433. Why Do I Feel So Broken When God Made Me Whole?

To find yourself in a place where you know that you want more for your life, you know that you don't feel great, you don't like how things are going, but you just don't know where to start or what changes need to be made. Another so many of us that find ourselves here, and that is why God has put me in this place. So what we're going to be talking about today is to help you kind of have a map, if you will, to understand what it looks like to move from that broken place, that fragmentation, that not knowing what to do or how to fix things to a place of wholeness and just living just alive and loving your life. So we're going to start unpacking what that map looks like today so that you can begin walking into the full whole life that God has for you. Are you ready? Let's go. Something inside you knows there is supposed to be more than this, more than going through the motions, more than the patterns you keep repeating no matter how hard you try. Hey, you're not broken, there's a root beneath it all, and there's a path through it. Welcome to the Made Whole podcast where biblical wisdom and psychology meet to finally get you unstuck. Hi, I'm Brittany, a former therapist and someone who is sat in the same place you're sitting right now. You don't have to stay there. This is where you're made whole. The broken place has become beautiful and you finally come alive. Hey friend, how are you doing? I'm so excited to be back with you today. I do want to apologize for my delay and missing a couple episodes here. I've been being better at consistently, but there's been kind of a wild whirlwind of events over here. I'm excited to share it with you. It's a lot of good stuff, but thanks for your patience. I know there was like a lot of changes coming your way, and then all of a sudden I'm just gone. So let me explain to you where I have been before we dive in, and I'm really excited to dive into the series. We're going to start today. So, you know, we relaunched Morning Mama into made a hole on June 15th, and it was a ton of excitement, a ton, a ton of work, a lot of hours and hours and hours spent leading up to that. And then, you know, that was like the 15th was the five-year anniversary of Morning Mama, and so that's when we launched Made Whole, very exciting, but it also happened to be my 10-year wedding anniversary three days later. So June 15th was the podcast anniversary, and my wedding anniversary is June 18th. So for our 10-year anniversary, my husband and I decided to go to Sicily, and celebrate he was already going to be out in Europe for work, he travels a lot, and we're like, you know, even though we can only go for a few days, and why not? Why don't I just go and meet him? And so, anyways, that was already planned, I already knew that part was coming, but there was a little bit of a wrench, I don't call it a wrench, because that sounds like a bad thing. It's a prize thrown in the plan, so, you know, as I've shared with you, we have just recently gotten certified as foster parents, and we landed, because I flew alone to meet him out there, landed in Italy, and I had two texts waiting for me when I landed, and one of them was my husband saying Happy Anniversary, because it was the day of our anniversary, our 10-year anniversary, and then the second text was from our social worker through the agency that we are going through, and she said, "Hey, please call me as soon as you can, I have a placement for you." So I was a little bit in shock, landing after a 12-hour flight, and getting that text message, and it just felt like God immediately, and I didn't know at first what direction. I knew that God was speaking, I knew that He was saying that He saw me, because I'd been wondering for so long when was this child going to come? We wanted a girl, because we have two boys, and we wanted to give our girl a sister, I've always wanted a sister. Anyways, so when is this girl going to come? And, you know, just waiting, and praying, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and what felt like forever felt like it took forever to get certified, it felt like, well, even just took forever to start the process, then to get certified, then to wait, even though we didn't end up waiting too long after our certification was complete. But it felt like forever, because there was moments where I felt like it was the time, you know, but God's perfect timing. So, okay, all that being said, I knew it was from God, I knew He was speaking. I just didn't know if that meant like He was just showing me, okay, I got you. It's going to come in the right time. This is me closing the door, because usually when there's a placement for you, you have to take it right away. You know, I've heard at most you have like a night to think and pray about it, but not longer than that. And we were just landed in Italy, so I wasn't going to be back in for almost a week. And so, I thought, you know, surely this is going to be a closed door. And so, I saw that text message and I prayed, God, would you just use this to show us, you know, if this, if this girl is for us and, you know, close the door, you know, such an easy door to close right now, because we're gone and show that to us through that. I'm going to trust you with that, God. But if it's for us, God just keep the door open, like fling it open. And so, anyways, I could go through all the details with you, but long story short, they still wanted our family to take this baby. And even though we weren't going to be back for a week, they even gave us the whole week to think and pray about it, which is just unheard of, it's just an act of God to really help us process and pray and sit on it. And yeah, so all that being said, we now have a three week old baby girl, actually she's four weeks now. So, that's where I've been back in newborn season, you know, we got back into the states at home Tuesday night and then Wednesday we put her up. So I didn't even have time to do my laundry. You know, we're just like thrown into this beautiful thing, so grateful. She is perfect, amazing, like such a blessing. And, you know, we'll see what God has for us. Of course, we would love to keep her and our family, but we'll see the plans that God has for her and we're just blessed to have her as long as possible. But just kind of crazy timing, you know, God's just so good at timing. We often doubt him, you know, when things take so long. But gosh, if you know, I was able to get everything done for the business and again, I spent a lot of long hours and a lot of long nights and if this would have happened in the middle of all that, it would have all kind of fallen apart, which is so would have been worth it, would have been okay. But it's just his perfect timing and so that's where I've been, just wanted to give you that update, especially those of you that have been around here for a minute and you know, know my story and, yeah, so I am though excited to get back into the swing of things and hoping to be consistent again. We'll see what that looks like. We're experimenting with working again. This is my first day back at my desk actually since before I left for Italy and there was like legos all over it and what's his name. Buzz Lightyear was sitting in my chair. I was like, oh, it's been a minute. So yeah, I hope that to just get to start walking with you consistently again because I'm so excited for, well, I've been talking about what we just launched and where we are headed and that's kind of what we're going to be diving deeper into today and know we really kind of gave you the high arcing overview a couple episodes ago of what made whole as all about and where the name came from and all of that and in these next episodes, we're going to kind of go into a little series on whole living and I'm going to unpack for you what I believe it looks like to really live the life that we were created for. This full, alive life where we feel whole, we feel good. Now, when I say that, doesn't mean we always feel good or that's not going to be reality until we reach heaven. But I think so many of us get stuck in life just going through the motions and just getting swept up with what's in front of us and how life takes us instead of living intentionally on purpose and when we get swept up in that, we end up feeling a lot of things that we don't want to feel and we end up acting in a lot of ways we don't want to act and so I want to kind of like very, very systematically and slowly unpack for you what whole living looks like to kind of give you this map of what I believe it looks like to get to a new place where you have firm ground under your feet to walk a path towards that whole living. So we're going to be going deeper into that. Oh, I did want to mention before we dive in also, we are still doing the giveaway. So if you heard me on a previous podcast a while ago now, talk about that. I'm extending the date because I was totally out of the loop for a minute there. So we're the new deadline is July 10th. So the giveaway is all you got to do is hop on to Apple Podcasts, write a written and start review, take a screenshot of that, send that over to us. We can send it to either us on Instagram. Our Instagram is made whole path email is [email protected] either is fine, just send us a screenshot. You can also do it on Spotify, leave a start review. You can also leave a comment, we have to do it on a specific episode. So pick an episode that speaks to you or just the most recent one and just write a written review on whether for that episode or just the podcast as a whole and send that over to us and yeah, and then you'll be entered and I'm going to give away 10 unstuck workshops. Unstuck Workshop is the new workshop that we have. I'll talk about it more in this episode, but where it really helps you get started on understanding what you're doing. your wounds are and what to do about them so that you don't live from that place anymore which also begins to change how you feel as well as the behaviors that you don't like. And so it's based in Restoration Theory but yeah, 10 free of those. So the odds are really good that you're going to win. So make sure you enter those and thank you in advance for doing that as well because it really also blesses me. So enough, enough, wow, there's a lot of agenda to get through but I do want to dive in today. Yeah, so this series is called, "Is this whole living, the made-hole series?" And this is really what defines made-holes. So we're going to go deep into something that we will revisit pretty much on all the episodes. Like everything we're going to be doing from now on is going to tie it back into some facet of what we're talking about in this series. So this is going to be the map for you, the path for you. And then we're going to, as we go through the coming months and years, we're going to dive into the nitty gritty, the facets of what does this look like lived out and how do we do this in all of these different ways with all these different people and all these different circumstances. So yeah, I'm really excited for what we're going to be running at together. You know, first of all, so just to kind of begin unpacking the path. First and foremost, I think many of you know, but you were created by God on purpose, right? He had intention when he created you. We can see this echoed in Psalm 119 as he talks about how we are beautifully and wonderfully made in his image that he planned us out even before we were in our mother's womb. And this is how we were created. We were originally made whole, right? We're made by a good, perfect God. He plans us out. He creates us intentionally. And so we are made whole. And I can't help when I think of this to think of the baby girl that I hold in my arms. And you know, right now we're calling her May. And she even though she's already been through a lot, you know, she was exposed to drugs. And there's a lot that she's already walked through. And and maybe her parents didn't intentionally bring her into this world. I don't know. But either way, she's not an accident. And that's something I tell her all throughout the day is you were created on purpose. You were created with intention. You were created good by a God that loves you. You're chosen. You're called by name. And so it doesn't matter your story. It doesn't matter how you came into this world. And what choices your parents made and how you got here because God is the one that created you. And he and his goodness plans you out perfectly. We're going to talk about what happens next, right? Because we know we're not perfect. We know our bodies aren't perfect. We know, you know, there's sin. But the original plan, how you originally created was whole and perfect. Okay. And so that's that's the beginning is in the beginning. We are made whole. And then we are fragmented. Okay. So this is where the brokenness comes in. I see it as fragmentation. I don't know. This word like stood up to me a year or so ago when I was starting to to dream up made whole and just this word fragmentation just kept I kept seeing it and things I was reading and all these things. I just feel like it just really holds the picture of what our lives look like in this age. Sometimes we do feel the brokenness. We feel broken. We feel, you know, all of the fractures in our lives. But sometimes it's just fragmented, right? We're racing around. We're here and there. We're in a little bit of this relationship, a little bit of this relationship. We're, you know, we're, it's these fragmented lives that we're living. So I'm going to unpack now what that fragmentation looks like because there's a lot of layers of this fragmentation. And so I want to, I want to play out for you what all of those layers are. And the reason that this is important is because when we move into a process of healing and restoration, we're going to need to tackle each one of these. Okay. So in order to fully become whole again, we need to understand how we're fragmented. In order to target each of those areas in which there is fragmentation. Okay. And so this is why this matters. And I hope as I go through this, you also just begin to see yourself and understand why you struggle or why you're hurting or how you got here. Because I think sometimes we're just, again, don't know why life feels horrible and overwhelming or why we feel horrible or why we keep making these choices again and again. And so it helps to kind of look at the layers of what's going on and what got us to this place, right? Especially when we know God made us whole. Okay. So what happened? So number one layer of fragmentation is sin. Okay. So and again, sometimes this happens even before we come into the world like with baby Mae, you know, there was sin that exposed her to pain and suffering and hurt her body even before she came into this world. The sin impacts us immediately. And even if it doesn't impact you before you're born, obviously, they're still still sin impacting you. And maybe it's not an as a direct way as baby Mae, but as soon as we come into the world, of course, this sin plays out as well. Okay. So what this looks like is that neither of our parents or whoever is taking care of us, none of them are perfect. They're all broken and flawed and sinful. And so as as they care for us, even if they're amazing, we get wounded. We have these wounds that develop in us because we aren't perfectly loved. We aren't perfectly kept safe. And so as we go through life, those wounds develop in us and we carry those wounds really from our childhood, like as early as like six months, those wounds are kind of fully developed in a sense. And then we carry those wounds for the rest of our lives. And this is what we're going to talk about a lot. This is based in restoration theory. This is the theory that I use to use as a therapist. I now use as a coach. And it's based in neuropsychology as well as in the Bible. And so it's I just love it. I'm excited to continue sharing it with you if you haven't heard me talk about it. It helps us to understand the wounds that kind of are the originators of all of our pain. Obviously, sin is the core root. But then we can get specific about what the wounding looks like. So sin fragments us, the sin of our parents and our close family members. But this also is sin of like larger sins as well, and more more community oriented sins. Not just our parents and people that close to us, but larger tragedies like shootings, like unfaithful leaders, like systematic oppression, right? Like all of these different things that are sin-based people's choices that continue to fragment us. So we've got the original part of our caregivers wounding us. And then we can go out even more from that and look at the friends that we grow up with. Dr. Terry Hargrave, who created a restoration theory, always jokes about how, you know, even if somehow you come out of childhood unscathed, which I really believe is not actually possible. But even if we'll say if you want to argue, then we go to middle school, right? So we all know what happens in middle school. And so we all get wounded. So maybe it starts with our family. And then it moves out to friends, to spouses. And then we can look at community at large and larger capacities of how sin impacts us and fragments us, okay? Another layer of fragmentation that happens is by the brokenness of the world, okay? So the first layer is sin. Second layer is the brokenness of the world is caused from when sin entered the world. But what we're talking about here is death, disease, sickness, natural disasters, right? The world itself, our bodies themselves, they are broken because when sin entered the world, everything begin deteriorating. And so this also fragments us, right? It can fragment our bodies right through and our bodies now are deteriorating as they go, right? Because we all of our lives will at some point end in death, which is not God's original plan. And then of course, along the way as sickness, whether it's in our bodies or someone else's bodies and how that impacts us. This, you know, as we are affected by these things, you know, say it's just, say it just impacts your body and sickness in your body. Well, we aren't just body, right? We are triune beings. So just like God is a triune God, we are triune beings, meaning that we have three parts to us. We have body, spirit and soul, okay? Soul represents our mind, will, and our emotions. And so when our bodies are impacted, it doesn't just impact our bodies because these are all connected. You really can't separate them. I know we like to think you can, you know, we treat our body one way, and then we treat, you know, our spirit a different way. And we, you know, we're praying and we're in our Bible and feeding our spirit, but we're all the while starving our bodies by not, you know, nourishing them properly or not exercising and moving them or whatnot, right? Or you can go the opposite way, right? We take care of our body and we're in great shape and we, everything organic, but we're starving our spirits all the while. And we're not, we're not spending time with God. And so we, we think that they're separate, but really they all come together, really, you know, that's part of how God made us whole in these three parts. And so when there's something that impacts our body, it's also of course going to then impact our spirit and our souls, okay? Our spirit is a part of us that looks most like God. And then our soul is kind of like that deciding vote, right? We'll talk more about our soul in a little bit. But that's second layer, okay? So we have sin, the sin of people, that fragments us, then we have the brokenness of the world, that fragments us. Then we also, this could kind of go into the sin of people, but I like to make it in different category. And we're also fragmented by culture, okay? And this is something I love to talk about a lot, just what culture is saying. Essentially, this is a godless way of viewing the world and living. And I'm not saying that every part of culture is inherently evil, but the way that culture views things, the way that it does things is not based in God's word, it's based in viewing things from, especially in the culture we live in right now, a life void of God. And so because of that, that also begins to fragment us because that is impacting us, it's impacting our perspectives without us realizing it, it's impacting our choices without us realizing it. And so that's why we have to look at that layer of fragmentation because it often happens in much subtler ways than some of the other layers, right? We know when someone sin impacts us most of the time. We know that the world's brokenness impacts us. But are we always realizing how culture is impacting us and fragmenting us? And so we have to also peel back that layer to see what ideologies are at play that we have unintentionally ingested because that causes us to have fragmented lives. And so that's something we're going to be talking about a lot as well, okay? So we've got layer of sin, we've got layer of brokenness of the world, we've got a layer of culture, we're also fragmented by our current relationship. So this kind of goes under the category of sin, but it's not just people from the past that fragment us. It's also our ongoing current relationships, okay? So the people, maybe your spouse, maybe your co-workers, maybe your children, maybe your friends, maybe your family, not in the past, but today, those relationships have an ongoing impact of fragmentation in our life. And that's why I have an separate category because we have to tackle that separately in a sense because we're not just looking at the past, we're looking at the present and it's not just like a one and done thing of like, okay, I'm going to heal, I'm going to look at the past, it's an ongoing process that I'm going to talk about in order to continue to bring wholeness, even though we continue to experience daily, weekly, monthly fragmentation in our relationships, okay? Okay, so we've got fragmentation by sin, by the brokenness in the world, by culture, by our current relationships, and then of course we can't miss the fragmentation by our own sin and our own destructive choices, okay? We are not victims to all of this. We are impacted by the people around us, but we also are ones that do this to ourselves, the way that we live, the way that we see the world, the way that we choose not to forgive, which I know can be hard and it's a process and I'm not trying to say you need to do it the second, and this is a process we have to walk through then when we choose not to forgive, it fragments us. And so our own sin, whether from the past or definitely also from the present, it creates fragmentation in our lives which lead us to this place that we don't want to be, okay? So these are the layers of why you're here. This is why you don't get excited to wake up. This is why you are frustrated that you keep getting angry and you don't know how to stop. This is why there is anxiety that is spiraling around you and you can see also, I didn't even mention this, but in the sickness there also can be mental sickness, right? So there could be, maybe it's not just your lifestyle that's impacting this, it also could be hormones, it also can be genetic predispositions, right? There can be other things that are at play here, but all of this together is what creates this life that we don't want to be in, right? It helps us to get to this place where we are carried away by the desires of our flesh to do what feels good, whether whatever is easy and comfortable, whether that's food or alcohol or sex or scrolling or shopping, right? This is where we end up in a place of striving, a feeling like we have to prove ourselves and prove our worth and we're exhausted. This is how we get to a place of disconnection where we don't have anyone we feel like is by our side. This is how we live lives of people pleasing or we're just constantly looking to please others and we're just caught up in this cycle. This is how we live a life of imitation. This is when we're moving too fast, everything shallow, right? All these things that we've been talking about, about what made whole is pushing against. The fragmentation is what gets us to this place, okay? So our spirits are damaged, our minds are altered, our bodies are broken, but remember, we were made in his image. We were made to be whole. So what do we do? All of the fragmentation is real and that's not going away until Jesus comes back, right? That's all still here. The sin is still here. The brokenness is still here. Our own sin is still here, right? All of these frustrating things that we don't want to do with the death and the world, you know, I'm just reading about, there's famine in Somalia and a drought and you know, like all these things we have to live through big and small, the relationships that are continuing to hurt us. What do we do? Because God intended us to be made whole. So what do we do? And that's what we're going to be talking about, showing you the path out of this fragmentation. And in this together, as God's daughters, we are taking back our identity as a whole creation of God. And we are learning to live these whole lives in this fragmented world, okay? God wants to take us into a place of wholeness where we get to live, not in disconnection, but in deep, rich connection, not in the shallow end of life where everything is just pseudo this and fast and easy, but in depth and intentionality and authenticity and slow, purpose-filled living. And that is where we are going. Because God didn't just make us whole in the beginning. He didn't stop there, right? This is why Jesus came. So that once again, we could be made whole, okay? So that's where we're going, we're going to be talking about what's next and the next episode, let me just pray for you. God, I just thank you, Lord, that you have given us the gift of life, Lord. I think you God, God, you're in the beginning just planned us out so intentionally, Lord, and we just thank you God that you chose us God to be in this world. You planned out who we are, God, and you've just blessed us with this life, God. And I just think you God that even though we live in a sinful and broken world where there's pain and there's suffering, God, that you have a plan for us, God, that you don't just leave us in that God. We think you God that, that fragmentation, Lord, the suffering we've walked through, God, it has nothing on you, God, you are bigger, you are more powerful, God, and you have a plan to pull us out of that God. And so I just pray God for everyone that just feels broken right now, God, that you would just bring hope and restoration, God, to those parts that are hurting God. Would you just help her to know God? There's a way out, there's hope in the future for her, God, and walk her out step by step. We praise your name, God, in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Love you. Hey, friend, I hope that God used today's episode to speak to you or encourage you in some way. And if he did, don't leave it just with you. There is someone else in your life that needs to hear the encouragement that you heard today. So be sure to share it. And maybe you're still feeling stuck and you're realizing that you're in the same place day after day and nothing is changing, and you need to take it a step deeper. If that's you, then the unstuck workshop is your next step. You can finish the whole thing in a day and begin getting unstuck. You can find out all the details at madeholdpath.com. Lastly, if the show has meant something to you, I can't tell you how helpful it is for me if you leave a review. I am deeply encouraged and it also helps other women find the hope and tools that you found. I'm so very grateful for you, friend. I can't say it enough and I can't wait to see all that God has in store for you.