In the 12 Steps we have a phrase that you quickly come to recognize after spending very little time in any of their programs, and the saying is this,
"The God of your understanding."
That may sound funny to some of you, especially if you've grown up in a Christian home or are a cradle Catholic like myself. We don't typically think of there being a different idea of God or who he is, especially in our own faith-based circles. We have our Creed, we have Scripture, God is who he says he is.
And He is...but our subconscious doesn't always know that, and the scared little parts of our hearts certainly don't know that. In fact, within each one of us, we have parts (subdivisions of our mind that carry certain experiences, beliefs and worldviews) that operate from very misguided, wounded, untrue or outright wrong ideas about who God is and how he cares for us.
I had this realization within my last few years in my 12 Step work that seemed to really change the trajectory of my interior journey. You see, in Step 3, those who have successfully gone before us "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." I knew I was definitely not turning over my entire will and life over to the care of God because I was acutely aware of the intense anxiety, unrest and turmoil I often felt within, but something within me realized that if all of me was convinced that God was really all the beautiful things we hear him to be, then I would have absolutely NO ISSUE turning my will and my life over to him.
It was so obvious! No longer was my resistance to surrender my life to God evidence of my stubbornness and failure, it was indicative of areas of my heart that have yet to heal their perception of God. So I started to ask myself, if these anxiety-inducing thoughts (or whatever it is for you) are true, then what would that implicate about God?
Our perception of God comes from so many lived experiences, interactions with authority figures, treatment from institutions and our own presumptions about ourselves and the world. The Catechism also reminds us of the importance of the impression of our parents.
By calling God "Father", the language of faith indicates ... that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children...The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But... no one is father as God is Father.
CCC 239
All of these things color and shape our perception of God as we struggles to use the material world to understand that supernatural. Dr. Peter Malinoski, speaks at length on this, referencing the work of William and Kristi Gaultiere, and has a series early in his podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, where he goes through several of the Gaultiere's 13 suggested common "false God images". I highly recommend a listen if you are at all curious what kind of errors your psyche made me operating from. It's fascinating, but it's also a thing to grieve and to repair.
That is the work I do with people! I help them see the unrealized ways in which parts of their mind assume God to be that are essentially blocking them from turning their will and their life over to the care of God, because the God of their understanding, in that particular circumstance, in that moment, (Not the God they state to believe in the Creed), but the felt experience of a false Father, revealed by their fear, anxiety, and general discontent, suggests that God feels absent, distracted, exacting, harsh, critical or neglectful and their actions inevitably follow based on information that is not in fact true.
We act based on false information from our wounded hearts and our lives, and the lives of those around us, suffer.
But it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to live at the mercy of our unchecked, false ideas about God, we can bring them to the light! We can look at them, get curious about them, seek to understand where they came from, pray about them, renounce them, and open the gaits to let Truth flood our hearts and minds.
It's the work of a life time, but why not take the first step today? Why not start this work right now and allow each day of the rest of your life to be another step in the march of your interior journey back to the heart of Love.
Join me every other Tuesday in the Grateful Blessed Mess Patreon Commmunity as we dive into this work starting Tuesday August 27 from Noon - 1pm CST.
See you in there and God bless!
Nora
Catholic Mindset and Interior Life Coach
Hi, I'm Nora :) Catholic mother, daughter, wife, poet, blogger, podcaster, avid reader, 12-Stepper, and Certified Catholic Mindset and Interior Life Coach. I help people who struggle to see their dignity and value amidst the hardships of life find hope and fulfillment by reworking limiting belief patterns and learning how to know themselves deeply in a way that invites compassion and understanding. I use the tools of Mindset Coaching through the lens of Internal Family Systems to help my clients see the Truth of the Goodness and Beauty of who they are and how they were Made.
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