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The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

“The Process” 

Feel your feelings, tell the truth about your feelings, and trust God with the process, because He owns the process.

Free Downloadable Resource - The Ladder (https://www.chipdodd.com/free-resources-download)

The Ladder is a disrupter of The Process. If you get trapped on The Ladder, you will miss The Process and you will miss the actual “arrival” that you’re created to have because you never acquired the skills of living fully.

We are created for connection; created to find fulfillment through relationship with ourselves, others and God.

Parents often want to prevent their children from having to experience the pains of the world, so they teach them to act in an “acceptable” way; they teach them to perform. The result is, children wind up giving up their presence (God given uniqueness) and putting performance in the place of how God made them.

We come out of the womb with healthy shame. Examples: I am going to make mistakes. I’m dependent. I can’t help but be fully present. I can’t help but be in need. I’m a feeling creature. If something is sad or I lose something, I’m going to cry. If I walk into the dark, I need someone to hold my hand, etc. 

Webinar on Shame > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Pjb6EsAGI 

We are created to find fulfillment through relationships. When this need isn’t met through relationship, we will give up our God-given identity and start looking to others to fulfill what they want from us, and claim a false identity, in order to find fulfillment through belonging and mattering. 

“Adorning the Dark” by Andrew Peterson

“Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” Psalm 8:2 (NIV)

“And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’”  Matthew 18:3 (NIV)

Once healthy shame is rejected, once it becomes not okay to make mistakes, once it becomes not okay to be in need, once one becomes distrusting of questions, an unwillingness to risk having answers/ideas, and once we start to have to be more than human, we lose connection with healthy shame.

Healthy shame is a dependency feeling that allows us to have the humility to be people who can be of equal worth to other people. We have the same needs. We have the same heartaches. We have the same struggles. We have the same feelings.

“It’s a Small World” is considered a children’s song, but it is so deep and rich. The lyrics are pure and true for everyone, young and old.  https://youtu.be/2rTZ9UndNeI?si=5OhagIXRyS3socj5 

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