I have been involved in Christian activities ever since I was born. As a young boy of 10 I came to faith in Christ but struggled with my sense of self and fought against God and my parents. then in June of 1968, at age 20, ten years after my first faith experience, I was transformed by the intervention of the Holy Spirit.
That intervention came without fanfare, singing, preaching, my asking or seeking of any kind consciously. But it came in a powerful and meaningful, life changing manner. About ten years later I understood better how to speak of the event but all that matters very little. Like the blind man in the Bible, "All I know is that I was blind and now I see".
A similar thing happened to a lady and described by her in this New York Time's Video. It is a powerful video and a great testimony to the power of God. her deep touch came suddenly and set her free quickly. That is rare but wonderful so let us give God the glory when we are able to receive such a blessing.
Here is a summary of what happened to this young woman who is now a famous Psychotherapist.
She was hospitalized again and emerged confused, lonely and more committed than ever to her Catholic faith. She moved into another Y, found a job as a clerk in an insurance company, started taking night classes at Loyola University — and prayed, often, at a chapel in the Cenacle Retreat Center.
“One night I was kneeling in there, looking up at the cross, and the whole place became gold — and suddenly I felt something coming toward me,” she said. “It was this shimmering experience, and I just ran back to my room and said, ‘I love myself.’ It was the first time I remember talking to myself in the first person. I felt transformed.”
The high lasted about a year, before the feelings of devastation returned in the wake of a romance that ended. But something was different. She could now weather her emotional storms without cutting or harming herself.
What had changed?
It took years of study in psychology — she earned a Ph.D. at Loyola in 1971 — before she found an answer. On the surface, it seemed obvious: She had accepted herself as she was. She had tried to kill herself so many times because the gulf between the person she wanted to be and the person she was left her desperate, hopeless, deeply homesick for a life she would never know. That gulf was real, and unbridgeable.
That basic idea — radical acceptance, she now calls it — became increasingly important as she began working with patients, first at a suicide clinic in Buffalo and later as a researcher. Yes, real change was possible. The emerging discipline of behaviorism taught that people could learn new behaviors — and that acting differently can in time alter underlying emotions from the top down.
This is what I call "Healing from Shame" because biblical Shame is a "Complete loss of Identity and Inheritance". The answer is the experience of knowing intellectually and exponentially that God knows us and loves us. When this lady experienced the raw love of God inside her she was delivered from Shame.
Gary Sweeten
sweetenlife.com
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