When you hear the word “grounded,” what comes to mind? Is it the hard solid surface beneath your feet? Does your mind instantly travel back in time to when you were punished for breaking a rule? Or perhaps it is what you are wishing to do to your teenager at this moment for telling you how to drive when they haven’t even taken Drivers Ed yet!? For me, of course, I think of coffee.

Ahhhh the sweet bitter taste and aroma that only comes from ground coffee beans. I am writing this at night when it is far too late to enjoy a cup without heartburn and the after effects of caffeine until 3 am. None of this stops my mouth from watering from the thought of holding a warm cup in my hands.

In preparation for this blog, I did some “digging” on ground coffee. Ok, so it was actually one of those “squirrel!” moments but what I found was insane. There is actually a complex science to it! Because I don’t even like to measure ingredients while I am cooking, I am not going to pretend to be an expert here. Let me just tell you, let the baristas you love or the Keurig machine do the work.

Lots of good things, besides coffee, come from the ground and it really is where everything begins.

Therefore last week when I was having some tough moments I was thinking a lot about grounds, the ground, and being grounded.

Start from the ground up.

 7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.Literally we started from the ground. Genesis 2:7

So when I am in a tough place emotionally I need to come back to where I started. This sometimes means laying on the ground and sometimes it is kneeling on the ground. But it is always coming back to Him. Let me tell you this is not always easy because sometimes I just don’t WANT to. I instead want to stay in my sadness and depression. By returning to the ground, I am posturing myself in a way to accept and allow myself to be remade.

Focus on grounding techniques.

When we return from vacation, my son, after a full day at home, will get a migraine and then throw up. After this happened for the third month in a row last summer, we were concerned. Upon running multiple tests we were able to narrow it down to stress and anxiety. All week long, he holds in his fears, stress, and anxious triggers so that when he returns home he releases them all at once. This reeks havoc on his body.

But you know what? I am not so different. I will hold on to all my emotional triggers, sadness, anger, and overwhelming cloud of loss until it has wedged itself in every crevasse and pore of my body. The result is a wave of emotion followed by depression.

Here is what we do and has worked for both him and myself. Everyday on vacation or when he feels himself getting overwhelmed (he is better and recognizing it within himself than I am within myself!) he works through a very simple senses technique. He puts a mint in his mouth and begins to tell me 5 things he sees, 4 things he can touch, 3 things he hears, 2 things he smells, and 1 thing he can taste. This simple grounding technique forces the mind to focus on what is tangible and ignores all the “what if” thoughts that like to take up space in our minds. 

Remain Grounded

An I.V. at a hospital is one of the best inventions. It enables the doctors to get a patient fluids and medicines quickly. Without it, there would be countless jabs and wasted time.

4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.      John 15:4-5

God is your I.V. 

Without remaining in Him, you WILL endure more jabs than necessary and you will have wasted time, energy, and the blessing. 

So when you are like a coffee bean and life has ground you up to little bits, remember this is where the aroma and the taste we love so much comes from. Without the process of grounding, we can’t become the person God has created us to be.