Returning to Perfect

Chapter Four The Healing Heart You may remember we have already talked a little bit about the heart whose main purpose is to pump richly, oxygenated, blood throughout our body with its every beat. This heart is needed for our very survival and without it – we won’t, survive that is. And we’ve discussed, in part, how it repairs itself and creates contributories to ensure it works as efficiently as possible for as long as possible. So, we won’t be talking about that again. Instead, we are going to discover and discuss what else the heart is and what our heart means to us. And in doing this, we will be learning not only about how it heals and ultimately survives but how it can be hardened, softened, broken and, believe it or not – can signal the world as to who we are, what we think and what we believe. It can do all that? Sounds pretty impressive... Can it leap tall buildings in a single bound, too? No, it’s not Superman but it does represent the part of us that houses love - that feeling we call “love”. Really? Does it capture that true essence of our soul? That soul which we can give freely to others or hold back, like “The Grinch” because we have been rejected or abandoned? Yes, it can. It can do all that. When our feelings are hurt or we lose someone close to us either due to death or rejection, don’t we feel a twinge in our heart, the ache of pain and grief? And don’t we feel a warm feeling of happiness and tenderness in our heart when we feel loved and when we love in return? On Valentine’s Day pictures of hearts are everywhere and often when we write “I love you” we add a little heart next to it, right? Is that heart just a symbol or is there more to it than that? The bible states that out of the abundance of the heart, the fullness and overflowing of the heart; we speak words loving and kind or cutting and sharp like a “Ginsu” knife, (paraphrased that a little). If that’s so, then maybe it’s also true that without “a heart” - a heart that can love and show love, we can’t survive. Just the same as if we didn’t have a physical heart that beats. The separation from others, this lack of communication, the inability to be a friend or to show compassion, to give and to trust others can isolate us to the point where all that is left is a “stone-cold heart” – lifeless and without meaning. And a life without meaning is no life at all - death to the soul and spirit. Questions? I know you must have some of them. How can one person be hurt, abused, used and discarded but still seek out love and give love to anyone who needs it? But yet another person takes all the kindness and love others are willing to give but never have a kind word to say or do a single loving act for anyone else? Is this “feeling heart” - this intangible part of us, this “invisible to the eye part” of us the very thing which is eternal and lives on long after our bodies are gone? Maybe the answer can be found in understanding what having a heart, a “feeling heart” really means. The Websters Dictionary defines the heart as - the core of something, the nucleus. It also gives as its synonym, the word - spirit. Is this a coincidence or is it the recognition that our spirit, the Holy Spirit lives in all of us – in that central part of us, our core - our nucleus. It’s not something you can study under a microscope like bacteria or a virus. There are no “PET” scans for it - no autopsies or dissections of it. But it can be measured, observed and its’ affects recorded. And its’ aftermath is the only true test of what it has been and what it has meant for each of us – each person, all of humankind – for you and for me. I had the privilege for ten years to work directly with women and men in a residential setting, helping them change their life from one of chaos and failure to one of stability and success. First hand, I observed the effects of what the lack of or misguided love can do to a person. And what the flip side - unconditional love from God can do. It can erase mistakes, rewrite history and restore what was lost – “a perfect life on purpose”. In those ten years, hundreds of individuals walked through our doors – their lives out of control. Each and every one told their story of pain, loneliness, abuse, addictions and of all kinds of brokenness - their guilt and their shame. And in every one of these cases, their heart – their core had been damaged. The person that they had been - was no longer the person they were now. They were far from perfect – far from their true creation. But through love and compassion, structure, stability and discipline, encouragement and positive self-talk, (behavior modification) - their thinking and belief about themselves and the world around them was changed. Their confidence and self-esteem restored and strengthened and their hearts healed and ready to love again. All this was accomplished utilizing a technique we called “inner-healings” – healing from the inside out, letting each individual heal themselves. All human beings have issues with people throughout their lives, but in the case of our students (individuals with addictions), these issues had taken on a more sinister role - the root cause of their downward spiral of destruction. So, for them to be able to be free from the addictive past and be launched into a future without drugs and ruin they had to be able to deal with all the pain, anger and shame, forgive and then let go and believe their life now was changed. The process went something like this: The first step was a conversation between the student and their mentor to identify who the student needed to do inner healings on. Caregivers, parents, grandparents, were always included along with siblings, spouses, ex-spouses and boyfriends. In addition, anyone else in their life that they had strong negative feelings for. The list could be as long as a dozen or as short as three or four. God was always a part of the list, too. And we always saved that one till last. The student and their mentor would first pray then briefly talk about each person on the list. Sometime during this discussion, the order in which the inner healings would be done was finalized with the easier ones always being done first, to quickly begin the process of relieving their pain and gain freedom and the confidence to build a solid foundation for the tougher ones yet to come. Next the student would be asked to write down all the things that the person said and did to hurt them or - didn’t say or didn’t do that made them feel bad, hurt or angry in some way. They would work on the list for about a week and then meet with their mentor again with the goal of having the student talk about the events, feel the emotions, understand and realize how this had affected their life and lastly, confront the person.