Like an athletic team running plays out of their playbook, we become skilled at running plays out of ours. However, those plays are not running or passing plays. Rather, they are intuitions- feelings and thoughts about people and the circumstances that confront us. Our reactions to these situations are so automatic, they operate in our subconscious. In these three episodes of Breaking Bread, Physician Keyna Martinez helps bring our playbook into our conscious awareness so we can learn, adjust and even correct our plays to match more closely with Christ’s.

Show notes:

Definition: Our “playbook” is our subconscious intuition that launches judgment and reaction.

Importance: Our “playbook” is extremely important for life. Many of our decisions are made subconsciously. For example, we avoid danger by judging it as such and making necessary changes, often before we are fully aware of what is happening.

How the playbook is made: Experience largely has constructed our internal playbooks. More specifically, painful experiences have a larger effect than blissful experiences. These experiences construct our values, judgments, expectations, and reactions.

How the playbook is maintained: The playbook is maintained when its “plays” are reinforced by repeated or similarly interpreted experiences.

Reality: Our intuitive “playbook” is right a lot of the time. However, it can be and is often wrong.

The effect of an incorrect playbook: Our judgment is incorrect and therefore our words, feelings and actions are motivated from a place of falsehood. We will not respond like Christ would in the situation.

Changing the playbook: The playbook can be changed for the better.

1.       Identify your plays - Learn to identify the subconscious reactions you have to people and situations.

·        Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now and what experiences in my past are my responses coming from?

2.       Learn the playbook of others – Be a student of how they think.

·        Learn what their experiences have been. This will inform why they have certain values, priorities and behaviors.

3.       Conform your playbook to Christ – We need a standard outside of our experience to compare and correct our intuitions against. Christ is that outside standard.

·        Conforming the playbook to Christ comes through intentional decisions and deliberate practice of Christ-like behaviors. Over time, new rules will be created and become our new subconscious intuition and automatic response – renewing our minds after Christ.

Tragedy comes to us unannounced. It is a shock in the human experience. The new and unwanted reality has a way of troubling us to the core. Yet hope can emerge if a community is present to care for the troubled. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Ted Witzig Jr. speaks to those in the caring community. There are some things to know about support in times of crisis that will prove helpful to the troubled.

Show notes:

Definition of tragedy: Tragedy is a sudden, shock inducing experience that launches us into a place crisis.

Examples of tragedy: Natural disaster, unexpected loss, robbery, assault, accident

Effects of tragedy: Tragedy undermines safety, security and the sense of control. It has a shocking effect in the human experience. Emotionally, tragedy causes grief, sadness, anxiety, and anger. Spiritually, tragedy can surface troubling questions of “why?”.

Community Role in tragedy: Provide support and care for the troubled both in the short term and long term. To do this well, we must be aware of which phase the crisis is in and attempt to match support to the phase.

• Phase 1: Troubled individuals need “safety and stability.”
  • Examples of phase 1 support to provide: practical helps, meals, childcare, lodging,                 reconstruction, prayers.
• Phase 2: Troubled individuals need to heal through “remembering and mourning.”
  • Examples of phase 2 support to provide:  personal presence, sitting with difficult              emotions, listening to the grieving, prayers.
• Phase 3: Troubled individuals need to find “new purpose and new meaning.”
  • Examples of phase 3 support to provide: encouragement, purpose, reception into new normal, supporting people through disillusionment, prayers.

Tips for the helping community:

·   Pace yourself. Victims of crisis need support now, but also down the road.

·   It’s okay if you don’t know what to do or say. Victims of crisis care less about you having answers and more about your commitment to walk with them.

·  Be patient. Often, helpers make the mistake of wanting to see those in painful places move forward more quickly than they often do.

·  Understand your role and relationship to the victim of tragedy. Provide support consistent with that role.

·  Be slow to evaluate “how the grieving person is doing.”

·  Learn to observe the emotion the hurting person is experiencing and respond to it empathetically.

Tragedy gives the believing community the unique opportunity to act as the family of God.  We pray more. We are more thoughtful about what is important in life, and we get to display Christ to the world.