Did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in? Anita and I used to enjoy watching the sitcom “The Middle.” Many of the middle class, middle America situations that the producers built their comedy around were situations that we were living through in our own home with our own kids, so much so that we sometimes felt there must have been secret cameras capturing the everyday drama of real life and rewriting it in sitcom form. One particular episode that lives on in our home is when Patricia Heaton’s character, Frankie Heck, had a computer problem. Everything she tried to make the technology work correctly and recover the files of pictures she reluctantly saved to the computer never yielded a good outcome. So, after an emotional meltdown she dramatically unplugged the computer, counted the magical "10 seconds" and plugged the computer back in. She did this repeatedly (not recommended). Eventually, miraculously the computer worked again and the photos were found. This still happens with the technology around our house now. When the Wi-Fi is being wanky, we ask, “did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in, Frankie?” Most times the Wi-Fi comes back up. We do this with smart TV’s, laptops, smart phones, and anything else that we feel technically unfit to fix.
When life is going nuts and things just don’t seem to be right, sometimes we need to unplug a moment and then plug back in. When I do pre-marriage counseling, I tell couples when they become angry or frustrated to the point of engaging the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response in their brain, it typically takes the body 30 minutes to calm down from this God-given protection response. The chemicals in our brain are triggered in such a way that we become self-protective and even aggressive if we feel threatened or unsafe. The part of the brain that reminds us who we really are, how we really act in this situation has shut down. If we don’t recover, we continue to act in fear instead of joy. And that means I have to win at all costs and everyone else has to lose… so then we all lose. God reminds us through Paul that if we let emotions control us, we quit acting like Jesus and we start acting like the Evil One. Paul says, “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Ephesians 4:26-27 (NIV) So, when something triggers us we need to do a “Frankie Heck restart,” and take some time to return to joy by plugging back in to Jesus, and then plug ourselves back in to the relationships with those around us. We can start acting like our “Jesus self” again.
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
