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The Healing Journey. I have liked the sound of that phrase since I heard a person, who is now a friend, use it to describe herself. I knew it was the kind of journey I was on.
The Healing Journey is one of those journeys that is within a larger journey and has many smaller journeys in it. It would certainly be within the journey of your life – it could be your whole life if that’s how long it takes God to heal you. I still believe that WE are the most important thing that he is doing in our lives so if our healing takes a life time then that’s what it takes.
How do we get started on such a journey? Could it be that we were always on that journey but didn’t know it? Possibly. But I know in my own life that The Healing Journey as I understand it did not begin until there was a moment of Recognition that took place in my inner being. This was that moment in the mid ‘90s when God revealed my depression and I asked him to show me how I got here and to show me how to get out. I didn’t need that moment to tell me that something was wrong - that had been obvious for a long time. But I didn’t know WHAT was wrong until that moment of Recognition came. I kept looking at my life and asking God what was I doing wrong – at least that’s what I did for years until I realized I could blame Larry and then I did that for the proper length of time. He never told me I was doing anything wrong. That was not the point. The point was that there was a bitterness in me that I could not identify. God gave this the name depression but that still didn’t tell me what it was or how I had gotten into it. But that moment of Recognition (there I am with a long word to type again) was cataclysmic in my life. At that moment everything really did begin changing although much of the time we couldn’t tell it.
This moment began a (now) 12-13 year Healing Journey that has included times when God was teaching me, ministering to me through others, having me minister to others, receiving revelation and there are probably many sub-titles that can go under those. But I think – and I can not be sure about this – but I think that every truly healing moment came with a moment of recognition. Or was it that the healing did not happen until I could Recognize what was happening. Some of these moments were small and quiet. Some were seemingly ineffective when I was not ready to understand what was happening and walk in agreement with it. But all these moments lead me to today.
The best example I have of what can happen in a moment of Recognition is when I was set free of a Death Wish. Sound Melodramatic? I promise you it’s real. I embraced this somewhere around age 30. It was a time of dramatic ups and downs and when I was down I cried a lot and spent many a night pacing the floors. There was no way out of my pain. Couldn’t commit suicide – that would be wrong. Couldn’t get a divorce - God had already nixed that idea (and this was not about Larry – he was just always a part of the equation). I was in pain and I wanted to escape and the only place I could go without getting off the straight and narrow was to my mind. At least I could hide it from people there. I was already accustomed to living in my mind (see previous posts for more of this) so it was a natural progression for me. And I began to think of dying. Over the years it might be me or it might be Larry but it seemed if one of us would die then surely things could get better. Nobody Died – Thank God. But by the time this Recognition came my body was getting into a mess of problems. I won’t go here into the whole Mini-journey of getting to this Recognition but will take you to the moment of it. We were in KC and I was in full blown depression. We were still going to International House of Prayer some and one day I saw a notice of a Healing Room mini seminar called The Oil of Joy. I was, at the time, reading that passage in the Bible so I felt impressed to go. Turns out the class was about depression. Hmmmm. A Set Up perhaps? The teacher was experienced in being led by the Holy Spirit and during the class he (HS) indicated that we needed to renounce the Death Wish. Two ladies there had tried to commit suicide. Without this turn of events the class itself would have been depressing because of us who were in it. So she explained how we would Renounce the Death Wish in prayer. RECOGNITION. Big time. I so understood in that moment that this –this place of Death - was my place of escape and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to give that up. I honestly sat there and thought about it for a minute. I also understood in that moment the slow death that was wrecking my body and my life. Well I did it. I spoke the words that would take me out of agreement with that Thing. I did NOT immediately turn around. The next day I realized that I would not be able to change the way my mind worked just because I prayed once or thought it was a good idea to not be that way anymore. I wrote a prayer on an index card that I prayed every day for months afterward. I prayed it quietly but I also prayed it through clenched teeth and tears and over and over until I could say it with out have to fight myself to do it.
Eventually it worked because it was the Lord's strategy and I believe that moment of Recognition and that battle won opened the way for some other very significant moments of Recognition to happen - like the one about trusting God. I pray I will continue to have such moments even though I know that I’m more whole than I have ever been in my life. I’m not done and don’t expect to be done until THAT day.
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