How Simple Doodles Can Heal Wounds And Clarify God’s Truth

The Power of Doodling with Jesus Workshop (Heart Doodling for Emotions, Boundaries & Renewing Your Mind)

Mukkove introduces the Power of Doodling Workshop and explains, with a disclaimer that she is not professionally trained to diagnose or treat, how “doodling with Jesus” can create space to stop overthinking, feel emotions, listen to the Lord, and evaluate thoughts and feelings. She shares how small creative choices (like adding color or using permanent marker) can teach boundaries, freedom, and peace, and describes doodling as a tool for renewing the mind, breaking agreement with perfectionism and performance, separating identity and worth from behavior, and accepting mistakes as part of learning. She discusses heart wounds that can lead to false beliefs about self and God, and how creativity and sitting with emotions can help uncover roots, invite Holy Spirit’s comfort, and bring wisdom and healing. Mukkove demonstrates a simple first doodle: drawing a basic version of yourself inside a box boundary, choosing a current emotion (she chooses gratitude), journaling prompts (“What do I feel? What am I thinking? What is the message?”), and then painting/adding color to create more space for clarity and revelation; she suggests adding words, scriptures, and visuals, signing and dating pages, and using doodles to sort thoughts, compare/contrast ideas, dream with God, and practice new emotions like confidence. She lists basic supplies (marker, sketchbook, watercolor/paintbrushes) and guidelines (keep it simple, accept mistakes, don’t fix, don’t push for results, be curious and compassionate, avoid judgment/comparison/shaming). She shares personal examples (gratitude for Alaska’s mountains, exploring the phrase “I don’t deserve the life I have” in a healthier gratitude-based way) and closes with background on her love for Jesus, her family, her books (Christmases about Jesus, an Easter book, and Messed Majesty about childhood emotional neglect), her certification training in childhood emotional neglect recovery, and her hope that heart doodling will be transformational for viewers, including moms doing it with their kids.

00:00 Welcome + Workshop Disclaimer (Not Professional Advice)
00:43 Why Doodle With Jesus? Quieting the Mind & Creating Space to Listen
01:02 Small Changes, Boundaries, and Renewing Your Mind Through Creativity
02:54 Breaking Perfectionism: Imperfect Art, True Identity, and Grace
06:11 Emotions ‘Travel in Packs’: Using Doodles to Feel, Journal, and Hear God
07:26 Finding Truth on Paper: Sorting Thoughts, Scripture Visuals, and Dreaming
09:11 Supplies + Core Guidelines: Keep It Simple, No Fixing, No Performing
12:13 Guided Practice: Draw Yourself, Pick an Emotion, Ask the 3 Questions
15:10 Painting the Doodle: Color, Boundaries, Gratitude, and Making a Memento
19:39 Go Deeper: Exploring What Comes Up ("I Don’t Deserve This")
21:20 About Mukkove: Story, Books, Credentials, and Closing Blessing

Mess to Majesty: Let God Love You in Your Mess

Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.

Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay

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Transcript

Why Doodle With Jesus

Creativity And Renewing The Mind

Letting Go Of Perfectionism

Co-Creating With The Holy Spirit

Sitting With Emotions While Creating

Finding Truth And Sorting Thoughts

Tools And Gentle Guidelines

First Doodle: Self And Emotion

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Power of Doodling workshop. I'm McCove, and if we haven't met, I am a life coach and an author and a doodler. I'm sharing the power of doodling with Jesus and what that's all about. And as a disclaimer before we get started, the things I'm sharing are from my experience and my training, but none of that training is professional. So I cannot treat or diagnose any person or condition. I'm sharing for your information from my experience and my understanding, trusting that you can discern what is helpful for you and what is not. Why doodle with Jesus? It gives us an opportunity to stop thinking so that we can feel and listen both to our emotions and to the Lord, and gives us some space from our thoughts and our feelings to evaluate them better. It helps us see the power of small changes. Just a little bit of color, just a little bit different expression, using a permanent marker when you'd rather be able to erase things and make them perfect. These small changes that make a big difference. And they help us to practice boundaries and freedom and peace. And so this doodle I called respecting me, and there's the fence there, the boundary. Um, because we feel safer, we're doing a better job of looking after ourselves if we have proper boundaries in place. More reasons to doodle with Jesus. I find it a powerful way to renew our mind because we can look at what we're thinking and evaluate it in a different way. And there's research that shows that trying to create like a new thought pathway can take or learn a new thing, can take 400 repetitions to learn something. If you bring in creativity, it reduces that number to 10 to 20 times. So so powerful to bring in that creativity to renew our mind. Part of why I believe it's so powerful for renewing our mind is that it addresses our heart as well. And there are things that happen that wound us. And then out of those wounds, we begin to think thoughts that aren't true about ourselves or about God. And so working to change our mind is a lot of work if we don't go to the heart issue of where those thoughts came from, and being able to sit with the doodling to see what emotion did these thoughts come from. It helps us to break agreement with perfection and performance. So many of us feel like we're not good enough if our work doesn't meet a certain level, or that our value comes from how well we do and we need to get things just right. And you don't, and you might know that, but doodling in the way that I'm teaching you helps you experience that over and over again. That I did this picture and it's not perfect, yet it was still powerful. God still spoke to me through it. I still learned something through it. Um, and I know people look at my drawings and like, oh, they're perfect. I don't see any mistakes. I look and I see mistakes. I see, like I drew the crown after I drew her head. So you can see her hair in the crown. And same with the tool belt. You can see the lines of the dress in the tool belt, and you know, the money colors funky, and you know, whatever. But it doesn't matter because I still have this powerful picture of being equipped with everything I need. I have the mind of Christ, I am royalty as his daughter, I have a shield of faith, I have the sword of his word, I have a whole tool belt, I have a whole bucket of tools, I have the word of God, I have the heart that Jesus gave me. Like all of that is in this simple little picture, imperfect little picture. So it's it's just so powerful. Um, it helps to separate our identity from our worth and from our behavior because that's not where it comes from. Our identity and our worth comes from Christ alone, because he's we're worthy, he says we are righteous. So then all those other things that come and say differently aren't true, it helps to create a space to separate those things. Um, and just accepting your humanness and that mistakes are part of learning. If you look at a child learning to walk, learning to write, learning anything, they make all kinds of mistakes and we cheer them on and encourage them because we know that that's a normal part of learning. And then somehow we hit a certain age or status in life or something where we think that doesn't apply anymore, and we should just be able to do everything um without any mistakes and without even being taught sometimes. We beat ourselves up and we don't need to. A few more reasons. This is my last slide of why to doodle with Jesus, but we are called to create because we are made in the image of our creator. And I think that is probably why he made it so that when we create, we can take that number from 400 repetitions down to 10 or 20 repetitions. He designed us to work that way. Creating space to allow the Holy Spirit to come and speak and bring wisdom and revelation into our thoughts and feelings and our experiences. And he's also the comforter. So he's there to comfort as we might uncover things that aren't so pleasant. And that brings healing to those emotional wounds, those places in our heart that have been the ground for those lies and misconceptions about ourselves and about God to grow in. We can see I have fear on the top and confidence on the bottom as a kind of a compare and contrast. This is how I feel, but this is how I want to feel. This creates the space to sit and go, okay, so if I'm feeling afraid, what else am I feeling? What else is there? What else is going on? So that's the sitting with the emotions. What does it actually feel like? What's my body doing? What kind of thoughts are coming? Um, what other emotions are around? And just sit with that as you draw, as you paint. Um, I journal. I don't have the journaling in these pictures, but I journal about what the fear is and where it's coming from, and what would it feel like to be confident? And we listen to the Lord as we do this. It can be an opportunity to just like, God, I want to hear from you about something in particular, or I just want to hear from you. And we can bring that creativity to what we feel like he's getting, and it gives us a visual to hold on to. If you do a scripture verse and put a picture with it, you now have that visual to hold on to of the truth that he gave you in his word. I use it as a way for finding truth because I can start with, okay, this is what I'm feeling and thinking, and get it out on paper. And sometimes I'm sure you've like you write something down or you say something, you're like, well, that sounds ridiculous. I don't believe I actually said that or thought that. This is a way of doing that and being able to like, okay, that's not accurate. What's actually true? Or asking God specifically, like, what is the truth here? Like, my emotions are saying this and my thoughts are saying this, but what's actually true? Or sorting out thoughts, just writing stuff down. Creativity isn't always the little girl with the hair. Sometimes it's just a bunch of words, and then I use the colors to kind of sort things out, comparing and contrasting again of okay, something hurts or something harms. What's the difference there? Gaslighting isn't a good thing, but we're called to deny ourselves in Christ. So, what's the difference there? How is because a lot of times the teaching on denying yourself sounds a lot like gaslighting. So, like, that's not healthy. So, sorting through, or what do I control and what is out of my control? And just putting it on paper in separate places and bringing that revelation to that. Use it for dreaming with God, use it for practicing new emotions. I want to feel confident, I want to trust you. What does that look like? What does that feel like? Show me, Lord, and help me to sit in feeling that as my partner I take the time to draw and to paint and to journal it out. What do you need for heart doodling with Jesus? A marker, permanent marker, a sketchbook, watercolor paints, my paintbrushes in here. If you're being creative, you can do anything you want. And I have people who have listened to my ideas of bringing in the creativity and doodling who do things completely different than I do, and God is still meeting them in really powerful ways. I'm just showing you what I do and the things that God has shown me. Our guidelines is to keep it simple, to accept your mistakes and don't fix things. That's why we're using a permanent marker. It is what it is. If you want to try again, and that's why I put this doodle on this page. I was just experimenting. I was trying to come up with an image for exploring and being curious and digging deeper. And so I just kept drawing. I can look at some of them and be like, well, that's a really funky-shaped head or hat, or she looks like a hunchback. But it doesn't matter. It's just about exploring and going, oh, well, yeah, this illustrates what I'm talking about, or um, or it doesn't, but I'm still just doodling and being creative and spending the time thinking about how do I describe and illustrate um the idea of being curious, the idea of exploring, the idea of digging deeper, accepting mistakes, not fixing things instead of feeling like it's a failure because it didn't turn out super cute or the way I had envisioned. I was learning and I can see that, like, oh, that was the first one, and then I learned. And so then the ones I did after, I like better because I learned from it. Another guideline is to not push for a result. You're not trying to get a particular piece of art that you can share. You are not trying to get a particular outcome from your time. Take that pressure off. We're not performing, we're not trying to get an outcome. We're just being with ourselves, with our emotions, with the Lord. And we want to be that in that time, curious. We want to be compassionate for ourselves. Learning how to do all this stuff might be very new for you. And so, again, like a toddler learning to walk, we don't get frustrated that they keep falling down and that they toddle along, you know, it's normal, it's okay. So have that compassion for yourself. And then there is no judgment, no comparison, no shooting, shaming, or condemning. Don't do that to yourself, don't do that to others. Most of us would not ever do that to someone else, but we do it to ourselves all the time. So treat yourself with the love and compassion that you treat others with. We're gonna move into doing a first doodle. We're just gonna draw a simple picture of yourself. It can be a stick person, it can be a circle and a line and legs and arms. It can be that simple. My stick person, I do a little triangle dress. So it's still a stick, it's a circle and a triangle and arms for legs, arms for legs, lines for arms and legs, circles for hands and feet, and I'm always barefoot. I don't do shoes or anything. The hairstyle, experiment with that, and maybe, you know, make this first doodle more like the one on the left's page, where instead of trying to do a picture of you, we're doing multiple pictures of you because it's like, well, do I want my hair to look like that, or do I want my hair to look like this? Um, and just do I want shoes? Do I not wear shoes? Um, do I need eyelashes? You know, just what makes it you and just experiment with that. Pick an emotion that you're feeling right now, and start with the box as that gives us that boundary and that defining of where we're drawing. And like I said, you can do multiple pictures of yourself if you're just experimenting and feel like you just really don't know what to do. I do a round head, which isn't always very round, and a triangle dress. And I do the heart because I'm living from the heart that Jesus gave me, and I don't always do that well, but that's my desire. That's what my goal is. And when I'm doing these and listening for his truth in the heart that he gave me. For a while, I wasn't doing them in the like more discouraging or typically seen as negative emotions. Um, but then I realized that I can feel those things and still be living from the heart that Jesus gave me. If I'm identifying as those things, then I'm not living from the heart that he gave me. That's what the heart on my address is. That's the heart that Jesus gave me this November. So I'm gonna pick gratitude. When I'm feeling gratitude, what do I feel? As we're watching the recording, obviously you can pause this and spend more time on what you feel or on your drawing or whatever as I'm moving through. Our next question is what am I thinking? What do I feel? What am I thinking? And what is the message is the last question.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

This is just one way.

Painting For Space And Clarity

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I just want to do one simple doodle and the experience, the process instead of just being told about it. Often as I doodle, I get our way, and I might feel like there's more, but I'm not sure what it is exactly. So now switch from journaling to painting, and the painting gives that time and space to continue thinking about it. But I'm no longer trying to create words, I'm just painting. Part of why I always do me pretty much the same, is so that I'm not thinking about how to think how do I want my hair today, what color dress do I want today? It's just me. And I just can do me without really thinking about it. And then that creates the openness and that space for Holy Spirit to speak and for clarity to come as I paint. Hope you're painting along with me. Or if you don't have paint, you're coloring with whatever you have. Um I've had multiple people and I experience it myself. Like I can have feel like I've had all the thoughts and everything. Um, that there's something about adding the color, and that's probably part of that creative process, but it kind of makes it come alive. It makes it really powerful to have that color added and do the box around it to give that boundary of how much we're painting. It also challenges to fill that space. It gives more time to sit with the emotion and the thoughts. I think redefines that idea of boundaries of like I could do her just kind of floating in space with nothing around her, and she kind of does look like she was floating in space, or I can do the box and she's kind of grounded and she has a place to belong. So I like to do the box and then could write around her the names of people or different things that I'm grateful for. I felt like doing a lot of doodling. I could doodle pictures of things that I'm grateful for. I live in Alaska and I love the mountains and the trees. So it's appropriate for my gratitude, like just blown away on a regular basis. The beauty I get to see, just going about everyday life, going to the grocery store, taking my daughter to classes. It's just an astounding, astounding place and an amazing blessing to just walk out and see that beauty and that undeniableness of his magnificence and my smallness.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Yet he cares for me and he pays attention to me, and he's interested in what's going on in my world, even though I'm such a small, small part of the world from my perspective. So I often do the mountains and the trees.

Gratitude, Place, And Imagery

SPEAKER_00 20:10

And that is part of the power of these pictures, you know, when they say a picture's worth a thousand words. Um and it's true, but here you're creating your own pictures, so you know the words and the power of what you're doing here. Um, so sometimes I'll come and add more words down here.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Um just emotion words.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And if I got more of a message while I was painting, then I have room to write it.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Um datum because that kind of is a journal of a monument, memento, an ebenezer of what you experienced and where your journey was, especially if the focus on the healing and renewing your mind. So it's neat to be able to come back and see um where the Lord has been working and renewing your mind. And going deeper, we did this one simple doodle, and um, one of the things I wrote down was um that I don't deserve the life I have. And so depending on like what I'm meaning when I say that, I could go deeper with that. Because at one point in my life, it would have been like, I don't deserve this, I'm so unworthy. Um it's all that uh yuck lies, focus on me. And so that would have been something to go deeper with. Like, is that actually true? Why do I feel that way? Um, and do more doodles exploring that and going deeper with that.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Um for writing it today, it's just of like, but for God, I don't deserve this.

Returning To Messages And Monuments

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Like, I deserve it because I'm his daughter and he has said I am worthy, but outside of that, so now it's really from a place of gratitude, like when you should get this feeding ticket, but you don't, not the self-loathing and self-defecating, I don't deserve this, but like I'm so grateful because I didn't deserve this. Take those things that come up and do more doodles with them to do more exploring to see what else is there.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Why is that there? What did it come from?

Going Deeper With Beliefs

SPEAKER_00 22:50

A little bit more about who I am. So I love Jesus. I hope that's a parent. I love doing life with him and doing these doodles with Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit. They all kind of come together most of the time. I'm a wife, I've been married for 28 years now. I'm a mom to a 23, 22, 20, and five year old. So I have three big ones and the little one that came 15 years later. Um, that was very much a surprise to my husband and I. Very much a God plan, not ours. I'm Author. I originally wrote Christmas is about Jesus, which is family devotions for the month of December. It's just a short devotion each day on how things that we see around Christmas time in the stores and the decorations and all of that can be used to remind us about Jesus instead of just all the commercialism. And then I wrote an Easter book of the same theme and added time with God activity ideas to that. I wrote Mess to Majesty, which shares part of my story of coming childhood emotional neglect and all of the thinking patterns and beliefs about myself that came with that. My voice doesn't matter. I'm only valuable if I'm contributing something, and that something needs to be really good. I need to take care of everybody else's emotions and everybody else's needs. I don't even know what mine are. It's written in a devotional format too. I wrote a story of four different women in the Bible and how Jesus encountered them in their mess, and then wrote stories from my life of how Jesus encountered me in similar messes. Not a licensed psychologist. I took a training from a licensed psychologist to be certified to do the childhood emotional neglect recovery. And I have made that my own by bringing Holy Spirit and prayer and scripture into that instead of it just being a mental exercise. I'm a heart doodler. This is what I love. It's been transformational for me. It's been transformational for many others. I'm praying that it's transformational for you since you are here. And I would love to hear from you. I'm excited to see what God is going to do. I'm excited for the moms that are telling me they're doing this with their kids, introducing the principles to the kids and the impact that that is making and just the vocabulary that it's giving them for talking through things. Bless you. That's it. Well, see you next time.