Conversations With Cinthia

Dating seems like it should be fun, doesn't it?  The reality is pretty variable.  And, fun or not, dating in the current era is very difficult to do, or at least to do well.  How do you seek a long-term relationship in our society while keeping hold of your emotional health?  Cinthia is going to be discussing this topic for the next two weeks.  Join her in today's episode for a look at where to start in the adventure we call dating.  

Some people seem to have stronger faith than others, but trust is a relational issue.  How do we increase our faith and strengthen our trust?  And what does it mean that our fears can be real without being true?  

Since the Bible so often repeats, "Don't be afraid," Christians sometimes come to think of all fearful feelings as sin, or at least as signs of weak faith.  But fear is partly biological, partly psychological, partly instinctive, partly learned.  Fear is our alarm system, and not being able to acknowledge it can be dangerous.  God made humans and knows all about this; He also became human and experienced it (remember Gethsemane?) without ever sinning.  Cinthia explores how to take God's "don't be afraid" commands seriously so that they bring freedom.  (She'll talk more about this at the beginning of tomorrow's episode, too, so check that out, as well.)

Have you ever told a child not to be afraid?  Perhaps you followed this with a reminder that you were with the child, or explained that the situation was safe, or told the child what to do instead of focusing on their fear.  God tells His children over and over again not to be afraid, and He often follows this with commands or other reassurance.  Cinthia explores how to receive this and help it soak into our beings.  Also, have you ever wondered why people seem to like being scared in some contexts, such as horror movies or roller coasters or singing karaoke?  Cinthia covers this today.

Fear can be paralyzing. Why do we have it? Do we need it? And what are we supposed to do with it?

Some of our past choices can truly sicken us.  Do you still have memories that bring wave upon wave of horror, guilt, or shame when you remember them?  These can make us want to avoid our moral inventories, but truly resolving them can bring us freedom we have not dared to imagine.  Cinthia offers us a step-by-step approach to address these issues.  

It takes tremendous courage to look at ourselves honestly and come clean to someone else, and it matters who that someone else is.  How do we get the courage to step into the light, and whom should we trust to go there with us?

Ever heard that phrase about being your own worst enemy?  If we want to make sure we aren't working against ourselves, we have to look honestly at ourselves and apply acceptance, responsibility, and effort.  Cinthia begins this series with a focus on the kindness of God that leads us to repentance, and how this kindness is exactly what we need to face the truth of what we've done.

We are on the third and final day of looking at ways we can stop self-sabotaging.  Today, Cinthia looks at the importance of letting go of habits like withholding forgiveness, lowering your own ethics to meet those of others, over-explaining yourself to others, missing the beautiful things, holding onto perfectionism, following the path of least resistance, and more.

Yesterday, we started talking about how to stop working against yourself.  Today, we continue with more things NOT to do to yourself, including holding grudges, looking exclusively to others for our happiness, being idle so that we have too much time to think ourselves in circles, getting into relationships with the wrong people, and rejecting new relationships based on cynicism from past relationships.

Do you ever make your own life harder than it needs to be?  Cinthia starts a three-day series in which she lists 30 things to stop doing to yourself.  Today she discusses spending time with the wrong people, running from your problems, lying to yourself, and more.

Do you ever think that pursuing dreams is a thing better left to the young?  Are you tempted to think the time to reach your own potential has passed?  Cinthia gives an impressive list of people who accomplished amazing things later in life, or who failed impressively before succeeding notably.

The idea of unleashing your potential can be overwhelming until we remember that we are on this journey with the God Who created the potential in the first place.  He already values us more than we could ever imagine, so His value for us is not dependent on our success in reaching our potential.  Instead, we learn from Him to move toward the goals He assigns us, knowing that He provides the resources and loves us regardless of our success.  

If the word "potential" seems irrelevant to your adult life, this episode is for you.  Cinthia shares a definition of potential and discusses what it means to carry the seed God planted in your heart, even when it seems like it will never grow.  

Maybe yesterday's episode got you thinking that it's time for you to step out a little and not let fear stop you anymore.  Ok... great... how?  Cinthia encourages turning fear into excitement, a return to the wonder of exploration and discovery, acceptance of our own strengths and weaknesses, responsibility with effort, nurture, letting go of what has to die, redefining failure, and dealing with the reality of what your talents are and are not.  Cinthia explores what each of these means.  The potential God created inside you is worth unleashing with Him.

When you think of taking risks, do you picture yourself taking them with God?  Risks (responsible ones, anyway) are part of life, and making mistakes sometimes is an inevitable part of the process.  But sometimes we get so afraid of this that we hide our talents and play it way too safe.  Cinthia discusses God as having taken risks in creating and redeeming and as the One Who accompanies us as we embark on the adventures of responsible risk.  Is He calling you to come discover who you are with Him?  Do you believe that He will help you, even when you mess up the process?  

Learning to trust is a difficult task.  This week, we have discussed transferring our trust to God as the perfect Parent we all needed and that no human parent has ever fully been.  The next step is to begin learning how to become trustworthy so you can trust yourself, and to approach the world with boundaries and a willingness to take healthy risks.  Cinthia discusses what this looks like.  For example, she explains that our child-like, complete trust should be reserved only for God, that we differentiate with humans between perfection and trustworthiness, and that we learn how to manage earning the trust of others and giving others appropriate chances to earn, or re-earn, our trust.

Some people find trust so foreign that they don't really even know what it would look like to trust another person.  Others may trust too easily and tend toward denial about the warning signs that trust may not be appropriate in a given situation.  Yesterday, Cinthia discussed the process of learning trust or mistrust in early childhood.  What if we didn't learn to trust appropriately in those early years?  Where do we start?  In this episode, Cinthia discusses what it means to start over with God as our perfect Parent and relearn healthy trust as a new skill.

The first thing we humans try to figure out after birth is whether our world is safe, whether we can trust our caregivers.  The conclusions we reach can follow us through life until resolved and can shape our feelings, perceptions, assumptions, behaviors, relationship patterns, and views of God, self, and others.  Parents on earth are never perfect, and self-diagnosing emotional wounds from infancy has significant risks and pitfalls.  However, for those who suspect we have some unresolved trust issues, Cinthia asserts that God is more than able to heal these wounds as we transfer our trust to Him, the only perfect Parent.  

Life hurts so badly sometimes.  It can seem that God, if He were truly all-good and all-powerful and really cared about us, could simply prevent so much of our pain.  Unable to reconcile the details of the world with the character of God, we can cycle through attempts to trust God and retreats into bitterness toward Him.  Cinthia discusses God's response to our pain-inspired assumptions about Him and about ourselves, as well as what this response means for us as we struggle with the cycle.