The Supernatural Power of Forgiveness by Kris Vallotton

Author:Kris Vallotton [Vallotton, Kris and Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Forgiveness—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441268877
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Pain Doesn’t Have to Stay

Throughout the process of working through my pain, I realized that without the ability to connect and feel and let out what was going on in my heart, I would have no way of being free. Most Christians have been so programmed to look only at the positive that it can easily seem like a violation to focus on and mourn their losses.

Recently, I met with a woman for a counseling appointment who said she never cries and she has a hard time expressing her needs to others. The perplexing thing about her is that she is Superwoman in the room, attending to everybody else’s needs, making them feel loved and accepted. But when it comes to her, she would rather listen to someone else than express what she is dealing with at that moment.

Sitting in my office that day, Megan began to tell me her story. Her father died when she was really young, leaving her with an incredible amount of pain at a young age. Around the age of 18, she received a phone call that her mother had died in a car accident. She was scared and alone. In one day she had gone from making plans to hang out with her mom to being left alone in this world.

Shortly after her mother died, her friends and family gathered together to attend the funeral. Kind words were spoken and beautiful songs were sung, and soon it was all over and done with. After the funeral, Megan’s friends gathered around her and took her into the living room of her house for a time of worship and praise. They felt like she needed to start a new chapter in her life and worship her way out of this terrible time.

The more I listened to Megan that day, the more I realized that she had never allowed herself to mourn the loss of her parents. And because Megan never mourned, she was never free of the pain. Megan’s friends had great intentions in wanting her to be free of pain and feel joy and be able to praise. But what they didn’t realize is that by not allowing her to mourn her loss and work through the pain, she was stuck with it.

Megan had never allowed herself to access all of her heart, because she believed that the pain would never go away. Therefore, it was pointless to even go there. She was trapped inside the façade of never feeling sad, but only acting happy. In reality, her heart was screaming for someone to acknowledge the pain.

Allowing ourselves to only be happy is as dysfunctional as only allowing ourselves to feel pain. As we learned in the previous chapter, God created every emotion, and each one has a specific purpose.

Megan and I spent a large portion of our time in that counseling appointment facing the reality that her mom and dad were never going to come back. I had her do things like write

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