Heart healing

It's hard to believe there's something better out there than heart chocolate. But there is. It's healing that reaches from your head to your toes and to the depths of your very soul.

Heart healing.

I blogged a few weeks ago about my heart chocolate experience in Nashville and how Brandilyn prayed for me. Well this week I followed through with something else the Lord put on my heart from that time in Nashville. To visit the Healing Rooms. First I visited their web page, which I would encourage you all to check out. There's a quote there that immediately grabbed my heart…

"If you want to walk on water, you must get out of the boat."

Peter and his water walking is my all-time favorite story in the Bible. God has used it over and over to teach me so much. In my marriage, my writing, my teaching, my friendships, in all I hold dear— I sink and cry out… and am learning to walk on water.

So I read the quote and did it again. I got out of the boat and made plans to visit the Healing Rooms. The enemy attacked on so many fronts. My marriage took some painful hits and we almost didn’t follow through with the plan to go for prayer. But God is God and He had appointed a time for us to go.

My husband stepped out of his boat and decided we’d go, even if I wasn’t willing to talk to him. The entire trip to the Healing Rooms was spent in silence. Me listening to the Holy Spirit’s conviction of how I’d treated my husband and forgiving him for how he’d treated me as well. (Over a small incident of selfishness we both fell back into old patterns of relating and let the enemy have a field day in our relationship. Thankfully God is not about to give up on us and has better plans that even our foolishness can’t thwart.)

While we waited for our appointed time to be prayed over we read some of the books on display. One in particular caught my eye. In it I read about diabetes and both physical and spiritual/emotional causes of the disease. I’ve know since I was diagnosed 18 years ago that my mind and heart had a lot to do with this disease manifesting itself in my body. So nothing in that struck me as odd. What knocked my feet out from under me was the statement about severe rejection being one of the emotional roots.

Rejection?

Immediately my mind went to the fact that I’ve never known my biological father. He’s known how to contact me, but never has. And I’ve tried to contact him with no return response. But God had far deeper places to take me.

My husband went to be prayed for and I went a little later with a totally different team. Not my plan, but God knew exactly what He was doing. The team that prayed for me was incredible. We did talk through some issues of forgiveness, but not towards my dad. What came out of my mouth was all about my mom.

After that, the two wonderful ladies on my prayer team spent most of our time together praying for my physical healing. It was an experience like I’ve never had before. Going into the prayer time I had the assurance from the Lord that I would be healed, but that my healing would not be an instant happening. In fact, I had to sign a form that I would not stop any medical treatment before seeing my physician. God showed me then that He had far bigger plans for my healing than just my freedom from diabetes.

What happened at the Healing Rooms is a precious memory to me now, something I will go back to and be reminded of God’s amazing power and faithfulness. But what happened later that night is an even more incredible memory.

It began with one of the prayer ladies speaking to me about God being whatever I needed. I have received Him as my Daddy, my protector and provider, my strong tower where I would run. But I’ve struggled with Him being my comforter, softly and tenderly drawing me to Himself and enjoying me like a mommy does her little ones.

So that night, I prayed about God being whatever I needed and He gave me these verses:

Isaiah 66:12-13 “For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.’”

Isaiah 51:3 “The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”

As I started to personalize those verses and pray them, God broke open the floodgates in my heart. Pain I had kept stored there, rejections that felt like a noose around my neck, years and years of memories. Ones I had forgiven and even felt before, but not like this. Not in the context of rejection and how I’d allowed it to define me. I cried curled up in a ball rocking back and forth on my bedroom floor for what felt like hours.

But this time as I cried, I felt the cleansing that can only come from being in the presence of God, laid bare and yet totally loved.

I feel it’s important to say here that I love my mom and she loves me. She is a wonderful person who, like me, lived out of her wounds and wounded others.

But I had to face those wounds, not so much what she did or didn’t do, but what I received from the enemy through those wounds and allowed to continue hurting me over and over again. Feeling the wounds in the safety of God’s arms and proclaiming from my heart forgiveness for my mom, freed me. Internal walls crumbled and I felt God’s presence, His soft, gentle comfort surround me.

I reread those verses and cried tears of peace and joy. God had answered the cries of my heart. I wrote them in a little notebook this way:

This is what the Lord says, “I will extend peace to Amy like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; Amy will nurse and be carried on My arm (provided for and held dear) and dandled on My knee. (enjoyed) As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort Amy.

The Lord will surely comfort Amy and will look with compassion on all her ruins; (my physical body, my past, and the difficulties in my marriage) He will make Amy’s deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in Amy, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

Typing this I can’t help but smile. The Lord has been so good to me.

And He continues to be. He’s answering the prayers for healing from diabetes and continued healing in my marriage. I’ve already started to see physical improvements in my body and my blood sugars. Slow and steady, but there nonetheless.

And in my marriage… wow. God has been teaching us new ways of living and relating to each other for some time now. But after Thursday, I’ve seen what a major work God is dong in both of our hearts and how it extends far beyond us. Quiet, but powerful, like the sun after a solar eclipse. That’s how I feel. The eclipse has passed and the Son is shining—even brighter than before.

Please keep praying for us. I’m seeing that marriage is a journey of the heart— healing, rejoicing, stumbling, and growing even more, going deeper and deeper still with God and each other. Please pray we’ll stay the course and let our light shine so that many will be drawn to the Lord. In the same way, that my physical healing from diabetes will be used to show many that God is indeed still in the business of working miracles… inside and out.