prayer
- confession, freedom, Imaginative Prayer, mindfulness, prayer, relationship, Self Awareness, Shame & Guilt
Mindfulness and Confession: Reflections in the Mirror
Mindfulness, in the early stages of my Christianity, did not exist, though I sure knew about confession. I believed the truest thing about me was a list of all my sins. And as a person for whom shame was a way of being, the idea of confessing my sins to someone else besides God seemed impossible. To begin with, I couldn’t even share my feelings with others, much less those faults and weaknesses I perceived in myself. I could barely admit my feelings to myself, much less others. I remember at one point listing out all of my transgressions on a sheet of paper and presenting them to God. I…
-
Imagination and Prayer: How to Encounter Jesus
I still remember the river we saw while on vacation in Yosemite my junior year of high school. The river’s perfectly clear waters shot past in a narrow channel, about hip deep. The icy cold chilled my parent’s feet as well as my brother’s, and mine as we sat on the edge. My mother, brother, and I decided to jump in. The cold rushed over me and after a few minutes, I got out shivering, but with the endorphin rush that comes from a dunk in freezing water. The memory of that state of well-being has stayed with me my whole life. I felt fully alive at that moment and…
-
Baby Heart Revival: A Transforming Miracle
The third grade daughter of a friend of mine had a hurting heart. Childhood depression isn’t always obvious, but this little girl was very introverted, always looked ragged, and was unaffectionate and disconnected from her mother. In fact, she would hiss at her if she tried to hug her. Childhood depression is hard to treat because eight is too young to experiment with medication, and generally, children aren’t self-aware enough to get a lot out of counseling. But children have one advantage over adults, and that is that they are still connected to their youngest selves. Adults can have a difficult time accessing their inner child, but an eight year…
