Healing in the Cast: Spiritual Restoration Time - Ep 136

I didn’t know how to have an intentional emotional recovery time. I didn’t even know it was a thing until a few years ago.

I was going through a very difficult time emotionally. There were attacks on my integrity, character, health, business, friendships, and marriage.

The Lord used the attacks to reveal where I wasn’t trusting Him. Because I repented and received healing in places where the distrust was rooted didn’t mean I fully trusted. I needed to see the choices I made out of lack of trust so I could choose differently. I needed to know what it felt like so I could notice when I was there again and make a better choice. I needed to know the thoughts I was having and know what to think instead.

As I worked with my coach the Lord showed me that He had me in a cast. In our coaching sessions He was setting things to His design like setting a broken bone. The bone isn’t healed when it’s set, it’s just ready to heal.

My heart was the same. It wasn’t ready to bear weight yet. Not ready to jump back into everything. There needed to be time to rest, to let the new ideas and emotions solidify.

Recovery time in the cast looked like spending time with God, meditating on His word of how He sees me, imagining how the person He made me to be shows up in difficult situations.

There was memorizing and reciting scriptures, worship songs on repeat - Thy Will Be Done, Own Your Belovedness, and God is Not Against Me.
Intentionally reminding myself I wasn’t instantly changed. There was time to learn, grow, and strengthen myself in the Lord.

This week’s podcast is all about learning to rest and heal in the cast, held by the Father.

I'd love to connect with you!

• Find community in Healing Generations
•  Learn how God communicates with you in Transformational Quiet Times

Transcript

Physical Vs Spiritual Recovery

Speaker 0:16

When we break a bone or have a physical injury, it's normal for us to have a recovery time and to make allowances to be more gentle with ourselves, to be more patient, to understand our limitations while we physically heal. I don't often see that we do that spiritually and emotionally. I didn't even think that it should be a thing until a few years ago because it seemed that people just like you give it to the Lord, you pray about it, and then like it's over. You're supposed to be walking in freedom and victory now. That didn't seem to work out for me, but it seemed like that's what people were sharing and showing. And that just added to my condemnation and my frustration with feeling like I was never gonna get it, like I was letting God down because here He had died for me to overcome and be victorious and healthy and all these things, and yet I was still struggling so much.

Speaker 2 1:35

If we haven't met before, I'm Mukkove, and it's my passion to take all the things that the Lord has taught me and I've learned through my studying and training in recovering from childhood emotional neglect and

Meet Mukkove And The Mission

Speaker 2 1:51

some toxic Christianity Just the things that I was missing. So the things that I've learned on my journey to take them and put them in super practical tools, ways that are easy to understand so that you don't just feel like you're always the problem and that you're too broken and that you're letting God down because you just don't seem to be able to live out your faith and walk in victory the way that it seems like other people can

Speaker 3 2:26

This idea of comparing our spiritual recovery, our spiritual emotional recovery to the same type of expectations we have for our physical recovery came during a season

When Life Attacks From Everywhere

Speaker 3 2:41

where I was being attacked

Speaker 2:45

in my integrity, in my character, my health, my business, friendships, marriage. Like, it just felt like everything that could come from anywhere to attack me was. And so I was working with a coach because it was like, this is more than I can handle on my own. Like, God, you've given me amazing tools, but I need a safe place to really be grounded and anchored in, in this season. And so during our sessions, she would help me connect with the Lord I was receiving revelation of where things need to be adjusted or, you know, where I needed healing, different things like that

The Cast Metaphor For Healing

Speaker 3:36

And the Lord showed me that idea of being in a cast that, well, if you have a broken leg, you get the bone set, but then your leg isn't healed. It's not ready for you to take off and run on it just because the bone is set. There's a time in the cast, there's a time of being held firmly and safely while everything solidifies and re-strengthens

Speaker 4 4:08

The Lord was showing me it was the same spiritually and emotionally, that just because He had set things right in my heart didn't mean that I was just ready to take off and run, that I was ready to bear all the weight of everything. There needed to be time to rest, to let the new ideas and emotions solidify. And I wanna give you a picture of what that recovery time looked like for me Um, heart doodling with Jesus was a big part of it because he's like, "You need to spend the time

Heart Doodling With Jesus

Speaker 4 4:51

seeing things how I see them." And one of the things that I practice with heart doodling is, like, so given this particular situation, well, there was lots of situations wrapped up in it, but one of the things he showed me was that I wasn't trusting him. I was trusting the gifts in other people over trusting him. So when I thought about that- I had to repent. But he also said, like, look and see, like, what's there. And in the heart doodling, like, I make a picture of what the situation would look like if it was a picture. But I also do the journaling of what am I feeling? What are the emotions? What are the sensations in my body? What are my thoughts? What actions am I taking? I was struggling and I wanted answers, and I didn't trust myself to be hearing from you. So I was trusting that other people were hearing from you and trusting what they were saying, rather than checking in with the Lord and really being sure that I was following His lead on health choices or business decisions And he also showed me that a lot of my choices were motivated out of fear and control it's not fun to look and see those things and those areas that are like, "Oh my goodness, I'm still failing, and is that really what I'm doing?" But we have to be honest with where we're at before we can move forward. And so like I said, repenting of those things. And then just on a very practical level going, okay, if I was thinking that I couldn't hear from the Lord clearly, I need to clean that up, and I need to be reminding myself that scripture says that I'm his sheep and I can hear his voice, and that when I'm going, there's a voice behind me saying, "This is the way. Walk in it." That his spirit speaks to my spirit. So replacing those thoughts that, like until I sat with him, it was subconscious that I wasn't trusting myself or that I was operating out of fear. But when I take the time to sit with him and really allow him to show me and to be specific of, you know, what are the emotions, what are the thoughts, what are the behaviors? Now I have a very clear target of what needs to change that if I'm thinking I need to do this, well, there's a red flag. If I'm valuing someone else's opinion over my own or over seeking the Lord on something, that's another red flag of like, no, you're not trusting again Along with being aware of the thoughts and the emotions and the behavior that was coming out before the Lord met me and, you know, like set the bone, set these things back to right in my heart. I can also use the heart doodling to imagine when I believe what God says is true about me, that I can hear Him, that I am enough in Christ, that He's gifted me, that He created me for good works, that He is completing the work in me. It's not me becoming like Jesus. It's me surrendering to God so He can make me like Jesus. And that surrender is in those little moments and choices and having it clearly written down helps to see how to behave differently. This is what I thought. This is what I need to think. This is what I felt. This is what it would feel like to be walking in victory, to be fully believing what God says. These are the behaviors I was doing. And now imagine the behaviors that I will be doing when I'm walking in truth, when I'm believing what God says about me and my circumstances. One of the reasons that I really like the heart doodling is because it gives a visual to hang onto. You know, it says a picture's worth a thousand words, and so it gives that visual to hold onto when meditating on God's truth and what does it look like to walk in victory? What does it feel like? What am I thinking? What am I doing? Using heart doodling with Jesus isn't the only thing I do, it's just one of my favorite things, and it's certainly not the only way. Like, you can journal, you can do whatever

Scripture Worship And Visualization Tools

Speaker 4 10:11

My recovery time also included memorizing scriptures and reciting those, reminding myself of God's truth that agrees with His Word. I had different worship songs that were just on repeat. Um, Thy Will Be Done was one of them. Um, Own Your Belovedness was another. Um, I think it's called God Is Not Against Me. The line is, "This is not my fight. You're my defense." And intentionally using those To remind myself that God put me in the cast. He told me, "This is your time in the cast. I'm holding you. You're safe. This is time to strengthen and build." And spiritually and emotionally building by learning the scripture, by meditating on that. Emotionally strengthening by imagining myself functioning differently. Just like athletes will visualize themselves going through the event or through a particular thing, like that visualization is powerful. And like God told Abraham, like, "Look at the stars. Visualize, that's your descendants. They're gonna outnumber the stars. Visualize that." And so visualizing, what does it look like when I believe that God says- I can trust myself because His Spirit is in me. And it doesn't mean that everything I think and feel is a good idea. It means when I, my spirit is submitted to His Spirit, the thoughts that I'm thinking, the desires that I have are trustworthy because they're His Recovery also might include paring down your schedule so that you have time to spend in the, the practices, the exercises. Like if you have the broken leg, once it comes out of the cast, now you need the time where you're starting to put the weight on it again. And depending on the injury, like you might have physical therapy appointments, you might have specific exercises

Taking Weight Again Without Perfection

Speaker 4 12:36

you need to do because those muscles have started to atrophy from being in a cast and being immobile. And so now you need to take the time every day to exercise those muscles and start putting weight on it again. And so you move from that time spiritually and emotionally of like just being held and letting things kinda settle and solidify, which I say like might mean pulling back from some relationships for a season, from some responsibilities, so that you have that time for things to strengthen and solidify, where you're learning those verses, you're hearing from the Lord, you're spending time with His perspective. Because the wrong perspectives of not being able to trust God and feeling the need to control things got there from repetition. And so then it's gonna take repetition of new thoughts and ideas to replace those. And then there will come a point where He's like, "Okay, time for the cast to come off, and now you need to actually start walking in the truth and the freedom and the victory that I have given you." And we walk that out by acting in the new ways, thinking in the new ways. And we're not gonna do it perfectly from the beginning. Like, it's really helpful to imagine it as a continuum of not doing it at all and doing it perfectly, but those aren't the two options. It's a continuum where we're getting-- we're going from not doing it at all To doing it more and more often. So we start at 0%, and we get to where we do it 1% of the time, and 20% of the time, and 50% of the time, and 95% of the time. Like, we're moving towards that being like Jesus, and as long as we're moving towards that, that's what God's expecting of us. He's not expecting us to go from zero to 100 And it's not right of us to expect ourselves or anyone else to go from zero to 100 either because that's just not how we learn. We gradually get better and better and better The more intentional you are with identifying the thoughts and the emotions and the actions, the easier it will be to move from zero towards 100

Your Practices And Final Blessing

Speaker 4 15:17

because you know what behaviors are taking you back towards zero, and you know what behaviors and thoughts are taking you in the direction of 100 I would love to hear from you what practices you use for recovery or what questions you have about what it might look like in your situation of how do I create the space, even if it's just a few minutes a day, to, like, spend that time in the cast where I'm just sitting and healing, letting the Lord minister to that broken place, that injured place.

16:03

Remember that your healing heals generations, and I'll see you next time