Did you ever want to be healed and whole QUICKLY?… So did I, in fact Very Much! I guess no one likes to experience pain.
After four and a half years of prayer ministry, and a lifetime of struggling, I am FINALLY beginning to see there are no quick fixes. – but I am at peace with it. This is a huge accomplishment God has done for me. Since my recent week of prayer ministry with my prayer minister, I have a hope and a peace in how I feel about my emotional healing process, that I have never had before. Instead of being frustrated and fighting against myself and the pain, and hurt inside, I can relax in it because I am around a community of understanding and knowledgeable people/prayer ministers. (A prayer minister, in my own words, is someone who can be with you in your negative emotions, pain, etc. and know what to do, and how to help you connect with Jesus through prayer.)
It feels so good to be under the “C.A.R.E” of those who are experienced, and have knowledge of childhood traumas. (By the way, childhood experiences DO have devastating and long term effects on the soul, and person as a whole.) To be here gives me the hope and security I need, to be able to face anything, if necessary, that has happened to me in my life, no matter how big or small—oftentimes called “joy strength” or your “capacity” ( the amount you can handle emotionally). I am beginning to understand this vital concept that is taught here. A child or adult can only handle what they have the capacity to handle emotionally. Which is why if the people you live around are up to capacity emotionally or emotionally mature, you will be also, and able to handle whatever happens in your life. Sorry - I tried living in denial - but no one will ever be able to escape traumatic events of some sort in this fallen world. So the most liberating way is to download from “bigger brains” how to deal with them in a mature way.
During this week I have learned some important things about myself. Now I understand why I act or react the way I do to certain events. And how the negative things in my past are still affecting me now.
So for the first time in four and a half years, I am FINALLY able to say I’ve had a breakthrough. Not a huge, dramatic one like I envisioned, but an understanding and acceptance of my healing process that helps tremendously! It has taken a lot of pressure off that I had put on myself to hurry this healing process up. To hurry and get out of the pain. I can now be patient with myself and understand that I cannot push myself or make myself do something that inside I am really not ready to do.
I am so thankful for this breakthrough… I thought it was a long time coming. But I’m beginning to see it is worth the wait. I know I have a way to go yet, but I feel very secure in my prayer minister's knowledge and care! Thank you, God, for giving this staff, and ministers, the knowledge and experience You have. I am grateful to them for sharing it with me.
(P.S. God - thank You also for teaching me what you are Really, Really like).
God IS good!
About a year ago I went to C.A.R.E. for 4 days of prayer counseling. One of the prerequisite in coming was to bring at least one prayer partner from the community of relationships I felt most safe with. This was my first HUGE step of faith. Everyone was soooo busy in their own personal lives. Who could free their schedule as to take 6 days off? Who would WANT to get that involved in my life?
The Lord had placed an unrelentless yearning to know and enjoy the fulfillment of scripture in my life. I was not able to consistently "live out of the heart Jesus gave me" (a concept from the book “The Life Model: Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You”). I knew this was possible BUT I also was painfully aware that this was not my daily experience. Though I was in many leadership positions throughout my life, I suffered greatly in relational intimacy. I almost always felt outside of the circle of relationships. As I did a personal inventory on the maturity chart, I was sobered. I was not confident I had mastered even one of the tasks in the "infancy stage". Instead of this being a discouraging finding, it was just the opposite to me. It was life-giving. No wonder I had such a history of broken relationships!!
I went to prayer, "Lord, if part of Your 'redemptive work' is to provide the spiritual adopted family I need to heal and mature, I ask you to do that for me. By Your grace I will do my "maturing work' ". He did and I recognized it as such. I was able to receive. I'll never forget when my friend went to prayer with me over the desire to fly up to Michigan. She started her prayer with, "Lord 'we' need You..." "we"? She had voluntarily come into my pain. I could hear in her voice she was "glad to be with me!"
As "we" began my counseling time I felt safe and "known." I felt the power of prayer from those at home that were interceding and the staff at CARE. I was with people that were authentically "glad to be with me." I felt inside the circle of relationship as we progressed through the week.
One of the beautiful truths I learned was that the Lord will only allow painful memories to surface to the conscience level when there is greater "joy strength" than the pain I need to face. My prayer minister guided me in such wisdom and kindness. She was discerning when I needed to rest, or needed a story told that would help me move through a block, or a teaching time after I processed through something so that "we" would understand what just happened. My husband was able to join us for the last day and a half of my sessions. He was amazed at the wisdom and skill in which the prayer minister shepherded us and the recovery work that had already happened. These too were answers to his prayers of many years for me. It meant so much that he would be learning with me.
As we ended the time my prayer minister summarized the work we had done that week . She felt the most important work I needed to focus on in the ensuing months was learning to "receive joy" and learning how to return to joy from the 6 negative emotions. I would need my community to help me mature and build joy strength. Because relationally there were parts of me that were stuck at "infant level maturity", I could handle only opening up on a regular basis with my friend and my husband. (Both of them were in the adult or elder stage maturity. ) We were taught synchronizing exercises that would help foster recovery and help me learn how to rest and receive joy. As I matured I was able to enlarge my circle of relationships. The Lord has truly displayed HIS "redemptive work" in my life this past year and I have enjoyed learning how to do my "maturing work"! At the end of this week "we" are returning for a second extended time as my prayer minister feels I have enough "joy strength" to address a season of pain in my life. I am not anxious but peacefully ready to press on through.
I look forward to my redemptive story that will not only be life-giving to me but for those who need to hear and see a living letter of the glorious work of our Lord Jesus Christ A life where ashes were turned to beauty.