Saturday, February 13, 2010

Dearest God,

This morning in prayer I was reminded that a personal healing has a far higher purpose. It does not just begin and end with me but rather is intended to extend outward. It has the power to heal others.

Can this really be so? Because if healing is not just personal but also communal, then a healing that is shared in an intentional way can become yet another means to fulfill your greater purpose in the world. One healing can become 10 and 10 can become 20. Oh, my God that is what happened in my family! Oh my goodness!

Many years ago I participated in a continuing education program where we had to make family diagrams including as many generations as we could. Then we had to get specific about cut offs, estrangements, addictions, and even more. I remember weeping as I filled in the blanks and discovered the heartbreak so present in my family for generations. When we shared our personal graphs with our classmates, I remember my deep sadness. I had never put it all together before. I came home and wept some more.

Throughout that year I was educated on the ways in which a broken family system could be made whole again. I learned that one breakdown can lead to others but one healing can lead to more. I made a vow that I would change the cycle in my family. I had no idea how that promise would play out. What could one person do, I thought to myself. But clearly I had learned that one has the power to change things.

Sixteen healings later, this morning I wrote down the names of family members who have experienced a familial healing and I was astonished. I was blown away by the number of persons in my family who have found their way back home. One healing became sixteen and there is probably more due to the fact that each one's healing probably took on a healing of its own that lead to further healings around them.

I was a participant in the healing of my family but not the real power. The power to heal belongs to you. You healed my family. You lovingly healed my family. I guess my role was to take your lead, to allow my own self to be changed, transformed, to be an agent of healing for others.

How many people have or are being healed that can be traced back to my own familial healing? Wow! Anyone I assisted in the church as a pastor through acceptance and unconditional love, sermons, retreats, spiritual direction, counselling. Each one became an extension of my healing, again not because I had the power to heal but I had the power to participate, to assist, to walk differently, to point to you, the Great Healer.

Even as I am writing right now you took me back to another incredible memory that was associated with the healing of memories. I remember being with my covenant group. One trained in deep healing lead me through a three and a half hour spiritual exercise that literally took me back to former generations of broken family members. Literally I heard their screams, their wailing, their pain. I was overwhelmed with loss and grief. Somehow I wound up in the deep black hole with them. And then suddenly I saw myself in the light in the bottom of the pit lying still, breathless, lifeless. Momentarily I witnessed my body gently and very slowly begin to move, my lungs commence breathing. As I entered my own body I began to stir, breathing in life. Many minutes later I realized the quiet. Healed, my ancestors formed crosses that connected together making a stairway to a new life above for me.

Sixteen healings, oh no, so many, many more. Even a church, healed by your grace-filled hands. Oh my goodness, if this is all so, then the healing did not begin with me at all. It started back, way back, way, way back. My own healing was an extension of someone else's. Oh my, oh my.

You reveal
the secrets
of the cosmos
to us
as a way
to teach us
about compassionate love
and gracious gratitude,
O Lord.
What awesome power
you have
for good.
What trust
you place
in us
to participate
in the healing
of the world,
one person
at a time.
Even now
there are those
who have
come to me
this morning
where healing
is being extended
yet again.
Oh my God,
my wondrous God,
I am awestruck
with wonder.
Accept all
my alleluias,
dear God,
all my glorias,
I pray.

Love always, Andrea