have something to cleanse it first, or at least that’s been true for me. There’s a pastoral counseling group that I nearly joined that’s for abuse victims hereabouts. (I missed the first session, I was in CA.)

The group was started because the traditional responses from the religious community don’t work with abuse victims:

Give it to God and
Pray about it

are well and good, but don’t help a tremendous amount when your physiology has changed. That change is from God too. Our bodies react to abuse and trauma and our brain chemistry changes.

Removing that change is a long, slow process, God designed it that way. If you are undoing something that large, it takes time to unweave the strands.

And, you know what? You are enough. God made you that way! My guess is that when you look, the part saying you’re not enough came from your family, friends, society, something outside of you, but not God or yourself.

:0)

jkd

I can so relate to the “not being enough” and I don’t know, but some things have changed where that weight has not quite been there as it had been in the past.

So many people are praying for me, which I know God is working. Plus, I’ve had godly people and children lay hands on me, praying for healing. I haven’t been writing as much as I used to because the need hasn’t been there. Yes, there are still periods of times I do, but that soulfulness of not being enough, that desperation and search isn’t there, at least it’s not subtle.

On and off, I’ve been using EFT (emotional freedom technique) to address some of the issues that come to mind. Honestly, I don’t know how much to attribute to that or maybe it’s the combination of everything.

Also, getting rid of toxic people or having minimal contact with them has been incredibly helpful. I’m sorry I haven’t kept up with all that’s going on with you. I pop in periodically and see how you’re doing and usually have not felt so inclined to comment as it seems the very deep soulfulness of me has changed.

Aside from prayer and having people pray for me, I have been loosely kept a notebook of various thoughts and feelings I have, and things that people say either regarding me or just that they say that hit a negative nerve. I write it down without passing judgment, then at some later point in time, I do EFT (aka tapping) on it.

Sometimes I’ll take my afformations list that I have here on 43T (one of my goals) and do the “tapping” on all or parts of the list. And, I do get Gary Craig’s EFT newsletter and often times it has at least 1 article that resonates with me and I do the tapping that is talked about in that article or at least read the article.

The tapping itself when combined with the psychological part breaks the physiological and psychological bond of negative emotional strongholds. The tapping is on various meridian (energy) points of the body.

I really don’t understand how it works, but something does work. I’ve been using this method on/off since May’01. It’s been really interesting to see things progress for me emotionally.

I so feel for you, and though I still deal with some perfectionistic tendencies, the stronghold is no longer a stronghold and greatly weakening.

Bless you,
Doris

surely this is the most difficult thing we do in our 80 ~ or so years of life… trying to be humble, trying to lay our lives down for our brothers, taking off and laying down our crowns at the feet of the most high.

look at this word… instead of the word shame. because with surrender comes grace and a flooding in of rejoicing, warmth and welcome from the creator of the universe, whereas that other word does not bring anything good at all.

the evil one (how sinister that sounds) would trick you into only thinking about the second word. don’t let it happen.

Rejoice with the new day.
God bless : )