It was a day in May, not much different from today, that I got a phone call informing me that my grandmother’s vitals were failing rapidly.  My mom was traveling out of the state and was not sure when she would be able to catch a flight back to Florida.  I left work heading over to the Nursing Home to be with my grandmother.

When I got there the Hospice Nurse explained that my Grandmother was not coherent and her vitals had started to fail within the last hour.  This was upsetting to me because I knew my mom wanted to be here with her mother in the final hours of her life.  The Hospice Nurse and I started praying for my grandmother to hold on until my mom could fly home to be with her.  We read her Bible verses, called my Aunt so that she could say goodbye over my cell phone, and sat with Grandmother continuing to pray.

Then I had a thought.  My Grandmother had always loved music.  In fact, she used to sit in her bed listening to music waving her arms like an orchestra conductor.  I went to ask one of the Nursing Home Nurses if they had a Radio or CD player I could borrow so that I could play some music for my Grandmother.   I was told that my Grandmother was deaf and wouldn’t be able to hear the music.  I said that I knew she was hard of hearing, but I still thought she’d be able to hear the music.  I was then told that they didn’t have anything that they could let me borrow.

I was frustrated by their response.  Then my friend Lynn called me.  She asked if there was anything that she could do for me.  I said, “Yes, can you come sing to my Grandmother with me?”  Lynn was part of the Sunday Worship Team so I knew that she’d know some worship music we could sing.  Lynn arrived and we began singing worship songs to my Grandmother.

While we were singing the Hospice Nurse took my Grandmother’s vitals again.  We were all shocked to see that she was stabilizing.  We continued singing to her knowing that she could hear us.  And we also believed that there was now hope that she would be able to wait for my mother’s plane to arrive.  The entire time we were singing her vitals remain stabilized. (I kept thinking, “I knew she’d be able to hear us!”)  The Hospice Nurse said that she’d never had this kind of “vitals” turn around happen before when someone had been in my Grandmother’s condition.

My Grandmother never became fully conscious again, but that hour or so of us singing to her enabled her vitals to stabilize for a long enough period of time for my mom to be able to get home to hold her mother’s hand, kiss her cheek, and say goodbye.

I am a firm believer that praising the Lord through worship music can open the door for all kinds of healing to take place.  If you are ever in a circumstance where you are feeling overwhelmed I encourage you to quietly start singing a worship song.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.

 Acts 16:25-26

When we arrived in Orlando I turned to him saying (with awe in my voice), “That light followed us all the way from North Carolina to Florida.”

The older gentleman smiled while gently patting me on my head, “That’s a good thing, sweetie, since that light is attached to the wing.”

I found the entire situation amusing.  I am now thankful for that moment of “duh-ness” because it gives me a perfect example of how my perception (the light following the plane) was my reality, but it was not actuality (the light was attached to the wing – it was not following us).

Pastor Steve and I talked about this exact topic on last week’s Healing Thoughts Radio show.  When people visit the Glennon House for inner healing many times it is their perception that needs healing prayer.

Our perception of an initial circumstance is how our reactions to future similar circumstances are formed.  That initial perception helps to shape our individual reality.  If we continue to observe the same perception pattern repeatedly it makes our personal reality become concrete in our minds.  The problem with this is that our perception/reality is not necessarily the true actuality of the circumstance.  And therein lays the problem.

Here is an example:

A young woman grew up in an alcoholic family where her father got extremely physically abusive with her mother when he was drunk.  The whole family went into “crisis mode” the moment her father picked up an alcoholic drink.

The actuality in this circumstance was that her father did become abusive every time he had an alcoholic drink.  Her perception of the circumstance was that whenever any man had an alcoholic drink he became abusive.  Her father’s continued reinforcement of her perception by his abusiveness made her perception become her concrete reality. 

“All men who drink alcohol are abusers.”

When she got married her reality became a serious problem in her marriage.  Anytime her husband had an alcoholic drink she became petrified that he was going to abuse her and their children.  Her husband had no idea that she was terrified for her own life and the lives of their children.  Fear began to rule her life.  That fear caused problems in every area of her life. 

If you believe that your perceptions might be interfering in your life; I encourage you to come in for healing prayer.  Bring your perceptions and reality to the Lord.  He will reveal the truth, the actuality, in every circumstance.  He will heal those areas of woundedness so that you can live a life walking in the freedom of His actuality every day of your life.

On our most recent Healing Thoughts Radio show, Pastor Steve and I spent the entire show talking about the importance of forgiveness.  Over the weekend the word forgiveness came up a couple times as well.  Whenever, a topic keeps popping up like that I feel like God is bringing it to my attention for a reason.

One of the quotes we used from the radio show was this one from Canon Jim Holbeck, “To choose not to forgive causes us to be in bondage to those who have hurt us.”  I don’t know about you, but when I look at unforgiveness in that light it makes me want to forgive as fast as possible.  The last person I want to be in bondage to is the one who hurt me.

As a teenager, I dated a young man who hurt me deeply.  I trusted him because I truly thought he loved me.  I discovered that he had never deserved my trust.  My hurt at his actions quickly turned to a deep root of anger.  The longer I let that anger fester in my gut the more bitter I became.  In fact, I swore to him that I would never forgive him for what he’d done.

That bitter root of anger became a destructive force in all of my relationships with men.  I carried the baggage of my unforgiveness into every new relationship.  Because of my past hurt I took the stance that every man was a cheater.  I figured that if I walked into the relationship knowing that then I would have the upper hand.  Unfortunately, my angry behavior coupled with constant accusations drove many of my boyfriends away.  One of them even said, “I had never even thought about cheating on you until you kept insisting that I was cheating on you!”

Of course, a majority of my boyfriends ended up leaving me sooner or later because the constant nagging became overwhelming to them.  Every time one of them left I remembered the young man who had made me the way I was towards man.  I would get angry at him all over again.  It was all his fault that I couldn’t maintain a relationship.  I could almost feel the bitterness boiling in my gut at the mere thought of him.  Instead of time healing my wound that bitter root of anger was making the wound larger.

Whenever I entered into a new relationship, I thought of that young man knowing in my gut that – no matter whom I was with – the relationship was going to be doomed.  I was in bondage to that young man in every relationship I had with a man.  He still ruled how I thought about men, he ruled how I would act in relationships, and he ruled how I destroyed those relationships.  He had power over me even though I hadn’t seen him in years.

It wasn’t until I came to the Glennon House for inner healing that I realized that unless I forgave him I would never be free of him.  As, I worked on forgiving this young man I began to realize that I also needed to forgive myself for the way I let him have continued control over my life.  And I also had to forgive myself for my destructive behavior in my other relationships.

We all have areas of unforgiveness in our lives, sometimes they are people and sometimes they are circumstances.  As long as we allow that unforgiveness to fester inside of us we will be in bondage to that person/circumstance.  If you would like to be set free to walk in a life of forgiveness I encourage you to visit the Glennon House for inner healing prayer.

Photo Credit: sharinggodsgrace.org

I pasted one of our past Healing Thoughts into Wordle to create a picture.  Words like “God, Healing, Hope, Lives, and more” popped up extremely large in the picture.  As, I sat there hitting “randomize” I began to think how in our lives we have large words that seem to pop up again and again.

A few of the “large” words that have had the nasty habit of popping up in my life are:

• Addict
• Failure
• High School Dropout
• Fat
• Loser

Sometimes those words came from the mouths of other people.  And other times the words came from my own mouth.  Along the way, I internalized the words believing that those words were who I was as a person.  In fact, I believed those words completely to the point that I never thought I could amount to anything in my life.

In the word picture of my life those were the only words I was able to see.  No matter what changes I made, by hitting the “randomize” button, those words remained the same size.  My situations altered when I made changes, but my core belief about myself always remained the same.

Through inner healing I began to slowly see changes to my life’s word picture.  Those old large words began to fade.  In their place new words grew larger – words that no longer tore me down or made me miserable.  These new large words brought me hope.  They were words that helped me to see more clearly the person I was created to be by God.

Do I still have moments where my old large words try to exert some control in my life?  Yes, but the good news is that it doesn’t last but a moment.  Then I remember that Jesus is the Word and His words about me are the only words that matter.  Those are the words that I need to choose to be the LARGE words of my life

I believe many of us are carrying around “large” words as burdens in our lives.  It’s time to stop hitting the “randomize” button.  Instead, come visit the Glennon House for healing prayer.  Let the Lord show you His Wordle Picture of your life!

Here is the Wordle Picture of today’s Healing Thoughts.  If you notice, the LARGE words are the words that I used the most in the writing today.
Just like our LARGE words are the one’s that we tell ourselves the most.

hover over pic for photo credit

The Healing Ministry recently started a new outreach ministry.  We are now broadcasting a show called “Healing Thoughts Radio” on Blog Talk Radio.  Our show broadcasts on Thursdays from 3:30 – 4:00 pm. (The next broadcast is Thursday, April 18th)  Please click the link below to listen to our latest show.  We look forward to you joining us!

Healing 101: Healing Our Image of God 04/04 by Healing Thoughts Radio | Blog Talk Radio.

Baobab Seeds by Antoine de Saint Exupery

Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab.  The soil of the planet was infested with them.  A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late.  It spreads over the entire planet. 
It bores clear through it with its roots…
                                                                            The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

A friend of mine recently gave me this little gem of a book.  I vaguely remember reading it when I was child, but reading the book as an adult has opened up brand new doors of understanding.

As I read the above quote from the book I thought about the “baobab seeds” that I’ve let take root in my life.  While there are many times in my life that I’ve encountered the destructive power of those seeds there is one example that stands out more than the rest.

During one of my more serious bouts with depression, I fell prey to the eating pattern of binging.  I remember buying a bag of Oreo cookies.  My plan was to just eat a couple of them to satisfy my sweet tooth.  So, I took a couple out of the bag, dunked them in milk, and proceeded to enjoy the sugar rush.

I was soon distracted by the movie playing on my television.  When there was a lull in the action packed film I happened to glance down at the bag of Oreos.  I was shocked to discover that I had eaten two entire rows of the addictive cookies.

Right then I promised myself that I would never, under any circumstances, indulge to that extent again.  It was a great promise, but it was one that I failed to keep.

Those two rows of Oreos soon became the entire bag eaten over a period of a couple of hours.  Then because I was overloaded with sugar I craved something salty.  In order to appease that salt craving I’d open a bag of Lays Salt & Vinegar potato chips.  I would pour myself a small bowl of the chips in order to have some kind of control over the portion size.  My mistake was placing the opened bag of chips next to the bowl.  This easy access temptation enabled me to refill my bowl numerous times.

The result of my out of control binging was my weight topping the scales at 240 pounds and being medically labeled as “grossly obese.”  As I look back, I can see that the day I ate those two rows of Oreos was where the seeds of obesity began to grow.  If I hadn’t provided the soil (by indulging my cravings) for the seeds they would have never grown roots which resulted in the destruction of my health for many years.

The good news is that God in His mercy gave me a second chance.  I am now constantly on the look out for “baobab seeds” that are trying to take root in my life.  If I see even one, I know to pull it up then hand it over to God to dispose of permanently.

If you have some “baobab seeds” trying to take root in your life please visit us at the Glennon House.  We will pray for you as you hand over those destructive seeds to the Lord.

You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first
moment when they can be distinguished…(p 23)

Smart people those car designers!

That same principle can be applied to our lives.  While we need to be aware of what lies behind us to navigate through life, what lies in front of us requires more of our attention.

I spent a majority of my life with my eyes focused on my rearview mirror.  Granted I needed to do that for part of my healing to occur.  However, I clung to the past like a security blanket.  I had made a variety of inner vows based on situations and people from my past.

• I swore I would never trust a single person ever again
• I swore that I would never love another man
• I swore that I didn’t need anybody but myself
• I swore that I would hold everyone at arms length so I wouldn’t get hurt

Those are just a few of the inner vows that I made because I was continually focused on my past.  Not only did I make inner vows, but I also embraced my past behavior patterns because I was afraid of change.  Unfortunately, that kept me trapped in a stagnant life full of regrets.  I should have heeded Albert Einstein’s words, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

It wasn’t until I came to the Glennon House for inner healing that I learned that the more I was healed the less I had to cling to my past.  The Lord was healing me so that I could move into my future.  Continuing to concentrate on my past whether through my inner vows or behavior patterns resulted in me not receiving the fullness of the Lord’s gift of healing.

The inner vows I had made also interfered with my ability to fully trust and love Jesus.  When I realized that my past was prohibiting me from deepening my relationship with the Lord I asked Canon Jim Holbeck to pray with me to break those inner vows.  We prayed through each of those inner vows breaking them so that I was free to move forward in my relationship with the Lord and with other people.

God wants us healed so that we might move forward into the life He has designed specifically for each of us.  If we are desperately keeping our eyes focused on our rearview mirror life we risk missing the amazing life that is ahead of us!

If you are tired of living a rearview mirror life I encourage you to visit the Glennon House for inner healing prayer.  Embrace the life that the Lord wants to give you so that you can see the awesome plans He has for you!

I think each of us was born with a unique song in our hearts.  It is the song God intended for us to share with the world.  That song that dwells in our heart is nurtured by the way we love and the way others love us.  Over time the notes of our song join together to form a melody that we sing as we live our lives.

In a perfect world everyone’s heart song would flourish.  Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world that tries to steal our songs before we have a chance to sing.  Sometimes others actions rob us of our songs.  Sometimes our own actions steal our songs.  And sometimes it is a combination of others actions and our own actions.

Regardless of whose actions are to blame many of us are walking around with our heart songs silenced by the pain that we carry.  Here is part of a poem I read that talks about the seeds of song in our hearts:

…The fertile soil of my heart watered
My seeds of song as they sprouted
Leaves reaching for the light of love
Blooms spread open in song

Then one day a shadow stranger
Paid a visit to my heart garden
He blocked the light of love
Stealing lyrics from my song blooms

The stranger crushed the petals
Blowing their dust from his hand
The lyrics scattered on the wind
Lost to my heart’s perception…

The scattered petal dust of my song
Awaits the return of the light of love
That has the power to change petal dust
Into the seeds of song once again

As I read that poem I thought how the “shadow stranger” could be an addiction, a disease, depression, an unhealthy relationship, a lost job, or any number of negative circumstances that cause us to stumble in life.  While the stranger is determined to destroy what is good in our lives he is not ultimately successful.  Because the “light of love” has the power to heal what was destroyed and make it whole once again!

That is the hope we can have in the Lord.  He is the “Light of Love” that heals us…making us whole.  He is the One Who takes what has been destroyed and makes it brand new!  The Lord is the One Who gives us our new song to sing!

He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:3 NLT

“We will learn that His [Jesus]* only agenda can be summed up with two compelling words: obedient surrender.”

My heart was stirred by the words: obedient surrender. Depending on where you are in your walk with the Lord you will probably fall somewhere on the spectrum between “That scares the heck out of me” or “Finally, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief.”

For most of us who have grown up with the mentality of “to thine ownself be true” it is a huge paradigm shift to be solely obedient to Someone besides ourselves.  Many of us are indoctrinated from a young age to think that the only person we can rely on is ourselves.  If we don’t do it ourselves it doesn’t get done.

The outlandish idea that obeying Someone else is actually a freedom sentence is a hard concept to wrap our minds around.  For me, the term obedient always seemed to have negative connotations that implied that I would have to give up my freedom (of self) to another, whom 9 times out of 10, I didn’t trust.  I equated obedience with being controlled by another for their purposes only.  I found the idea that being obedient to God would set me free as opposed to imprisoning me a rather bizarre concept!

And the word surrender…that was 100 times worse than the word obedient in my eyes!  My skewed perception of surrendering hinged on my wounded view of never allowing myself to be vulnerable to another.  My entire life I had worn a stalwart mask of invincibility so that no one would ever discover a chink in my armor.  The thought of surrendering to God scared me!  It would mean that I had to be vulnerable in front of Him.  Once again I couldn’t fathom that surrendering to God would actually set me free from my prison instead of making me a prisoner.

When I truly began to walk with the Lord all my preconceived perceptions of the words “obedient” and “surrender” were destroyed.  All one has to do is to read the New Testament to see the evidence of what happens when somebody is willing to walk in obedient surrender to the Lord.  Jesus’ life epitomizes what happens when you willingly choose to be obedient and surrender your will, mind, heart, and body to the Lord.  Everywhere Jesus went freedom followed.

Freedom from sickness, pain, addiction, mental illness, blindness, relationship issues, and many others followed Jesus wherever He traveled.  He is a testimony to a life lived in obedient surrender which then changed other people’s lives as they too chose to live this way before the Lord.

Are you ready to leave the old ways of thinking about “obedient” and “surrender” behind to embrace God’s idea of obedient surrender?  I encourage you to take your first step towards freedom!

* added by me for frame of reference

While driving one day, a woman’s attention focused on the license plate of the car ahead.  The license plate read “B-WHO-UR.”  ‘How can I,’ she thought.  I don’t know who I am!

As I read that my heart ached for her because a short time ago that woman was me.

Somewhere, along the way I’d decided that my identity was wrapped up in the behaviors that I was participating in during my daily life.  Or the labels that were given to me by Doctors that explained my erratic behaviors.  My background is riddled with many activities and/or labels that I’d rather not admit, but those activities and/or labels were who I believed myself to be for years.

• High School Dropout
• Pregnant Teenager
• Cocaine Addict
• Alcoholic
• Welfare Recipient
• Food Addict
• Relationship Addict
• Homeless
• PTSD
• Panic & Anxiety Disorder
• Bi-Polar Disorder

When I looked at that list of behaviors/labels all I saw, from my viewpoint, was a LOSER.  I often wondered if I would ever amount to anything in this life at all.

Back then, reading “B-WHO-UR” would have sent me into a tailspin of denigrating self rhetoric.  I probably would have been driving my car telling myself what a horrific “loser” I was the entire rest of the drive.

Then I came to the Glennon House where I received inner healing with a trained Prayer Minister.  As my healing advanced, I began to realize that my past didn’t have to define my future.  I did not have to carry all that baggage with me for the rest of my life.  In fact, the Lord wanted me to give Him all of my baggage so that I could walk through life as a free woman who no longer viewed herself as the ultimate loser.

That’s when I realized that the whole “B-WHO-UR” mentality is really not what is important.  In fact, it’s the wrong mentality completely.

It should read, “B-WHOSE-UR.”

In other words, who you are in the Lord is what really matters!  As a child of God I embrace that fact that I am loved, forgiven, precious, invited into relationship with Him, and the apple of His eye to name just a few.  When we come to truly know whose we are the Lord transforms our brokenness into wholeness. The only way to define ourselves is to remember that we are His children and to ask Him to help us see ourselves the way He sees us – through His eyes of love.

If you are struggling under the weight of all of your baggage I encourage you to visit the Glennon House.  It would be the privilege of one of our Prayer Ministers to walk beside you as you receive the healing that will enable you to see yourself as God sees you.  So that you may know that “whose” you are is much more important than “who” you are!