Who Killed My Dad?

By Dorothy Mitchell

My father is not in the best of health right now, but he is getting better. The primary spiritual culprit behind the attacks on his health was found a little while ago.

So it puzzled me that this month in August/Elul I began repeatedly hearing a lyric from the notorious anime Kill la Kill, a show that, in a nutshell, follows a girl on a quest to avenge her father’s murder (and stumbles on a piece of rejected armor): I’ve got to find out who killed my dad; I hear the voice of you in my mind...

As I pondered this all month, I assumed that God was saying I needed to figure out who or what had been plotting against my earthly father, but finally it dawned on me that perhaps I was wrong. He might have been talking about himself. I accepted Jesus and asked God to adopt me into his family a long time ago, so God is also my Father. Jesus knew him as Father and taught us to pray to him as Abba (Daddy) so we could know him as Abba Father.

God wants to be close to us. Sometimes, the enemy of our souls plots against God through us. The easiest way to get to us is not to let any relationship begin in the first place. Sowing doubt and sabotaging trust and relationship in us as early as possible makes sense to the rebellious ones. That’s what would surely hurt him most.

I spent a good deal of my early life acting and feeling loyal but detached from God, as if God were dead, uncaring, unreachable, immovable — the unknowable, ineffable, deist watchmaker god. But who gave me that idea? Who told me he was dead? Who deceived me and killed his image in my mind, and made it so I couldn’t approach him as Father, let alone as Daddy? Sure, the culture put words to the idea, and egged it on, and sure, my own earthly father wasn’t perfect. But it was completely blown out of proportion.

God’s not dead, he’s surely alive! He’s living on the inside, roaring like a lion...!

I also assumed that it was ME who needed to figure this out. But I think I was wrong. I realized that God has his own detectives (I’ve seen him deploy them); I merely needed to give him permission to use them.

Father God, I ask you to find all those culprits, plotters, and schemers who attempted to poison your image and sow discord and distrust into my relationship with you. Release your divine detectives. Track all sabotage back to its source. Account for every blow dealt against me and my earthly father and the fathers before him on earth and between earth and heaven in an attempt to distort relationship between me and my heavenly Father God. I ask you to take the culprits to court and deal with them most harshly. I give you my record of wrongs and ask you to get justice for me. I am sorry for any way in which I agreed with them knowingly or unknowingly. I renounce them completely. You are a good father. You are my good daddy. You are love. I reject all false blueprints or mappings that were superimposed over your image in my heart. Please tear them down and take them away. I want to know you, God, the way Jesus knew you, too.

Guardians Raise Objections!

By Susan Mitchell

We gotta love the prickly Guardian parts of our soul/heart, but they can create strife when their protective objections conflict with our current goal or purpose. This often happens when my husband is chauffeuring me somewhere: I’m totally at ease playing on my iPhone, but my Guardian suddenly emerges to shriek, Watch out! about a “dangerous” shadow movement out of the corner of my eye. Then hubby’s Guardian comes out in response to being startled into, well, nearly wrecking the car. Or, on occasions when I have gone to meet with a group I know and love, some Guardian gets alerted and irritated for who knows what reason and simply won’t calm down. I might even get into an argument with someone if I don’t resolve the trigger, choose a non-reactive path, or remove myself. 

A few Sundays ago I was looking forward to peaceful time with my church. Worship for many of us is one place that is usually safe from triggers, so this is often easy since Guardians are often lulled into a sense of safety by music. The worship team began singing “How Great Is Our God,” a lovely anthem I’d heard many times. The word pictures (“wraps himself in light” and “time is in his hands”) ignited my imaginative awe and sparked actual conversation with the Lord (“my heart will sing”). The Function, Emotion, and True Self parts of my heart were wholly engaged in appreciating the Lord and allowing their joy capacity to expand.

At the moment my Guardian did not seem to be “up,” which is not surprising. They can go dormant for months or years. They do not sequence time, so they can be completely desynchronized from a person’s overall timeline, unaware of past encounters or experiences that occurred between their creation and their seemingly random awakening to take a guard shift.

But on this occasion, when we hit the line “the Lion and the Lamb,” my Guardian woke up to declare the equivalent of, “Danger! Untrue! Words found nowhere in Scripture! Misquote of Isaiah 11:6, 'And the wolf will dwell with the lamb….’”

Guardians can really wreck a party, but my Function considered the artifact of the song and the accusation carefully and came up with a logical narrative counterpoint: “This song is about the reach, span, and range of God: age to age, beginning to end, Lion apex predator to slaughtered Lamb. He is great in encompassing it all, and Jesus stands in these two faces of himself in Revelation 5:5-6. It’s legit.”

Guardian, appreciating the logic, bought it and relaxed, letting the gate swing wide open for the rest of my heart to re-engage in the adoration of our great and glorious God. Whew.

A few takeaways —  

• Music is a good way to keep Guardians at peace. I believe King Saul used David’s harp-playing to keep the scary, loud evil spirits that were attached to his Guardian at bay.

• If a Guardian shows up unexpectedly, take some time to reply kindly with facts and with logic to suggest another way to view things. 

• If they keep intruding (not all Guardians are as compliant as mine was), it’s often helpful to affirm them: “Guardian, you are an important part of me, and I appreciate your help. However, I, Susan, could really use this time to soak and relax from the stresses of the last week. Is it okay if we continue this conversation later?”

• Of course, if this is a Guardian that simply will not be mollified, it might be time to schedule an appointment to do look deeper at the cause, so Jesus can be brought in to resolve and heal the underlying issue: www.estuarycourts.com/book

Out of Religion, Into Relationship: Part 2

By Dorothy Mitchell

Continuing the story of my journey into an experiential relationship with God.

The Turning Point. My existential distress during my college years came to a head in an unexpected way. I can’t even explain why what happened hit me so hard. At the time, I was living in a dorm for women in the center of campus that had an unofficial reputation for being the virgin dorm.

One day, I was studying in my room when a girl raced down the hall pursued by a pack of boys, who cornered her just outside my door while one of the boys pressured the girl for a date. (Ironically, the boy was in the same religion class that pushed me to familiarize myself with the branches of Christianity I had not been exposed to before, which for me were Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.) Alarmed, I propped my door open in an attempt to give the girl an escape. She did not take it, but succumbed to the pressure and gave the boy her number.

I am not usually an impulsive person, but on this occasion I was so angry I was ready to run out and do something rash. However, the girl did not want anyone to retaliate on her behalf. I filed a report, honoring her choice, but inwardly I wrestled with my anger and my impotence, pursuing justice solely on paper. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I cried out to God that my ways were not working; I had tried everything in my own strength and had failed to change myself one iota. I had no resilience. I could not cope with my moody, whiplash emotions or the pressures I put on myself. I needed God to change my life and my heart so I could live in the way Jesus had promised.

I did not receive any answer at that time, but soon after, my mom was introduced to the process of HeartSync, and I sensed this might be the tool that I needed in order to change. I was also introduced to Silicon Valley Healing Rooms, where I felt the undeniable presence of God for the first time and began to learn how to listen and hear from God by seeking words of knowledge before praying for physical healing. In the years since, other gifts and modes of communication unlocked: tongues, discernment, and dancing. More importantly, my inner stability and foundation in Christ has become more and more firm.

I have continued to seek God, listen for his voice, receive ministry for the shattered and broken pieces of my heart, and renounce the vows of religion and stoicism that captured me. It has been my pleasure to engage with and learn from teachers, evangelists, healers, and prophets from a great many ministries. It is my honor and joy now to help others restore the lines of communication in a living relationship with our Living God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit in their many roles as Father, Friend, Shepherd, Banner, Defender, King, Teacher, and Creator.

There is hope for you, too. Check out our appointment options for connecting you to the Source of Hope here.

Out of Religion, Into Relationship: Part 1

By Dorothy Mitchell

This is the story of my journey to wholehearted healing and connection.

The Setup. I grew up in a very small evangelical church with liberal leanings relative to the rest of the Church of Christ denomination. They embraced women as capable leaders, deacons, teachers, and servants within the church partly out of necessity because of their small population, but also out of general Bible study and local professional attitudes. The church denominational theology was organized around the cessationist premise that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the time of the first apostles. My congregation neither endorsed nor repudiated that belief directly, and I had no experience or knowledge that would cause me to question that premise or its effects.

Dorothy drinking from the old church fountain

Although the church hesitantly leaned in the direction of the Holy Spirit more and more as the years went on, the endeavor was of the cautious-blind leading the cautious-blind. We didn’t know that agreements in the spirit stick around until they are explicitly refuted or put down. We had very little grid for God’s heavenly kingdom and great fear of passion, mysticism, and the unknown.

Deep in my heart, I knew the spiritual world was real. I knew some people heard God and had a personal relationship with Jesus. Yet I could not seem to grasp it for myself. I grew increasingly disenchanted and frustrated with the evangelical world’s flat take on a seemingly one-sided relationship with a Jesus who could not talk back. Though I agreed in theory that such a relationship was crucial to my Christian walk, I could not make mine come alive, and no one seemed equipped to teach me how to make it bi-directional and real. Prayer felt very close to useless. But Holy Spirit had plans to guide me deeper.

The Commitment. I had always known I wanted to be baptized someday, but I felt I could not make the commitment in good conscience until I felt that I was willing to give my whole life to follow Jesus. One night I had a dream that I knew came from the Holy Spirit. I saw a white and purple flag featuring the dove of the Holy Spirit waving in my dream. In the dream, I was teaching some children about Jesus, who stood behind them. The children confronted me and asked me how I could teach them about him if I had not committed and was not baptized myself?

When I woke up, I knew it was time.

Dorothy's water baptism.

By her father, Keith Mitchell.

Rising as a "new creation."

A fresh start in life.

I felt nothing in particular during the baptism event, but Holy Spirit began to show me things. One time he even downloaded an entire parable to me. While I was applying to college, I would idly ask God where I would be in the future and I would receive faint glimpses in the blink of an eye. Later in the year, I recognized myself in those places he showed me. This brought me reassurance about my purpose and my destiny. I did not want to assume I knew where God wanted to send me. Eventually, I settled on Hope College in Michigan where I could pursue creative writing, art, and Japanese in an environment that encouraged its students to grow in their Christian walk.

Finally, finally, I would be allowed to nourish my passions with people who also wanted to be in school, with people as motivated as myself! I fully expected to flourish, but instead I attained accolades and success without thriving. I was frequently too anxious to enjoy my freedom. I made many acquaintances but struggled to make strong friendships, which came lowest on my priority scale. I felt chronically battered and exhausted. I realized I had absorbed toxic expectations and habits from twelve years of school that I did not know how to unlearn. I continued to do my work and enjoyed my classes, but outside of class I felt something was dreadfully wrong. I did not know how to live as a whole human being.

Have you also experienced such an existential crisis? Stay tuned for the conclusion of this story of hope.

Hard-Wired for Love

By Dorothy Mitchell

Do you ever wonder, “Why don’t people feel safe around me? Why can’t we all just get along?”

Everyone wants to be loved. We are built to respond to and seek out love. Why then, in our desperation to be loved, do we push others away? How do things go wrong before a single word has been exchanged?

It’s because our heart, the largely subconscious parts of our mind, is divided and trying to protect its own integrity. Our heart gets wounded. In response to traumas experienced in relationship or in community, our heart may develop deep insecurities. These insecurities are held in our emotion parts, and they rouse the guardian parts of our heart to step up and protect us. Guardians that are on hyper-alert or easily triggered can create a hostile and unpredictable context for friendship. Insecurities also affect the way the function parts of our heart walk and talk and act.

Your intention of friendship may be pure, but others may perceive that the relational safety they require cannot be guaranteed should they make a mistake. Some people are good at reading into others’ words or body language, and other people may be forewarned in their spirit, and may even subconsciously step carefully around you or avoid provoking you. It takes a mature guardian and a mature heart to be able to approach an insecure person with an immature guardian and relate and minister to them. Even then, some boundaries are needed.

Tensions. Sometimes two people have guardians with mutually incompatible ways of protecting the heart. One person’s penchant for yelling when upset is not compatible with another’s need to process conflict in silence. One guardian’s alarm is fed by seeing alarm in another guardian, and the two guardians’ hackles begin to raise at the same time—like two suspicious animals circling and readying for an imminent fight! When this happens, we could follow HeartSync founder Andrew Miller’s example in admitting, “my guardians don’t like your guardians.”

When I was at my most wounded, I had a habit of saying, “I would hate to meet myself. I don’t think we would get along.” At the time, this was probably true. One of the first people I was assigned to receive HeartSync ministry from was very much like me, and she was very competent at facilitating a HeartSync session while her ‘Original Self’ was in charge. But outside of a session, I could not understand why I was so nervous and tense around her, and I hoped someone else would be assigned to help me. She was a very complex person; I was a very complex person. We respected each other, but we just didn’t get along without accidental ouchies, like two hedgehogs trying to hug. But the more healing we both get through our synchronization to Jesus, the more likely we are to be able to get along on this earthly plane.

Shortcuts. Another reason why instant fear or dislike may take place is because of the patterns that guardians have picked up on over time. Human beings have a natural ability to analyze, categorize, and sort experiences and encounters with people, animals, and objects, and associate “these things” with “those things.” The amygdala in our brain, which is associated with the guardian parts of our heart, is particularly devoted to assessing whether these experiences put you in contact with something good, bad, or scary. Instead of approaching every situation as if it were absolutely new, your brain will try to read into it according to the patterns it has perceived in the past. While undergoing trauma, using shortcuts like these may be vital for survival.

This is easy to see in abused animals, who react with fear or anger to people who match the profile of their old abusive master in their memories. These animals must be re-homed carefully. So too can our fear be easily transferred from one person to the next or from one context to the next. But here’s the good news: so can joy. When you have a memory of someone you trust who has been devoted and good to you, that joy, love, and trust can be transferred to people who remind you of them. Your guardians like their guardians, and you get on like a barn on fire!

Society has a way of instilling stereotypes into us; you may hear us call this “programming.” What you see, read, and hear on the news, or in the paper, in books, in movies, on social media, or from friends and family informs us about the world we live in. But these stories are not necessarily true or retold at a frequency that reflects reality, and they can erode our innocence over time. When feeling threatened or scared, we make a lot of snap judgments based on these stories. At worst, we inflict harm and perpetuate phobias and bigotries through these snap judgments in the forms of sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, paternalism, and so forth.

Although it is good to question stories and pursue education about the diversity of cultures, I believe that the ultimate deliverance from all these -isms can only be found in Christ Jesus, in whom we are enabled to see each other as the Father sees us. We cannot return to dovelike innocence or embrace an unencumbered snakelike canniness by our own strength. But if we repent and submit our biases to the Lord for judgment, he will surely help us.

Interrelated Parts. In a nutshell, we get wounded (heart/identity/original self), and then our insecurities (emotion) fuel our guardians to come out, which can create a hostile or unpredictable context for relationship, affecting how we act and talk (function), and how free or cautious our friends (guardians) feel around us and react to us. And when the world consequently feels unsafe, our hopes and dreams (original self) gets relegated to the backburner so that we survive instead of thrive. But Jesus called us to an abundant life. If you feel stuck, let us help you in a HeartSync appointment: https://www.estuarycourts.com/book.

My Big Break: Surrender

By Susan Mitchell

God looks for every opportunity to break you out of stuckness. We can do a lot of things — therapy, prayer, journaling, talking with a friend — to give God that opportunity, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like much has shifted. If we keep chipping away at it, those small steps will pay off one day when the simplest thing breaks it all open. 

Control. Sometimes we get stuck because we are actually trying too hard without knowing how to unclench, attempting to wrest control over ourselves or our situation. That’s how it was for me, an irritable, self-described control freak.

My heart had already been softened and lightened through a few sozo sessions, in which I was led back to sad memories, saw God in the memories, and got his perspective on the situation. Although I felt more peace about that particular situation, my life in general wasn’t affected. Then a sequence of events built up to my culminating moment: (1) I received my first HeartSync as a demo in front of a “live studio audience.” Amazingly, I was able to release a lot of pain that I had been carrying and began climbing out of a negative mindset of painful irritability, reaching a more neutral zone. (2) I was blessed with a hopeful prophetic word from a friend. (3) I attended a conference of artists learning about human trafficking. I was relaxed, not expecting anything.

Surrender. At the end of the conference, we were invited forward to get a prayer to release us from a pattern of abuse. I seized the moment, and my life changed suddenly and permanently through the minister’s 2-minute prayer:

“Lord, I invite you to tear down the 'abuse me' sign over Susan, so that every word out of her mouth going forward is good and pure and wholesome, and every word directed toward her is truthful, clear, and loving. Sever the ungodly soul ties between her and all abusers, and retrieve all parts of her soul, washed clean in the blood of Jesus. Send back to her abusers all parts of their souls, washed clean in the blood of Jesus.” 

I am normally a pretty stoic person, but as she was speaking, I felt my spirit grieve, and my body reflected that grief with shuddering, crying, and deep exhalation. I could have shut it down, but I went with it — the first surrender. While the minister left me to continue the process on my own, I felt an invitation in my spirit to release and surrender more. Maybe that’s overstating it. It’s actually rather boring to just stand there crying. With my get ‘er done mentality, I decided to cooperate by going through a standard process I'd been taught since childhood: Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess, and Be Baptized.

So I heard the minister express the Lord’s desire to heal me. I believed my spirit wanted to receive his healing, as evidenced by the turmoil in my body. I verbally repented (did a U-turn) by ceding my control to heaven and declaring that I was surrendering each part of my body. I worked my way down from head to toe, pausing between each part to see if I the Holy Spirit wanted me to do anything else before moving on. I confessed all sins I could think of that I had committed related to that part of my body. I forgave people related to those sins and let go of the resulting bitterness I had held. I asked Jesus to sever all attachments to all spirits that were chaining me to sinful behavior patterns (spirits of anger, control, vengeance, grief, etc.). Over the course of about 20 minutes, I slowly yielded each body part (head/brain, eyes, ears, mouth, shoulders, abdomen, hips, knees, feet) and ended up face down and flat on the floor, until I felt the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was the peace that comes from having nothing left to surrender. This is what it means to be washed clean in the blood of Jesus. 

That was the watershed moment jumping me past zero and into positive numbers. My family noticed positive effects immediately even though I don’t think I was behaving any differently or striving to be a better person. But the reality confirmed by many people’s external observations is that I have not been the same person since that moment, and abusive verbalizations toward me ceased. 

Love. That’s my personal story. Your story may be very different. But the common thread is that God loves you and longs for you to truly experience the “abundant life” that Jesus promised. Don’t wallow in the negative zone of pain. Don’t be satisfied with the neutral zone of meh. Go for it, and work out your “sozo,” your very own salvation path into the positively charged life you were designed for. 

Why Do We Do What We Do?

By Susan Mitchell

We are people like you. 

We have been wounded by life events and people. Our hearts have shattered, and we have responded with all of the human emotions of helplessness, hopelessness, grief, fury, revenge, pride, bitterness, disgust, fear, and self-loathing. We have made vows to avoid this or that person, situation, place, or time. We have looked for ways to escape the pain, seeking comfort in entertainment, food, drink, and other mind-altering substances and processes. Over time, we have borne pain, trauma, negative expectations, crushing responsibilities, and overwhelming fatigue. We have replayed some of our worst experiences over and over obsessively. Our guilt and shame have weighed us down. We’ve made up stories and embraced lies in an effort to make our world make sense. 

But it didn’t come close to making sense until we met people —

• Who understood. 

• Who actively listened to us. 

• Who honored and respected our views. 

• Who help us lay down some of the heavy things we carried.

• Who helped us get additional perspective and release blockages and constraints.

• Who gave us tools that allowed us to feel love and gratitude, which led to peace and joy, which blossomed into patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and faithfulness. 

People now tell us, “I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you’re a lot nicer than you used to be. What happened?”

We will be sharing our personal stories to answer this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! For now, suffice it to say that we have been actively working for 7 years to lean into this healing and absorb the strategies for sharing it safely and effectively with others. Are you ready to let go of the things that used to give you purpose and momentum, but now just seem to keep you stuck? Let us cooperate with you to get unstuck. Unstuck is what we do.