Conversations With Cinthia

Have you ever wondered why your brain picks the thought trails it does, especially the ones that involve worry or negativity?  Cinthia explains this today -- your brain is trying to help you -- but also encourages us to re-work this, noting what worry and negativity do to our bodies and lives.  If you like learning about the brain and how to help it function well, you will love this episode.  In order to have the best year possible  and be the best versions of ourselves, we have to remember... worry and peace cannot coexist!  This is about so much more than false positivity.  Join Cinthia to explore how to reduce your Eeyore tendencies in 2020.

Love sounds great, doesn't it?  We all love love, we want it to make the world go round etc. But would you say you live in love, moment by moment and day by day?  What would that even look like?  Cinthia explains that this is exactly what God does with us and what He wants to do in us.  Still, love is confusing on earth, starting with the fact that something so wonderful can feel terrible at times; just look at the cross.  It can be painful, making us want to avoid love.  Yet, if we want 2020 to be the best year possible, we have to start by aligning ourselves with the agenda of the One Who will be running the universe this year.  He is Love, and coming to know Him involves learning how to love.  Join Cinthia to explore where to start, why to keep going, and how to think about the things that get mixed up with love but aren't the real thing.

Do you find it easier to take care of others (or of your business, your ministry, your hobbies, your pets...) than to care for yourself?  Sometimes our own well-being falls to the bottom of the priority list, despite the fact that God has given us responsibility for self-care.  In the long run, neglecting or harming ourselves, however unintentionally, can sabotage all our other goals, too.  Cinthia looks at five areas for self-care: physical, social, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.  Join Cinthia to look at what self-care really means and why it matters, as well as what you can practically do about it.

Do you believe that God can do a new thing in your world, something only He can imagine?  How can you participate in that, or even stay out of the way?  Sometimes we have trouble perceiving and taking hold of what He's doing, but still He does it!  Cinthia has been discussing practices to help make this year the best it can possibly be.  This episode focuses on the fact that God is already at work in 2020 and that He wants us to go with Him in this.  What does it mean for us as mistake-making humans to learn how to cooperate with the creative miracles of God that are happening in us and all around us?  Despite continuing to heal and guide us through the fallout of the past, God is not stuck there.  He's doing something new.  Join Cinthia to explore how to join Him in the new things He's doing.

How many years have you spent trying to control the external world so you can feel better inside?  Or majoring in things that should be minors?  If you've been with us for a while, you know that Cinthia loves to spend January preparing to make the new year great.  There will be lots of things in 2020 that we can't control, and they may not all be good.  But what if you were to make this the year when you change the way you relate to yourself and, by extension, to the world?  Join Cinthia in learning to make new beginnings any time we realize we need them; this is how we seize the day!

Happy New Year!  Some of you may be greeting 2020 with excitement and fervor, while others may bring discouragement, loss, or longing for previous years.  Some go in with determination to meet resolutions with 100% faithfulness, while others avoid setting goals they could potentially fail to meet.  How can we approach 2020 with hope and helpful tools?  Cinthia explains that both resolutions and hindsight become destructive when we use them for self-condemnation, but that vision-casting and getting closure on the past can help us begin this new decade with direction, purpose, and freedom.  Do resolutions and new beginnings excite you but fizzle quickly mid-January?  Do you assume you won't make more progress this year than you have before now? Join Cinthia to look at what it means to cast vision and live each day as the beginning of a new year.  

This time of year, we focus a lot on gifts --- buying them, wrapping them, giving them, receiving them -- and on Jesus, Who is God's Gift to the world.  Perhaps the enemy is hoping you'll miss another piece of the picture: the fact that you are a gift, one God meant to give to the world on an ongoing basis.  What would it mean to follow Jesus in living as a gift?  Would it involve sacrifice?  Joy?  God made you completely unique and intentionally placed you in this time and place.  Being the best version of yourself means allowing God to give through you in ways only He could have imagined!  Join Cinthia to explore what it means to live as a gift that keeps giving.

Are you trying to motivate yourself to do something for which you have no real vision?  Motivation and inspiration can be an uphill battle when we try to work ourselves up to do something that doesn't fit, or when we keep sabotaging ourselves in other ways.  Learning to manage our own internal worlds frees us to pursue the passions God placed inside us.  Also, if you liked yesterday's quotes, you'll love the ones Cinthia shares in this episode, including one from Dr. Seuss!

Do you believe in what you do?  Do you have faith in your ability to do it?  Cinthia explores what it means to live out the passions inside us wisely and what it takes to keep going.  Get ready to figure out what helps you and identify your own personal kryptonite when it comes to staying motivated and inspired.

David, the psalmist, asked God to teach him to number his days correctly so that he could gain a heart of wisdom.  Today Cinthia shares something she does every year on her birthday and how the practice helps her value the time God gives her.  Minutes are precious; minutes are powerful.  History can change direction in a minute; lives can be forever altered.  Minutes are gifts.  Still, none of us (other than Jesus) uses all our minutes to the fullest.  What do we do with the minutes we regret, and how do we more fully utilize the minutes to come?

There are times when life disintegrates into a living nightmare.  Lora Jones experienced this.  A pastor's wife and mother of two children, 11 and 14, Lora woke up in a car accident that took her husband, her son, and her daughter within a matter of hours.  In her new book, Song of A Wounded Heart, she describes the miraculous experience of hearing God sing to her, even as she was trapped in the van and gripping her husband's head in her hands.  She describes how, in the days and years to come, she clung to God but struggled with Him at the same time, grappling in agony with the tragic reality He had allowed.  If you have faced grief or feared it, if your dreams or loved ones have ever slipped away from you, if you have struggled to accept the gift of life when it seems so much less painful to die, Lora's story is one you have to hear.  

If you've been around Christianity long, you've probably heard or talked about the idea of "dying to self," a biblical concept that sometimes gets misrepresented and confusing.  Sometimes we try to improve ourselves, killing off the parts of ourselves we don't like.  God knows whom He made each of us to be, and He knows what is killing the real us.  Cinthia reads excerpts from one of her previous books, exploring what it means to truly live.

We've all heard the phrase "trust issues."  Some of us have them with God.  Cinthia continues last week's discussion of what it means to partake of the peace God gives us, this time looking more at how our relationship with Him can be a place of transformation, healing, and peace.

Did you know cheetahs have anxiety?  Peace is hard to come by for lots of living creatures.  If you're one of them, you will appreciate this exploration of acceptance, trust, and the gift of peace Jesus gave us.  Apparently, even for cheetahs, there is no peace without the presence of someone, or Someone, we trust.

Remember the old-fashioned daisy petal game?  "He loves me, he loves me not..."  Figuring out whether someone loves us is a much bigger task than just listening for the sentence, "I love you."  We know we aren't perfect and can't expect perfection from our relationship partners, but we do need to be trustworthy and to discern whether we are in relationship with a trustworthy person. Cinthia continues exploring how to know whether someone loves you, giving specific behaviors and qualities to observe.

Fans of 80's songs will especially love this episode, though the topic applies to everyone, regardless of generation or musical tastes.  We desperately need to be loved, but how do we know if the "love" we are receiving is really love?  The words "I love you" can be spoken in so many contexts, including those that involve abuse, apathy, and other profound dysfunction.  Cinthia explores the quest to know love and discusses how to know when we are really being loved.

Humans have an innate, primal need to be seen and understood -- even humans who are desperately wanting to hide.  Remember Hagar?  Used and discarded, waiting for her son to die in the desert, she encountered God in the wilderness and called Him "the God Who sees me."  She was then able to go back with her son and face the situation she could not previously handle.  Cinthia discusses Hagar, John Newton (the former slave trader who eventually wrote "Amazing Grace"), and the rest of us.  When we see the God Who sees us, it changes everything. 

What do you experience when you hear news or discussion of the recent court decisions regarding abortion laws?  This issue is tender for so many people and demands that we love well on many levels.  Cinthia's guest today, Roland Warren, is  the president of Care Net, a movement of more than 1,000 life-affirming pregnancy centers that also runs a real-time call center providing pregnancy-decision coaching.  Along with his now-wife, Mr. Warren chose life for their own unplanned child, despite being strongly encouraged by a nurse to choose abortion.  Today, he emphasizes that we must support those facing difficult pregnancy circumstances in ways that help them not only choose life but find abundant life for themselves and their families.  After the interview, Cinthia continues the discussion introduced last week regarding etiquette and its role in helping us treat one another with respect.  

What do you think of when you hear the word "manners?" Do you associate it with outdated stuffiness or see it as sadly lacking in the modern era? Today's episode is a two-for-one. Cinthia starts by building on last week's "Undoing Your Past" theme, this time exploring how to build a strong foundation in the present. She then discusses the value of showing respect for ourselves and others and ways old-fashioned etiquette can bring a little class to our lives.

Do you ever cringe when you remember things you've done? Do you know that feeling when waves of regret and shame sweep over you? We can't redo the past, but we can create new history that changes the present effects of our past decisions.