Since I moved to Gainesville in September, I began getting training in inner healing, through Elijah House ministries. Trainings are every Thursday night for about five hours. My goal is to eventually bring others through the inner healing process, and I’m already doing so with a couple of peers at Adventures. But God keeps calling me to go higher with Him by inviting me to many opportunities for my own personal healing.
The other day I met a woman who has nothing to do with my trainings on Thursdays. She doesn’t even live in GA. The circumstance in which we met could only be organized and led by the holy spirit. She and her husband have been doing inner healing ministry for 30 years. I had about a week to spend with them before they would travel back to Kentucky where they live. So by the middle of the week, I found myself sitting in an empty office at Adventures with this woman. Nose-dive into soul care and inner healing, we did.
Soooooo what does “inner healing” and “soul care” look like in real life?
Well, with the holy spirit I guess it can look however he wants. But as I sat facing my new wise friend, I closed my eyes and I was whisked away back to a time when my family lived in a 3 bedroom apartment in New Tampa. I was probably in 3rd grade at the time. I had a lot of things that a little girl likes to have: barbie dolls, pink everything, a collection of polly pockets, a t.v., bicycle. But the word that kept coming to mind for that time was, abandonment. I wasn’t literally abandoned by anyone. But the way that I conducted myself in relationships and often in response to conflict, was to isolate myself in my room. I remember sometimes throwing crying screaming fits in that room, often when I didn’t have my way. During that phase I so to speak, “let the sun go down on my anger”.. a lot. I didn’t realize that this was only the start of a very difficult few years in life: pre-teens and middle/high school.
The woman’s voice spoke softly to me from the Adventure’s office, and told me to stay in that place; to picture myself in my room in the apartment. I imagined my 3rd grade self in one of my crying fits on the floor, feeling like everything was falling apart, including myself. Although I don’t ever remember doing this in real life, I saw the little girl push a box of toys underneath her bed. Then, the gentle voice from inside the present-day office spoke. She asked me where Jesus was in my room. I thought for a moment and then knew that he was laying on my Little Mermaid comforter on my bed; beckoning me up off the floor. He wanted me to come snuggle with him. So I crawled up on to the bed next to him and nuzzled my face into his chest.
As I let myself go in my imagination, I saw Jesus playing all kinds of games with me in my room. In one scenario, he played polly pockets with me on the floor and he made up a bunch of ridiculous dialogue between the polly pocket figures. It made me giggle. In another scenario, he got on his hands and knees and crawled into the closet next to me so we could pet the kittens that were born in there. In another, we were sitting next to each other and I saw him lean over and whisper into my ear: “you know, I think you’re very pretty.”
My third grade self seemed to be beaming, lighting up at all these exchanges. But my 25-year-old self was silently weeping uncontrollably in an office chair..
The older woman’s voice told me to stay in that place, in my pink room, with Jesus. Suddenly my childhood room that I didn’t necessarily like to be in, became a delightful place. I knew that every single time I would go back to it from now on Jesus would be there, ready to play. Truth be told [and I didn’t know it until the gentle woman’s voice was telling me so] somewhere along the line, I had suppressed a piece of my inner little girl. She made herself shove the toys underneath her bed at a very young age.
But now, it’s time for the little girl to arise off the floor.
It’s time for her to play again..
[Part 2 to come soon]