The Intentional Life: Connecting Dots of Pattern for Clarity

By S. Michelle Ross

The Intentional Life is about the process of connecting the dots of our life development to that of our habits. All habits are first introduced and practiced until they become automatic. Once they become automatic, we no longer notice them within ourselves (without being intentional). These habits dictate how or if we trust, wha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chef Chelle's
• Release date: Mar 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889558026

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Process of Emotional Scarring

Pliability is having the quality of being easily bent. Once we enter the world as infants, everything about us physically, mentally, and spiritually are all very pliable. As we age, we become more rigid. This rigidness affects all areas of our lives and gives permission to allow or deny movement when exposed to any new stimuli. Our rigidness will or will not allow us to try to take part in innovation.

The fallow ground spoken of in Hosea 10:12 refers to that rigidity of our untouched ground in all areas. It is the stiffness of our stance on allowing innovation into our territory. Fallow ground is soil that has been untouched for a season. It is settled and unchallenged. When a farmer decides he wants to plant in that soil he must break it up to get it to a soft pliable state, ready to receive and nurture seeds.

The same is true of our hearts, unchallenged until we heed the call of God. That soil of our heart, mind, and soul has been unchallenged by the things of God, subject only to the things we have been exposed to. When we are shaped by this world system as we grow, those belief systems become our fallow ground. It is that compacted untouched soil that must be broken up, in our hearts, minds, and souls. The tightly packed soil is unable to receive anything. Even rainwater struggles to invade its layers. It must be broken up to receive the seed of God's word. Fallow ground can be formed as a result of trauma.

The introduction of a trauma can occur at any point in our lives. When we are young the impact of emotional trauma has a much greater impact over the totality of our life, establishing filters from which we will view our future. Filters initiate in our behaviors just as rings appear in the center of tree trunks. If you take a slice out of tree's trunk, it will show us the seasons and weather conditions of its growth. A light-colored ring represents growth during the spring and early summer, while the dark rings represent growth in the late summer and fall. One light ring plus one dark ring equals one year of the tree's life. The rings also tell us the weather conditions during each season of growth. For instance, tree rings grow wider in warm seasons and thinner in wet years, even drought times show up as lack of growth (What Can Trees Tell Us About Climate Change?).

To make a comparison, the conditions in nature are filters which allow trees to grow. The same is true for us in the sense of seeds or information once anchored into our soil (soul). Once these seeds are anchored, they grow to become filters which dictate our growth (e.g., behavior, choices) in the same way seasons and weather conditions dictate tree growth.

The enemy desires to begin the filtering process in infancy. If he can snare or scar us at an early age, the deeper and more secure is his anchor, keeping us locked in place, bound in fear, hopelessness, and despair. He wants us to be his servants for a lifetime and he takes every opportunity to keep us bound. His attempt to keep us bound is established from the initiation of filters, to the internalization of those filters, then the formation of habits that cements those filters, and finally, the death of innocence altogether.

Initiation

Children come into this world dependent on others to meet their needs. The way their needs are met will begin to establish filters of how the child will view others in the world, how or if they trust, how they define good and bad, right, and wrong and what love is, how they view themselves and others...in other words, everything about their development! Therefore, God tells parents to train up a child in the way they should go in Proverbs 22:6. They need the training to prepare for the battle they will face with our adversary. The sooner the training begins the better.

Children are sponges absorbing everything that occurs around them. Every emotional connection or the lack thereof establishes these filters from which they will view life. These established standards become their default settings (muscle memory, automatic response system) or foundation on which the child will build. It is the main reason to do things the way God prescribes. His way guarantees success in defeating the enemy within this system.

When a man and a woman get married and produce a child, that child is subjected to its parents' experiences and knowledge. What they value is passed along to their child and the same of what they do not value. They bring with them their tainted established filters from which they teach their child, adding to the child's foundation. Neither parent may have recognized their filters nor from where they came, remaining in need of allowing God to break up the fallow ground of their foundation that was laid by their flawed parents.

Each of us are born to imperfect parents consequently we all need to have the foundation of who we have grown into to be broken up and rebuilt on the true foundation which is the word of God. This is true for those who have even grown up in homes where the word of God was spoken. All of us come to God with a personality shaped in iniquity (Psalm 51:5). We teach the word of God built on our understanding, knowledge, and interpretation of reading the word. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:6 that the letter killeth, but the spirt giveth life. As we mature, we learn to trust God and the Holy Spirit.

By the time we know better, our kids may have left the house, and many things may have transpired. The things that we may have thought were true may not have been the truth. For example, some people believe they do not need to be baptized after they accept Christ. They believe that Jesus was baptized for them but in Acts 2:38, we read otherwise. Believing in our heart and confessing with our mouth is what grants salvation, but baptism is our first obedient act of faith. It is the first of many acts of being obedient by faith. Many individuals who hold this belief do so because it was introduced to them at an infancy stage of belief and/or development. Even though they may have read Acts 2:38, they continue anchored in their truth.

The weight of information, knowledge, experience and observation poured into a child during their innocent years is comparable to the weight of ten male elephants stacked atop each other. The child did not ask for the information, and the parents might not be aware the child has the information nor what should have been done, especially if they too had to endure similar behavior from their parents.

Some parents see it as a rite of passage for their children to learn on their own or to make do. God did not intend for that to happen when He produced children through the union of a man and a woman. His word says in Proverbs 22:6, to train up a child in the way they should go. If we do not train our children the foolishness that is bound up in their hearts, (Proverbs 22:15) will be their teacher. That foolishness must be curtailed by discipline (training) so when they explore (prodigal time) they have their training to guide them back to a place of truth.

We are born selfish and need to be taught how to share and to think of others. Children will make everything about them. They do not understand everything is not about them, but in their world, it is. It is something we all enter this world system with, and we struggle the longest surrendering it.

When children are born, they demand our time and energy on schedule. They tell us when it is time to eat, sleep, and play. We, as parents, graciously embrace their time schedule until we start the process of teaching them ours. That is the point of disruption or intervention for the child. Now a demand is being placed on them to comply with something different than compared to what they have grown accustomed to doing.

This is their first lesson of thinking of others and the initiation of our roles as trainer. It is the necessary training they need to live in our world. That training or shaping is what they will need to surrender to God. We are to prepare them by shielding them from the enemy long enough for them to take up their own armor.

Internalization

Every piece of information that passes through our gates (our five senses) must be anchored somewhere to create a filter.

That somewhere is in the soil of our hearts, our soul which is where our intellect, will, and emotions are housed. Another way of thinking about it is as seeds dropped into soil for planting. The seed must be anchored into the soil for proper growth and development. If the seed is not properly anchored what happens to that information is as described in Matthew 13:1-9 and 18-23, the parable of the soils.

Each seed (information) must not just land on top of the soil but must be completely sheltered by the soil. The soil provides a place for the seed to receive nutrients, protection, and a place to grow (develop). As we read in Matthew, the other soils could not produce a filter because of where the seed (information) landed in proportion to the soil.

The seed that fell by the wayside produced nothing as it was eaten by birds, equivalent to a passing thought that we allow to fly away without much thinking. Seeds that fell on stony places is information that produced something (a behavioral or emotional response) quickly but was scorched by trails (the sun). This is equivalent to an emotional response in the moment but has no depth to sustain, similar to sexual attraction, intense but easily extinguished. Some fell among thorns. The thorns represent the wickedness (pride) that is present in all of us that comes to choke any and everything contrary to itself.

Our internal process is very much like growing a tree. To grow a tree there must be a seed planted in good soil. As the seed is anchored into the soil, nurtured, and fortified by its environment, given time the tree will grow. As the tree grows stronger and bigger, removal of the tree becomes more arduous. The same is true of the trees (behavioral patterns) in our