“Help Me Understand?”

Some of my greatest leadership lessons haven't come from a conference stage. One came from my mother-in-law's kitchen table.

I was unpacking a challenge with her — walking through all the circumstances, all the noise. She stopped me cold with three words: "Help me understand."

That question centered me. It forced me to slow down and name what I was actually facing — physically, emotionally, spiritually. I didn't know it then, but I'd just picked up one of the most useful leadership tools I own. I still use it more than any other question I know.

Here's why it works: you can't answer it with a yes or no. You have to think. You have to process. And you can't get it wrong, because the answer is yours — your words, your filter, your terms.

Break it into three parts.

Physical
Start here. It's the easiest to name. Whatever you're facing — a conversation, a conflict, a decision — your senses take it in first. What you see, hear, feel. Your body reads the room before your brain catches up. That's why context matters. A guy running at you with a machete triggers fight-or-flight — unless you're watching it on a movie screen with a bag of Skittles in your lap. Same image, different environment, completely different response. When someone asks you to help them understand, start by naming the physical reality you're standing in.

Emotional
Emotions are unreliable narrators — and we still need them. If someone asks "help me understand" right after you've been up all night with a colicky kid, your answer is going to be raw. If it comes right after you land the promotion, your joy might outrun your ability to explain the details. Both are valid. Both are needed. God didn't build us to live in the emotional middle lane, numb to the highs and lows. He built us to feel the whole range — and naming what you feel is what gives your answer real context. We weren't made to be robots.

Spiritual
This is the hard one. This is where you invite the Holy Spirit into the moment and ask what God is doing in it. Making your morning toast? Low stakes — God just wants you fed. If you are deciding whether to move your family across the country? That's a different conversation. "Help me understand" plays out clearly on the physical side. On the spiritual side, it takes faith. Can you trust a God you can't see to give you an answer you can act on? Are you spending enough time in His word and His presence to actually recognize His voice when it shows up? If you want God's help understanding His purpose in a moment, you have to ask Him — and that takes humility. Are you willing to slow down long enough to do that?

Think of a challenge you're facing right now. Name what you're seeing physically. Be honest about what you're feeling. Then surrender it and ask God to speak into it.

It all starts with one simple question.

Help me understand?