Podcast

Transforming Our Minds to Experience God’s Love: Doreen Steenland E116
Doreen: [00:00:00] so now I’ve been told, looking at my report, that I have cancer, and yet I can’t get to a doctor for a month, and then I get into the doctor, and I have to wait another month for the results of the test. So God had me in this waiting room, and at that moment I had a choice. I had a choice.
Doreen: Do I take the fear pathway and go round and round and round with all of my fears, my worries? My daughter’s getting married in May. I even thought, “I don’t wanna go to her wedding with no hair.” And I wanna say I visited that place of fear. And then I realized, okay, what I need right now is I need to slow down my life so that I can hear more from God.
Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions, such as how do I trust God’s [00:01:00] heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.
My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His Word and His love through these conversations.
Kelly: Hey, friends. Well, if you’re anything like me, you love it when you see science catching up with the Bible. Romans 12:2 reminds us not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. There’s so much brain science we now know that confirms the power of God’s plan that’s already laid out in the Bible. My guest today, Doreen Steenland, offers us valuable insights from decades of her experience coaching, teaching, and writing. In her book, Transform Your Brain One Thought at a Time, she writes, transformation [00:02:00] doesn’t start with striving. It starts with one micro shift at a time. We’ll be exploring what this means and what it can look like in our real lives.
Kelly: Doreen helps women deepen their connection with Christ, with others, and their God-given identity so they can live free from people-pleasing, comparison, and the pressure to prove themselves She longs, and I love this, she longs for women to experience God’s love personally, moving them from from knowledge to knowing.
Kelly: That’s what this is all about, right? So maybe the question we’re going to answer today is how do we allow God’s love to transform our hearts and minds in our journeys of faith? What does it look like to receive and walk in His love?
Kelly: Doreen is also an ICF-certified professional executive coach, a registered nurse, and a trauma-informed neuroscience coach who integrates brain science and faith to support lasting [00:03:00] transformation. She lives in New Jersey with her three college-aged children.
And I just wanna mention Doreen is also a coach for Promised Land Living. And she will tell you a lot more about that at the end, the person that started Promised Land Living, Cheryl Scanlon, has been on this podcast a couple of different times, a powerful ministry that is worth checking out
Kelly: Doreen, I could not be more excited about our conversation. Thanks for joining me.
Doreen: Kelly, thank you for having me. I am super excited to be with you. This is, such an honor. Thanks.
Kelly: Aw. Wonderful. Well, I want you to start with just telling us a bit of your story,
Doreen: okay. So, I was raised in a house by 19-year-olds. As many of us were, right? Yeah. Our parents married young , back in the day parents married at 19. Now we, we see it almost as something unusual.
Doreen: And so my parents really did not [00:04:00] grow up. I mean, they were still kids- raising kids. A lot of ways that they parented probably wouldn’t, , be best practices in this current day and age, right? Mm-hmm. And , they didn’t do it intentionally. They just didn’t know better.
Doreen: They parented how they were parented. And a lot of those ways of parenting, the things that were missing, we tend to develop these patterns of behavior to make up for the things that we might have missed in childhood. Okay. And so Long story short, I lived more life before the age of 25 than most people live in a lifetime.
Doreen: Emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and a whole host of things, so just fast-forward to my, 20s when I came to know Christ, there was a whole lot of healing that needed to happen. Yeah. [00:05:00] Right? Like- Yeah … so there was a whole lifetime that existed before Christ, and in the same breath, the more I mature, , He has been part of it since the very beginning.
Doreen: Absolutely. And that we can have confidence in, right? Yeah. I know that I was a very sensitive child, and my family, emotions were kind of taboo. And they’d be like, you know, “Why are you so sensitive? Get over it. Suck it up, buttercup,” things like that, right? If I were smiling, it would be like, “What are you, proud?
Doreen: Too big for your britches?” So there were all of these messages, right, that we receive as a child- … and we make meaning of them. We make it mean that in order to be loved and accepted, we need to change who we are. We need to shape-shift. We need to adapt in order to be accepted and loved. And I mean, that’s [00:06:00] just part of my story, but we all have these patterns of self-protection that we chose unknowingly to survive in our environments and actually, make sense of it because if, as a kid, we say to ourselves, “My parents don’t know what they’re doing”- They are so messed up, right?
Doreen: If we say that to ourselves, it’s a fearful place to be. So as children-… we try and make sense of what’s happening, and they become right and we become wrong. And so then we interpret that as there’s something wrong with me.
Kelly: Wow, that’s helpful to understand. Yeah, because a kid can’t say, “Gosh,
Kelly: That’s just totally ridiculous. What is wrong with you guys? God is wise- Right … and this is wrong, and so I’m not gonna let this affect me.”
Doreen: Yes. I mean, as children, we don’t have the emotional capability. Our brains are not wired like that. As a matter of fact, our brains are not [00:07:00] fully developed till, after 25 years old, and I, think you can add an extra two years for boys.
Doreen: And so thinking of that and thinking of my parents having underdeveloped brains- raising me, I can make sense of it now, and I can love my parents that they did the very best that they could, right? Right. And this is not to finger point and say that, your parents have done things , that were not good because as a parent I know I’ve also done things that I wish I would have done differently.
Doreen: Oh, absolutely. Right? So we don’t wanna be, like, these judgers who are looking at our parents and saying, “Okay, they messed me up. This is my reason why, so now I get to blame someone.” We never wanna be in that space, right? Right. We wanna make sense of it in our brains and learn how to move forward into adulthood and into, well, in my case, in my 60s, right, into [00:08:00] my senior years as healthy and whole human beings with God.
Kelly: What you shared just now is so important. After you came to know Christ and he began to heal you of so much childhood trauma, he transformed you into being able to look at your childhood without judgment, without judging your parents, without judging yourself, and he led you into so much wholeness and healing.
And that’s what He wants for us. He is always transforming us into whole, integrated people, the ones He created us to be. So He sets us free from the lies. But it is so freeing, I think, when we can identify some of the lies that we may have adopted, some of the habits we may have adopted as a child.
Kelly: And so I love Romans 12:2, it reminds us not to be conformed to the world’s way of thinking, not to give into these lies, but instead allow God’s love, God’s truth, to transform us by renewing our mind. [00:09:00] And I know that you talk to women about this all the time. How does this transform our mind?
Kelly: We want- Yeah … a deeper, more intimate connection with God.
Doreen: Yes. And we don’t just want that. He wants that for us. Yes. Right? Like- Yeah … that is all He’s ever wanted from us.
Doreen: Yeah. He doesn’t want us to feel like we have to perform to earn His love. Oh, amen. He wants us to receive it and live in it, right? And so this whole concept of renewing our mind is huge, and neuroscience proves that this is the way to transform your thinking, right, by the renewing of your mind.
Doreen: But when we use mind, we often think it’s just the brain, right? Right. And in our society, and even back in the Bible- biblical days, th- they connected, they disconnected the body from the brain and the mind and [00:10:00] thought, right? The body was almost an object that just housed the brain,
Doreen: but in fact, your body has so much information that it’s sending back and forth to your brain, and God wants to interact with His people from our body, soul, mind, and strength. He says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” You cannot love your neighbor as yourself until you learn how to love yourself.
Doreen: Yes. And that has been my journey, because I spent decades putting up these walls and pretending to be someone that I wasn’t created to be. , I developed this tough girl persona because I made- My emotions, be a bad thing. The fact that I’m empathetic, the fact that I’m compassionate became this [00:11:00] taboo almost.
Doreen: And it was just my way, my brain’s way of making up for it. I decided, “Okay, I’m gonna be this tough girl. Let’s see if that works. Let’s see if that gets me love and attention,” right? And that’s what we do unknowingly as children. Mm. We develop all of these patterns of behavior. And so what God wants for us is He wants us to renew our mind.
Doreen: He wants us to take our thoughts captive. And our thoughts come a little bit later than the energy that, that sparks those thoughts. Right. And so we’ll go into that a little bit later, but what I wanna say is that there’s two pathways in the brain. There’s the love pathway and the fear pathway, and when you and I connect with another human, we look into their eyes and we’re…
Doreen: Your brain is determining, is this person safe or a threat? And whatever your body and brain tell you [00:12:00] is how you respond to that person in front of you. Now, if you determine that I’m a threat in some way, shape, or form, and we get those in- those, that information through the way people look their body posture, their, ability to connect with us, all of these messages are sent, and your body and your brain are making decisions based on, is Kelly safe for me to be real with here?
Doreen: Or am I going to have to show up as someone else? So at that very moment, subconsciously, your brain goes into one of a, one of two pathways.
Doreen: The love pathway and the fear pathway. If I determine that Kelly’s a threat, I go to the fear pathway and I self-protect. I might be looking to blame or shame. I might have fear, frustration, or I might think, “Oh, I’m a failure around Kelly,” [00:13:00] right? Mm. All of these these decisions are coming from our subconscious brain- Yeah
Doreen: based on the energy that we’re picking up from Kelly. Versus when I determine that Kelly is safe, I go through the, the love pathway, and we connect with warmth, and I can relax, and I can show up open, and I can show up in my full essence as God created me to. I can show up without fear of rejection, and we connect with each other.
Doreen: And then I can filter everything through the front part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, through that lens of safety. So it allows us to communicate with each other in a way that that fosters growth, that fosters collaboration, unity as the Bible says. And all of the [00:14:00] positive fruit of the spirit come from that love pathway.
Kelly: Yeah. So that’s how we wanna relate to God. That’s how we wanna relate to people. We wanna show up as the person we truly are. Yes. But I have a question about that. So can we show up as the person we truly are with somebody who maybe we know them and we know they’re not safe, so can we put just some safe boundaries around our conversation and still be the person we are, but just limit some of the things that are said and not allow some of the things they say to, hurt us the way they did in the past?
Kelly: Does that make sense?
Doreen: Yes, it makes sense. And I would say yes, and it takes attachment with God- Oh … in order to do that. That is not something that our brain will do automatically on our own. And that process of attaching to God in uncertainty and attaching to God when things don’t feel [00:15:00] safe is a learned process.
Doreen: Most of us do what Adam and Eve did in the Bible, right? Yeah. We fear and we hide. Yeah. Right? And so learning to trust that God is for us, and He is with us, and He will fight for us in the middle of uncertainty is a process of building that neural pathway in the brain.
Kelly: What you just said is so powerful. It can change the way we live our lives. The secure attachment that we can have with the Lord- through Christ can, attach us to the strength and power and love that is ours at all times. And so what we’re really doing is we’re living in the truth of who He is, and we’re living in the truth of how He loves us.
Kelly: So let’s talk about that just a little bit more. How-
Doreen: Sure thing … do you do that? Yeah, and so we all know in our heads, right, that God loves [00:16:00] us. He’s never gonna leave us. He’s never gonna f- forsake us. We know all the Bible verses, right? That when we come to Christ, that we are sealed.
Doreen: There’s nothing that can disrupt that seal. We know that to be true in our heads. And yet, as believers, at times we struggle to trust that. We struggle to really live that. We struggle to live like that because our evidence that we’ve seen in childhood, potentially, was that a father and mother are flawed, that if I behave a certain way, they might pull away from me, right?
Doreen: So if you looked at my childhood, you would say, “Okay, she grew up with an insecure attachment.” Right. Right? And if we didn’t know about neuroscience, we’d probably say, “Oh, Doreen’s doomed,” right? We’re gonna just- Yeah. … we’re gonna sign off on her. Yeah. But what we know [00:17:00] about attachment, that secure attachment comes when you feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure.
Doreen: Okay. Safe, seen, soothed, and secure. So for me, I was not seen for who I was, right? Right. Because I was told my emotions are bad. Boop. She can’t be seen for who she was. So I would say, all right, I had insecure attachment. Now, we’re not blaming- Right … anybody. Sure, yeah. But for me, the journey then becomes learning that God is trustworthy, and I can give it all to Him without having to put on all those masks- and that He will be with me in the middle of it all. Right. And that is a learned, a learned, relearning, rewiring the way our brain responds to stimuli.
Kelly: Okay, so taking your [00:18:00] situation, so as you looked at God’s word over the years and he began to heal you of those lies, I would assume that some of the truths you heard from scripture was, “Doreen, I made you this way.
Kelly: I created you with these emotions, and I love the way your emotions reflect my character to the world, and look at how I’m using you.” Can you just elaborate on some of the truths you began to, acquire along the way?
Doreen: Yeah. Such a great question. And so I wanna just say that we’ve got all this biblical knowledge in our heads.
Doreen: Yeah. And until it becomes part of our hearts, and until that heartfelt experience comes out through our hands and our actions and our words and our life, we haven’t really truly learned how to abide in Christ.
Doreen: Oh, that’s good.
Doreen: [00:19:00] So we really want to take that head knowledge and experience it, because God is all about relationship. He was never about religion, right? Right. Religion holds all the truth in their head, and they cite it. And here’s an example. Have you ever had a death of someone you love, and someone will come with a Christian cliche, ” They’re in a better place now. God’ll work all things for good,” right? How does that feel in your heart when someone says that to you?
Doreen: It’s hurtful and dismissive.
Doreen: Yes. Right? And so God wants us to know that He’s with us. “Wow, Doreen, I know you’re hurting right now. I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. I wept when Lazarus died.” “I am with you in this. Come and snuggle up next to me. Be with me right now and I [00:20:00] will walk you through this grief.”
Doreen: Right? That’s so different than the platitudes that we often give as Christians. Yeah. There’s a difference because it’s coming from the heart. So if you take that small example and apply it to all things, like when, for example, if we look at scripture in our politics today, and I don’t wanna talk politics because it’s bad.
Doreen: We could say, “This is right, this is wrong,” and we can say all of this from a place of our head knowledge- and it’s void of love. Yeah. It’s void of compassion. It’s void of experience. It’s void of Christ’s power working through us. Do you see the difference? Yeah, absolutely. So that’s what we want.
Doreen: When we abide with Christ so closely that we are just [00:21:00] with Him, and I call it withness, as a witness of His love, right? We are with Him. He gets to shine our, His light through us, and He gets to either stop our words and have us just be silent and still with a person, or to say what it is that person needs at that moment.
Doreen: Because He’s the great physician. He knows it all.
Kelly: Right. We have so much wisdom at our fingertips with Him, so much love- Yes … so much transforming of how we perceive a situation. I love the withness word. I’ve used that before, too. When we live in the withness, but I love how you connected it to the word witness.
Kelly: Yes. When we live in the withness of God, we become a witness of His love to other people. And, throughout the Bible we hear God is with us, like
Kelly: Deuteronomy 31:8, “For the Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you. He’ll never leave you or forsake you.” And you already talked [00:22:00] about how when we are sealed in Christ, He is always with us.
Kelly: Nothing can take us out of that space. No one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, the Bible says, and nothing can separate us from His love. So the Bible makes it very clear He is with us, and you’ve explained some of what it means to live in the withness of God. But let’s just go through some other examples of what it looks like to trust that God is truly with us in all of His power and love at all times, and how that can rewire our brains to experience the abundance of His presence.
Doreen: Yeah. Great question. And yes, He is with us, right? We know that to be truth. And when I think of Peter when he was walking on water, yeah. He was with God at that moment. Yeah. And then when he took his eyes off Jesus at that moment and put his eyes on himself or [00:23:00] the storm or whatever he looked at, we don’t know what he looked at, but we know he looked away from Jesus at that moment, he sank.
Doreen: We know the story, right? Yeah. And it’s the same for us. Practically, when we practice- Being with God, even in our day-to-day activities. So here’s a, an issue I have. I’ll tell you a story about me. I’m an activator. I get things done. I am like the duty girl. I could develop a plan and get it all done by the end of the day.
Doreen: Check check. That is how one of my strengths in the Clifton StrengthsFinders. So sometimes in the past when God has given me a marching order, He’s told me one piece of something, I do the one piece and then 20 other pieces. I, I’ve like left Him back here and I’ve carried on without Him,
Doreen: and so what God [00:24:00] wants is He wants that connection through it all. Mm. He wants me to do that one little step with Him and then sit with Him and say, ” God, what’s next?” Right. And see how that is like an unhurried life when we do that versus my activator strength who wants to get things done, right? Because then what happens is we put problems above people- Yeah
Doreen: because we are trying to accomplish. .
Kelly: Oh, my goodness, that’s something God said to me a long time ago in the very beginning of my parenting journey. Because as a physical therapist, I approached everything with, “Here are my problems. Here are my goals. Here’s my treatment plan. Let’s go.” Yes. And in parenting, I mean, my oldest daughter, I found out she’s profoundly deaf, and she was a handful, but so sweet.
Kelly: But I sensed the Lord telling me one day, and I’m so grateful He rescued me this way. Mm-hmm. He said, [00:25:00] “Kelly, your daughter is not a problem to be solved. She is a beautiful creation of Mine to be loved and enjoyed.” Yes. Wow. Changed everything.
Doreen: Yes, that doesn’t it? If we could just slow down long enough to invite God into the everyday moments, this is how we rewire those default patterns of negativity, by being with God in the middle of the everyday things and practicing so that when the situations come, and they will come where we are challenged, we have built that mental muscle and are able to transfer ourselves to that neural pathway of connection with Christ.
Doreen: For example I have, diverticulitis. No big deal, right? Okay. It k- gets flared up every now and then. I had to go for, A CAT scan because it was not getting better. During that CAT [00:26:00] scan they found three different things, and the radiologist wrote, ” Resembles Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.” Oh my goodness.
Doreen: Right? Okay, so now I’ve been told, looking at my report, that I have cancer, and yet I can’t get to a doctor for a month, right? And then I get into the doctor, and I have to wait another month for the results of the test. So God had me in this waiting room, and at that moment I had a choice. I had a choice.
Doreen: Do I take the fear pathway and go round and round and round with all of my fears, my worries? I had… My daughter’s getting married in May. I even thought, “I don’t wanna go to her wedding with no hair.” And I wanna say I visited that place of fear. And then I realized, okay, what I need right now is I need to slow down my life so that I can hear more from God.
Doreen: And so that is what I did. I went from posting [00:27:00] on social media every day, I’d been posting every day for probably 10 years, and I said, “Nope. Once a week.” So I took my business and I said, “Okay, this is the bare bones minimum that I’m willing to do because I want to be so close to Christ in this time that if my business, if God wants my business to work in this state, He will make it work, and if He doesn’t, there’s no loss.
Doreen: It’s only gain for me,” right? Wow. It’s only gain. And so that’s what I did, and I snuggled up close to Him and I sat with Him and I, when the fear came up, I’d say, “Oh, God, help me to trust you with this,” right? And then I’d feel His warmth because I’ve now connected to Him, and He’d say, “Child, I’m with you.”
Doreen: Like- Wow … and so these aren’t audible voices, but you can- Yeah … you can f- feel the impression of [00:28:00] it in your heart, you know? Yeah. Like, y- you get to tune in to Him and His still, small voice, and it often sounds like your voice, as my friend Pamela Merch says, right? It often sounds like your voice, but it’s not the condemning voice.
Doreen: Yeah. And when we are slowed down enough to connect with Him, that’s when He rewires all of these patterns. And- It’s like an onion, right? We never arrive. I just posted something about the arrival fallacy. We never arrive to healed and walking with Christ 100% of the time, it’s like an onion, and God is so gracious to us.
Doreen: Like, we see these things as obstacles when in fact they are, they’re water for the seeds that God is planting in our lives.
Kelly: Oh, that is beautiful. Say that again if you don’t mind.
Doreen: I will [00:29:00] try, but it just came up. We see these situations as obstacles, and God is like, “This is just water for the seed that I’m planting in you, in your heart, and that I’m growing,”
Doreen: yeah. And, you know, I saw a few layers of that onion come off- Yeah … during this situation, and I’m still going deeper. And what He taught me in that time is just to learn to receive from Him.
Kelly: Okay, so you said some major key words. First of all, was slow down in those moments- Yeah … that you can connect with the Spirit, connect with the depths of the rivers of living water.
Kelly: Yes. And the other thing you talked about was … what was the word you just used? Receive. Receive. Oh. Yes, and receive, and that’s- Mm-hmm … such a powerful word. Cheryl Scanlon was on here, that was the whole topic of how- Oh. … to receive all that God has for us so that we get unstuck.
Kelly: [00:30:00] So opening our heart to receive. And your prayer, I just wanna point this out. When you said to the Lord, “Okay, I’m gonna pull back on posting every day like I’ve done for 10 years. I’m gonna sit in this place of having a possible very difficult diagnosis. I’m gonna sit with you. I’m gonna hear from you,” and that’s what you were doing.
Kelly: You were saying, “I’m not gonna strive. I’m gonna trust my entire business to the Lord in this place and realize it’s completely dependent on Him.” Yes. “But I’m gonna rest in this new place of difficult, possibly, information, even though I have to wait two months to even know if it’s true.” Yes. And so that’s a good example of the slowing down, rewiring our brains, receiving all the love that God has for us.
Kelly: There’s no condemnation coming from Him. Yeah. It’s all love. It’s all power. Those are very beautiful, and what you’re describing is developing that secure attachment to the Lord that we talked about, and [00:31:00] in that space we are experiencing the fruit of the Spirit. We’re experiencing His joy in greater proportions.
Doreen: Yes. And so here’s the thing. If I stayed with my personal image of what secure attachment looked like when I looked at my parents- Yeah … right, I’d never have this depth of relationship with Christ, right? Because we get to earn that secure attachment. And so there is a thing in neuroscience, it’s called earned secure attachment, and we earn it through practicing with God who is always faithful, who never leaves us, who will give us every single thing that we need.
Doreen: He wants us to have the more. We need to be willing to receive that more from Him. And as women, we are so good at giving. Yeah. We will give until our fingers are bleeding. And yet we [00:32:00] struggle to receive. I, I haven’t h- I haven’t really met a man that I have to tell to receive, but for women it seems to be, for me, that women have a harder time receiving.
Doreen: Have you ever been sick and had someone bring you meals? Mm-hmm. How was that for you, for me, it was hard to receive, but I’m more than willing to jump on that meal train and give to someone else. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
Kelly: My husband has had to learn to receive because he is very much, a doer.
Kelly: Oh. And so slowing down is something that, wow, that’s hard, too, to learn to slow down and receive the abundance of God’s love that’s for him. Yes. I love those examples. Now I, I really want, before our time has ended, for you to talk about some of the negative reactions to difficulties, to stress that have probably become habits for most of us, and so that we can identify them [00:33:00] in our lives.
Kelly: So I know, one of them is catastrophizing, and I’d like you just to talk about those kinds of things, the way we might react. Mm-hmm. Because I think if we can name ’em, then we become more aware of them, and then we’re able to slow down and connect with the Lord in that space.
Doreen: Okay. So yeah, catastrophizing, seeing a situation and really making it bigger than it is, right?
Doreen: Right. It becomes this looming thing. And another one of the patterns that, that we see often is all or nothing thinking. Like, it’s just black and white, and there’s no in between, right? Yeah. And then there is, I’m blanking
Doreen: I’ve had it in my mind three times, and it stopped. So that’s interesting when God does that. Pay attention to that. When there’s something you wanna say and suddenly it’s gone out of your mind. Maybe God doesn’t want me to say that.
Doreen: So maybe I just, fall back on the patterns of [00:34:00] people pleasing, perfectionism, looping in negative thoughts- Yeah … round and round to try and solve the problem in our brain. I just wanna say when we do that, we’re in the left side of our brain, which is not attached to God per se. It has to go through the right side first and then it crosses over, and when we solve problems with God, we’ve gone to the left side of our brain with God and we’re ready to solve problems with Him instead of solo.
Doreen: So, the circular thinking is a stress pattern.
Kelly: Okay, so when you’re rehearsing negative thoughts, when you’re rehearsing all the ca- the catastrophes that could happen, when you’re seeing only bad instead of able to see the good, then you are trapped in negative thinking and you’re in the left side of your brain.
Kelly: But when you stop and slow [00:35:00] down, you’re saying you connect with the Lord, and then you can see and process these same situations differently from His perspective.
Doreen: Yes. And so your brain has a default setting, that just sees all of the negative because- its number one job is to keep you safe.
Doreen: So we have to train it to be able to slow down and create space, as Victor Frankl would say, space between the circumstance and the response. And Victor Frankl says, “And in that space lies your freedom and your power.” Now, Victor Frankl was a, concentration camp survivor. He was also a psychotherapist, and he knew that the only thing he can control was that space in between where he paused before he reacted to the [00:36:00] responses of things going on around him.
Doreen: He paused and connected with God in those moments- Wow … and expanded that space of freedom. That’s where his power came from That is fascinating So what we’re talking about here from a neuroscience perspective is when we pause and shift to that right side of the brain and take that pathway all the way up with God, we’re, we’re in the relational pathway, so we’re connected with God, we’re h- able to hear His voice, we’re able to experience the fruit of His Spirit, and then we can go to the other side of our brain and solve problems together with Him.
Kelly: Together with Him. Yes. And if I can just stick with the story of being in those concentration camps always makes me think of Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsy.
Kelly: Yes. And Corrie ten Boom is there just complaining [00:37:00] about the fleas and the, I mean, there’s so much to complain about. It is a horrible nightmare of a situation full of evil, and yet her sister said, “But Betsy, here in this place, we can thank God for the fleas because the guards won’t even come in here, and now we get to teach the Word of God to everyone in this bunker.”
Kelly: And so they were able to- Yes … read the Word and pray with these women and teach the Word of God. It’s a different way of processing. I remember saying this to the Lord,
Kelly: when I look at my girls’ lives, what I see is neglect and not the care of a good shepherd. But I know that’s not true because I know what the Bible says. I know who You are, help me see differently.” So in align with what you’re saying, I was slowing down, I was connecting with His Spirit, and then He was helping me process the pain through His Spirit, through His Word, through His love.
Kelly: Is that correct?
Doreen: Yes, that is correct. And, you know, like I said, healing is never one and done. Right. God is [00:38:00] so gracious, right? Yeah. As soon as we get one layer down, He’s willing to take us deeper. That’s why it’s interesting when we’re in a group or we’re in church and a v- familiar verse comes up, we kind of almost tune out.
Doreen: Like sometimes when we hear John 3:16, we’ve heard it so many times, we kind of tune out to that. But those are the times we need to lean in. Because God is able to take that living Word and, and- transform it so it’s sharper than a two-edged sword, and He’s gonna give you a deeper truth that you can receive from Him when we are open to it instead of with- in that default negative mode.
Kelly: Yes. Oh, I’m so glad you shared that. I love this so much about the Lord is He is, He has so much knowledge, so much wisdom, so much love. He is always going deeper within us to bring about more soul [00:39:00] healing and deeper connection to His love and deeper understanding of His word. I love that with Him, the walk of faith is never boring.
Kelly: We’re never stuck because He is vast and incomprehensible. His thoughts and ways are far above our ways. The Bible makes it so clear. And so the fact that He continues to invite us into conversations and deeper knowledge just blows my mind and fills me with such anticipation and hope when I’m in difficult places.
Doreen: Absolutely. Oh, gosh, I couldn’t have said it any better. That was perfect. He is amazing, isn’t He? Yes. He is amazing. It’s so much fun. Well, Doreen, I know we need to close out our time. So- Yeah … in these last few minutes, please let people know how they can connect with you.
Doreen: Okay. So I do own a private business called Doreen Steenland Coaching and Facilitation, but what I really invite you to jump into is a [00:40:00] special journey into Promised Land Living. Yes. Promised Land Living is a journey from we, we walk with the Israelites in the desert, and it’s, it’s about getting to that promised land that God has for you, that He wants for you.
Doreen: He wants the more for you. And in these groups, these cohorts, it’s a safe place to show up as you really are, your real self, without judgment, without feeling like you’re gonna be fixed, and to learn and grow with God. You probably won’t hear many new truths in there, but what you will have is space to learn how to connect with God in a deeper way so that your life can be transformed to a next level, right?
Doreen: That’s what He’s looking for us. He’s always looking for us to get to a next level. So I am running another cohort in September. There’s only eight spots. But there are many other [00:41:00] groups ready and waiting to invite you into. So promisedlandliving.com you can find all the groups available, and we’d love to see you.
Doreen: Oh, yes. And this is for men and women, for both- Yes … a group that always- Well, not together. Right They’re separate groups for men and women, yes. And now they have a marriage one too- Oh … which is another exciting exciting journey. So anyway, yes, please connect with the Promise Land Living Ministry because that is our passion, to help ourselves and to help others to go deeper with Christ, and just enjoy the fullness of life that he wants us to enjoy with him.
Doreen: Right. Oh, amen. Thank you so much, Doreen. Thank you. This has been just fascinating and so encouraging. Thank you for helping us understand. I just thank the Lord for bringing us together as well. Thank you, Kelly. I am thankful. This was a great conversation, and I feel like [00:42:00] I could’ve gone on with you for hours.
Doreen: Oh, me too. It felt really natural. Yeah, it was really fun.
If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kellyhall.org, and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope podcast.