everything he did.

Dad would often take my brother and me with him to work, partially to instill in us a strong work ethic, and partially to educate us with the hope that one day, one of us might want to follow in his footsteps. Okay. Maybe the hope was more about my brother following in his footsteps and I was just a tag-along, but let’s not tarnish a memory!

I wanted so much to please my dad and learn whatever he was teaching, but as soon as he would explain something, I would forget what he told me almost as quickly. He could show me an Allen wrench or a tube cutter and, ten minutes later, I’d have a distinct look of confusion on my face when he asked me to hand him one.

What I remember most from those days with my dad is he always gave me the job of painting the ends of the PVC pipes with purple primer. I somehow felt that my job must be incredibly important, so I worked diligently to be the best purple-primer painter anywhere.

Obviously, I was not exactly mechanically inclined, but what I did learn from those experiences with my dad was that the way the pipes worked had a profound impact on the overall functioning of a house. If the pipes were laid out, connected, and sealed properly, the plumbing would function well. However, if there was a leak or a stoppage, the flaw would affect everything else around that failure in the system. You might not see the cause, but a leak could destroy the structure all around and result in an expensive repair.

Our emotional interior is much like the interior of a house. We, too, have emotional pipes that if connected, flowing, and functioning properly, allow our individual selves to function at optimal performance. However, if there is a leak or blockage in our emotional pipes, the result is either a flood or a back-up. For some, there is a complete emotional disconnect. Sadly, they feel that if they can cut themselves off entirely from their emotions, they will never have to experience the potential pain or messiness that can result as a consequence of feeling.

Yet even for those who have cut themselves off entirely from their emotions, the emotions don’t simply disappear. They will drain into, contaminate, and infect some area of their lives whether they want them to or not.

We cannot run away from our emotions. We cannot push them down or close the door on them – not permanently anyway. Emotional Abundance empowers us to find the proper balance between our thinking and feeling, and equips us to become more calm, more present, more thoughtful in responding to the challenges of life.

You do not have to remain a prisoner to your emotions. Nor do you have to expend so much energy to keep your emotions locked away. There is so much more God has for you! There is hope, there is freedom, there is abundance we can experience in our emotions.

I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you connect your emotional pipes and create balance and clarity within your heart and mind. This material will empower you to build a life of indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

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Why Solitude Is a Necessary Place For Our Healing and Peace

 Life comes at us. We barely have a chance to catch our breath. From the time we wake up in the morning until we finally drift off to sleep, it seems we simply live reacting to whatever crises, whatever deadlines life demands. We carry our wounds with us, from one season to the next, one job to the next, one relationship to the next. At the end of the day, we’re left wondering why we are exhausted, depressed, undone.

This is not the life God designed for us. Healing will never happen in the hectic. Peace will never be cultivated out of chaos. Solitude is as Henri Nouwen describes, the only necessary thing — for our healing, for our peace.

If you’ve ever felt beaten-down, bruised, and broken, God has so much more in store for you! He longs for you to experience peace. “Peace” in Hebrew refers to wholeness, completeness, safety, soundness, and fullness. God wants us to be whole —physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I Thessalonians 5:23-24 (NLT) states, Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares why solitude is a necessary place to experience true healing and ultimate peace.

As we embark on this phase of our journey, recognizing we must walk this pilgrimage alone with God is important. While family and friends can provide great support, encouragement, and wisdom during this season of healing, we must take all of the energy we expend externally on others and begin to focus that energy internally on ourselves and our walk with God.

I’ve spent so much time and energy over the course of my life reaching out to others with the hope or expectation that they might love me, fix me, heal me, or even need me. So many times I cried in anguish for what others could not give or fix. In my barrenness, hunger, and need, I approached those around me with an empty cup, begging them to fill my broken, empty vessel. Because of their love for me, they might try to fill me. But just at the time I thought my cup was full, I would look down to see all of the contents had escaped and once again I was empty. The cycle continued until my friends had nothing left to pour into my cup, and I felt my emptiness as their rejection of me.

The truth is our friends cannot heal our wounds; our pain is our pain, and their pain is theirs. Yes, Scripture says that as brothers we should carry each other’s burdens (Gal 6:2 NIV), but we only have one Healer and he is Jesus Christ. He is the One to whom we should run with our pain, our fear, our loneliness, and our desperation. He stands waiting in that place of solitude to heal us, to free us, and to strengthen us.

Only when we become still can we silence the outside world. That stillness enables us to turn down the volume on the noise that keeps us distracted and exhausted. Only in the stillness are we able to experience both God and ourselves, perhaps for the first time in our lives. Initially, the silence might be difficult, maybe even frightening, but such silence is the beginning of true healing and peace.

You don’t have to continue hanging on by a thread. You don’t have to carry your wounds with you one more day. I’ve put together materials in my book, Peace for a Lifetime, to provide simple, practical life steps that will help heal the broken place inside of you. These materials will show you how you can cultivate a life of indestructible and indispensible peace —not just for today, not just for tomorrow, but peace…for a lifetime!

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The Only Remedy for the Hole Inside Our Hearts

 God created each of us with a “God-shaped hole” inside of us. A hole designed to draw us to Him, and into an intimate relationship with the God of the Universe. Most of us feel the ache of the hole inside, we feel the emptiness and despair that echoes our inner pain.

We try to fill that hole with anything and everything under the sun, except the one thing that was perfectly and uniquely designed to fill that hole.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that explains the importance of understanding the hole that exists within each of us, and details the only remedy to fill this hole and give us a life of abundance and peace – the perfect person of Jesus Christ. He is the remedy, our remedy!

St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in You.”19 Still, humanity searches to fill this hole with anything and everything except God! Sadly, too many people spend their lives looking for something other than God to fill their longing for meaning only to discover how empty and unfulfilled they remain.

King Solomon, who had all the wealth, power, and success in the world still declared all those things vanity, because everything he had accumulated and achieved had cost him so much in time and energy and satisfied so little. He summarized his experience by declaring, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13 NIV)

Famous mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, echoed this truth by stating, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can only be filled with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God Himself.”20

I cannot pour enough alcohol into the depths of this God-shaped hole to numb the pain of the emptiness in which I am helplessly lost. I cannot run fast enough to get my adrenaline fix of sex, gambling, or thrill-seeking to escape the numbness of this stale existence called life. I can’t glue together the cracks in my soul through compulsive relationships, spending, or eating to provide at least a few moments where I can breathe. The glue will eventually begin to pull apart, and the cracks will become even deeper and wider than they were before. Nor can I simply intellectualize my way out of this closet, trying to pretend in my self-proclaimed sophistication this hole does not exist any more than the God I cannot look at nor believe in exists.

We spend half of our time numbing ourselves and running from the pain, and the other half of our time using every rationale to pretend the pain doesn’t exist. Ironically, we appear to fear the light that would save us far more than we fear the darkness of the abyss that threatens to consume us. As a result, we prevent ourselves from passionately committing to anyone or anything outside of this prison cell of our own making.

What have you used to fill the hole inside of you? How have you tried to numb the pain in your soul? I invite you to stop running, stop reaching for things that cannot fill you or provide the meaning and peace for which you long.

In my book, Peace For a Lifetime, I share simple, practical life steps that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you discover identity, clarity, and purpose. It will help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in You.

_ St. Augustine

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19 St. Augustine, Confessions (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 43.

20 Blaise Pascal, Pensees (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1966), 75.

How Our Search for Meaning Can Bring Us So Much Peace

 Do you ever find yourself bored, unsettled, restless? Have you ever struggled to find meaning in your life?

Culture tells us if we have the right education, the right house, the right spouse and kids, even the right toys, then we will have everything we could ever ask for in life. The problem is, all the things in the world were not meant to fill us, fix us, or provide the meaning for which our souls long. We were designed for so much more.

King Solomon had all the wealth the world had to offer and still declared, Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:11 NIV)

I’ve included an excerpt from my new book, Peace for a Lifetime, where I share why we were created for meaning, and how we can begin to search for and cultivate deep roots of purpose that will not only provide a solid foundation for your life, but will impact your life and relationships with significance, abundance and fulfillment beyond anything you could imagine!

Have you ever wondered, “Who am I?” or asked yourself, “What is my purpose in life?” Why are we here and what, if anything, provides meaning to our existence on this planet? Is this all for nothing? Is there more? These questions are not only valid, but they also are an active part of our journeys toward finding peace with God and peace within ourselves. There is within us all a quiet war, an epic battle for the answers to these very questions. These questions don’t request an invitation. They don’t sit politely by the side. They loom overhead in the routine and mundane tasks of the day. They step ever so softly over the stillness of our souls. We might not be aware of anything at all, except that somewhere what began as a tiny tremor grows into a seismic quake. We can feel the pounding in our ears and the reverberations in our chests, counting cadence, steadily louder and clearer. There comes a time when we can no longer tune out these battle drums. We must choose, we must fight to claim this territory once and for all, or surrender ourselves altogether.

The most basic of all human desires is to find meaning to life. Individuals who experience Emotional Abundance (EA)—the ability to feel and manage their emotions—are not only able to meet the demands of everyday life, but are able to create meaning in their lives and relationships. Anxiety is the tension that arises from that battle for meaning. Kierkegaard calls anxiety the “dizziness of freedom.”14 Existentialist theologian Paul Tillich characterizes this as “the state in which a being is aware of its nonbeing.” 15

If you have struggled to find meaning in your life, if you live with an emptiness and despair in your soul, wondering if there must be more to life than this, you are not alone. For so many years I felt both helpless and hopeless to fill the emptiness that swallowed everything inside until I discovered how to fill that hole and build a life of hope, wholeness, and meaning.

In my book, Peace For a Lifetime, I share simple, practical life steps that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

All the things in the world were not meant to fill us, fix us,

or provide the meaning for which our souls long.

We were designed for so much more.

We were designed for God.

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14 Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 61.

15 Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 35.

Why We Need a New Way of Thinking About Emotions

 We have a glass of wine at the end of the day to take the edge off. We take a pill to numb us from whatever’s making us feel bad. We throw ourselves into work to avoid having to come home and deal with the pressures of marriage, finances, parenting. We use phones, gadgets, and games to distract us. We use the television to help us zone-out. It seems we expend so much energy to keep us from feeling anything unpleasant, anything messy, anything real.

The problem is, avoiding our negative emotions doesn’t get rid of the negative emotions. They are always there, right beneath the surface. They do come out – usually in ways we wished they wouldn’t. Over time, it takes exhaustive amounts of energy to get rid of them and yet, they are still never resolved.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that explains why we need a new way of thinking about emotions so we can actually use all of our emotions, even the negative emotions, to work for us instead of against us in our lives.

Most people today believe that all negative emotions are bad. We are supposed to feel good all of the time. If we don’t, we must find a pill or remedy to remove the feeling, so we can get back to normal.

Even in the church, many see positive emotions as divine blessings and negative emotions as spiritual attacks from the enemy. We pray that God will remove, heal, deliver. We long for victory. Few of us stop to inquire about the emotions we are feeling, to lean into them so we can understand them. In doing so, we miss golden opportunities to grow, to learn, and to heal.

For many years, I felt emotions simply happened to me, that I was helpless to do anything with these emotions. I believed emotions were bad, that they were Satan’s attacks over which my only hope was deliverance. When I realized that God created my emotions and experienced emotions Himself, I began to believe there might be a reason for my emotions other than to torment me. Perhaps God understood there was an area in which I needed to grow or heal. Instead of delivering me from the emotion, He wanted me to find healing in that emotion, so I could learn what I needed to learn and ultimately overcome.

My journey here on earth seems to be about growth. Most of our emotional growth happens in the difficult seasons of life. Growth requires friction. Growth requires resistance. Anxiety is part of the growth process. Maybe some amount of anxiety comes from the internal struggle with the unknown, the resistance that is necessary for me to grow strong.

Emotions are not bad. Even negative emotions are not bad. Emotions are part of God’s design to help us navigate the waters of life effectively. Ignoring, numbing, or shaming our emotions leaves us disconnected, wandering, and lost. Understanding how emotions working together with our thinking creates balance and equips us to experience our emotions as wise guides instead of stumbling blocks.

Emotions are a powerful resource. My new book, Peace for a Lifetime, unpacks the purpose of emotions so we are no longer forced to ignore them, numb them, or drown in them. I share simple, practical, life steps that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime.

Emotions are powerful resources. We will either use them as wise guides or stumbling blocks.

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What Exercise Can Teach Us About Our Emotions

 We’ve all made them. New Year’s Resolutions. We’ve over-indulged through another holiday season and we’ve made the commitment to begin working out after the New Year.

We begin the process of getting ourselves up early in the morning so we can head to the gym. Each step, each day, an act of will. The first few weeks are horrific. Muscles that haven’t been exercised in years are throbbing from use. We are told to lean into the pain. “No pain, no gain” – right?

For those who make it past those first few weeks, things begin to change. The muscles that had initially ached now feel taut and lean. We can feel ourselves growing stronger. We feel good.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, where I describe the important truths exercise can teach us about our emotions. Physical exercise is necessary for our overall health, for us to grow. Yet if we spend our lives running away from the discomfort associated with exercise, we will never grow solid and strong. We will never know what physical health feels like.

The same is true for our emotional health. We will never experience the emotional health or abundance God desires for us if we spend our lives running from any painful or uncomfortable emotions. We will find freedom, fullness, and peace as we learn how to lean into and develop a new relationship with our emotions.

Growing is a double-edged sword. The results are generally positive, but the process never occurs without some amount of struggle, effort, and pain. A few years back, I decided the time had come for me to start exercising.

As I began to near my thirties and the realities of an aging metabolism set in, I decided that perhaps now was the time to dust off my 1980s aerobics gear and head to the gym. That my best friend was a body builder and trainer, not to mention that another sweet friend, Sheila, offered to train with me, I felt was divine providence. This is like a two-fer, I thought. This was perfect.

Neither Sheila nor I were fitness types. We probably had fairly similar body types and athletic skills. Nevertheless, we both showed up the first day eager to become lean and trim. We didn’t know what awaited us.

To say our trainer took her job seriously might have been an understatement. She kept yelling, “One more set, one more set!” I have never been a quitter, and so I tried my best to push through the pain in order to finish well. By the end of our first day, Sheila and I were both exhausted. I drove home feeling sore, but exhilarated. Once I arrived home, however, things began to change. Little by little, I noticed my soreness increased. By the next day, I could no longer walk up the stairs; I could only crawl. Sitting down and standing up became monumental and excruciating tasks. There were moments I thought the pain might never end.

Over time, the pain did subside. As my muscles toned, I felt stronger, more capable. I could walk farther and faster on the treadmill. Steadily I was increasing my weights and adding repetitions. I was feeling good. My physical body was growing, and the results were worth the struggle.

I distinctly remember hearing my trainer encourage me to “lean into the pain.” She would push me harder than I thought I was capable of going, not to run away from the exercise, but to press forward. What is the saying? “No pain, no gain?”

The same is true for our emotional growth as we work to cultivate peace with God. If we can lean into our emotions instead of becoming numb to them or distracting ourselves from them, we grow. If we can reason through our emotions, understand our emotions, and effectively manage our emotions, the more Emotional Abundance (EA) we build into our lives.

It is never too late to begin cultivating a new relationship with your emotions. You don’t have to keep running from difficult emotions. You can lean into your emotions and use them to gain insight, wisdom, and strength on your journey.

In my new book, Peace for a Lifetime, I’ve included more information about the importance of establishing a new relationship with your emotions. I’ve packed it with basic, easy-to-understand life steps that will yield abundance and peace in your life and relationships. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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Why Neglecting Our Foundation Will Always Leave Us On Shaky Ground

 Have you ever watched a house being built? Ever seen the concrete and steel foundation formed carefully and precisely for the house that will be constructed on top?

In construction, the foundation is everything. If the foundation is defective or faulty in any way, it can undermine the strength and stability of the external structure. An entire house can sink, settle, or even collapse if the foundation is not completely secured, solid and strong.

Building our lives is a lot like building a house. We, too, have a foundation. If our foundation is not formed wisely and carefully, everything we will build on top will be built on shaky ground. Our careers, our relationships, our finances and our faith are subject to collapse if the foundation of our life is not well-built, trustworthy and strong.

Yet most of us have spent very little time focusing on the foundation. Our culture likes shiny things. We like shiny new houses and shiny new cars. We tend to focus our time and energy on making sure our “house” is decorated beautifully, without realizing the importance of evaluating and securing what lies beneath.

God wants each of us to build wisely on a solid foundation. Matthew 7:24-25 (NIV) tells us that “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace for a Lifetime, where I share both the importance of building a strong foundation as well as the history of how we as a culture arrived with little to no understanding of foundations and the impact they will have on every area of our lives. The good news is that it is never too late to shore up the foundation of your life. You can take this season to check your foundation and make certain that it is strong enough to withstand the storms and pressures that life will bring.

How many of us rush around busy with life, our careers, families, goals, etc., preoccupied with building our own towers? How much of our time is invested in having the right house, working the right job, driving the right car, sending our children to the right school, or being involved with the right circle of people? We focus our energy on making sure the exterior is polished and impressive while we devote little, if any, energy to make sure the foundation upon which everything else rests is strong and sure. What I have come to realize is you cannot have one without the other. You cannot have the gleaming exterior, the lifestyle, or the status, if you haven’t built your life on a strong foundation—at least you won’t have them for long.

The recession in the U.S. economy over the last several years has revealed to us that the opulence of the ’80s and ’90s in many ways wasn’t real, but was a façade. And that façade looked so good! Everyone had so much—lavish homes, vacations, boats, cars, jewels, etc.—we seemingly thought we were living out an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Somewhere along the way in the last ten to twenty years, the ground beneath us as a society began to shift. We all felt the tremors. Perhaps we suspected something was awry, but very few of us were brave enough to question the foundation. Few of us were wise enough to spend time and energy focused on making our physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual foundations strong enough to bear the weight of the external structure.

I can’t help but think about the motto of financial guru, Dave Ramsey. He famously admonishes his audience to, “Live like no one else now so that later you can live like no one else!” His belief is if people will take a long, hard look at the financial area of their lives, and are willing to make some difficult choices today about how they spend their money, they will permanently alter their future financial trajectory and later will be in a position of financial freedom. In short, the sacrifices they are willing to make today will bring the rewards of financial peace tomorrow.

I wish we as individuals, couples, and families would have that same mindset and intensity in the emotional arena of our lives. What would happen if we could take a moment of our lives, a season, to embark on a journey of discovery and health? How much greater could our impact on the world be if we could check our emotional foundation from the bottom up and make sure the foundation on which we are building is strong and sure?

Is your foundation solid? Can it stand up to the stresses and strains of life? My new book, Peace for a Lifetime, will walk with you step by step to help you evaluate your life’s foundation. This material will provide simple, practical life steps that will help you build a foundation of indestructible peace —not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

The foundation on which we build our lives is

the difference between life and death in a storm.

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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How Trauma Can Wreak Havoc in Our Lives and Relationships

 It takes two healthy individuals to create a healthy relationship, experts say. But what happens when our early childhood experiences seep into, contaminate, or even destroy our relationships?

As children, we absorb a world of big and small hurts (traumas) that we didn’t ask for, we couldn’t help. We didn’t have any adult tools to help us deal with those traumas, so we developed tools of our own, coping skills that would help us survive, help us deal, the best way we knew how.

But what worked to get us through our childhood years, doesn’t usually work for our adult lives or our relationships.

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares how trauma from our childhood can wreak havoc in our adult lives and relationships.

Kevin was thirty-two years old when he and his wife, Stacy, twenty-eight, came to see me for their first counseling session. They had been married for six years, but they were on the verge of divorce because of Stacy’s control issues. Kevin alleged Stacy controlled everything in their marriage, including the finances, household chores, and parenting of their three- and five-year-old girls. Stacy decided what and when they ate, what movies they saw, their activities, and their friends. If everything went according to Stacy’s plan, the family could enjoy a pleasant afternoon. But if something didn’t fall in place perfectly, Stacy usually became agitated, critical, and often enraged at Kevin or the girls. Whenever Kevin wanted to offer his opinion or make a suggestion, he was ignored, belittled, or threatened. Those experiences left Kevin feeling resentful and bitter toward Stacy.

During their initial visit, I discovered that Stacy’s mother had been brutally murdered when she was twelve years old. After the loss, she was taken to a counselor once, but shortly after that, her father remarried and moved the family several states away. Since she wasn’t getting into trouble and appeared to be doing okay, her father didn’t see the need to continue her counseling sessions.

In therapy, Stacy revealed she began having terrible nightmares of something happening to her after her mother’s death, or, even worse, to her father. He was all she had left. If something happened to him, what would she do? Who would look after her?

She began pulling her hair out several months later, a habit she was continuing at the time of our sessions. Her anxiety was at an extremely high level and was accompanied by severe periods of depression.

Stacy is an example of how a Big-T trauma during childhood can dramatically impact how we function in relationships as adults. However, Big-T traumas are not always from exposure to a single traumatic event. Big-T traumas may also result from sustained exposure to significant physical or emotional neglect or abuse over a long period, or repeated incidents of sexual abuse or sexual molestation. Big-T traumas can occur if we are loaded with an overwhelming amount of emotional baggage in childhood. Should there be no one to help us unpack and detach from those situations, we are left to carry this baggage with us into our adult life, our jobs, our marriages, and our relationships with our children.

Kevin and Stacy are just one of several stories I chronicle in my book, Peace for a Lifetime, that shows us how we can not only heal from our childhood wounds, but we can build a life that is radically different from anything we may have experienced. We can build life differently. We can build a life of hope, wholeness and harmony that will bring us peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, we can experience peace…for a lifetime!

We are not chained to our past. Through Christ, we have been freed to build a

foundation of peace that will last a lifetime!

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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Why Is There So Much Brokenness in the World?

 Why do bad things happen to good people? How do such unspeakable tragedies strike innocent children? Why is there so much brokenness in the world?

I hear these questions often. I hear them in my practice as I sit with individuals who have endured a lifetime of pain with little relief. I hear them in the church at large. It is here, where we tend to believe everything in our lives is healed at the moment of conversion, that these questions gnaw at us. They disturb us.

Why are there so few emotionally healthy adults, even in a community of spiritually minded, Christ followers?

Life continually writes upon the slate of our emotional identities. And yes, even after conversion there are some wounds that are to be healed over the course of our lives as we, “continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12, NIV). Some wounds just don’t disappear instantly no matter how much we study and pray.

Yet, if we understand the nature of our journeys here on earth, we can recognize that God is always about the process of healing, teaching, and growing us up to become more and more like Him. What a beautiful picture!

Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, where I explain why there is so much brokenness in the world and how we as individuals can move beyond our wounds to experience healing, embrace wholeness, and cultivate the kind of peace we’ve always dreamed of for our lives.

If children develop emotionally as they do physically and intellectually, why are there so few emotionally healthy adults? What happens that stops or prevents children from attaining Emotional Abundance—that ability to feel, reason through, understand, and effectively manage emotions—as they arrive at adulthood? The short answer is this: life happens.

We are born as blank slates. However, since we live in a broken world, that brokenness makes its mark on the slate of our identities in many ways. Brokenness changes everything about how we see the world, how we see ourselves, and how we see relationships. Life in a broken world creates broken people, and that brokenness is our universal wound. No one escapes being broken. No one is exempt. Brokenness is simply the reality of life and relationships on this side of heaven.

For example, many children living in environments where they are helpless to protect themselves or those around them learn to see themselves in adulthood as powerless to affect change in any area of their lives. They sometimes begin to experience themselves as deserving of the abuse they attract in relationships, and they may begin to feel a certain comfort in unhealthy environments and relationships because that unhealthiness seems familiar. Because they feel powerless to affect any change in their worlds, they continue in the pattern written on their physical, cognitive, and emotional slate many years earlier in childhood.

We are left to carry our wounds with us into the relationships that mean the most to us. We unconsciously wound those we love with our wounds.

That doesn’t have to be the end of the story.

God loves you. He weeps for the ways your childhood wounded you. He longs for you to be healed, to be whole. Whole — spiritually, emotionally, physically. Complete. Lacking in nothing. Abounding in everything. Every wound. Every relationship. Every heart. Every life. Yours.

My new book, Peace for a Lifetime, provides step-by-step information and tools for how you can experience healing in the darkest, deepest wounds within your heart and mind. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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How I Found Peace on the Road from Brokenness to Abundance

 We have all experienced seasons of winter. Each of us has felt the gnawing pain of barren and broken places deep inside that nothing seems to heal. Sometimes our brokenness catches us off guard and snatches the breath from our lungs in an untimely and unguarded instant. Sometimes our brokenness is a collision we can see careening towards us in the far-off distance but are otherwise helpless to escape. We come to the end of ourselves and we can go no further.

The good news is, for everyone who has experienced moments or seasons of brokenness, wounds that may be years old but are still tender to the touch, your broken places don’t have to stay broken.

God desires healing for you! John 10:10 (NKJV) encourages us that, The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

I’ve included an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime that shares the importance of Emotional Abundance and how we can begin building a life of abundance and peace. Peace is not something out of reach, it’s not something just for others. Peace is powerful, peace is possible!

I watched as the light changed from red to green. Cautiously, I pressed the gas pedal and accelerated through the intersection of this quaint little town. I had been through this intersection so many times before, but never to this destination.

The building was once a historic home, now turned into offices. As I entered the office, the corner office in the front of the house, I noticed two large windows. Old windows—windows where the glass slightly distorts the images outside, almost like a watercolor painting.

In between the two windows was a large fireplace. Though the fireplace did not work, and there was no fire lit, I immediately felt its warmth, as if something told me I was safe here.

I moved toward the sofa and noticed a book displayed on the mantel of the fireplace—one book sitting alone. The book must be important, I thought. I didn’t know how important.

That day, my first day, was the beginning of my healing. I had arrived here after a season I like to call the season of my undoing. Like those in recovery say, life had indeed become unmanageable.

No, there was no addiction, no rehab, or such. That might be easier to label somehow. I had simply come to the end of myself, and I could go no farther. I had reached, for me, the place of critical mass.

Change was no longer a matter of choice. Change was a necessity.

Like everything else in life, change was a process, so he said. My therapist spoke eloquently of a journey. He said since I didn’t arrive here overnight, I probably would not get out of here overnight. He said to trust the process. I did. I had no other choice.  

Week after week, I would stare out the windows—those big, old windows— as we talked. In the fall, I watched the wind bluster through, causing the trees to shed their leaves. I watched the barren winter wield its mighty hand, reducing nature to a cavernous nothingness. I watched as the spring came and the leaves, the bright yellow-green leaves, began to paint their watercolor brilliance once again.

One day as I peered outside, I could see the wind gently blowing through the branches of those old ancient trees. Like waves on the seashore, theirs was a gentle ebb and flow, as if life was being breathed back into them. I felt life begin to breathe inside of me, too.

Peace for a Lifetime chronicles my journey from brokenness to abundance as I healed the wounds that had kept me stuck for so long and learned what it felt like to be whole. This book will give you simple, practical life steps that will help you heal the broken places inside and will guide you towards cultivating peace in every area of your life —peace with God, peace within yourself, and peace in your relationships.

You can experience peace not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!

 To learn more about the book, click HERE!

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