Self Awareness
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Delight: the Ministry of the Holy Spirit
Delight did not come easily to me as a child. I had a somewhat lonely childhood. I even suffered from a lengthy stint of childhood depression. So when a lovely older lady named Winnie, from the house with the luscious orange and lemon trees a block away, invited me to milk and cookies in her backyard, I immediately agreed. This was back in the seventies when parental supervision was more relaxed. “You are such a good girl!’ she would say to me, and such was the pleasure in her tone that I was forced to reconsider my idea of myself. I never thought of myself at bad, particularly, but neither…
- 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…
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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…
