Emotional Groundedness Strike Force
A four month old screams inconsolably when her parents leave her with a babysitter for the first time. Although the house and all the tangible, visible world were unchanged, the loss of immediate, visual, auditory and physical connections with her parents, left her emotionally ungrounded.
At 24, she was in a car accident where her best friend was killed and she was badly injured. Weeks in the hospital and months of PT ensued.
She had a strong community that was there for her, and with their support, she wobbled occasionally, but broadly remained emotionally grounded until she returned to normal life.
At 44 her husband divorced her and since he was the pastor of the church, her whole spiritual community pulled back from her, believing the accusations. The judge believed them too, and her husband gained complete, permanent custody of the kids.
She got a job – a bad job – and found a place to live – a miserable place – and started the task of rebuilding her life.
And then she was diagnosed with cancer.
She lost her job, did not really have any friends there, and faced possible end of life with only her faith in God, the God who had not protected her or defended her lately.
She recovered from her third catastrophic life event, and rebuilt her external life reasonably.
Her relationship with God was odd. He never explained His seeming lack of engagement in her past. She did not develop intimacy with Him. But He would occasionally give her a name of someone she did not know, and said, "They need what you carry."
He would "connect" her with that stranger in a spiritual way she could not describe, for an hour, or a day or a week.
Then God would speak again, and say, "Thank you." And she would be abruptly disconnected.
Then, ordinary life would go on.
When she went home, Habakkuk met her there, with a large group. He said, "Our tribe has been watching you, and cheering you on, and waiting for you to come home. You are going to live in our neighborhood!"
Habakkuk 3:16ff NKJV “When I heard, my body trembled; My lips quivered at the voice; Rottenness entered my bones; And I trembled in myself, That I might rest in the day of trouble. When he comes up to the people, He will invade them with his troops. Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls — Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.”
***
In theory, deep emotional groundedness should emerge naturally from a loving, safe, engaged home.
In theory.
In practice, emotional groundedness most often emerges in those who, like a solitary tree on a mountain side, are battered by the howling winds of adversity, frequently.
God seemed to have groomed Anna and Simeon for a life time, largely as eccentrics, not having a peer community, that we can tell.
The apparent futility seemed to bite Simeon. ". . . now You are letting Your servant depart in peace . . ." Luke 2:29 NKJV
An odd life, lived in preparation for 30 seconds of ministry.
One way to look at it.
Another is, "Handpicked by God, strategically prepared, powerfully positioned to bless the Son of God at His first engagement with The Law."
So all of you in the SLG Tribe, who have been drug through the rat hole backwards, multiple times, and like Habakkuk have been taken to the very edge of your body and soul's survival, but have made it through, because of your spirit – I would be deeply honored to have you on a strike force for the BYH 1 event.
Copyright by Arthur Burk
March 2023
Prayer Strategies
Strategy #1
Emotional groundedness does not come from our head. It comes from our heart.
Ask Peter. Head was in a good place. Great place, actually. But when a servant girl poked at him, his heart caused his mouth to say he had never even heard of that Jesus guy they were talking about.
And there are a whole lot of people coming to the seminar with The Peter Syndrome. Their head is screwed on right and believes and wants all the really good things. And their heart betrays them and pushes away the gifts of God and a whole lot more.
So . . . you who have warred and worked hard to get to a place where there is some congruence between your head and your heart occupy a very special niche of earned authority and you have much to contribute to the spiritual climate of the event.
Thank you for joining us in warring for others you may never meet here on earth.
But first, I would like you to spend a couple of weeks sanctifying your gift.
Back in the day, when you were a mess, there were probably the ever-present boo birds who spit on you and told you what a mess you were. As you grew through the years, very few of you had an overt celebration of your journey and your progress.
So you need to be your own celebrant.
Look at the person you were 30 years ago, in terms of emotional groundedness or lack thereof, and do a compare-and-contrast with who you are today.
Pretty wild, huh?!
However it works for you, spend some unstructured time, looking at situations in the past where you lost it because of your lack of emotional groundedness, and situations today that you walk through with head and heart maintaining congruence. Celebrate the product of the life choices you have made in the last 30 years.
Then go back and celebrate the process. What were some of the things God did in the last 30 years to move you along the trajectory from then to now?
As you take the time to savor and to call your journey good, it will sanctify it and position you for more authority in your prayers as we go forward.
Strategy #2
I hope you celebrated a lot during the long delay and that it was amazing how much God did for you over the years to heal you at the core.
Emotional groundedness varies a lot over the course of our lives.
The initial phase relates to proximity of a large power – mom! When a child’s sense of security is jarred, mom’s arms and voice are highly powerful ways to re-establish emotional groundedness – even if the external world is no safer. The perception of safety comes from mom, not data and logic.
Let’s focus on that one issue at present.
Highly wounded people are often highly prickly and their swift reactivity to really trivial issues in the context or in the message will cause them to miss the treasure God has for them. The devil is quite skilled at causing an offence right before the core truth they need is about to be delivered.
Draw on your awe over the ways in which God has drawn you from where you were 30 years ago, to where you are now.
Ask God to draw their attention to His nature in their lives, His provisions, His wisdom, His strategies.
Between now and the event, ask God to calm the firestorms in people’s spirits and souls, so that they see Him, and their trust in Him is at an all time high because of how He has hugged them and comforted them in the weeks leading up to the event.
Strategy #3
I walk with a number of people who have little emotional groundedness. With them, the past evidences of someone’s faithfulness does not really build trust. They operate in a very short time frame. If I have demonstrated something they can believe, during the last 24 hours, they feel modestly safe in the face of external turbulence. Asking them to look at the last year of faithful actions on my part is an absolute waste of time. They simply cannot accrue like we do.
Let’s tackle that issue head on for the Blessing Your Heart seminar.
The people who need a heart transplant the most are the ones who are most easily offended. And the devil is presumably busy setting up problems with the front desk, the hair dryer, the breakfast counter, the traffic, the registration table, the name tag spelled wrong, and the person seated next to them at the event wearing enough perfume for ten.
They can easily be so emotionally yanked at 9:00 a.m. that they cannot hear a thing I say until around 3:00 in the afternoon when they finally calm down.
Or not.
God has vastly more resources than the devil does.
And God knows exactly which kinds of hugs land the deepest.
Would you press in for a bouquet of hugs from God during the 24 hours leading up to 9:00 a.m. on the 24th, so that they arrive in one of the best conditions possible, for receiving life-transforming ministry from the Holy Spirit?
Strategy #4
For our final prayer strategy before the event, would you war over the climate in the room?
We are meeting in a junior college.
Kids that age tend not to be emotionally grounded! And they tend to imprint their messiness into the seats and the ground when they are in a venue.
Not good for what we want to do!
So let’s trump the last few decades with the timelessness of the Ancient of Days.
God was there first. God does not have emotional groundedness issues. The infinity of God’s immensity vastly transcends the tens of thousands of mere mortals who have been leaving petty deposits there.
God’s original deposit in what we now call the Temple Mount was not diminished by the Jebusites or the farmers who controlled that rock for a time. It was just hidden away, until it could be released.
Same here.
God knew we were coming. Ask the God of All Time to release the emotional groundedness of His nature into the time and into the land on the 24th, in a way that VASTLY transcends all of the cumulative brokenness that has entered the doors of that room.
Copyright by Arthur Burk