Monday, 27 June 2016

If Jesus manifested his love and goodness by healing people during his earthly life, I can't not believe that he would not continue healing work for us today. We can open ourselves to His healing in terms of our emotionality. However, us surrendering and being open to that healing process is our necessary co-operation with his healing hand. We surrender to the healing process, different from trying to control it. Emotional healing is very much a letting go process. The initial letting go is consenting to God's healing action in our lives, even though the healing is not always a pretty picture. Invariably, it constitutes growing pains and surrendering particular ways of seeing ourselves, others and God.    

Can we weave this statement into our inner being:

"God regards me. God values me. God finds me acceptable even in my growing awareness of my brokenness, weakness, my inability to overcome my flaws and even my lack of faith. I can take off all my masks, let others know my truth, and even if they struggle to accept me in my truth, I can go towards the ultimate truth and that is that God loves me unconditionally." 

We want to have a renewed attitude to our emotionality. While we want to be free from the inhibiting dictates of our emotions, we first have to go towards them. It requires us working with them, not disowning or fearing them. We want our afflictive emotions to be healed by God, rather than us just "eliminating" them through repressive means

Getting in touch with our feelings can be difficult at first. We may feel overwhelmed at times. We may also feel confused about the array of feelings and conflicting emotions that we begin to experience. Sometimes we may even feel worse before we feel better. The important thing is to feel. 

Our attitude towards our emotions is pivotal in the context of preparing the way for God's deeper healing of us. A healthy attitude towards our emotions is marked by a truthfulness, and an acknowledgement of them. Can we accept their existence? Can we begin to name them? Can we make friends with our emotions rather than view them as this nuisance value in our lives?

It is simply not true that we need to feel shameful about any part of our wounded, broken selves, whether it be our vulnerability, our needs or particular emotions that we have, over time, learned to experience as shameful. God asks us to let go of any distorted, non-loving attitude toward ourselves. Paul (Romans 5:20) encourages us to contextualise our weakness in our faith, and regard our growing awareness of them as an opportunity to experience God's grace and power in our lives.    

Whenever we buy into our shame, and respond in daily life in ways that give the impression that we indeed believe ourselves to be shameful, the shame that we carry is reinforced and exacerbated. Identifying the shame, acknowledging and accepting its presence in our life at this juncture in our growth is necessary. However, being controlled by it as though it were the truth about us hampers our healing process.