29 The Courtroom in My Head: How I Stopped Putting Myself on Trial

The Courtroom In My Head: How I Stopped Putting Myself on Trial 

Have you ever noticed how quickly uncertainty turns into self-doubt? 

Recently, while waiting for our house to sell, I found myself caught in a familiar cycle of frustration, fear, and disappointment. At first, I thought I was struggling with uncertainty. But as I journaled and listened to my thoughts, I discovered something deeper: 

I had been interpreting uncertainty as self-indictment for a very long time. 

What if the problem isn't the feeling? 

What if the problem is the verdict we attach to the feeling? 

In this episode, I share a personal breakthrough about disappointment, fear, uncertainty, and the internal courtroom many of us unknowingly carry around in our minds. We'll talk about emotions as messengers, the difference between circumstances and conclusions, and why some of the hardest feelings to experience may actually be the healing ones. 

If you've ever felt like you're constantly evaluating yourself, questioning yourself, or wondering if you're somehow failing God, this conversation is for you. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Feelings are messengers, not judges. 
• Uncertainty is a circumstance, not a verdict. 
• Disappointment is an experience, not an identity. 
• You don't have to step into every courtroom your mind creates.

If you want to go deeper and hear more like this, join my Private Facebook Group Willow   https://www.facebook.com/groups/willowbylisa

Schedule your 15 minute free Discovery Call at www.outsidethepulpit.blog.

Transcript

Lisa Meador 0:42

Welcome back to Outside the Pulpit. Today's episode is going to be a little different because I am going to talk to you about something that I am actively practicing right now. It's not something I've mastered entirely, and it's not something I conquered years ago. It's something that I really am walking through today. And I wanted to share it with you now because I want you to know there's other people walking through things just like you are. You know, we're all learning and growing. And this is now stay with me through the whole episode because I you're, I don't want you to think I'm repeating a bunch from the past because I will bring that in. But it's the twist at the end that I believe is going to really bring it together for you because it did for me. I thought I knew these things, but boy, oh boy, when the Lord gets ready to show you something, He's the best. I love that about the Lord. You know, I've been in such a struggle in this uh area that I'm getting ready to share with y'all. It's about the sale of our home. But man, did God just like, he just went in my spirit and he showed me what was going on and he has just moved all this uh upset out of my life. And no, my house hadn't sold yet. But that's okay. I've got peace because he gave it to me, and I'm gonna tell you how I got there. So hang with me today. You might have to listen to it two or three times, but hang with me. It's gonna be worth it, y'all. This is something so that I have said before, the feeling won't kill you. For years I thought difficult emotions were problems to solve. Fear meant something was wrong. Anxiety meant I wasn't trusting God enough. Sadness meant I needed more faith. Loneliness meant I needed to pray harder. I thought the goal was to get rid of these feelings as quickly as possible. But what if emotions aren't problems? What if they're just part of being human? What if they aren't nearly as dangerous as we've been taught to believe? Recently I was reading the Beatitudes. I love the Beatitudes, by the way. You know, if you're ever stuck not knowing what to read, always. Or if you've got a friend who's not know where to start, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Man, those are the words straight from Jesus' mouth. We start practicing these, y'all. We're gonna get where we need to go, I tell you. But let me get back on track here. The Beatitudes. Then this one verse really got my attention. It's Matthew 5, 4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Jesus doesn't say blessed are those who never mourn. And he doesn't say, blessed are those who avoid grief. He doesn't say blessed are those who suppress difficult emotions. He says, blessed are those who mourn. So mourning is expected, pain is expected, loss is expected, disappointment is even expected. The blessing isn't in avoiding pain, the blessing is in God's comfort while we're experiencing it. So that tells me something. Jesus wasn't afraid of our emotions. You know, maybe I don't need to be either. One of the coolest things I've ever learned. Now, y'all hang on, I'm gonna geek out just a little bit, not gonna go too far, but I'm with me. Here's a go, I learned about metacognition, and that's the ability to observe my own thinking. I learned that a thought is simply a thought, it's a sentence running through my brain, a spark of electricity. And just because I think something doesn't make it true. That was one of the most freeing and liberating things I ever learned. Look, I was convinced, as I'm sure you are too, you hear these thoughts, you hear them in your own voice, and you're just taking them for granted, assuming them that they're true. But man, when we start challenging these thoughts, we start realizing how many things trying to, you know, run across our minds here aren't true. This is where we get to actively participate in what's happening. The other thing I learned is called neuroplasticity. And that just means the brain can change. You know, I call it or equate it to like a well-worn path. Let's say a path back and forth to your grandma's house or something like that. You know, you just like a dog when they're running around the yard, you know, they wear out a path of grass around the yard, a well-worn path, a neural pathway. But we as human beings, God made our brains able to change that path. We don't have to keep taking that same path. We can create a new neural pathway, we can create a new way so the brain can actually change. We can create those new pathways, new patterns, new habits, new ways of thinking. You know what? This sounds a lot like what Paul wrote. Romans 12, 2, one of the scriptures I use here quite often, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The renewal of the mind isn't just a spiritual concept, it's something God designed our brains to do. Isn't that beautiful? God didn't leave us here to just be subject to these old carnal minds that want to rule everything that's going on. No, not at all. He gave us these sweet, beautiful brains that can change. All we got to do is direct them. I oh, it's hard. I got it, it's work, but there is a way out, there is a path forward. I love that. God, he's so good to us. The biggest breakthrough honestly wasn't learning to observe a thought. The biggest breakthrough was learning that I could experience a feeling and survive it. I think I've got an earlier episode on that. I'm not going to get too far in it today. But, you know, I learned as these things come to my mind and create so much fear and anxiety that I could take about two minutes, two to four minutes to sit there and I could feel afraid, I could feel sad, I could feel shame. And you know what? Then it was gone. In just a few minutes, it dissipated, it left my body because y'all, it's just a chemical reaction that your body had to the thought you were having. It's called the cognitive cascade. I know, y'all, I promised I'm not going to geek out too far, and I'm not. I'm going to get back on point, but I want to put these things out there for you so you can understand what's happening. One thing I teach often, and it's that every circumstance is neutral. And I know some of y'all are laughing out loud because we've had this conversation in person before. But you know what? I'm having to listen to what I preach, I'm having to practice what I preach. Every circumstance is neutral. It's our thoughts about the circumstance that create our emotional experience. I'll say it again. It's our thoughts about the circumstance that create our emotional experience. Let that settle in. There's a circumstance, you have a thought about it. That thought creates a feeling, a feeling in your body, and that feeling drives an action, and that action has created the current results of your life. You know, I I've got previous episodes, and I'm not going to go any further into all that today, but that is the cognitive cascade. The feeling isn't the problem. Okay. The feeling is the messenger. The feeling it creates. Is it a helpful? Look, very simple, real quick. You know, you have a thought, you think something. Okay, where does that sit in your body? Does it feel helpful or unhelpful? That's how you find out. It's just really that simple. If you're finding out if what you're thinking is getting you where you want to go or not. But anyway, let me. I keep trying to get back on track here. The feeling isn't the problem, okay? The feeling is the messenger. Okay. It's letting you know if what you're thinking is helping you and moving you forward or not. That's really what it is. So feel feelings are really terrible leaders, okay? That's why we don't act and react to our feelings and our emotions. They're terrible leaders, they're wonderful messengers. They tell us what we are believing. I'm really going to try to slow down here. These feelings tell us what we're believing and they reveal what's happening beneath the surface. Most of us don't want to hear the message. Hello, I'm raising my hand right now. I didn't want to hear the message that I'm going to get to in a minute. I didn't want to hear it. We avoid it. But so we don't want to hear the message. We just want that feeling to stop, that uncomfortable feeling, whatever it is. We just want the feeling to stop. So I'm going to make this personal, okay? I'm going to get back to my house. So my house has been on the market for a while, and I honestly, y'all, I thought it would have sold by now. I had a timeline in my head. I had expectations. I had plans. And lately I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated. Man, I become so frustrated. It's coming out of my mouth every time I turn around. Everybody I talk to, I'm telling them about it. I'm griping, I'm fussing, I'm whining. Yes, man, I needed to deal with this, but I didn't want to because I was afraid of what I was gonna hear. And that's just the truth. I, y'all, I'm just human, just like you are. So anyway, I was, you know, found myself getting really frustrated at this circumstance. It was a circumstance of me not being able to move yet and go on and what I felt like move forward with my life. So it wasn't really, it wasn't really the sale of the house itself. It's it's the, believe it or not, y'all, it was the I don't know portion of it. So listen, I don't know when it will sell. See, I didn't like that. I don't know how long we will wait. I don't know the outcome. I don't know how much it will sell for. I don't know when it will sell. All of these things. And if I'm being really honest, and I am, because y'all know I do my best to come straight, you know, just as I am to you. I found myself asking God something recently. Y'all, here it goes. And I would ask him, I said, why can't you just tell me the date? Not because he owes me an answer, and not because I deserve one. I just really like to know. Because if I knew the date, I could relax. If I knew the date, I could plan. If I knew the date, I could stop cleaning this house every time we leave, like it's gonna, you know, somebody's gonna come see it, like, you know, to show it. If I knew the date, I could settle down. At least that's what I thought. But as I journaled, I realized something. The funny thing is, I thought what I wanted was a sold sign in the yard. And I still do, but I thought that's what I was craving. But what I was really craving was certainty. I wanted certainty, safety, because I believed certainty would finally let me relax. I believed certainty would create peace. I believed knowing would make me feel safe. And that's when I realized the house wasn't actually creating my emotional pain. My thoughts were. So here we go. This is important, especially if you are new to journaling. Because I was working through all this in journaling. Look, I I've come to use journaling as a form of prayer. So when I'm talking about journaling, that's how I'm referring to it. It's a form of prayer for me. I get on my knees and pray, absolutely. I bow my head and pray. I have all manner of prayer. Journaling has become one of the most helpful tools for me to really understand what conversation I need to have with the Lord so I can hear his voice. So, one of the most valuable things that I've learned is this. I do not journal to feel better. I journal to find out what's going on in my head. That's a huge distinction. A lot of people start journaling hoping for quick relief. They're hoping that they'll write for 10 minutes, pray for five minutes, and walk away feeling peaceful. Sometimes that does happen, but sometimes it doesn't. And it really doesn't mean that the process failed, it just means the process revealed something. The goal is not immediate relief, the goal is awareness. Relief will come. Once you get to that awareness, relief will come. When I journaled about the house, I did not suddenly feel better. Y'all, I've journaled about this house so many days. Oh my word, so many days now. But when I was really ready, y'all, I just I was sitting there with the Lord and I said, That's it, Jesus. I've had it with being tormented about this house. I'm gonna get to the bottom of it and I'm gonna get peace because I do not believe it's your mind and your will for me to live with this kind of frustration, disappointment, and all this in my spirit. Lord, it's hindering me from flowing in your spirit and living in the joy of the Lord that He has for us. So that's how I got ready for the rubber to meet the road, if you will. Hey, I've said this before, you just need to be willing. You know, and I guess I had had enough of this torment, of this feeling the way I was feeling, which was incredibly uncomfortable, that I was willing to go to the Lord and let's get to the bottom of it and let him deliver me from this. So, anyway, what I was saying was when I journaled about the house, I did not suddenly feel better. I told y'all I'd been journaling for months on this house. But this particular day, instead, I discovered what I was actually thinking. See, the journal didn't create those thoughts, the journal exposed them. And you cannot renew a thought you have not identified. Y'all gotta stay with me right here because this is really the meat of the matter. You cannot challenge a thought you have not noticed, and you cannot bring into light something you're unwilling to look at. See, I said a minute ago, I was willing. And I know you're gonna reach a place where you're willing to. Oh, it's painful, it hurts, but y'all on the other side of that, Jesus is there with peace and healing. Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up. David prayed this: Psalm 139, 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. He wasn't asking God to help him avoid his thoughts. He was asking God to reveal them. Awareness is the first step towards transformation. So, what the feeling was trying to tell me as I listened to my thoughts, I uncovered some things like this. Oh, here we go, y'all. I don't like not knowing, I don't like not being in control. I am at the mercy of other people. I don't get what I want. What I want doesn't matter. It's my fault. I am being punished. I am bad. Here we go, and eventually I'm not enough. It was in my head that if I was in close enough relationship with God, he would tell me the date and the time and everything I needed to know. But therefore that meant, because that wasn't happening, I was not enough. That's a long way from a house sale, isn't it? But that's exactly what emotions do. They point us toward what we are believing. Look, I think my very first episode is I'm is You Are Enough. But look here. Y'all hear how it came out. And I've told y'all before, it's not those first two, three things you're thinking. It's gonna be five, ten things down before you actually get to the to the root of it. I'm not enough. I'm not in enough of a relationship with him. It's gonna come out some kind of I'm not enough. Wow. This was painful, and I didn't like it. I'm just gonna be straight up honest, you know, honest with you. And like I said a minute ago, that's a long way from a house sale. And uh that anxiety I was feeling that was not random. And that frustration I was feeling, it wasn't random, and the uncertainty wasn't random. They were all messengers of this underlying dialogue that was going on in my head, in my spirit, man. And here's what's fascinating. Those thoughts felt absolutely true. In that moment, they felt like facts. But then I remembered something I teach all the time. Look, sometimes I got to go look in the mirror, teach myself. A thought is just a thought here. Hold up, girl. A thought is just a thought. It's a spark of electricity, a sentence in my brain that is not necessarily true. I only think I'm not enough. I only think it's all my fault. I only think I don't get what I want. I only think other people are in control of my life. I only think I'm being punished. I only think certainty is what I need. Those thoughts may feel true, but feelings do not determine truth. God does. So what if I've already heard the message? Here's the realization I've had recently. We often hear that we need to stop avoiding difficult emotions. And I agree, what was the whole first part of this podcast, right? There's nothing you can feel that you don't have to be afraid of, right? Uh, shame, fear, whatever all I listed out. And there are in some other episodes too, right? Boy, listen to me. This is, boy, this is where God really got my attention about in this area around this. You are not enough in all of this. So we often hear that we don't, that we need to stop avoiding those difficult emotions because I'm the one that said it to you. And I do agree with that, but many people spend years running from fear, running from sadness, running from disappointment. Running from shame. But what if that's not your struggle? What if you have become very good at feeling those emotions? There goes that mind-blown emoji again. Man, this is what God brought me to. Oh my goodness, I could get tears in my eyes right now as I think about the very moment when God started showing me this the other day. What if you've spent so many years sitting with disappointment and sitting with fear, years sitting with uncertainty that that feels like home to you? Well, that's where I found myself. I wasn't avoiding disappointment. I was living there. And the realization reminded me of something from my weight loss journey. Years ago, my coach taught me not to treat the scale as an indictment. The number of on the scale was information. It was data, not a verdict. At first, every time I stepped on the scale and I didn't like the number, I felt disappointed. So she taught me to acknowledge the disappointment, to allow it, to feel it, and I did. Y'all, over and over again, okay. Finally, I asked her something. I said, How many times do I need to sit with disappointment? I was tired of it. I mean, it like my God, how many times do I have to do this? I already know how to do disappointment. I was becoming an expert at it. And that's when she suggested something that felt completely foreign to me. She said, Why don't you practice feeling cherished instead? I said, I'm sorry, what? That sounds completely ridiculous. I mean, I couldn't even wrap my head around what she was saying. The scale wasn't telling me I was cherished, the scale was giving me a number, and the number was not what I wanted to see. But I took what she said because I had asked her what to do. She gave me an answer and I took her advice and I started doing that. And I started instead of being disappointed, I just practiced over time. I won't get all the ins and outs of that, but you know, over time I practiced loving and appreciating all the wonderful things that my body was doing, you know, and began to cherish it. I began to feel, you know, cherishing my body. And I realized something really important. The scale was not creating the disappointment. The scale was activating a belief. The scale's an inanimate object with a number. How can it, how can it be making me feel something, right? It's the way I was thinking about it. It was activating a belief, a belief that disappointment was what I deserved. And suddenly I discovered that some emotions aren't difficult because they're painful. Some emotions are difficult because they are unfamiliar. Disappointment, incredibly familiar. I have lived there. Cherished, that was very unfamiliar. Ooh, I was uncomfortable. It felt gratuitous. It felt like, who do you think you are? Cherishing yourself. That's self-love. That can't be God. Jesus wouldn't be telling you that, like, oh boy, I had a whole nother round of dialogue to deal with. Disappointment, that felt deserved. Cherished? That felt undeserved. But you know what? The Lord delights in me. I'm his child. He cherishes me. So why can't I cherish myself? So I realize something else. Maybe the hardest feelings aren't always those painful ones. Maybe the hardest feelings are the healing ones, the ones we don't take time to lean into and feel and really bring healing to us. Feeling loved, feeling valued, feeling cherished, feeling accepted. Not because they are untrue, but because they are unfamiliar. And I wonder how many of us are carrying the same pattern into other areas of our lives. So here I'm going to use a phrase for you, the courtroom in my head. As I continue journaling about our house, a sentence surfaced that stopped me in my tracks, and I wrote it out. I have been interpreting uncertainty as self-indictment for a very long time. Not for a few weeks, not just around this house thing, not for a few months, but for a very long time. And suddenly, y'all, suddenly I could see the pattern. I didn't know what would happen next. And my mind automatically translated uncertainty into a verdict. Maybe I'm missing God. Maybe I'm not listening. Maybe I'm failing. Maybe I can't be trusted. Maybe I don't deserve to know. Maybe God is disappointed in me. And what struck me was that every road led to the same destination. The verdict was always against me. The topic changes, the verdict stays the same. I realized something. The uncertainty was not creating most of my suffering. The indictment was the accusation. The word tells us that the enemy is the accuser of the brethren. The uncertainty was simply uncertainty. Life has things that we are uncertain about. Evidence that I was getting something wrong. Evidence that I wasn't spiritual enough. Evidence that I had somehow failed. I was putting myself on trial. And the verdict was almost always guilty. Look, fill in the blank. Whatever it is, I was going to come out guilty. That realization changed everything because uncertainty is a circumstance, not a verdict. Disappointment is an experience. It's not an identity. Man, I've been living there, but no, that's the enemy putting me there. It's just an experience. It is not my identity. And just because a feeling is present present does not mean I have to agree with the story attached to it. And this is another thing that I realized. The house isn't my biggest struggle right now. Resistance is. For months, for months, I've been resisting, wanting certainty, wanting reassurance, wanting control, wanting the feeling to go away. And resistance always, resistance always creates suffering. Fear isn't usually the problem. Resistance to fear is. Uncertainty isn't usually the problem. Resistance to uncertainty is. Y'all know I bring that out every now and then. I listened for the thought. And uh what's the sentence running through my mind? What is it creating? You know, what feeling is it creating? What am I believing right now? So that's where we get into that scripture. Search me, oh God, and know my heart and test me and know my anxious thoughts. I look at it, right? I wrote it down. Every fearful thought, every painful thought. Man, I just shared them with you guys a few minutes ago. Weren't they terrible? Oh my goodness. Every fearful thought, painful thought, frustrating thought. And when I could see it on paper, I could separate myself from it. Lord, y'all, these steps have helped me so much. I realized I am observing this thought. This means I am not this thought. And a thing observed, once it's observed, it begins to change. Then came the, this might be the more difficult part. I don't know. I leaned in and instead of running from the emotion, I sat with it. I sat with disappointment, with the uncertainty, with the frustration, with the sense of not knowing. I let myself feel it. Where is it in my body? What does it feel like? Can I stay present with it? Can I stop running from it? And I remembered, you know, those feelings won't kill me. It may be uncomfortable, but it's only going to be uncomfortable for a short period of time. And uncomfortable and dangerous are not the same thing. And then I began releasing it to Jesus, not pretending it wasn't there. I let it go. Not suppressing it, not denying it, just surrendering it one piece at a time. That's that first Peter scripture. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. This isn't a magic trick, it's a process. And honestly, this part sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes it takes several minutes. Hey, it could even take several days. But surrender is still worth practicing. And then love. I know it's that love myself. Finally, I loved myself to stay present. I loved myself enough to tell the truth. I loved myself enough to face what I was actually thinking instead of pretending it wasn't there. I had to go through all of that, writing, thinking, writing, hearing, feeling, all of it to actually get to the truth of what I was discovering. That I did not feel like I was enough, that I feel like I was coming up short with the Lord. So I love myself enough to face what I was actually thinking instead of pretending it wasn't there. Lately I've been discovering something else. Sometimes self-compassion isn't just allowing disappointment. Sometimes it's allowing yourself to believe you are still loved, even in the middle of being disappointed. Sometimes the bravest thing we do isn't sitting with fear. Sometimes it's sitting with being cherished. Sometimes it's sitting with the Lord delighting in you. Sometimes it's learning that uncertainty is not evidence against us. Sometimes it's choosing not to enter that courtroom at all. As I sit here recording this episode today, the house still hasn't sold. Nothing has changed externally. I still don't know the date. I still don't know exactly how this story unfolds. And I can't tell you that every uncomfortable feeling is gone because they're not. But now I know what's underneath them. And that progress, I remembered that a thought is just a thought, a sentence in my brain, not necessarily true. I've remembered that feelings are not emergencies, they will pass. I remembered that uncertainty won't kill me. I've remembered that resisting uncertainty creates far more suffering than the uncertainty itself. But I've also remembered something else. For a very long time, I was interpreting uncertainty as self-indictment. If I didn't know, I assumed something was wrong. If I didn't understand, I assumed I had failed. If I didn't have an answer, I assumed the problem must be me. And that's a heavy way to live. Because eventually every circumstance becomes a courtroom. Every disappointment becomes evidence. Every delay becomes proof, and every unanswered question becomes another reason to put yourself on trial. But what if uncertainty is not a verdict? What if waiting isn't evidence against us? What if God isn't conducting a performance review every time we don't know what comes next? What if we're simply human, loved by God, created by Him? Learning to trust Him one day at a time, learning to feel cherished while we're waiting. Learning to believe that disappointment is an experience, not an identity, learning that uncertainty is a circumstance, not a verdict, and learning that we don't have to step into every courtroom our mind creates because uncertainty is a circumstance, not a verdict. And maybe that's exactly what I needed to learn. Until next time.