When I minister or counsel, whatever the case may be, I am always struck by the depth of pain adults still experience with respect to painful memories from their childhood. Usually, those memories involve their parents, their siblings, and sometimes pain associated with incidents from friendships. To get them unstuck is quite a challenge.
Part of the difficulty is getting adults to take ownership of their pain. We tell ourselves all of the time that we should be over certain things by now (meaning, adulthood). Hence, we not only deny the fact that we are still hurting, but we don't give ourselves permission to even face them to deal with them head-on. You can't get healed from something that you deny even exists. Getting adults to this first step, however, is crucial to healing.
Your second step is to embrace the anger, the disappointment, and even the hatred. Again, however, since at a certain level as adults we believe that it is not okay to feel hatred for a parent who abused us, it is therefore not okay to admit that the hatred is still there festering and growing, and defiling the heart.
If you are reading this and you know that the grave clothes you are wearing have everything to do with unresolved emotions from a parent who abused you, you have no room or space in your spirit to forgive, until you first embrace the anger and even the hatred. Look at it for what it is, feel it, embrace it, and allow yourself the time to grieve and feel the rage and injustice of what has happened. Once you do that - at a level of vulnerability and ownership - you can then move on to the next stage of release and peace.
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