Last month (see last blog) I told you about the night in 1998 when the Holy Spirit was pleading with me to respond to Him, to enter into my healing dialogue. I was reading Leanne Payne’s book, “Restoring the Christian Soul Through Listening Prayer.” However, I did not enter into listening prayer that night. I never did my dialogical prayer and journaling with God, and I had to resign from the pastorate about a year later.
But a friend of mine did it differently. Katherine is a dear friend. She went on the inaugural Women’s Pure Heart Weekend back in 2008. (All that I share here, I have her full permission and approval.) Katherine’s great struggle in life was from a story of abandonment and fear. On a couple of occasions in Katherine’s childhood years, her mother went into the hospital where she was gone for months! The first time it happened Katherine was only 4 years-old. On the day of her mother’s departure, headed out the door with her suitcase, young Katherine ran toward her and held out her little dolly saying, “Here, Mother. Take my dolly with you.” But her mother rejected the doll and turned away. A deep sadness and emptiness came to possess little Katherine’s heart.
Katherine was never able to rest in the assurance of being loved, and being safe and secure. Aching for the security in a mother’s bond, shame began to grow in her heart.
As a college student, her shame became more manifest. A few years of dressing and acting-out the Hippie’s life, and trying transcendental meditation, could not keep Katherine from severe bouts of depression.
But she came to know Christ in her years after college. She read the classic writings of C.S. Lewis, Tozer and Francis Schaeffer. She grew in the deeper spiritual teachings of the Christian life, and her marriage to a joyful man brought love and humor to her life. Marriage helped comfort Katherine’s heart in her adult years, but actually shielded her from ever having to feel the deep sense of unworthiness that had filled her heart since childhood.
She was in her 60’s when Katherine came on Pure Heart Weekend. As she told her story, she saw the brutal reality of her emptiness, her longing for love, her parents’ inadequacy at healing her heart. She came to acknowledge that growing up her shame-based identity had been “I am an unloved child; something must be flawed in me; I am worthless.”
However, her Pure Heart Weekend in 2008 did not break through to very much hope. Her weekend experience did not bring the healing she needed. She could not get in touch with her heart, for she was living in her head. But the weekend did make her hungry for healing. After the weekend she picked up the same book, Leanne Payne’s book, that I had been reading back in 1998. But Katherine did what I failed to do. As she read, Katherine pulled out a journal. She interacted with the book like she was having a running dialogue with her Heavenly Father.
She saw her pain, and she wrote many pages of childhood memories where her hurt was entrenched.
She felt her shame, and wrote many pages of the deep anguish and loneliness in her heart.
She winced at the emptiness of her false self, and wrote many pages of the grief and despair of her behavior in the presence of her schoolmates.
She did forgiveness work. She did healing of hurtful memories work. She identified lies from her childhood shame, and renounced them. She called out her own phoniness at the wincing memories of life at her prestigious, uptown school.
Here’s the point of sitting in dialogue with God about your backstory.
Most of us are lacking in self-awareness.
We need a greater transformational knowing of ourselves.
I need to know me as God knows me.
I must discover what He already knows about me, and what He sees in me.
I must come to know my hurtful ways (Psalm 139:24-25).
Intimacy with the Father leads to intimacy with myself.
The more intimate my dialogue is with God,
the more He will reveal ME to me.
When I acknowledge what He reveals, then I can change it.
Katherine began to do her work in 2008. She has spent ten years on this journey. But her biggest breakthroughs in dialogue with God have come here in the last few weeks. For Katherine is living with Multiple Myeloma, a wicked form of cancer that affects the plasma cells in the bone marrow. Next week, I will tell you more about her latest spiritual revelations.