Gut Intelligence

Gut intelligence may be as important as intelligence-intelligence and artificial intelligence and relationship intelligence. How gut-smart are you?

I made a big parental mistake when my eldest son, Jess, was sixteen. Nothing physical. No abuse. But I did incite him and create something I rued for years.

My son Jess, a sophomore at the time, asked to attend his high school's Winter Formal dance. For most families, this would be a simple yes. But for ours, it wasn’t. As the pastor of our church, we were used to organizing alternative events—offering teens a different environment than these hormone-charged school dances. But Jess had recently stepped away from our youth group, and to him, this was a normal teenage request. And honestly, it was hard to argue with that.

But there was something else at play. As the leader of the church, and with him now no longer part of the teen group, it created a tricky dynamic. Pastor dad. Non-involved son. What would people think? What kind of example were we setting? We hadn’t quite figured much of this out. I wanted to support his right to choose—but I also felt responsible, as a leader and a father.

It was a difficult time. Emotions were raw. Lines were blurry.

I received strong advice from trusted, spiritual parents not to let him go. Other church leaders echoed the same. Joyce and I both leaned in that direction. But her momma bear was rumbling. She had that deep mother-sense that this might be the wrong moment to draw a line. She feared we might win the decision—but lose the heart.

Jess was pushing hard. He was stepping into real independence for the first time—raging with hormones, emotion, and volatility. Voices were raised like never before. Doors were slammed. Acne was in full swing. Our home had become a pressure cooker.

As the day neared when I knew he would ask me, I doubted the advice I had received. I knew our dynamic. I knew how we had raised him—how often I had encouraged him to think for himself. I knew this kid. I knew his heart. And I knew, in my gut, how this would play out … how this little skirmish might turn into a war. My insides were doing jumping jacks.

Then the day came. It was up in our bedroom one sunny afternoon. I remember where I stood and where he stood. I remember being nervous, knowing my mind wasn’t settled, knowing my rationale for saying no was weak, or, to be honest, nonexistent.

He asked and I flailed. He pushed back and I flailed some more. He smelled blood and pushed harder. Then I did one of the parental things I am most ashamed about: I defaulted to the age-old, anger-provoking, teen-infuriating line of “because I said so.”

He nearly lost his mind. He ranted. He blamed the church and people in the church and me leading the church. And literally, in the space of five minutes, it felt like sixteen years of parenting went down the drain. And I know that sounds like hyperbole, but now, twenty years later, that is kind of what happened. In the space of those measly five minutes, a chasm opened between us. On one side: sixteen years of trust, teaching, and love. On the other: the wild ragings of teenage rebellion.

That night he ran away and spent the night at another family’s house. Jess and I were at odds for years. It probably caused him to do things in rebellion he never would have done.

All because I didn’t listen to my gut.

I didn’t listen to that quiet voice inside of me that knew better. I didn’t listen to my unsettlement. I didn’t trust my parental warnings.

Because sometimes the gut just knows. Sometimes it knows things you could never articulate. Sometimes it assimilates years of experiences, perhaps millions of data points, all formed into a feeling of intuition that may be so slight as a passing thought or a trivial stomach tug.

The language of the gut is its own tongue, its own inflection, its own volume.

I want to venture a proposition—and I know it’s a big one and maybe an exaggerated one—but I’m venturing it anyway. Learning to listen to and nurture your gut is a top three life-skill.

Top three.

And nurturing and listening to it takes a lifetime.

It takes a lifetime to distinguish fickle feelings from gifted gut. Emotions scream, “Get away now!” Intuition whispers, “Something’s off here.”

It takes a lifetime to tamp down your fear, ego, or people-pleasing nature enough to not only listen to that quiet gut-message, but to do something with it.

It takes a lifetime to strengthen your gut-brain axis—an actual nerve that connect the gut to the brain. Studies show meditation helps. Prayer helps. And so does journaling.

It takes a lifetime to collect experiences and develop beliefs and build up unconscious memories so intuition can blossom.

It takes a lifetime to understand the risk of going with your gut, being willing to live with the consequences, knowing that sometimes you will be wrong.

We are magical creatures, us humans. We are precariously balanced. We are more than can be measured. And we have within us, a universe all its own.

And just so you know, Jess and I are fine. In fact, we are more than fine. We recovered from my faux pas. And we have a beautiful thing between us now—especially since his own son is knocking on the door of hormones—we have that joint humility that comes from parenting a boy into a man. We also have a love that has been deepened by forgiveness. And we both share a high level of respect for that thrillingly-mysterious, microorganism-rich, mind-bending human feature called a gut.