The welcoming prayer is powerful. I have begun praying it since reading this. It seems it was almost written with the struggles of the parts of the Enneagram in mind!
I'm wondering, though, how you interpret the section about not desiring to change myself. In my journal I have added, "Because only the Holy Spirit can transform me." But that still doesn't mean I don't desire to become more like Christ, and I know full well that I fall woefully short.
Thank you again, Jason, for sharing your own painful story so openly and vulnerably. I pray that God continues to heal your wounds - and the wounds of those who read this and resonate with it because of their similar stories.
I, for one, don't usually *want* to learn from my wounds, but I'm also glad that in the economy of heaven, God wastes nothing.
Thank you Debbie. I too want to be changed, to become more like Christ. The welcoming prayer, seems a foundation for that. 'I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.' I have always read that as a counter to my insecure desire to be different, i.e. to have more resoruces, a different past, to be smarter, more sucessful. In other words if I was better due to my circumstnaces and choices Jesus would work in me more. Instead in the prayer, I see a place of surrender for who I am, as I am, that the Lord loves. Transformation by him begins by acceptance of how he sees me in his love for me. I am an object of his affection as I am. I discover his agency to transform me when I can accept that. Hope that makes sense.
My dad died when I was young. Parents divorced before that happened. My mom remarried. My step dad was and is emotionally unavailable. He and I had a falling out recently. It’s pushed a number of my childhood wounds, and I’m back in counseling to figure out what’s underneath that which I thought I’d released and healed from years ago.
Practically, what does it look like to “consent to the constraints of our own story”? What facilitates realization and also relinquishment? I’ll be pondering your words as I move through yet another season of navigating deep wounds of abandonment and emotional neglect from my childhood.
Thanks for doing the work and for sharing glimpses of your journey with us.
Hi Darcy, thanks for what you have shared here. It surprises me when parts of my story are tapped into and reply in moments in the present. The memory of my dad driving away and abandoning me was triggered the other day, watching a TV show with a character who walked out on their kids. That memory is piercingly bright in my minds eye, being a summers day, and middle of the day. Full of colour due to the intensity and pain of the moment. But it is also full darkness and despair. So much in that moment. My believing my Dad would be in contact but he never was. Finding out later in life, he another family was returning to, and the lies he was living in that moment that I was unaware of. I consent to it, in all it's ugliness and brutality and betrayal. I consent to it, in knowing that Christ on the cross bore this wounding of me. I read this story on his body and death. That's where I start, I think.
Really good . . . Reminds me of Leanne Payne’s exhortation/teaching to ‘forgive the circumstances of our lives’. Her three keys to inner healing, once recognition of our sin and repentance has been made, are 1 To give forgiveness; 2 To receive forgiveness; 3 To accept oneself, crossing the line from immaturity to maturity in so doing.
Her autobiography Heaven’s Calling: a memoir of one soul’s steep ascent is beautiful - she came from considerable lack in many ways, but went on to help thousands find healing through union with Christ.
I love the saying by Gregory of Nyssa quoted in her book. ‘For the one who runs towards the Lord, there is no lack of space. The one who ascends never stops, going from beginning to beginning, by beginnings that never cease.’
Thank you Jenny. I found this quote from Leanne Payne:
We pass through “the curtain, that is, his body,” dying to the old diseased forms of love we have clung to as well as to the unspeakable loneliness and pain of being disrelated at this most basic of all levels. Forgiving others as well as all the circumstances of our lives, we rise with Him in newness of life. Born anew, we take our place in His resurrected Being. In the cross there is healing; in His resurrected body and life there is identity and being. (Leanne Payne, The Broken Image (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1996), 112.)
I need to read her work, and will admit to never having done so. Thank you for showing me this connection.
And now you remind me of how I need to read the desert Fathers.
I read Leanne Payne's book Listening Prayer back in the 1990s. It was like nothing I'd ever read before in terms of Christian literature. I very much wanted to go on one of her Pastoral Care Ministries healing conferences, and in 1996 I did. It was completely life-changing – every church stream was represented, including the monastic, the Catholic and the evangelical, as well as the Anglican and the Episcopalian. Every stream was catered for in terms of worship. And yet there was very much a sense that we were all together, there in the Household of God. For years I read her central work, The Healing Presence, once a year. It really is transforming. Not sure how her other books are viewed now, relating to specific healing needs, but as far as I'm concerned they still stand up to scrutiny, steeped as they all are in love and prayer and a longing for holiness – the kind that is so joy-bringing, that truly allows us to see God. Nothing about her work or her conferences was gloomy or religious to me. It was all so fresh. At the time I attended the conference, I was struggling very badly with introspection and perfectionism, something Leanne addresses centrally in her books. Learning to practise the presence of God was nothing short of a saving grace for me! I remember so clearly how, in 2000, I finally began to master it and a new reality broke in – that of what it means to live in his presence, and to know finally what those words meant, to be, to live, 'in Christ'.
I have known about Leanne Payne for a long time, but never read her books. I have made a start on 'Healing Prescence'. I see that the idea of the book is that it is the 'dwelling presence that brings the power of the incarnation into wounded lives.' I can't thank you enough for signposting me to her work.
The welcoming prayer is powerful. I have begun praying it since reading this. It seems it was almost written with the struggles of the parts of the Enneagram in mind!
I'm wondering, though, how you interpret the section about not desiring to change myself. In my journal I have added, "Because only the Holy Spirit can transform me." But that still doesn't mean I don't desire to become more like Christ, and I know full well that I fall woefully short.
Thank you again, Jason, for sharing your own painful story so openly and vulnerably. I pray that God continues to heal your wounds - and the wounds of those who read this and resonate with it because of their similar stories.
I, for one, don't usually *want* to learn from my wounds, but I'm also glad that in the economy of heaven, God wastes nothing.
Thank you Debbie. I too want to be changed, to become more like Christ. The welcoming prayer, seems a foundation for that. 'I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.' I have always read that as a counter to my insecure desire to be different, i.e. to have more resoruces, a different past, to be smarter, more sucessful. In other words if I was better due to my circumstnaces and choices Jesus would work in me more. Instead in the prayer, I see a place of surrender for who I am, as I am, that the Lord loves. Transformation by him begins by acceptance of how he sees me in his love for me. I am an object of his affection as I am. I discover his agency to transform me when I can accept that. Hope that makes sense.
Thank you! That makes a lot of sense. 🙂
Thank you for sharing in this space.
My dad died when I was young. Parents divorced before that happened. My mom remarried. My step dad was and is emotionally unavailable. He and I had a falling out recently. It’s pushed a number of my childhood wounds, and I’m back in counseling to figure out what’s underneath that which I thought I’d released and healed from years ago.
Practically, what does it look like to “consent to the constraints of our own story”? What facilitates realization and also relinquishment? I’ll be pondering your words as I move through yet another season of navigating deep wounds of abandonment and emotional neglect from my childhood.
Thanks for doing the work and for sharing glimpses of your journey with us.
Hi Darcy, thanks for what you have shared here. It surprises me when parts of my story are tapped into and reply in moments in the present. The memory of my dad driving away and abandoning me was triggered the other day, watching a TV show with a character who walked out on their kids. That memory is piercingly bright in my minds eye, being a summers day, and middle of the day. Full of colour due to the intensity and pain of the moment. But it is also full darkness and despair. So much in that moment. My believing my Dad would be in contact but he never was. Finding out later in life, he another family was returning to, and the lies he was living in that moment that I was unaware of. I consent to it, in all it's ugliness and brutality and betrayal. I consent to it, in knowing that Christ on the cross bore this wounding of me. I read this story on his body and death. That's where I start, I think.
Really good . . . Reminds me of Leanne Payne’s exhortation/teaching to ‘forgive the circumstances of our lives’. Her three keys to inner healing, once recognition of our sin and repentance has been made, are 1 To give forgiveness; 2 To receive forgiveness; 3 To accept oneself, crossing the line from immaturity to maturity in so doing.
Her autobiography Heaven’s Calling: a memoir of one soul’s steep ascent is beautiful - she came from considerable lack in many ways, but went on to help thousands find healing through union with Christ.
I love the saying by Gregory of Nyssa quoted in her book. ‘For the one who runs towards the Lord, there is no lack of space. The one who ascends never stops, going from beginning to beginning, by beginnings that never cease.’
Thank you Jenny. I found this quote from Leanne Payne:
We pass through “the curtain, that is, his body,” dying to the old diseased forms of love we have clung to as well as to the unspeakable loneliness and pain of being disrelated at this most basic of all levels. Forgiving others as well as all the circumstances of our lives, we rise with Him in newness of life. Born anew, we take our place in His resurrected Being. In the cross there is healing; in His resurrected body and life there is identity and being. (Leanne Payne, The Broken Image (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1996), 112.)
I need to read her work, and will admit to never having done so. Thank you for showing me this connection.
And now you remind me of how I need to read the desert Fathers.
I read Leanne Payne's book Listening Prayer back in the 1990s. It was like nothing I'd ever read before in terms of Christian literature. I very much wanted to go on one of her Pastoral Care Ministries healing conferences, and in 1996 I did. It was completely life-changing – every church stream was represented, including the monastic, the Catholic and the evangelical, as well as the Anglican and the Episcopalian. Every stream was catered for in terms of worship. And yet there was very much a sense that we were all together, there in the Household of God. For years I read her central work, The Healing Presence, once a year. It really is transforming. Not sure how her other books are viewed now, relating to specific healing needs, but as far as I'm concerned they still stand up to scrutiny, steeped as they all are in love and prayer and a longing for holiness – the kind that is so joy-bringing, that truly allows us to see God. Nothing about her work or her conferences was gloomy or religious to me. It was all so fresh. At the time I attended the conference, I was struggling very badly with introspection and perfectionism, something Leanne addresses centrally in her books. Learning to practise the presence of God was nothing short of a saving grace for me! I remember so clearly how, in 2000, I finally began to master it and a new reality broke in – that of what it means to live in his presence, and to know finally what those words meant, to be, to live, 'in Christ'.
I have known about Leanne Payne for a long time, but never read her books. I have made a start on 'Healing Prescence'. I see that the idea of the book is that it is the 'dwelling presence that brings the power of the incarnation into wounded lives.' I can't thank you enough for signposting me to her work.