Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Flying Free is a support resource for women of faith who need hope and healing from hidden emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, and narcissistic abuse. Because of misogynistic theology taught in controlling and spiritually abusive churches, many Christian women find themselves in destructive marriages where there is an uneven power dynamic. Male partners use their status as a husband to gain power and control over a woman’s mind, emotions, body, social life, finances, and more. When she tries to get help from her equally abusive church environment, she is betrayed and re-abused. Flying Free offers a Christ-centered, gospel-oriented perspective on domestic abuse that protects and honors the voices and autonomy of women. Tune in each week to hear conversations with emotional abuse advocates and fellow survivors who will walk with you on your journey up and out. We hear you. You are not alone. Learn more at https://flyingfreenow.com
Hello, beautiful butterflies. 6 years ago, I started the flying free podcast, which speaks into the lives of Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages and environments. My goal was and continues to be to help these women as they wake up to the abuse that they're experiencing, to validate their experiences, to be an empathetic witness to their experiences, and to assist them in clearing away the fog and confusion so they can find their own God given voices and identities in order to find a life flying free from abuse. Starting with the abusive beliefs and thoughts that plague them on a daily basis. I wanted to be a voice that gave them encouragement along with a little humor, and I wanted to give them permission to feel their pain and their anger and their shame in order to process through it and find a way to the other side.
Natalie:I had the honor of working more closely with thousands of these women, as they have gone through my private program, flying free. And I've watched 100 of them grow and heal and even be empowered to turn around and help others get free. And together, we've built a powerful underground community of wounded warriors who are learning what it means to live into the fullness of their God given identity. I wanna try something new and offer a 10 minute flying higher moment once a week. And this is for those of you who are clear about what has happened to you.
Natalie:You've already done a lot of work around this and you want to apply what you've learned to other areas of your life. You may be divorced already, or you may still be married to your abuser, but you are in the process of rebuilding your life and learning how not only to fly free within yourself, but also to fly a little higher. So this is the very first flying higher moment episode. And today I want to talk about decluttering. I had a conversation with a member inside of our kaleidoscope community.
Natalie:If you'll remember, kaleidoscope is a word that means a flock of butterflies. And in our community, this member had used a tool that I teach and that we practice inside our private forum to gain some insight into her propensity to collect items that a part of her believes that she's gonna need someday. And this makes it really hard for her to part with those items in order to clear up some physical space in her home. And she feels distressed in both keeping these items as well as in giving them up. Can any of you relate?
Natalie:I can. So she wanted to figure out a way of thinking about this that would enable her to declutter her home in a more empowering way without feeling such a sense of loss or even self betrayal when she got rid of things. So do you see her dilemma? Part of her believed that by purchasing and holding onto things that she could protect herself against future need. And another part of her thought that was not good and wanted to get rid of all the things.
Natalie:So she was torn up inside with this internal battle. I write about this internal battle in my book, all the scary little gods. And I talk about how these different parts of us are all actually interested in one thing, keeping us safe, but these different parts of us are often younger and they don't always know the best way to keep us safe. When we can lovingly connect with these parts and offer them gratitude for the ways that they're trying to help, they will relax and allow us to introduce them to healthier ways of relating to the world around us. So in this example, I offered an idea out of my own experience with holding onto things that I think I might need down the road.
Natalie:This past year, I got rid of an arm sling that my daughter had used when she broke her arm many years ago. I was hanging onto it just in case. You never know someone might break an arm in the family. I didn't even really think about it all that much, but there was definitely a part of me that was afraid that someone in our family would break an arm and then we wouldn't have a sling for them. It doesn't really make that much logical sense when you think about it, because we didn't have a sling before my daughter broke her arm, but they just gave her one at the doctor's office.
Natalie:Right. But for this part of me, it made all the sense in the world. We have this sling now. We need to hang on to it just in case we need it again. Anyway, I was going through I was going through and doing some of my own decluttering this past year, and usually I give things, put everything in a big bag and give it to Goodwill.
Natalie:But I didn't think that Goodwill probably wanted someone's old arm sling, so I just threw it away. And wouldn't, you know, a few years later, I was in a car accident and broke my wrist. And when we walked out of the ER that day, I wasn't, I wasn't given a sling and I don't know why they didn't give me a sling in the ER, but they didn't. So that part of me that had been hanging onto that sling all of those years began to scold me. You should have hung onto that sling.
Natalie:Now you don't have one. Now you're in a pickle. You need a sling and you can't get one. But even as this part of me was scolding me, I realized I could technically go and buy a sling probably on Amazon or something like that. Or I could go to my follow-up appointment 2 days later and ask them if they had a sling.
Natalie:And that's exactly what I did. I just got another sling. So this is what I wrote back to this beautiful butterfly that was working on this part of herself in our forum, who was worried about needing something down the road and not being able to provide it for herself if she just got rid of things that she didn't use that much. This is what I wrote to her. It sounds like you are worried that you will not have something that you need at some point.
Natalie:So you collect things to take care of your future self. First of all, notice that that's actually very clever. It's very forward thinking of you. This part of you has what it takes and wants to make sure that you are taken care of. The problem is that this part of you believes that the thing that you need must be very close at hand in your home.
Natalie:And when you collect all of the things that you might need down the road and you bring them all into your own personal space, now you get crowded out. I wonder if it would help to think of the world as your larger space. In other words, you have your own personal private space in your home. And in this space, you can keep the things that you need on a regular basis, even things that you might need every year that you use every year. But your larger space, it is your city or your state or your country.
Natalie:And that larger space for me, that would include amazon.com. It holds the things that you might need 5 years from now that you don't need today. Or maybe you need something once every 10 years, but not every year. So you know that you will be able to go out and acquire that item. If you need it for yourself or someone you love, you can acquire that item when you need it rather than collecting it and hanging onto it in your own private personal space.
Natalie:And then I gave the example in what I wrote about the sling with my and my own broken arm. So what I've told myself is that if someone else breaks their arm or if I break another arm, God forbid, I will just get another sling from the doctor. I'm going to throw this sling away too that I just recently got. I'm going to let the doctor keep all of the slings for me, and then I will acquire one when I need it. This part of you that wants to take care of you believes that things might not be available to you when you need them.
Natalie:But what if that's not true? You know that you can go to the store and purchase whatever you need if you don't have it on hand right now. You know this because you've done it many times before. She had explained about how she does take good care of herself in this way. I like to donate things to Goodwill.
Natalie:And I think about it like this. I needed this item for a while, and now someone else needs it. Someone else in the wider space of this world needs this item. Someone who maybe can't afford to buy it at full price will appreciate having this item for a price that they actually can afford it. And I love being part of that.
Natalie:The things that I needed are still needed, but they are needed by someone else and not by me. So I will pass them along to someone else who will get some use out of them. And then I thank God that if I need something down the road, I know that I am capable of somehow acquiring it. I can somehow find it out there. Maybe I can go to Goodwill and see what's available, but I know for sure that I will take care of myself and my needs when they arise, because that's what I do, because I know I have parts of me inside that are always looking out for me.
Natalie:It makes me think of that Bible passage that talks about how God takes care of the birds and the flowers, and they never need to worry. We know that God has given us resources such as our minds and our bodies that will help us to get the things we need when we need them. And we can trust our heavenly father, as well as our future self to take care of us. We are in very good hands. So that's our flying higher moment for this weekend.
Natalie:If you would like to join me in our kaleidoscope of beautiful butterflies in doing this deeper work, there's a couple of ways you can do that. 1, if you are still in kind of in the fog and in confusion about your relationship, and maybe you're just waking up to it, maybe you go back and forth. Am I being abused? Am I not being abused, but you're really not sure Then flying free would be a great choice for you. You can go to join flyingfree.com to find out all the information you need.
Natalie:And if you already know about that, you're in the situation that you're in and you understand it and you don't have a lot of confusion about it anymore, but maybe you've decided to stay in that relationship for whatever reasons. There's many good reasons why we need to stay. And, but you're still doing that extra self development work and you want to continue to do that work. And you maybe would like to do it in community with myself and other women who are doing that, or maybe you're no longer in your relationship. Maybe you're separated.
Natalie:Maybe you're on your way to getting the divorce. Maybe you're already divorced and you're doing this rebuilding work. Then flying higher might be a good choice for you. You don't have to be divorced anymore to join flying higher. We had it set up that way for many years, but now we're opening it up to anyone who is ready to go deeper, who already understands about their relationship and wants to focus on their own self development.
Natalie:And we have some amazing changes coming up in 2025 that I'll be talking about and making announcements about. But if you wanna join now, you certainly can just go to join flying higher dot com to learn more and join us. You, you can join us today. And by the end of today, you could be posting an introduction in our private flying free kaleidoscope, and and we would love to welcome you and get you started.