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Healing the Family-From the Inside is Part 3 of the Healing the Family series. Many of the ones who have caused you pain are totally unaware of the effect certain actions have made on your life. Truth of the Spirit provides answers for Healing the Family from the Inside with understanding, inner healing spiritual exercises, forgiveness and prayer. Hurt and anger blinds people to the need to forgive.
Children tuck hurtful memories and they can be deeply buried. When in a difficult situation with your children, recall good memories of their childhood thus bring to mind the joy that was in those moments. A grateful heart is more open to the fullness of grace. As you realize the loop of hurt, and forgive, you are healed. As you ask for forgiveness you and they are healed. As Jesus stood in the gap caused by sin, so, too, you can be a bridge of His graces for others. Prayer can be an application of grace for our families’ wounds. One of the best times to pray for your family is during the mass between the Consecration and Communion. Other episode referenced is Truth of the Spirit podcast “Healing Beyond Skin Deep” which is part 5 of the series The Lord Healed Them All.
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Unforgiveness and regret build up layers of what seems like protection from additional hurt but actually can cause a more serious infirmity—that of severing relationship with God. Unforgiveness is like a poison we take expecting it to harm the other person.
Forgiveness is key. We must forgive, like Christ forgave those who crucified him. Forgiveness doesn’t change the past but can and does change our future.
Paul said in Ephesians 4:31-32 “31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” NRSV
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You are listening to Truth of the Spirit; I’m your host Patti Brunner. We continue our series today with #3 “Healing the Family – From the Inside”.
Inner Healing involves emotional injuries from the past. Sorrow and grief can hide us away from love to insulate us from grieving and hurting again thus keeps us from God’s fullness.
Inner healing unlocks the heart which, due to a pain of the past, has hardened and formed a barrier to prevent future pain at the cost of living the abundant life promised by Jesus. Angry, hardened hearts have difficulty trusting and loving God. Rebellion towards an unloving parent can cause rebellion towards God and authority. Pain from abuse by those who should be our caretakers can keep us from trusting God who is the Good Shepherd. Fears, both logical and abnormal, can arise that limit God’s loving gift of freewill.
Inner healing can give us peace from all anxieties.
The Lord wants to heal your hearts, your minds, your souls, your family. As we benefit from the Mercy of our creator and allow His Presence to heal us our hearts are ready for the fullness that the Holy Spirit brings. My husband and I serve together often as a prayer team for healing. Generally when people have a physical pain they know they need healing. Not so with inner healing. And the Lord is faithful and quite often provides relief from physical pain. Recently we prayed for a lady who had bulging discs in her neck that was causing her great pain. On a scale of 1 to 10 with ten being the worst, medication of morphine brought her pain down to an 8. As we prayed, the Lord reduced the swelling and took away all her pain and she was able to turn her neck for the first time in a long time. Praise God! Jesus certainly healed a lot of physical ailments in the gospel. However, physical healing is not the goal of the Kingdom. The goal is the unity of the people with their God for all eternity. Physical healing builds faith by repairing the body for a season—at the most maybe a season of a hundred years or so. The mortality rate of humans is 100%. Sooner or later all of mankind dies. Through the resurrection of Jesus we have an eternal life to seek and find. Spiritual healing is important. If we are clogged with sin, we need unclogging. In love, Jesus calls us to get unclogged with him.
What else limits a heart? What could be interfering with the abundant life God has chosen for our family? It is the heart that is scarred by pain and hurt. Anxieties have many sources but result in choking the heart with fear and lack of trusting God.
God calls us to take his gift of healing and share it with those he loves who suffer without peace. As hurts, sorrows and shameful memories surface the light of love shall heal them and the people shall be truly set free. The more you pray with the power of the presence of God the more you will find the peace of God.
Accepting the presence and the peace of God bring many people inner healing especially the healing of memories. One ways is bringing Jesus into the memory of the hurt. Sometimes our memories are buried deep within us. They might be so painful that we cannot easily release them to the light of Christ. God can reveal the memory by way of a special gift of grace.
A healing exercise I have used is to allow Jesus to remind us of 3 memories. By allowing Jesus to choose the memories we don’t force painful memories before we are ready. We then invite Jesus into each memory and then take note of what he does. God is eternal. He is truly present in the past, the now and the future. By the power of Jesus’ presence, we receive healing and the ‘clog’ that overwhelms us is removed.
Ask God to reveal and heal areas of your hidden pain: Pain in your hearts, in your memories. Pain that is a barrier.
God loves us. As we step inside our pain God shall be at our side—just as he has always been. Ask God to bring healing through three of your memories. Ask the Lord to remind you of something in the past. As you remember it, then ask Jesus to be there with you. As you recognize that Jesus is with you, then take note of what he is doing. To better understand this process I invite you to listen to the Truth of the Spirit podcast “Healing Beyond Skin Deep” which is part 5 of the series The Lord Healed Them All or read the blog available on PatriarchMinistries.com.
What else limits a heart? Unforgiveness.
Forgiveness–is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It overcomes pain and allows healings to take place.
‘The forgiveness given to those who have harmed you, or harmed those you love, signifies the kingdom’s power on earth in the heart of man. Forgiveness can be given at any time – it is a choice that love brings about more easily. When true love for others is in the heart one can forgo the “justification” of judgment against the actions of others and thus release to God all judgment, for Jesus shall come to judge the living and the dead. As you release your judgment against others you find joy and peace. Not as the world would claim it, but as the Spirit gives it – in truth, true joy; true peace.’
Forgiveness is an act of our freewill. When we forgive someone it doesn’t mean we agree with what the person has done to hurt us. It means that we give the issue to the Lord and ask that his mercy come upon the situation. When you can pray for salvation and mercy for the person who harmed you, you can be assured that you have forgiven that person.
I have found that the person who harmed you is often blind to the fact that they caused you pain. More importantly, sometimes people through hardness of heart are totally blind to the need to forgive. Hurt and anger blinds them. Are you blind to the need to forgive?
How important is this? We limit God’s mercy of forgiveness for our trespasses through unforgiveness of others. If you want to see how serious that is read Paragraph #2840 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It says: “Now – and this is daunting – this outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Love, like the Body of Christ, is indivisible; we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we do see.(136) In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace.”
Take your hurts and anger to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Your hearts will soften and you will be able to choose to forgive others and God’s mercy can then forgive you your sins.
All have weaknesses that cause others pain. Your own weaknesses have caused pain in your family that surfaces and you do not understand because the pain inflicted was totally unintentional. So too, many of the ones who have caused you pain are totally unaware of the effect certain actions have made on your life. As you realize the loop of hurt, and forgive, you are healed. As you ask for forgiveness you and they are healed. The complex effect of sin in the world causes pain. The more you seek the will of the Lord in daily activities the less what you do will cause pain to others.
After sharing God’s healing individually with hundreds of people over the years I have discovered that many of our wounds are from our childhood. Children are not able to process the world around them and they tuck hurtful memories and they can be deeply buried. Our parents were imperfect; teachers, coaches, and people who surrounded us were imperfect. We became imperfect parents and so our families joined the cycle of dysfunction in need of healing. Children who were in abusive situations may block out the pain and the memories or sometimes take the guilt on themselves. Our understanding of truth was imperfect when we were children. Sometimes it still is!
Let me tell you a story that my friend Frances Ryan once shared at Patriarch House, about a little boy with an anger issue.
The little boy with the bad temper had a father who loved him very much. He gave his son a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper he must hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his temper, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all.
He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail each time he was able to hold his temper. Many days passed before the young boy was finally able to tell his Father that all the nails were gone.
The father took his son by the hand and led him back to the fence. He said, “You have done well my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one. “
Sin in the world is like the holes in the fence. Infirmity, suffering, death are the side effects of sin in the world. “How many stab wounds do each of us suffer from? How often were things said to us in anger which have placed holes in our spirits resulting in scars that need to be healed? Our painful experiences and the way they have registered in our hearts have often taught us recoil in fear and self-defense.
In the family there are many hurts between each other especially between parent and child. This is due to the sin in the world. But in Christ you can put on Christ and in Christ, through Christ, these relationships can be healed.
Sometimes the innocent one needs to be honest before God and men. Hiding your ‘head in the sand’ or looking the other way instead of meeting the issue face to face does not allow the Divine Light to shine upon the darkness. The Divine Light of Jesus Christ brings healing. Pinpoint the prayer need, then, pray. You may also share this prayer request with the needy one. Pray without judgement but pray with truth. You may be thinking, if I am praying honestly, how can I not be judgmental?
One of the best spiritual exercises I have found to mentally separate sin from the sinner, to be able to forgive, and to pray honestly without judgment is from a healing seminar by Joan Hunter. Joan’s parents were healing ministers too. She called it “Tissue Issue”. I have adapted it for you to use. It goes something like this:
Think about the person who has wounded you, who needs to be forgiven, and needs your prayer, we’ll use the name Paul. Then, out loud, say “Father, I choose to forgive Paul. Paul really hurt me. What Paul did was wrong. Paul went against your will in hurting me.” Then pull a tissue out of a tissue box. The tissue symbolizes the thing Paul did that wounded you. Say “This tissue, this wrong was a sin and Paul sinned against me and against God.” Then say, “Father, you love me unconditionally, no matter what, so much you sent your Son to die for me so we could reconnect, and spend eternity together.” “Father, you love Paul, the person who hurt me.” Then take the tissue, the symbol of the sin against you and put it on a crucifix or a cross. As you look at it say, “Jesus, you took Paul’s sin. You died on the cross for Paul. Jesus, you forgave Paul on the cross. I choose to forgive Paul, who hurt me, because I love you, Father. I ask you to bless Paul in Jesus’ name. Father, bless Paul.” Then remove the tissue and flush it down the toilet. This Tissue Issue helps us to separate the sin and allows us to forgive.
The remedy is the application of grace as a salve to a wound that promotes healing.
Prayer can be an application of grace for our families’ wounds.
“When man uses freewill to pray and ask—miracles can come forth.
Love for others cause us to be intercessors to bring their needs before the Lord and to cause a communication of love between hearts that allows the presence of God to ‘break through’ the barriers caused by sin and pain, by lethargy and denial, by barriers caused by ignorance and by selfishness or unforgiveness. These barriers are difficult but not impossible to be broken.
When people pray together in one heart and mind the mind of Christ also enters in. And when Christ enters in, healing takes place.
One of the best times to pray for your family is during the mass between the Consecration and Communion. When you intercede to ask for healing, you make available the transmission of grace intensity by standing in the gap that had limited their connection with God.
God, in his mercy teaches us to laugh and love. When in a difficult situation with your children, recall good memories of their childhood thus bring to mind the joy that was in those moments. The same thing goes for your spouse; remember all the good things of your marriage. List the blessings in your life with family members, then, thank the Lord for each blessing. A grateful heart is more open to the fullness of grace.
Surely sin and sinful situations remain until conversion allows sanctification by the sacramental gifts to stir their hearts to remove all the chaff that has tried to root. Chaff cannot be fruitful—it has no life. And so allow Jesus to remove the dead chaff that chokes the soul and the heart. He heals the woundedness in our hearts, in our souls. God brings us abundant life.
All prayer is communication with God. Intercession during prayer asks for favor for others. Sometimes the person with needs can’t or won’t ask for the Lord’s help.
As Jesus stood in the gap caused by sin, so, too, you can be a bridge or conduit of His graces for others. We are called to imitate Jesus in our intercession for others. We are called to ask help from the angels, the saints and the Blessed Mother in intercession for others. We are called to ask help from Jesus. You can Intercess for loved ones by taking them to Jesus in your heart. This brings healing from stress. Once you truly surrender them to Jesus you will find peace.
We are all connected in the Body of Christ. When someone in the Body is sick with sin, it affects the whole body. Sort of like the mumps epidemic! The reverse is also true. When the members of the Body of Christ have conversion of heart and are bursting with the joy of the Lord, they affect others in a positive way. This is also why the intercession of the Communion of Saints and of Mary is so important.
You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit. I’m Patti Brunner. I invite you to subscribe, its free, and come back for more on Healing the Family. With the Holy Spirit, there’s always more. Amen.
