Inner Healing

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about inner healing. In my early 20s I went through a deep season of both experiencing and studying inner healing (for I suppose there is no way for me to experience something but to also simultaneously study it). But the books have either landed with friends or have been shelf decorations for many years now.

I believe it is time for a little revisit, for whatever purposes my sweet Lord may now have. I can only begin by lining up for myself some of the influences activating this new awareness.

Of course first there's my own knotty heart. I've been dealing with this issue of the role of the intellect in my identity or self-concept, and my personal history there. I guess lots of my recent blog posts have touched on that.

My friend Patty, the author of the blog Abba's Little Girl, has been writing an extended series on her own healing from incest, with the intent to help those who have been likewise abused, as well as those affected by clerical sexual abuse. As a convert to the Catholic faith, she is now grappling with how her experience with the discipleship and healing method that brought her God's healing can be shared in a Catholic context. She feels, as do I, that within the dimension of sacramental life, there is huge potential for the Church to offer something even more powerful and dynamic than what she experienced in a Protestant setting. It seems Jesus taught her things about truth during her healing that even those who discipled her were not open to. What to do with this marvelous gift that doesn't yet seem to "fit" in either tradition?

Willa at In a Spacious Place has a wonderful post called The Faculties of Past, Present and Future. She starts with a discussion of the Suscipe of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This prayer has always been like strong wings for my heart. (Here is the version I know and love best.) She then thinks about past, present and future, relating to healing from childhood troubles, and the value of having a coherent narrative of one's life. She says:

Every time we recall something, we basically recast it in our present moment. The content of the memory may be something past, but the actual "recollection" is something occurring in our present. This is why... a coherent "narrative" of the past -- even a troubled past -- can help us restore our present and affect our futures.

Just this past Lent I wrote one such narrative, but I really wasn't able to articulate what value the process had. Willa then discusses conversion, metanoia, and shame. I'm sure I need to read it over a few more times to really digest it all.

The authors I read most heavily, if not exclusively, in my 20s were John and Paula Sandford. They have been pioneers in Christian inner healing, and as such they've received their share of rejection. They are strongly supportive of Protestant/Catholic unity, and in many ways their understanding of the gospel (though perhaps not of the Church -- just perhaps) is quite Catholic as I recall.

This is from the website of the ministry they founded:

These scriptural and universal laws...

• Honor your father and mother... that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you (Deuteronomy 5:16)

• Do not judge, lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1-2)

• Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap (Galatians 6:7-8)

• For in that you judge another, you condemn yourself (Romans 2:1)

...are as sure as the law of gravity, and we are all subject to them whether or not we believe them. When we break these laws, we set in motion forces that (without God's intervention) must be reaped by simple, impersonal law-law that is absolute and eternal. In our sinful responses to wounding, we begin early on to develop patterns of behavior that cause us to reap in adulthood the very thing we have worked so hard to avoid.

Add to these laws the principle of increase: what we sow will come back to us as multiplied (both good and evil). For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind Hosea 8:7a (NAS). The laws of God are both natural and spiritual: For example, in physics, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"; in the spiritual...whatever a man sows, this he will also reap Galatians 6:7b (NAS).

So why do we need to be healed? Although Christ has fully accomplished our death on the cross, our carnal nature refuses to stay dead-it springs back to life: See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled... Hebrews 12:15 (NAS).

Many Christians have rightly celebrated salvation as a free gift but have not understood that they are to grow up in it. They have celebrated with Paul that by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified (Hebrews 10:14) without understanding sanctification as a process and without acknowledging with Paul, Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12).

As Christians, we tend to press on in terms of managing behavior rather than renewing our mind and receiving a new heart, which naturally changes behavior. Many have tried to forget "what lies behind" (Philippians 3:13) by ignoring the past rather than by letting the Holy Spirit search the innermost parts of the heart in order to allow Jesus to deal specifically with deeply ingrained attitudes. They have attempted to put aside the old self with its practices of anger, wrath, malice and slander, as if these were present, external expressions only, whereas Jesus called the Pharisees (and us) to "clean the INSIDE of the cup" (Matthew 23:36).

So, this is what I have in front of me today. Throughout my life I have felt Scripture get that amplified, bullhorn effect when I come across various passages regarding healing, restoration, speaking, and "being a prophet". Inner healing is a term for what I have experienced as being snatched from the brink of despair, having prison doors unlocked, having the tomb opened, my name called, and bandages untied. With all my heart, this is the gift I would long to be able to give to someone else, or, really, simply see someone else have whether or not I had any part in it.

This is what I have in front of me today.