Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
33. Redeeming “Just Sit in It”: From Avoidance to Honest Waiting with God
What if the advice you hate—“just sit in it”—isn’t a brush‑off, but a doorway to God’s presence, clarity, and change? We unpack why the phrase so often feels passive or even harmful, especially for those with abandonment wounds, and then rebuild it as a grounded, embodied practice of waiting with God. This isn’t wallowing and it isn’t spiritual bypassing. It’s a stage in healing where we refuse false escapes, tell the truth about our pain, and listen for the next faithful step.
We trace common misuses—encouraging isolation, dampening action, or camping on “death” without “resurrection”—and offer a redemptive alternative: waiting as intimacy. With a vivid Jason Bourne illustration, we show how wise pauses protect and position us. From attachment and containment to the Romans 7–8 shift, we explore how the Holy Spirit meets us in our mortal bodies, bringing regulation, courage, and unexpected hope. You’ll learn to spot your personal escapes, use them as clues to the deeper ache, and practice a simple, repeatable rhythm: pause, feel, name, invite, and act from presence rather than panic.
We also draw on trauma‑informed care, narrative work, and the Psalms to make this practical for real life: walking instead of numbing, journaling instead of spiraling, asking for co‑regulation instead of going it alone. The goal isn’t to get “back to normal” but to move toward flourishing—where you can hold grief and goodness at once and hear God’s cue before you move. If “sit in it” has hurt you before, consider renaming it “wait with God” and let that reframe open space for healing.
If this resonates, share it with a friend who’s in a hard season, subscribe to our emails for more story‑centered care, and leave a review so others can find the show.
Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_01:We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_00:We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story in the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_01:We're glad you're here. We've all heard the advice to just sit in it. But what does that mean? This is something that I've been wanting to talk about because I think it's very important. Like when it's used appropriately and what it means at its core is a central posture and necessary element to story work and to sanctification in general. But I'm also aware that not everybody hears it the same way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, when you first said you want to talk about that phrase, just sit in it, my initial feeling was I don't really like it. It feels dismissive. It can sound vague to the point of even being harmful to someone that's going through something difficult. So yeah, I can remember even friends mentioning that that term was used in a season of our life and it felt isolating. It felt harmful to them.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And so because of that, because of both the power of it and the potential for misuse, today we just want to look at both the problems with the advice, but also the surprising way scripture shows us the redemptive truth behind the essence of this advice. So we're gonna unpack it.
SPEAKER_00:So can we start with the misuses just to kind of get them out of the way and then jump into how we think it's central to scripture?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that'd be great.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, then I'm gonna start with a couple. I I feel like if I heard just sit in it, it sounds a bit passive to me, like it's substituting for action. Now, maybe that's because I'm driven more by what to do and action-oriented methods, but it sounds as though there's a passivity um mixed with I don't want to enter that with you. So you just go sit in it, not let's sit in this together.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I think that when we when anyone pursues counseling or care, they're ready for action, they're ready to see change, they're ready to move forward. And we've talked about this in an earlier episode on shame, but especially when things really start to click, it's like now I'm ready. What do I do next? And so in general, the phrase, whether used in those circumstances or just casually over a cup of coffee, can feel and you just kind of combine two. One, it can feel like you're basically not encouraging action. You're just saying, hey, don't do anything. But the other one is, and I think you and I have actually talked more about this one, is is a sort of spiritual bypassing or the spiritualization of avoidance that the person giving the advice might just simply be, and I think this is very often the case. I don't know how to help you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Like God is with you, but I'm not gonna be with you.
SPEAKER_01:And and that doesn't Yeah, it's like the Christian version of sucks to be you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I even picture like these youth retreats or college ministry retreats. You can imagine it's crisp fall weather, and everyone has said, go off into your own space, find a rock to sit on and spend an hour with God and come back. And I think that can be really good for some people, probably like me, that are fast-paced, don't slow down much. But for people with stories of abandonment, it can be very activating to their trauma of I'm all alone and I don't have someone, and you're not with me to kind of co-regulate or help me with wisdom or I have a lot of questions. And so I think just sit in it can also be ignoring trauma dynamics.
SPEAKER_01:I've also interacted with people who are terrified of being alone. So the thought of just going off by themselves, and I actually have been in those situations and it it freaks me out because it's like, where should I go? You know, when I was younger, especially like what where and what and what do I do and how long?
SPEAKER_00:And again, to your Well, especially when it feels like everyone else knows what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I'm just gonna look around and they seem to be really like closing their eyes and having a moment with God, and you're like, ha, I'm not feeling anything.
SPEAKER_01:Another one that I've seen, and I've again I've engaged this with clients, and and at times my own heart is why do I want to wallow in pain? Whereas what sit in it would actually mean is we're waiting on the Lord, but but there might be this sense of like, oh, I'm just supposed to like feel sad all the time, or I'm supposed to just sit in this pain. And and again, if that's what is heard, and especially if that's what is said, then that would also be a misuse.
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot of stories that can come up for people around the the term. Just sit in it, it feels a little bit like figure it out.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And figure it out is going to be activating to someone that didn't have parents guiding them through life. And so they constantly felt alone and looking in the face of the crowd to figure out how they're supposed to feel, how they're supposed to act.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's really, really great. The next one is if you've been tracking with our podcasts, you'll hear the Van Allen phrase the most powerful person in your community is the one that can hold death and resurrection. And that so much of this work is like about learning to do both. Oftentimes what we can end up doing is like sitting on the side of death too much without enough resurrection. Yes. And so sitting in it can be confused with just feel worse, kind of like feel more pain.
SPEAKER_00:Um like just that unhealthy endurance of don't name the good, just name the bad, sit in the bad.
SPEAKER_01:I would even add, and we've talked about the concept of being broken again. Totally agree with its intent, but I keep hearing it used as if it's sort of like my actual current state. When the truth is we are a sinner and saint. And when we say hold death and resurrection, it's a it's kind of a mystery because you don't casually hold one and casually we really do need to feel the weight of what we're wrestling with. And we'll talk more as we go into what this really means. However, with the goal of coming up and out resurrected, that is to come through the situation more in line with who God has made us to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So just to clarify, then, as we've said all these rapid-fire misuses, so to speak, the phrase just sitting in it is not the same as wallow in it, or it's not dismissing, it's not saying just endure abuse. So it could have been used like that in your story and in your life, but I think we're hoping to maybe have a conversation that could redeem it into what we think it's about creating space for God's presence and clarity for the next action, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So what we're saying is sitting in it, primarily it's we're not using all of the escapes. I mean, that that's the that's the essence. It's it's not that we're doing something unusual. Rather, we're doing what we would do without all these false escapes that we cling to. We're engaging this process as a stage in healing. It's not the whole process. So I the idea of sitting in it is again, I'm moving down in that you theory we've talked about in the places that are hard that are actually there. I'm feeling them, but with the goal then of the next stage, which is the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00:That's a huge emphasis. I want to say again, that this is not just the end-all sentence. So if we say this in a way that we feel like it's a good sentence, sit in it, that is never supposed to have the period at the end, like it's the end of a process. It's part of our stories, finding healing and redemption and resurrection, so to speak, that we've got to sit in it to wait upon the Lord. But there is then something that comes.
SPEAKER_01:An illustration that I've used because I love the Bourne movies, Jason Bourne, and especially the main, the first three. You know, there's like the Born Identity, the Born Ultimatum, the Bourne Supremacy. I get the order mix up. I think that was it. And I believe it's either the second or the third one. I don't know. But it's the one where there's a journalist who's figured out Blackbriar.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the third one. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And he's figuring things out, and he's starting to put it in the newspaper columns, and it's then we're starting to see the Russian bad guy getting worked up, and then all of a sudden the the people over Jason are getting worked up. Anyway, everyone's getting worked up. And there's a scene where Jason finally meets this journalist in a very crowded, like mall area. He's never seen Jason still, but Jason slips a phone into his pocket and then gets away and then calls it and it's ringing and he's like, What is this? And it's a phone, and then he hears the voice of Jason. And Jason, in the meanwhile, Jason Bourne is watching, he knows what he knows because he's like amazing. And he's telling him where to go and when to walk and where to step and when to duck into a store. And then he'll say, pause. And you know, as the watcher of the movie, you're like, Why? Then we notice, oh, because the camera just then swing at him. And so anyway, he's under Jason's care. And then at one moment he's like, Go in that uh staircase. Guy goes in the staircase, and out of nowhere are these bad guys show up, and then Jason just takes him out. And then they meet each other, and and then he says, Okay, follow my lead on the phone. And then the next thing, while this is going on, is you know, the bad guys show up to the sharpshooting, and they have this guy go up into this location, and his job is to find Jason and this reporter and do his job. Well, Jason knows this. The reporter doesn't know this, but Jason's aware of what's going on, and he's telling him what to do. And there comes a moment where Jason Bourne has told him on the phone, stay there. And we see him, this reporter nervous, you know, and we see him kind of looking at this, and he he sees a custodian's like cart, and he, oh, I think it's the custodian. And we see Jason kind of find it. No, no, no, no, that's not anybody. And that happens like with one or two things, and then all of a sudden the reporter is like, I know that's one of them, and he just starts to run. And it's as he's running that he catches the scope of the bad guy. Bad guy doesn't see him until that movement, and that's when things don't go well for him at that moment. And so I've always felt like what an amazing illustration of waiting and listening to the Lord. Like I get antsy, I want to run. Sometimes it's running toward a great idea, we think. Sometimes it's just running to get away from something. But what that illustrates is that sometimes just waiting is important.
SPEAKER_00:Part of that scene that I love is that Jason Bourne from a distance is telling the man, walk three steps, now lean down and tie your shoe. Okay, wait, stay there. And he's basically at that moment saying, sit in it. So if we think about like his goal, Jason Bourne's goal was to get this reporter to safety, but he knew there was a sharpshooter. And so he said, Get down, tie your shoe, now wait for it, wait for it. Okay, now stand up and start walking.
SPEAKER_01:And and I've thought about that illustration for this. It can be a little bit interesting. Like, is that really the same as sitting in it? You know, when he goes on to tie his shoe, it's for a purpose, right? Like, but if you imagine yourself in his position, aware of just his body's anxieties of what's happening now. His world is being torn open. And now he's got to squat down and kind of pretend to be tying his shoe until he hears like the word go. Or in the example I gave at the end, where he's gotta just kind of like hunker behind a pole or whatever until it's time. The point of those moments is his body is saying run, run, get away. And what he needs to be take action. And again, it could be actions of escape or fight or fawn. It can be any of the limbic responses. And one of the goals of this conversation is both learning the meaning of sitting in something that we're going through, but at the same time are probably of equal importance is learning the ways we actually avoid it, because often that's what we're gonna see first. We're gonna actually be noticing. I'm I'm moving to a familiar escape right now. What was happening just before that? What came up? And so it's a different way to get to the issue.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't know exactly what you mean.
SPEAKER_01:Well, if I asked you when you avoid sitting in it, what do you typically do? I'm not asking you personally, but just in general, maybe answer what would be some things a person might do. So uh the stimulus and the response, the stimulus is the thing that's inciting our anxiousness. We're responding to things we've not even noticed.
SPEAKER_00:Our emotions that even creates the need to say, I should sit in this.
SPEAKER_01:And then the response is what we do. And what we're trying to do is increase the space between the two, which is in psychology, that's where we hear the word differentiation and sort of like I'm I'm grounded, I'm in my body, I'm staying in my window of tolerance, I'm sitting in it. Use the escapes as the tracer chemical to the stimulus, which is the thing.
SPEAKER_00:So if all right, so if my let's say my tendency is to start scurrying around the house tidying. Yeah. So if I'm doing that, you're saying maybe pay attention. Are you doing this out of a response?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, low-hanging fruit could be something like that. It could be looking at your phone. It can be, I want to start connecting with the person on Marco Polo. It can be like, I don't want to be in my own head right now. I'm trying to get away from something. I'm not comfortable in my skin. But often we don't name that. This goes a little bit back to shame grandiosity, where we're noticing the response first. And usually maybe we can learn to do it in real time, but later it may happen where we go, you know what? Right there. So for me, when I have like some time between, let's say, clients or I have some some time to where I could do work. Often I feel like I need a break. I just want to sit down and maybe play chess on online or you know, whatever. Well, when I feel that, can I learn to go, wait a minute, I'm feeling that. Let me pay attention. And I worked with a person who has great advice about any kind of escape is she says, get on the floor. Like, like, get on the floor. I've never done that. And light a candle. Here, here's the thing: whatever the liturgy is, the the advice is stay with yourself. Christians, stay with your true self, your redeemed self, you and the Lord. Whereas often that brief moment where we are ready to escape, we feel alone. We don't notice it, but we feel alone. We feel confusion. Something's off. It may not be a landmark issue. It may be very subtle, but something's amiss. And we medicate it quickly with things that are not wrong, just things, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Well, right. Because when I heard you say that about you need a break, I'm thinking to myself, what's wrong with that? All of us need breaks. And so if I have a 15-minute break between two appointments, what I do with that 15 minutes, you're saying sit in it. I don't know that I want to sit. So what if it feels good to go move? Or well, yeah, again.
SPEAKER_01:So that's really a great question. I observe you sometimes in your breaks, you go outside, you walk around, you take the dog out. So that's healthy recreation. That's you saying, My body needs this, right? That's not an escape. I often am like, I'm gonna just play a game of chess. Like, I think what's happening for me, I'm I'm learning to name is I'm feeling something. Something's probably come up from the meeting I was in or whatever. And I need to dissociate a bit and escape. And what I'm suggesting right now in this piece of the advice is not to feel shame over that, but to pay attention to it. And maybe the next time just take a breath a minute to pause and to go, wait, what is it I need? What am I really needing? Maybe I needed something like food or a walk in the sun or maybe a conversation or whatever. But often the escape is something that's kind of dopamine, that's sure, there's no question marks, you know, it's fast. And so I I'm just suggesting that sitting in it is not something we just do for large scale things, but it can be these micro-daily things where major transformation can come if you just take a breath, feel it, and then shift to a better choice that you are making from your true self.
SPEAKER_00:It makes me think about Sela, which we've done an episode on, but it's my format for pausing and turning and reflecting on something that's just happened, but it's not sedentary. And so for me, I am a person that likes to move, and my job makes me sit for an hour, hour and a half at a time. And so I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm realizing I don't love this sentence. Just sit in it because I don't want to sit. But I think what we're really saying is can you pay attention and be in it? Like be mindful, be aware, be in the moment. Like waiting upon the Lord does not mean you're literally standing still, waiting in traffic or in a line. It means I'm moving about my day. It's it's a posture of the heart.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So so what we want to do is just legitimize why this is good advice. What about sitting in it is good? And I think the assumption we're making is this advice is given whether by a person to us or we think of it ourselves, however, it comes to you, at a moment where you are in something difficult. You're in something that has some degree of a desire to move out, to move on, to get this behind you. Right. And so what we're saying is often we're building on just common themes from all of our podcasts, the unfelt emotions do not disappear. So they're stored in your body, they leak into your relationships. And so when you use escape, we're preventing healing. Those emotions are just like free radicals. So avoidance backfires.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so then if we're sitting in it, we begin to discover there is something actually there, probably grief, probably anger, probably shame, which we don't want to feel. Like over and over we get to the same place. It's like, I don't want to sit in it, I don't want to feel. And yet we know that there's a need to uncover and reverse the numbing effect that so many of our scurrying and tidying, scrolling on Instagram, like all the things that we do are the numbing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and I want to say, so let's be clear. All of these things we're saying thus far are not wrong. There are sinful things you can escape with, or there are things that are not quote unquote sin, but that you may escape overuse or whatever. You may go do something amazing. You may go mow the yard or plant a tree. But the point is, have you, when these wounds are freshly uncovered, have we approached them? Have we sat in them? And here's where I want to make the turn for why this is so important for Christians, for humans. And that is we are not made to be alone. In the garden, Jesus walks in the cool of the day. God walks in the cool of the day, and they could go approach him. And it's when the serpent shows up that Eve kind of goes into solo mode, right? And Adam's involved, but they're involved solo, they're not connected to God. And so what we're naming is when we are in a place of trauma, we feel alone. Like our primary caregiver is not present in our memory or in our body or in real life. I mean, you're at a place where something has happened, you're confused, and what we need, what would be ideal is for a and let's say you're a four-year-old, is for a caregiver that you love and trust and who attunes to you, comes to your aid, right? Puts their hands on your face, looks into your eyes, says, What is going on? I want to hear everything. The absence of that is where our bodies become confused, our brains, we become fragmented. We're not sure. And so, as adults, when those early stories or just any situation shows up, often those are the pathways that get reignited. And so we're re we're freshly feeling confusion. We're freshly feeling that young place of embarrassment or unease or shame. And I think as we've talked about in our shame series, the essence of shame is alone. I don't want to be alone. Don't put me outside, don't put me to shame. And what we're saying then is sitting in it is not being alone. The irony is sitting in it is actually being with the Lord, welcoming the spirit's presence in the escapes are actually our attempts to be alone.
SPEAKER_00:So here's the tricky thing. No one really knows if the escape in and of itself is an escape or if it's being in union with the Lord by just looking at it. So let's take an example of someone that has land and they've got animals, horses, sheep, whatever it may be. And when they feel dysregulated by something that's happened in their life, maybe in the home or from work, they get home, they may want to go be with animals. I mean, that that's a very common therapeutic feeling. Dogs, horses, cats are very attuning. So am I doing this as an escape or am I doing this as a way of connecting and feeling like I'm being attuned to and the Lord is with me and I am sitting in it. Maybe I'm really pondering what happened at work, what happened with my spouse, the fight I just had with my daughter. Like maybe I'm really sitting in it while I'm walking my dog or while I'm riding my horse. But it could also look like I'm just doing this as an escape.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. This is not prescriptive. When I think of the concept of sitting in it, when I'm using it with a client as an example, I don't mean like right this minute, we're just gonna stop, you can't move. It's saying at some point, come back to this place and wait upon the Lord. And again, that can mean, yeah, I'm walking the dog and I'm processing the pain I'm feeling.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think waiting upon the Lord is the key synonym to this sentence. Because waiting upon the Lord says it's a stage in the process. The Lord is going to come through for us.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, you know, the song we used to sing from U2, Psalm 40. I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined to me and hurt my cry. Of course, that's the Psalm. You know, he put me on a rock, he put a new song in my mouth, he like all the beauty, all the resurrection. But that first part is easy to just kind of like gloss over. But to wait patiently for the Lord can be terrifying because, and here's where we're moving this is a form of intimacy. It's like a close relationship with another where you're vulnerable, where you're not sure how it's gonna go. And when we wait on the Lord, we are waiting for a person, for the lover of our soul, God, and that doesn't necessarily mean we're waiting for his physical approach or even words. I'm not even quite sure what it's so sacred. I'm not sure what the next thoughts are, but I do know this. We're waiting for his comfort and peace to restore. We're asking the Lord to teach us to rest, to be patient, to breathe, to slow down, trusting that we're safe. You know, we're in the house of the Lord. He is our shield, he is our refuge. And as we do that, our body, and this is the important thing, is saying, What are you doing? Like because of the fact that we carry wounds, we carry shame in our actual bodies, we are tuned or programmed or wired to escape. And when we don't, that's where all of the threats come in. That's where all the voices come in. That's where all the accusations are coming in. So to your point, maybe the dog walking and the riding the horse and the mowing the arter are all ways that we sit in it. Or maybe we need to just go do those things to be regulated, of course. But at some point, we want to come back when we feel safe and ready. And maybe with a trusted guide, a close friend, it doesn't have to be alone to process again, to set in again, to tell the story again. So sitting in it isn't just being alone in a room. It's it's the posture of recognizing that I need to move toward grief, toward shame, toward that what I'm scared to see, because it's in those places that Jesus does promise to show up. And he shows up in such a way that we can't fathom the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00:So it really comes down to the relationship that we may be alone for some of this season of waiting. We may be with friends or family. But the relationship that's central to this entire sentence is that we're trusting in the spirit of the living God being in our bodies, that the promised Holy Spirit, the promised counselor. And so in the Psalms, when you hear over and over again, I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined and heard my cry, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Then you get to all the promises within the New Testament. I mean, those are promises, but then you hear the relational fulfillment and reason why we can do that in Hebrews, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus' words in Matthew, I am with you always to the end of the age. You know, and so there's just this constant need to come back to He will be with you. Waiting upon the Lord is not the end of the process.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And a place I always come back to is the Romans 7, 8 corridor, because, you know, in seven, Paul is giving this beautiful and yet frighteningly true account of our sin, of what I want to do, I do not do, and the very thing I don't want to do, or that's the very thing I'm doing, and yada yada. But but what's interesting is he's alone. I mean, he's trying to figure it out. And it's not until he cries out, Who will rescue me? That's a prayer. Who will rescue me? He's praying. And the answer that comes to him, of course, is Jesus Christ. But what he receives, and we see later in Romans 8, is that the Holy Spirit shows up, the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will bring life to your mortal body. That's not glory, that's not eternity, that's this life. There will be healing and growth in our mortal bodies as we wait on the Lord and walk by the Spirit and trust that we are sons and daughters of God. But there's this moment where he says, Provided you suffer, you know, you'll suffer and you'll be raised. And so there's this constant reminder that, oh, when I come to that place that I want to run bungee cord, get out of, escape, et cetera, and I stay in it, it's gonna feel kind of like I'm entering into the very death that Jesus has endured.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's gonna feel like we're abandoned. And that's the very essence of entering into the sufferings of Christ. He screamed, My God, my God, where have you forsaken me? Both in the Psalms, you know, we hear it as kind of a prophecy, but also obviously on the cross. But the truth is God is with us, and sitting in it is choosing to believe God's nearness trumps our feelings of abandonment. Because I think you said recently in one of our episodes, we will never truly face the shame of God turning his face away. We do feel it, but we won't sweat blood and die because he's done. Like that's the substitute of Jesus. And we get to sit and wait on the Lord believing he's paid that. We're not going to be abandoned, even when our body is screaming, don't do that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then you're really hitting on a really important point because the cross we bear, take up your cross. It's not Jesus' cross, his cross is justification, it's once and for all. But we take up our cross, meaning we're going toward shame, toward his cross, over and over and over. And what makes the gospel so amazing is the deep places of our bodies that are wounded are getting healed. It's a progressive healing. And as we do this and practice this, part of the way I think the enemy works is not only do we have the problem, whatever it is, from brokenness, but then we feel like we shouldn't feel these feelings. Like something's wrong with me right now. And so much of the faith I think that we're seeing in the scripture, whether it's from Psalms and Lament and the ones you've quoted, Psalm 40 and others, or from when Paul is crying out, wretched man that I like he's at his end in Romans 7. The point is we're all coming to this place where we feel like something's off. We're broken. And he ends Romans 7 by saying, So I find that in my mind I follow the law of Christ, but in my body, the law of sin and death. What he's saying there is, I'm gonna feel like I'm like things are off from wounds I've received, from my own sins, my emotions. I mean, anytime we're off or feeling something, there's a part of us that's just look, give me the spiritual tolerant. Like, let's just get rid of this as fast as we can. And what's being said is much like the thorn in the flesh from 2 Corinthians 12, like, my grace is sufficient, like the the way you're supposed to grow. And it's said over and over is by again sitting in the situation in such a way that we're allowing ourselves to feel. So practically what we're doing is we're pausing when we feel this urge to escape. We're feeling it because we're safe, we're allowing it to roll over us, we're naming it. Um, that's an important part of the practice of sitting in it, like really seeing what is at the center of this struggle. We're inviting the Lord. That that's so hard. I mean, it sounds so easy. I want you to know it's so hard to just say, Lord, I need you. Like to be poor in spirit is I have nothing, nothing in my hands right now. I want to, I want a technique, I want something to get out of this, some plan, some good news, whatever. And I have nothing. I'm gonna have to wait. And that that's not very American-like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think you're really saying, I'm gonna sum it up in a sentence, that our faith doesn't take away our pain. It doesn't erase the pain, but it reorients us. It's the very essence of getting back into the presence of Jesus, the presence of the triune God. So if we avoid the pain and don't sit in it, we will never get to that place of intimacy with our Father. So many of the Christians I visit with all want to be close to God. We all want an intimacy with the Father. And yet we don't really want to suffer. And that's we don't need to shame ourselves for that. Of course we don't. Our brain is wired to keep us safe from injuries, sicknesses, abuse, you name it. So it it is not wrong for us not to want suffering. We're not to be martyrs and go in just for the heck of it. But we have to, I think, recognize as Christians, as we unpack whatever's happening in our life right now or whatever happened in our life, the suffering is the doorway that takes us into the intimacy with our Father.
SPEAKER_01:Very well said. I remember when I was kind of studying cognitive behavioral therapy years ago, and one of the experts in that field said that the goal is to get back to what we would consider the norm. And so a lot of therapies, a lot of modalities, that's what they're doing. They're trying to get you back to sort of norm. But that's not the goal of the gospel, right? That's not the goal of narrative-focused trauma care, in my estimation. That's not the goal of even interpersonal neurobiology. I think these modes and what Jesus is wanting is flourishing. And we're saying the only way flourishing happens is when the wounds we've endured and the ways we've responded are exposed and healed. And it's a process, it's a progressive process. It often can feel like we're going back to square one, but we're not. And the posture at the center of this is going to be contained in that phrase, just sit in it. Not meaning that's all you do, and you're certainly not alone, but don't run. Don't escape. Don't fill your life with all the ways we avoid it. Actually pay attention. Maybe it's something you're so scared to name, but others have named about you. Maybe it's there's wounds. When you even get sad about them, they just become obsessant and they can circle, circle, circle, and you're taken out for a few days. Whatever the situation is, our bodies are telling us something. You know, we talk a lot about the flesh, and that's sort of the idea of this fallen part, but our actual mortal body, which Jesus Himself had, is uh incredible and it's telling us things. And our job is to pay attention and to lean in and through prayer and presence of the Lord, sitting in these places, again, in a group with a friend, by ourselves at times, with the scriptures open, with the journal, however you're doing it, on a walk, we're coming back to these places and we can revisit them carefully in the Lord, waiting for some sense of healing, some sense of presence, some understanding of his glory in those moments, and he will come. So here's your call to action. The next time you feel the urge to escape, pause. Bring your ache to God, sit in it, knowing you are not alone, and that his presence is enough to sustain you until the rescue comes.
SPEAKER_00:Someone you may have trusted in the past may have said to you, just sit in it. And it felt like they were avoiding really engaging your pain. And it's kind of a spiritual passivity. But the call of a Christian is to trust that we are never alone, that we have possibly a story of abandonment, and that may be activated in hearing, just sit in it. But it's actually a call to wait upon the Lord. It's only one step in our journey, but it's an important step, and it may be the most important to know what's the next step. Often we don't know what our next step is because we never paused, we never sat, we never listened, we never journaled. Often this concept of waiting upon the Lord or sitting in something in expectation that the Lord will guide was never modeled for us in our childhood because a parent did not take the time to guide or direct or train. And so when we sit in it, we feel activated. We feel isolated, alone, scared, very childlike, but not in the kind of way that's a childlike faith, but more of a childlike anxiety. If we can at least be aware of our body's activation around the idea of waiting upon the Lord or the idea of sitting in it, or the idea of having a season where we don't know what the next step is, that very activated part of our body can be taken to the Lord because He's our new father.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love what you said about modeled. And I think of our podcast on the word containment. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend that it's a very important attachment theory concept that not only do our parents we need attuning, they see us, we feel felt, but containment is sort of the space where when we have emotions, we're upset, we're scared, we're any number of emotions, in that space, we we experience the parent to actually show us their attunement in the midst of what could be a rupture. Maybe the child's mad at mom and the mom moves toward the child, sits down on the child level, looks in the child's eyes, puts hands on face. The reason I say this is that's not only modeling, that's forming neurobiological connections. The child's very essence is being changed in those moments. And conversely, when the parent yells or leaves or storms out, same thing, child's being formed. And so, in some ways, what we're really uh saying and sit in it is let's enter into the containment that the father offers us.
SPEAKER_00:So if you hear all of this and you think to yourself, I don't know how to sit in it, you're not alone. A lot of us don't know how. But that very vulnerability of admitting we don't know how or don't want to, you get to take to the Lord and to possibly a friend or a counselor, relative or spouse and say, Will you help me? I'm feeling the call to just sit in something and I'm scared to death.
SPEAKER_01:Amen. I also encourage listeners to go back to the Selah episode Emily did in season one as a practice of learning to be in your body and breathe and feel these things as well.
SPEAKER_00:As Story Matters Coaching, we firmly believe that seemingly disjointed aspects of our present life are rooted in your personal story and the narrative of the gospel. We'd love to help you explore your story by doing individual or group work with us. Storymatterscoaching.com or Story Matters Initiative on social media can point you to us.