Archive for Emotional Healing
Navigating Uncomfortable Waters
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I like comfort. My personal choice is easy, painless, risk-free, non-confrontational living. God, however, seems quite at peace with asking me to be uncomfortable. In fact, He is somewhat insistent on stretching me, requiring me to face my own unhealed stuff, and gently reminding me that comfort does not always equal His will or purposes in my life or in the life of those I love.
I have found that God is not hesitant to ask me to walk through wilderness, desert, north winds, and mountainous terrains of my soul and spirit. The lessons I have learned as I have faced the uncomfortable places have greatly transformed me.
I think that most of us who are believers in Christ can identify many situations where God has asked us to be uncomfortable. From my salvation on, I can think of times when God’s invitation was to allow Him to change me IN AND THROUGH the uncomfortable place.
Why would God choose to work that way?
God, who knows each of us so intimately, much more than we know our own selves, has a plan for us. Scripture tells us that He intends for us all to be “conformed into the image of His own dear son.” This transformation requires change. Most of us resist change. We cling to what we know, even when it is not working.
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How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions
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What emotions are you feeling right now? Can you name what is happening inside your inner world? Could God be speaking to you through your emotions?
Are you annoyed, ashamed, confused, hurt, depressed, jealous, anxious, fearful, stressed, angry, or sad?
While it may sound like a simple task to name what emotions you are experiencing, I haven’t always been able to do that and I’ve found in my work as a therapist, that many, many folks are not able to accurately name what is happening inside them.
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Emotions: Moses’ Journey and Our Invitation
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I felt as if I were inside Moses’ skin yesterday morning as I meditated on Deuteronomy 31. I identified with his emotions. It was a moment when the Holy Spirit opened my eyes through my own journey to glimpse into Moses’ heart.
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Who Will Love Me for Me?
Posted by: | CommentsTears filled her eyes as the words formed on her quivering lips, “No one loves me for me.”
The unasked question that haunted this woman is the same one that every human asks, “Who will love me for me?” The words of J.J. Heller expresses this longing in all our hearts:
We are made for love, both God’s love and the love of others; yet, we all at times, find ourselves feeling empty, feeling unloved.
There is no more powerful force than unconditional love. It has the power to transform the heart of the most hardened criminal and the hardest part of my heart and your heart for none of us are that different from each other. Our hearts all need healing, and we all long for the unconditional love of another.
If we all need this kind of love so desperately, why don’t we just freely give it to one another? It would seem such an easy answer to the problems of this world. Let’s just love. Love well. Love deeply. Love unconditionally.
Yet we are all caught in our own stories, seeking to be filled ourselves, too busy, too self-absorbed or too wounded or too defensive or a myriad of other things which keep us stuck, unable to move beyond our own insecurities and needs to offer others what they need and what we so desperately long for ourselves.
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Facing Sorrow and Pain; Finding Healing
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My son quizzed me about a recent flurry of “unfriending” on facebook that had to do with an ended relationship. Although he had nothing directly to do with the relationship, just because he was a friend of the “ex”, he was “unfriended”. Several others, including myself, had been “unfriended” after this relationship ended.
It was obvious that this individual had quickly moved to eradicate all evidence of the painful end of her relationship.
Oh, that it were that easy to erase pain! Just one click of a button, an “unfriending” or two, and viola!, the pain is gone! (or at least all the reminders of the pain is gone. ) We all know that doesn’t really work. I know because I’ve tried it many times. While we may be able to get our pain out of sight initially, that living entity is going to eventually come kicking and screaming out of its grave for things buried alive are, well, still alive!
Every life has its own measure of sorrow and pain. It’s easy to want to move away from the pain, erase it, refuse to mention it or acknowledge it, but a life lived fully must face pain and suffering and feel it in order to ultimately find healing.
Understandably we are afraid of pain, whether emotional or physical. Certainly a world in perfection, as it was in the beginning and will be again in the end, is a world without pain. Yet in our current reality, pain is a part of life and while we desperately want to believe that there must be a way around experiencing our own pain, avoiding our sorrows also means losing part of the fullness of life.
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