God’s Healing

God, Healing 0

The range of our prayers to God is in direct ratio, always, to our willingness to have God be central. As we move ourselves out of the center of our consciousness, as we move God toward center, we begin to experience a new openness with God and, as a result, a new freedom and a new happiness. We experience the transformative power of God. We do not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it. We see how God can use our experiences to benefit ourselves and others. This brings us to a great mystery.

When we turn our will and our life over to the care of God, we begin to experience the “care” of God. With a tender solicitude, God reaches into our past, transforming its wounds and wreckage. Many things we deeply regret and feel certain cannot be changed are changed by the grace of God touching them. Miraculously, God has the power to act not only in the present and the future but also in the past. God’s healing is not bound by time. As we watch with wonder, old relationships are gently repaired. New understandings are reached. Where once there was only ruin, we are given the opportunity to mend broken relationships and forge new ones. We see that the care of God embodies a gentleness and tact that we can only marvel at: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 130-131

Uniquely Suited for a Rich Life

Core Value, Growth, Healing, Joy 1

One of the things that you will be asked to do in the pages that follow is to abandon a mind-set in which you live the remainder of your life as if you are still experiencing your trauma. You may argue that given what you went through you are permanently damaged or scarred, that your baggage will be with you forever. I’m not here to tell you to get over it. I’m here to help you get past it. I will make the argument that you’re richer now — stronger, more empathic, and more in touch with your core values — than you were before you were challenged by what you went through. I don’t just believe that trauma survivors can go on to live rich, happy lives; I believe that they’re uniquely suited to do so.

— Alicia Salzer, MD, Back to Life, p. xxiv-xxv

Permission to Be Fabulous

Acceptance, Core Value, Growth, Healing 0

Until a woman has given herself permission to be fabulous, she will not find herself with partners who promote her ability to be so. As long as she tears herself down, she will attract people who tear her down, she will find others who agree that she is undeserving and lacking as long as that is how she thinks of herself.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 59

When the Time Comes to Let Go

Healing, Letting Go, Love 0

Although long-term relationships and secure employment and living in that house feels good, remember, that’s not where your security lies. Let yourself bond. Get close to that woman, or man. Let yourself enjoy being friends with the best friend you’ve ever had. Be a loving parent, 100 percent. Throw yourself into that job with all your heart and soul.

But your security and joy are not in that other person or job. The magic is in you.

Don’t get angry when the time comes in your life to let go. Open your heart to that person, place, or thing, and say, “Thanks for teaching me to love and helping me to grow.”

Then let him or her go, without resentment in your heart. Because even though that time has come to an end, love can’t be lost. Even it means an end to the best time you’ve had yet in your life, look around at where you are now. Don’t forget to enjoy it, too.

This will be the next best time you’ll have.

Remember, love is a gift from God.

— Melody Beattie, More Language of Letting Go, p. 405-406

God Is Our Witness.

Compassion, God, Healing, Trials 0

Many times what we are seeking from God is a sense of witness. We want to know that someone, somewhere, is paying attention to us and to our struggles. We do not even necessarily want God to intervene for us. But we do want to know that God is paying attention. We do want to know that God understands. This is the juncture where we often get derailed. Many very spiritual people can have a tinge of righteousness. They may see our struggles, but they do not understand them and they give us the uncomfortable feeling that God does not either. Ah, but God understands.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 68

Transformative Reconciliation

Forgiveness, Healing 0

True reconciliation shows the innocent extending love and grace in a way that is truly transformative, and that mirrors the divine nature of self-giving love. True reconciliation means evil humans turning from evil ways and walking in a way of goodness. It shows the brokenness of the world, like a fractured bone, being set back into its rightful position. True reconciliation lets us glimpse a world where both the victim and the offender desire that the other be blessed and flourish. In our world we only get glimpses of such true reconciliation, but I believe that such glimpses are all that we need to take that vision back into the brokenness of our daily lives. That glimpse of shalom can change the way we act and react.

— Catherine Claire Larson, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda, p. 263

The Protection of Tears

Healing, Letting Go, Trials 0

There are times in a woman’s life when she cries and cries and cries, and even though she has the succor and support of her loved ones, still and yet she cries. Something in this crying keeps the predator away, keeps away unhealthy desire or gain that will ruin her. Tears are part of the mending of rips in the psyche where energy has leaked and leaked away. The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur — our light is not stolen — for tears make us conscious. There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping. Whatever sleep comes then is only rest for the physical body.

Sometimes a woman says, “I am sick of crying, I am tired of it, I want it to stop.” But it is her soul that is making tears, and they are her protection. So she must keep on till the time of need is over. Some women marvel at all the water their bodies can produce when they weep. This will not last forever, only till the soul is done with its wise expression.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 437

Having Forgiven

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to remember to say about it all. You understand the suffering that drove the offense to begin with. You prefer to remain outside the milieu. You are not waiting for anything. You are not wanting anything. There is no lariat snare around your ankle stretching from way back there to here. You are free to go. It may not have turned out to be a happily ever after, but most certainly there is now a fresh Once upon a time waiting for you from this day forward.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 403

The Highest Vibration in the Universe

Healing, Joy, Life, Love, Trials 0

Dogs and cats can love you. Nature can love you. Music that sounds like you’ve heard it your whole life can love you. Art can love you. Beauty can love you. Whenever you deliver yourself to the experiences, sights, and sounds that make you feel loved, your experience will change. Your problems won’t be instantly solved, but in the arms of love, they will start to feel different. You will feel different. Instead of being in the foreground, your difficulties will recede into the background and your experience of your catastrophe will be transformed. That’s because Love is the highest vibration in the universe, and when you can feel it for even a nanosecond, everything else in your life will fall into its proper — and lesser — place.

Of course, we don’t want love just in the abstract and in general. We want it to be personal and particular. That is, we want to feel and share love with real people in our lives. As you’re going through this extremely difficult time, therefore, lean on the people who love you. Run, walk, or hopscotch, take a train, a plane, or a bus, to the people who can give you some love. They are your family, your friends, your neighbors and colleagues. Sometimes they’re even strangers. Whoever they are, you’ll know them by how they make you feel. With them, you feel happy and whole. They are the people who recognize your spirit, who touch your sensivity, who nourish and enliven your body, who make you laugh, who “speak your language,” who share your interests, who ask how you’re doing, who call to see if you got the job, won the case, could get the car fixed for less than six thousand dollars.

They are the ones who will say the words that will carry you through.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 175-176