If you have been following my blog at all, you know a little about my story and my testimony of how God brought me out of the occult and new age and into His saving Grace. It has been quite a journey for me these past two and a half years! I reached a point in life where I had grown tremendously and felt very happy with my relationship with Jesus. Yet I still had so much anger inside of me, and could not stop taking it out on my husband and children. I had no idea why. I knew I had a bad life but it didn’t seem to be enough to cause so much anger all of the time. I have experienced abuse, sexual abuse, and depression, but really, I knew that other people had it much worse than I had. My anger was plaguing me and I began to really feel hopeless to change it. No matter what I did I was always angry. I would always blow up over the slightest things. That is where my journey into inner healing began.
Not to mention the gaps in my memory of my childhood. From my earliest ages up to about late elementary I could not remember much at all. I thought it was normal though, being older and just forgetting things. I did have some memories, so I knew I could remember things. I remember going to my grandmothers to spend the night sometimes and what it was like there. I remembered the apartments I lived in when I was little and sliding down the stairs in my footsie pajamas. I remember playing with potato bugs and my first boyfriend (whom I didn’t even like!) And other little fun things like that. Starting at about age 13, I just remember my life very clearly. I remember all the major events in my life. If you read my story you will see that the story starts at about age 13, except for a little background on my childhood. From there on I could tell you most everything that has happened to me with no problems.
I have never thought twice about why I didn’t remember much of my childhood. I never even questioned why I was so depressed that I wanted to die at such a young age. I just knew it was because I felt my parents didn’t love me. My parents were emotionally unavailable and angry most of the time and I just assumed that was the reason I felt so unloved. I never questioned any of it; it just seemed normal to me. As my life kept going it just continued to spin out of control. This led me to believe I had good reasons to feel crazy, depressed and obsessed with death. I didn’t like it, I just accepted that there were valid reasons in place to cause these awful feelings inside me.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18
This never seemed to be a good enough explanation to my anger issues though. As bad as I thought my life was, I knew it was not so bad I should be so angry all of the time. I would blow up at the drop of a hat, and completely lose control to the point of screaming at the people I loved the most. It would usually be over something that seemed like no big deal to others, but to me it seemed like the end of the world. I was always so easily hurt or offended. I did make progress in these areas to some extent, through the work of God. I began to love others when I never could before, and forgive easier. More so with people outside of my family though.
I was desperate for change, but no matter how many people prayed for me or how many deliverance sessions I had, the anger would persist. Finally I decided it was time to do something about it, and so I sought out counseling. I excepted that there was something emotional driving this problem, not just spiritual. I found an amazing Christian counselor who was Holy Spirit led. It was very different from any counseling I had done before. More like an inner healing type of counseling that started with prayer and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
I learned during these sessions that anger is a secondary emotion being driven by pain. Pain was a deep root that have been driven into me from an early age. It seemed to come from rejection and abandonment issues with my parents. Instead of identifying myself as an angry person, I started to realize I was a very hurt person, carrying around a deep well of pain inside that had never been dealt with. I had only skimmed the surface so far, and the bottom was still bubbling up and coming out of me. Pain hurts others, when we don’t seek to heal it and stop letting it control our behaviors and beliefs. Signs you may need inner healing.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Psalm 34:19
After a couple of months of seeing this Holy Spirit led counselor, I had to end our sessions due to the lack of a baby sitter. I was absolutely crushed because I had begun to open up the wounds that I had tried so hard to push down for so long and the pain was now pushing up to the surface, ready to spill out and drown me. I wanted inner healing and peace for my family. God had another plan for me however. He led me to someone else, who was going to begin a journey of inner healing with me like I had never experienced before. She had been down the path of inner healing herself, and was able to use her knowledge to help guide me as well.
My inner healing could not have really made progress if I had not first started with a deliverance session. Deliverance is the beginning to healing and it is like a house cleaning. You get rid of layers of demonic oppression, often caused by generational and ancestral curses, sin and other opened gates. This allows you to make room to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and His leading in your inner healing. Inner healing that is not done by Jesus Himself, is not true healing. Jesus has the power to destroy the bondage your past pain and trauma has over you, and to heal you completely. No one else on earth has that power. The devil wants to keep you broken and in bound to him, so that you cannot make progress in healing and in your relationships.
Before I go on I would like to talk about what inner healing is. Inner healing is completely Christ centered and Holy Spirit led. You always start with prayer and let the Holy Spirit led you in which direction He wants to go in. The purpose of inner healing is to heal your spirit and soul so you can grow closer to God and the freedom that He intended you to have. As you go through life, especially when you are young, you can have traumatic and abusive situations happen to you. These can lead to false belief systems that taint the way you see God, the world around you and other people. We behave through what our heart believes, not through what we actually know. Through inner healing the Holy Spirit guides you into memories of past events that have caused you trauma and pain. Through these you can find out what false belief systems have grown in you and then expose them to the Light of Christ to be revealed and replaced with His Truth. For some people this can open up very deep wounds that are very hard to deal with. Inner healing is something that you should not take lightly, and only accept working with someone in inner healing through prayer and the leading of God. Only God knows the perfect timing in which this should happen, and you must completely rely on Him to led you to the person He wants to use to help you through this.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3
I first began inner healing sessions once every two weeks. It brought up memories of my childhood that I had already known about consciously. Memories that were painful and hard to deal with, but that also shed some light into the why of the pain. It was difficult, but not so difficult that I couldn’t deal with it. Soon enough the Holy Spirit began to led me into new directions in my memory recall. Memories that deeply buried and hidden, because the pain of the events was absolutely unbearable. Every week seemed to bring a new memory of horrible pain and abuse, each one related to or connected with the last.
As I started my journey of inner healing the pain and anger seemed to grow and I began to find life harder to navigate on a daily basis. To be honest with you, I had already been struggling a bit, not just with my anger, but with anxiety, stress and other things. It made daily life more difficult than it should have been and caused some bad days. I soon had to move up to a session once per week. The pain that surfaced was so intense that some days it was all I could do to take care of myself, let alone make dinner for my family. Thank God that I had just enrolled my 3 youngest kids into part-time private school, because we had been homeschooling up until that point. God knew it was time for me to begin this inner healing, and that I was going to need help with the kids.
As the pain of the reality of my childhood began to be revealed my life came screeching to a stop. The world as I knew it was no longer the same. I began to understand the reason I was so angry and wanted so desperately to die at a young age. I had repressed memories so horrible that I really was unsure that they could have happened to me, because I did not want to believe that such horror could be true. It seemed like something from a movie that would happen to someone else, not to me. But the memories explained so much about who I was and what I believed. They explained why I was afraid of people and getting hurt, why I wanted to lash out at those I loved so easily. I knew they were real and not something forced or imagined because Jesus was right there in the middle of it, speaking truth into my heart, where it needed it the most. These memories were deeply repressed for a reason, but they were now coming out in God’s perfect timing for my inner healing.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32
I have discovered many things about myself in these past 8 months of inner healing. It has been quite a journey for me. I am now coming into a place where I am finding hope and functioning normally again for the first time in months. I began to gain weight and feel physically awful because I eat nothing but junk because cooking or meal planning was not something I could handle. So we ate lots of fast food and dessert, because it felt good and was easy. I am not done excavating memories that horrify me and bring up deep pain, but the work Jesus has done inside of me is a miracle. I am able to keep moving forward towards the end goal of being whole and complete in Jesus Christ. He has a wonderful plan for me, and Satan has been unsuccessful in thwarting it.
I have discovered many things about myself, my family, and my views of the world and other people. Satan has done a great work at trying to beat me down and steal me from God. It worked for a long time, but those days are over. That is just what he does, and he will never stop trying to rip apart God’s children. There are many people out there who have suffered for so long in shame and silence because they were afraid to talk about the horrible things that had been done to them. There are others who have an inkling somewhere inside, that they have something horrible hidden inside of them, that has caused them suffering for far too long. Satan has kept them in the dark, and bound in pain, but I say no more. You were not meant to live that life. You were meant to live in the light of Jesus Christ, who has died to save you and has a wonderful plan for you. Are you ready to come closer to Him, and see what He has waiting for you?
I am here to tell you that it is OK, and you are not alone. God is here with you right now, and He loves you so much. He knows your pain, your suffering, your guilt and shame, your fears and betrayals, and has experienced them all right there with you. And even though you think He was never there, that you were all alone, that is a lie. He was there. He was protecting you in ways that you cannot even fathom at this moment. But one day you will see how amazing your God is, and how far He has gone to help you. And when that day comes you will fall down on your knees in tears thanking Him for His love because you will be so overwhelmed by the intense love God has for you. It may not seem possible right now, but He truly will redeem all the years the locusts ate, and turn them around to use them for your good, and to glorify Himself!
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
I am not yet ready to publicly open up about the things I have learned during my inner healing. I am not yet done with my inner healing. I have just now come to a place where I can accept that this is who I am and this is my story. For me that is huge. I know that God will have me finish my testimony here on my blog, to share it with the world. For now it would be too painful, and I am waiting for His perfect timing. I can only tell you that I now understand why I was so obsessed with death and was so deep into witchcraft and the occult for most of my life. The devil tried hard to steal God’s purpose for my life, to kill me, and to destroy all my hope. But I am here to say that he failed completely. Sure I have bad days still. I even have days where I find it hard to function sometimes or feel far away from God, and even blame Him, but those days are getting less and less. The devil did not steal my purpose away, because here I am, telling you about it on this blog that God gave me, so that you too can have hope. I did lose my hope for a while, and I may have days where I find it failing, but I believe in God’s promises to me. He has begun to redeem the hell of my life, and He will finish His good work in me.
In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:4-6
Trust in your loving Father and know He will finish His work in you as well. Continue to seek His face and the freedom and healing that He created you for. God has a perfect plan to bring you that place, through deliverance, counseling, inner healing and prayer, He will give you the peace and victorious life you have been promised. Never give up, never stop praying for His help, and never stop searching for His truth. Be as persistent as the widow who continued to ask the judge for justice. God will prevail, you can count on it! Be blessed in His holy name brothers and sisters!!
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
Psalm 30:2
