Tag / Healing

by Jennifer Wells

Family Talk

I have an amazing friend named Jan, and she truly is one of the women I want to emulate in my life. She brilliantly shines Jesus and grace and beauty and love. Many of you reading this have been impacted by her and love her dearly.

She has this expression she uses often, and I love it. She’ll be sharing something, and right before she shares, she’ll say, “This is family talk.” When I hear it, I feel treasured. I know she considers me family. She trusts me. Also when I hear it, my spirit agrees with her. We are family. We share a purpose and a Father. We can rejoice together in the good and pray together in the hard because we give each other grace.

Family talk.

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. Acts 9:31

I was talking with Justin and another friend this week about the family of God. We certainly have our moments of frustration and division. We certainly have been through struggles together and sometimes there are hurts that need to be healed. But still we are family. We rejoice when God uses a member of our family to bring Him glory, wherever that may be. We pray when a member of our family is hurting. When someone from the outside of our family criticizes someone inside of our family, we can get a little defensive.

When I joined the family of God, it was at a large precious church that I still adore. Many many people became my family members at that place. I had father-figures and mother-figures and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters all over the place. We saw God move there. We were used by God to do big things there. It was an amazing time.

Image courtesy of calvaryinglewood.org

A few years later, that place went through some struggles. There was hurt. Many of us scattered all over the place during that time of transition. We were like baby birds pushed out of the safe warm nest. For a while there was some division and confusion and hurt. There were things we all needed to confess and forgive. We needed to let go of the former things (Isaiah 43:18). But if you look around that family, whether people left or stayed, wherever people landed, God continues to use us. He took us from ministering at one church to ministering at that church plus a dozen more. He was faithful. He did not give up on us. We healed. We grew. We were forgiven for our part in the struggle. We forgave others.

We are family – even across the miles and across the hurts. We don’t have to agree on everything because we agree on the important things. We can still rejoice in the good, we can still ache and pray in the difficulty, because we are family.

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brothers,by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 1 Corinthians 1:9-10

We serve in an area with many churches. And it’s easy and human to compare and compete a little. It’s easy to focus on our differences and not on what unites us. But we are not called to live easy and human. We are called to be set apart. We are commanded to rejoice with each other and pray for each other. God is moving in many ways across the world, and every move He makes deserves to be celebrated by us all whether we have a part in it or not. Because we aren’t just an organization, we are parts of an organism. We are family, parts of the same body. We are joined together with Christ, and there is no room for division in this body.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6

I am just filled with gratitude today for my family. I want each of you to know I love you and thank my God for you – truly. You have welcomed me into your family, and you have welcomed my brave wonderful husband and my beautiful little girls. You have treated us with grace. You love us, and I am so grateful for you. I love the Lord more because I know you and because you have treated me with love. I am grateful.

by Jennifer Wells

Beloved

I actually wrote this blog about a month ago – but have not had the courage to post it.  But this morning, reading this blog, I was given the courage to tell my story.  I am thankful for a God who reaches out to His girls and affirms that we are, indeed, His beloved.

I had an amazing encounter with the Lord about two months ago.  It came out of hurt and weakness, as many encounters do, and to tell you about it I have to be really vulnerable.  So, as an offering to my King, I will open up about this area of my life and pray that someone will join me in healing and hope because of this story.

One day in December, in a joking manner, my husband called one of my children my favorite.  When he said it, I became really defensive.  My walls instantly went up and I dwelled on this idea for days.  After I had gotten over my initial rejection of this idea, I began to look at my home and at my parenting honestly, and the truth is, he was right.  I was demonstrating some favoritism towards one of my children.  I love both of my sweet daughters – I truly love them equally.  But there is one of my children who was just more difficult for me to be joyful as I interacted with her.  I was more guarded with her.  I parented her more negatively than I parented the other child.  As I started dealing with this, I didn’t know where to go, but I felt the Lord lead me to Abraham.

Favoritism was rampant in Abraham’s family.  You look at the line of Abraham in the Old Testament, the price that is paid even today because of parental favoritism was incredibly costly.  It was a generational sin with great consequence, including competition between siblings, division in families, and marital conflict over the favored children.

So I acknowledged this sin of favoritism and frankly at first I felt powerless against it.  I went to the Lord begging Him for healing and confessing this terrible sin towards my daughter, and as I dealt with it in my parenting I began to look back to my childhood.

If I am brutally honest, I can look back at my childhood and it is clear that I was not favored when compared to my siblings by one of my parents.  That’s kind of strange to write.  It’s not so PC to talk about parental favoritism.  But I realized last month this is a reality I need to deal with.  This sin of parental favoritism is pretty easily identified in every branch of my family tree – including the wonderful home I grew up in.

Many years ago in therapy, I remember my therapist telling me to not be afraid to face hard truths, but simply to face them, acknowledge them, and move on.  She said that when we fear something and run from it, it has power over us.  But when we acknowledge it and decide whether or not we will give it the power to define us, we can have victory.

So last month I said all of this out loud, for the first time in my life.  I acknowledged that A) – there was favoritism that existed in our family, and B) that I was not the one favored.  I felt bratty and needy in a way that I really was not comfortable with.  But I said it.  And it was freeing.  I realized, in saying it, that it did not have the power to define me.

I had to deal with this truth because in not dealing, I gave it power, and I continued this sin into my family.  Acknowledging this in love and grace was hard, but necessary.  The brokenness in my family had become my brokenness without even realizing it – and acknowledging it was the first step in healing it.  This was a defining reality and likely has much to do with some insecurities remaining in me and with my competitive nature I have to fight to control, especially with my siblings.  So this isn’t something to mess around with – this is serious and I needed help from the Father to understand it and figure out what He was teaching me by revealing this, and then to get healing, for me and my daughter.

Because although it feels bratty to say outloud – I was hurt.  It did bother me.  I felt small.  Unloved.  Unworthy.  Unchosen.  Fundamentally flawed.

As the Lord began to open my eyes to this favoritism and to the history of it in our family, suddenly I wondered if the Lord wasn’t allowing me to feel this pain and this rejection because He was trying to wake me up to the pain I was causing my daughter and the rejection she was living with everyday.  In realizing this, my heart broke for my little girl.  I desperately wanted healing and to stop this sin of favor and rejection.

I didn’t know what to do with all of this.  So I wrote about it to my sister, who loves the Lord and is very wise.  I very tentatively wrote her a long email explaining where my heart was and why I was so broken over all of this.

My sister wrote back and lovingly, gently, and courageously affirmed my view of my childhood.  She wrote “You’re right” and in reading that – I suddenly felt this pain and this weight that seemed to pin me down.  Her words didn’t create that pain or that weight, but in reading her words I suddenly realized this pain and weight that had attached itself to me at some point in my past unacknowledged.  I read on in her email.  She wrote these words:  I have this picture of you where you’re just growing– in every way– getting bigger and bigger as He fills you and breathes into you more and more. Little pockets of poisonous air are being punctured and aired out, and even though it deflates you for just a second, He is quick to come in and start breathing into that part to re-inflate you, bigger and stronger than you were before.

As I read what she wrote, I stopped and closed my eyes.  I told the Lord how hurt I was, and how broken.  I told him that I felt rejected, unloved, and unchosen.  I asked Him to come into that place of hurt and to heal and mend my heart.  And I felt him do it.  I can’t explain it.  The pain and the weight lifted off of me.  Suddenly I heard in my heart “You are my Beloved.”  That is not a word I use, nor a phrase I connect with myself.  I believe I heard the voice of God in that moment affirming His perfect love for me regardless of my background.  I can’t explain, even now, what it feels like to again realize the perfect unconditional love of my Father.

That night I faced my past with the confidence of one who is loved.  I confessed hurt and anger towards my parents.  I confessed the sin of resentment towards my siblings.  I confessed the sin of favoritism towards my child.  I begged the Lord for healing.  I asked him for His perfect love to enter into my parenting.  I begged Him to heal the hurt I have already caused in my child and to give her a foundation of favor and perfect love.  As I went through this time of prayer, I felt weights lift off of me.  I felt light enter parts of my heart that were dark.  I felt cleansing take place in my soul.  It was an incredibly powerful time.  I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced anything like it.  I was delivered from something, and something was healed in me.  It was pretty amazing.

This all happened in the dark of our room late one night and early the next morning.

That next morning, my previously “unfavored” child came into my room.  I am telling you – I looked at her differently.  I felt my heart break for her.  Since that day, I have understood her better, had more patience for her, less anger, less frustration.  It has broken something in me. In the past several months, I haven’t lost my patience with her and my heart has continued to be soft when it comes to her – regardless of her behavior.  I feel her pain and understand her better.  And she is responding to that change.  I am so grateful to the Lord for every moment of this revelation.  He has used this knowledge and this reality to break something in me that needed to be broken.  I am so grateful that He chose to heal this part of me I didn’t even know was broken.

He has given me His grace towards my daughter.  His perfect, unending, delightful, overflowing grace.

And He has redefined me in that same grace.

I am His beloved.  And that label, and only that label, defines me.  And with His grace and His help, that will be the only label defining my children.

by Jennifer Wells

Planted by Streams of Water

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers. Psalm 1:3

I am visual and because of what I imagine when I read it, I love this verse.  Doesn’t your heart rate slow when you read this verse and picture that tree?

I read this passage this week and immediately thought “Lord, I feel withered.  I don’t feel planted by streams of water.  I don’t feel like a tree. I feel like a weed.” In that moment, I realized I had a choice – turn from this passage and believe that either this is not really true for Believers or that I am abandoned in my sin, or dig in and figure out why my feelings aren’t matching up with truth.  I realized, quickly, the context of this verse is that the person living deeply invested in the Word of God is the tree.  Ahhh – there is my problem.  I have been disobedient in that area.  So I returned to Him, and sought His presence, and began to feel the streams of water reenter my parched soul.  My perspective began to shift from inside this tiny life I live to the bigger picture of His grace and glory.

And I saw something in this verse.  “Which yields its fruit in season.”  I know from previous study that there is a symbolic meaning to fruit – and I know what this passage is trying to say.  But I also saw something else – another definition of fruit.

One of the MOST amazing things about this past year has been the private messages I have received via Facebook or email, particularly after I reveal some aspect of my terrible nature on this blog.  I have received confessions of weakness or sin from women and men who I’ve known throughout my life, small “me too” messages that reveal that I am not alone in my struggles.  I have received PRECIOUS notes of encouragement from people who have defeated similar sin and many people have joined with me and prayed for me.  I have had the great privilege of praying for, and maybe encouraging, some other people who are struggling alongside me as they have walked their walks with the Lord.  One thing I’ve realized – many many people wait with us on the Lord.   This waiting room is more full than I ever imagined.  But in the waiting room, if we’ll look around, is grace and true Biblical fellowship with other Believers, also waiting.  We can learn from each other.  We can relate to each other.  We can find lifelong friendships.  Amazing.

Another great thing about this time, since I have decided to speak out loudly about our desire to adopt and our desire to support adoptive and foster parents, a number of people have privately messaged me that God is calling them to adopt or foster.  Someone wrote today – it just thrills my soul.  That calling is a daunting one.  I read somewhere that only a very small percentage of people who investigate adoption actually adopt.  And I can understand why.  The process is sometimes confusing and challenging, and it is scary stuff to ask for the permanent care of a child from another environment – not because we fear the child, but often because we don’t feel worthy to handle the challenges that could be associated with adoption and we worry we’ll mess up everyone’s lives in the process.  So I get these quiet messages – “Do you think I could do this?”  I love getting those messages – I love that people trust me with that secret desire and I love that I get to, in that moment, affirm that what God begins in us, He is faithful to complete in His power.  During this past two years, we have gotten the amazing privilege of praying with people, encouraging people, and in tiny measure maybe even helping people do what God has called them to do.  It has been overwhelming and humbling.  When I get those messages, I shake from the honor of being a small part of God’s movement in their lives.

It has been priceless to me.

I wonder had all of my dreams, and my plans, come true in my timing, would I ever have known that community and that privilege?  Had it been up to me – our house would be on its way to being full of little people from around the world.  It is likely I would have been puffed up in my success and busy in my own pursuits, and I would have missed out on the joy of this avenue of true Biblical fellowship.

For that reason, I love this time while we wait.  We can’t adopt now, but we can encourage now. We can pray.  We can advocate.

So this week, when I went to the Lord feeling weak and lifeless, He reminded me that even in Fall and Winter, He is working to bring forth Spring.  And even if I get to be a small part of bringing forth Spring in the lives of others, it is worthy wonderful work.  If that is some of my fruit of this season, I’m in.  I may not be seeing fruit at this moment in our home, but I am seeing others bear fruit and joining with them in community.  Rock on.

So that was a sweet new definition of fruit for me, as pertains to the Psalm 1 passage.

And speaking of bringing forth spring – the Lord has been pruning me so that I can produce fruit in my parenting.  This wait has revealed in me some deficiencies that I needed to correct before I was ready to adopt.  About six months ago, I began to be aware of my inadequacies parenting my girls, in particular Grace.  It was like she was a mirror reflecting the worst side of my nature, and what I saw in myself was ugly.  It killed me.  I longed to parent her with grace and wisdom, and I knew I was failing.  So I prayed.  I begged.  I blogged.  And truthfully, my parenting style, and my sin nature, didn’t revolutionize overnight.  I started having more good days than bad, but sometimes the sin that so easily entangles would overwhelm me.  And I was frustrated.  I felt broken.  I knew my problem, knew some of my wrong thinking, but wasn’t sure how to correct it.  But in my chaos and confusion, the Lord was working quietly and perfectly. Over time, He weaved several seemingly small interactions together that have helped me see my purpose in parenting and helped me identify and correct much of that wrong thinking.  Through a verse, a couple of conversations with friends, some messages from Brandon Thomas, a note from a high school friend over Facebook, a couple of books, the Tapestry Adoption Conference, and the prayers and accountability of precious sisters in Christ, He spoke.  Today I confess that I am not perfect yet (Ha – I wish!), but that I am tapped into the source of change and everyday realizing the grace that is mine both for myself and for parenting my loves.  I am seeing, in Grace, the same struggle I face everyday, the struggle to protect and control what we see as ours, and finally I am feeling empathy for her, not frustration.  Loving, obeying, understanding, and dying to ourselves is not natural.  It is hard, lifelong work.  I am an adult with the person of Christ living in me and yet I struggle, but I expect my three year-old to get it?  It is terribly unfair.  So finally I am seeing that for what it is – sin in me that needs to be dealt with.  Thank you Lord for your refining of me for my and my sweet daughter’s sake.  Protect her Lord from my habitual sin, and continue to be a source of love and grace for my girls.

I remember after therapy realizing that there is power in the knowledge of our brokenness.  Sometimes healing takes work and often it comes later, but a great victory is won when we see ourselves as we truly are – in need of healing and help.  In that moment, we can turn to the Lord and confess our brokenness and He begins to heal.  That is why the enemy of our souls fights to tell us that we are okay, that our problems are always due to other people in our world.  The enemy wants us to believe “It’s all good.  Don’t sweat it.”  But the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin for our benefit, so we can become free.  And I am so grateful to God for that.  He could leave us to walk through life clothed in the stink of death and sin, unaware of our own stench, covered by the grace of His Son’s death but unable to live an abundant life.  But He doesn’t.  He has made us positionally pure in Christ, but He reveals Himself to us and reveals our sin so that we can become completely pure.

That is what streams of water is all about.  Filling with Him so there is no room for our sinful selfish ways until we grow taller and stronger than we ever could have grown in our own power.

Sign me up for that.

by Jennifer Wells

Headed Toward Healing

It amazes me sometimes the body’s incredible ability to heal. My best friend growing up was the youngest in this big wonderful family. Her dad was recently in very critical condition and in the last week we have seen him turn a corner and his body has healed in a profound way. He has a ways to go – but we have seen a miracle in a situation where there seemed just days ago to be no hope. It reminded me again this week that these bodies we are in are fearfully and wonderfully made.

As I have watched this happen several times in recent years, it seems to me there is a moment where the body goes from reacting to circumstances to fighting to recover. And when that happens, the progression from critical to stable can be very rapid.

I think it is the same for our emotional and spiritual health. We can allow circumstances, consequences of bad decisions, and the weight of this broken world to overwhelm us. And when we react to all of those things, our emotional and mental health can rapidly spiral downward. Have you ever done that? Sometimes we can be in a highly reactive state and a circumstance can happen and suddenly we seem to have been thrown into a crater. We churn on it and dwell on it and can’t seem to break free. It is like all we see is the circumstance.

But there is a moment that can change that downward spiral. In fact, it can change the direction of our life. The moment may be a truth that suddenly gets illuminated for us, or a caring friend confronting us in love, or a turning point in our heart where we simply humble ourselves and turn back to the Lord and ask for help. And in that moment, although our circumstances don’t change – our direction does. Suddenly, things aren’t so overwhelming. And we begin to, very quickly, heal. Now that our direction and focus are right, our attitude and actions and perspective suddenly snap back to center. We begin to feel like we have control over ourselves and our emotions again.

I recently worked with a guy named Josh King and he drew this illustration about people and their relationship with Christ for us in Staff Meeting – I thought it was really powerful. Imagine that each of these dots is a person and the diagram represent their closeness to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He said that we as people tend to want to judge the condition of people’s hearts. So we begin to do this grouping thing. This person is close to Christ obviously because they do this and this and this, and this person – well they are far far away because of all these things they have done. So, we begin to draw a circle. The red area represents people we think are “in” and the white area is everybody else.

 

The point my friend made, which was so powerful to me, is that what we judge as closeness to God isn’t the important factor. The important factor is the orientation of the hearts of men (which we of course cannot truly see). So if we were able to instead look at the direction people are headed in relation to God, then we would be able to see the entire picture.

Our job then, as Christ followers and ministers of the Gospel, is to encourage others in their orientation towards Christ, as we ourselves continually correct our direction to orient our own lives toward His glory. Realizing that only when headed toward Christ can true happiness be found, we make it our life’s ambition to point people toward the wonderful person of Christ. How close they end up, whether they are “in” or “out” is not something we can ever judge or truly know. All we can do is reflect His glory and point people back to Him, realizing it is all about the direction of our focus.

Just as this amazing illustration represents our overall spiritual direction, I think it also illustrates my point about healing. Emotional and spiritual healing, I think, is a matter of orientation. And when we and the people we love are facing the right direction, with the right goal and the right God, it is AMAZING how quickly everything can change.