Restoring Relationship: Transforming Fear into Love Through Connection

by Molly LaCroix

Jesus provides the vision: “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Jesus loved generously, even lavishly, surprising people by loving without preconditions or limits. He pursued people to love them, bringing healing and freedom.

We need loving relationships when we are struggling with life’s challenges. Unfortunately, the Christian community has not always been a reliable source of support. The strategies used in an effort to be helpful often break relationship because they are rooted in fear, not love. We fear vulnerability, and we feel vulnerable when we go through times of distress or walk with someone who is. Our fear of vulnerability blocks our capacity to connect when we need it most.

Restoring Relationship explores the roots of vulnerability and provides a framework for transforming fear into love through connection.

Through stories and exercises, I introduce a new spiritual practice based on the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, demonstrating the congruence of IFS with biblical and theological truths. Common causes of distress, including loss, betrayal, addiction, and the emotional response to physical and mental illness, are explored through the lens of IFS and the new spiritual practice. Through this journey of connection, constraints to loving relationships are removed, restoring loving relationships with God, one another, and ourselves.

Genres: Faith

226 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2020

About the author

Molly is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice. She received her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Bethel Seminary San Diego and returned to Bethel as an adjunct professor in the MFT program. Specializing in treating clients who experienced early adversity, Molly has the highest possible training level in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model. Her first book, "Restoring Relationship: Transforming Fear into Love Through Connection," explores why Christians talk so much about love but sometimes fail to be loving. She and her husband live in Central Oregon, visiting their children and grandchildren in Southern California as often as possible.

Reviews

[Chris C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informed by the call of Jesus to “love one another as I have loved you”, with attention to the latest understandings in neuroscience, attachment, and trauma, Restoring Relationship is a thoughtful integration of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Christian spirituality. Molly’s writing provides Christian helpers (pastors, lay counselors, therapists, or anyone else) with a new paradigm for offering support to those who are suffering. The book begins by describing ways in which well-intended people within the Church often miss the mark and can even cause harm in their efforts to help others, then describes how IFS can offer a way for people to engage differently with themselves, others, and God.

So much more than just a list of what to do and what not to do when supporting others, Molly introduces practices that will assist readers in connecting with parts of themselves with curiosity, grace, and compassion, beginning a process that can transform fear and judgment into love and genuine connection. I’m grateful for the ways that I know this book will help readers develop a new way to explore their own internal world, in turn allowing them to extend loving curiosity towards people in distress. I have witnessed and experienced the pain caused when well-intended people offer help that is unknowingly influenced by fear. As Molly writes, “In order to be someone who is available to lovingly connect with another person who is suffering we need to be investing energy in our own journey of healing. Otherwise we will continue to meet another person’s suffering with protective strategies.”

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in being more effective in the ways that they show up for other people, and I trust that the principles and practices from this book will have an impact on readers emotionally and spiritually.

[Kelly Early]

IFS