My hubby and I are blessed to lead a small group of fantastic couples at our church. And we are one deliciously mixed bag of people, let me tell you. We have working moms, stay-at-home moms, working dads, stay-at-home dads, our professions cover all the bases from teacher and nurse to engineer and officer, we have a 1-child-and-we’re-done! family, and a 3-kids-and-we’re-eager-to-grow family…and everything in between.
We belly-laugh together, ugly-cry together, pray together, dissect scripture together, and walk through world-rocking tragedies together.
Today, one of our precious couples will bury their beautiful baby girl. This is their third loss.
Which just confirms what I always knew…life was never intended to be lived out alone.
And because life was created to be spent together – the good, the bad, and the tragic – this is just one of the heart-breaking experiences we’ve walked through together as a group.
We are one motley crew of hilarious, transparent, Jesus-adoring peeps who love each other to pieces, who aren’t afraid of being painfully real, and who manage to throw together a killer meal every time we gather.
This, my friends, is what “church” looks like.
Life; raw and unfiltered, sweet and sour, embraced and squeezed dry.
If there’s one thing I could not live without, other than tea and date night, it’s friends.
Because we can’t get enough of each other and meet only every other week…we 
decided to meet on the “off” weeks as guys and girls. So the hubbies meet one “off” week, and the gals meet the other. This has taken the intimacy and soul-safety of our small group to a whole new level.
While the guys gather at the local brewery and talk Jesus, man-stuff and beer, we’ve decided to work our way through a book by Lysa TerKeurst, Unglued: Making Wise Choices in the Midst of Raw Emotions, and it’s been just what the doctor ordered.
It deals so beautifully and practically with the way we process our wild and hairy emotions, offering simple ideas and methods of processing and delivering them in an honoring, relationship-enhancing way.
After all, God has given us so many examples and principles in the bible to glean from. One of my favorite scriptures is 2 Peter 1:3-8 which says…
“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I’ve had many “ah-ha!” moments between the pages of Lysa’s book.
And because I’m visual, I need reminders. Everywhere. Enter: scripture cards and a cheat sheet!
While I put these cards together mostly for myself and our girl’s group, I figured I’d make them available to you too…as it’s definitely a book worth reading, and a ‘procedure manual’ worth working into your life.
“The one who holds their tongue is the one who holds the power” Lysa TerKeurst
When uncomfortable, blood-pressure-raising circumstances roll our way…before responding…work through these steps:
1. Remember who you are: the way you respond, or react, will always be an overflow of how you see yourself – who you are, and whose you are.
2. Redirect your focus to Jesus: don’t let trials and tribulations pull our eyes off of the only One who truly matters and who can direct your path (pray, pray, pray!)
3. Recognize God’s job isn’t your job: it’s not our job to fix or control others, it’s our job to be obedient, loving and self-controlled in our response to adversity. Remember, life is 10% what we encounter, and 90% how we handle it!
4. Recite thanks and praises to God: cultivating an attitude of gratitude in the midst of discomfort always has a way of changing our hearts and energizing our weary hearts.
5. Realize reactions determine reach: we can make or break relationships by how we handle unexpected set-backs. With every negative encounter comes the opportunity to grow personally.
When we tackle the issue, rather than the person, we give God room to do His thing…to refine and mature us, while honoring and esteeming the other person. He also happens to have a way of redeeming seemingly hopeless situations.
It’s a win-win.
Seeing God is far more concerned with our character than our comfort, we are guaranteed prickly relationships and encounters in this life. Next time you’re facing one, and battling raw emotion…before you come unglued, try working through this biblical procedure manual:
*Get your procedure manual cheat-sheet & scripture verse printables right here.
*As always, please note that this is exclusively for personal use and is NOT to be reprinted for resale purposes. Feel free to share the link, pin it, or head over to Facebook and visit Simply Bloom.
