Healing our Children's Hearts

     My almost three year old, Isaac, has had a cloud over his head for over a week.  My usually cheerful, sunshine boy had been replaced by an Eyoresque figure with Oscar the Grouch mixed in abundantly. I would hear him wake up in the morning with his older brother, by 15 months, with delighted giggles, whispers, and squeals of delight. The moment he encountered me he turned into a mud puddle of woe and suffering.

     Isaac is unabashedly smitten with his 3 month old sister, Isabelle Grace, and yet I have told myself that even so, this curmudgeony toddler must be having trouble adjusting.  I have been intentional in trying to hold him more, sing to him more, say yes when he brings me a book to read, tell him I love him and that he is dear to me but even with this added effort on my part it still feels like I am living with an ill humored wookiee. 

    His complaining, whining, and crying is unrelenting.  Despite trying to love him back into joy Isaac does not seem able to change his mood until I complete the following steps.  I finally tell him he cannot continue to act like "this", I take him to his room, swat him on the butt, wait two minutes, and return to his room to offer comfort and condolence at which time he falls into my arms ready to "be happy".  It is not ideal.  I have not fully understood why it takes this punishment to regain my joyful son.  I grasped at the straw of an idea that he was acting out and only stopping when he received this negative attention.  I was giving him a lot of positive attention so why wasn't he accepting that?  I stumbled upon my answer this afternoon with the absolute help from the Holy Spirit.  Isaac, my sunshine son, had a wounded heart that was crying out, in the only way he knew, for help and healing.

    Once more I slowly walked to my little son's room ready to administer the swat and then follow up with hugs. I hated this. This didn't seem rooted in Truth and how Jesus would do things. "Come on, Lord..." I absentmindedly prayed.  "There has got to be a better way but I don't know what it is."  I have tried just skipping straight to the hugging compassionate part but Isaac just rejected it every time.  I took a breath and walked in.  I knelt down in front of him.  "Isaac, can you look at me?"  He would not raise his downcast eyes. "Why!?" I mentally anguished.  "Where is my happy boy?"  I feel at that moment the Holy Spirit just breathed into the room.  My hands on his slight shoulders I said with feeling "Isaac, I LOVE YOU."  He gave no response but whining and squirming to get away.  "I. LOVE. YOU.  Isaac.  I love you."  He was a little more still.  "I LOVE you. Can you look at me?  Look into my eyes, Isaac." He barely raised his eyes to meet mine, just briefly.  "Isaac, you must be so sad that I don't hold you as much I used to."  In an instant he had slid off his bed and buried his face in my neck, arms wrapped around me. I squeezed him tightly and began rocking him.  I heard my eldest, Eli, call out to me from another room. "Mama!".  I responded instead to Isaac. "I am SO sorry, Isaac! We used to hold each other all the time before we had Isabelle and you love her SO MUCH but I bet sometimes you are sad I can't hold you as much as you want."  "Mama!!" came from the other room again.  Mentally I wondered if the bacon I had put in the pan right before coming into Isaac's room was alright. I hadn't intended to be spending so much time in here when I initially walked in.  "And do you remember" I continued "how we used to sit on the couch all the time and read lots and lots of books?"  Damp nodding into my neck.  "That was so nice and we don't read together as much as we used to.  I am so sorry.  Someday we will start reading together more again.  This isn't forever.  I love you so much."   "Uhhh, MaaaaMA!!!"  Although Eli was being insistent he wasn't coming to find me and he wasn't screaming.  "I don't want your heart to be hurting you.  I want it to come together and be full and happy."  I recalled how Isaac insisted on us calling him a "big boy" now.  "And you know, Isaac, it is okay if you still want to be the baby sometimes."  Usually he would insist that he was NOT a baby.  Now he was silent. "Sometimes you go outside with Daddy and Eli and you are a BIG boy but sometimes it is okay if you just want to be a little boy and have me hold you and kiss you.  You can still be a baby sometimes."  Sniffling sounded in my ear and a grimy little hand reached up to hold my cheek. "May I kiss you, Isaac?"  "Maaaaaaamaaaaaa?" came from the living room.  Nodding from the son in front of me.  He laid a sloppy wet kiss on my lips.  "Isaac, would you like to come with me to check the bacon on the stove?"  I finally heard his little voice for the first time. "Uh huh, mama.  I happy now".

    Smoke was pouring into my kitchen and the bacon was black and ashy.  Isaac has returned to his happy go lucky self.  I learned an important truth about healing the day I burnt the bacon which I hope to incorporate into the parenting of all my children.  I am going to try and explain it here in the hopes that it might help other parents.

     Isaac needed me to speak the words of his pain out loud in order for HIM to recognize what was causing him pain.  It wasn't enough that I realized he probably was acting grumpy due to less attention than he previously received.  It didn't matter that I was making a concerted effort to hold him more and love on him more.  He did not know why he was grumpy and in pain and he needed it to be named for him. He was not able to receive the extra attention and love in a way that healed his heart because he did not know that he was being given it in response to his pain.  In exasperation both my husband and I would ask him "What can we do for you? What do you want?" only to be met by meltdowns, defiance, and contradictory behaviors.  He didn't know.  As soon as I spoke those words of truth "You must be sad because I am not holding you as much" and named my son's pain his heart recognized it as true and responded accordingly.  I was able to help Isaac's emotional wounds heal because I named it for him, asked for his forgiveness, and breathed new life into him again.  As adults we hopefully have the acquired skill of looking for the source of our anxieties, pain, and heartache. Our children need our help to learn this skill.  Speaking TRUTH into our children's lives is so important.  Do not be afraid to speak a "negative" truth for especially in naming sins, struggles, fears, and lies we unleash the Light of Truth!  Speak the truth and if it is the truth of an evil presence or struggle then be sure to claim it for Christ and breath new life into that area.

"For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light." Mark 5:22
 "You will know the truth, and the TRUTH will set you free." John 8:11

On Healing Emotional Wounds

    Many adults have not learnt this skill of being able to acknowledge or name their wounds resulting in struggles with anxiety, depression and walls up around hearts.  If you would like to learn more about healing your heart and living in freedom I would suggest learning about St. Ignatius' "Discernment of Spirits".  I use it as an every day habit to look for the source of anxiety as soon as I feel it well up and deal with it immediately to live in freedom.  Additionally there are many good books written on healing emotional wounds that can be found through a google search such as "Healing emotional wounds Catholic books" or some variation of that.

     God is The Great Healer.  He desires our healing and our wholeness.  More important than our physical healing, although he can absolutely provide that, is our emotional healing.  When we are emotionally whole we are WHO God intended us to be.  Fully alive.  The more we are wounded and have not dealt with those wounds the farther we are from the authentic version of who God intended us to be.  The closer we are to perfect version of ourselves that God intended us to be, and we once more will be when we enter heaven, the more closely aligned we are to living out God's perfect plan for our lives and thereby positively impacting others.  Healing is so important.

    "But Angela" you may be thinking "we live in a broken place".  Pain abounds.  Injustice hammers against us.  Suffering. Loneliness.  Physical and emotional abuse enters our lives, sometimes from the most unexpected (and subsequently the most painful) places.  And you a right, my friend.  All the more reason that the Great Healer desires us to be healed.  Cry out to him for healing and He. Will. Heal you of your emotional wounds.  It may take seconds, or weeks, or in some cases years...but eventually, if you keep knocking on that door, healing will come.  And God is pouring out his healing more and more.  The darker the night gets, the more God heals his people because it is NEEDED to combat the spreading darkness.  So ask for healing.  Be brave.  Walk through the valley of death into the light of wholeness.  The nights gets darkest before the dawn, there is the crucifixion before the Resurrection, and an acknowledgment and reliving of your pain precedes the healing that God has in store for you.  Let go of the bitterness, the unforgiveness , the score keeping.  Seek emotional healing for YOUR freedom.  Your healing is not about the justice of the situation.  It is all about the desire to live in freedom without the shackles that bind your heart and make your chest tight.  Letting it go, giving it to God to sort out.  Acknowledging your pain, the truth of the situation, the role you may have played in it or been forced to play, accepting it for what it is, and letting God's loving hand caress your heart.

     Speaking words aloud.  NAMING the pain is important.  Have you ever had that experience of saying something out loud and it is not until you speak the words that you see how deeply it impacts you emotionally?  In fact we name things we are emotionally attached to.  You hear of people naming their guns, cars, animals, and of course children but have you ever met someone that names their fork?  Or hairbrush?  We name that which impacts us emotionally.  We speak the truth of our love.  We must always acknowledge that which pains us by saying what it is aloud in order to receive healing.

     I have experienced this.  Speaking some words out loud, almost letting them roll around my mouth to see how they feel, and suddenly I feel like crying.  I acknowledge that these words strike a truth that my soul knows although intellectually I was not sure of the truth.  For example, I might say "I feel like maybe my sister, Suzie, doesn't love me."  I am unsure if I REALLY think that...I am unsure if it is even true.  But suddenly tears are trickling down my face.  I still don't know for a fact if my sister Suzie loves me or not, but I realize that I don't FEEL like she loves me and how hurt I am by that perceived lack of love.  I acknowledge that pain.  I ask God to show me the truth of the situation, unclouded by my own human-ness. I allow him to minister to my soul.

  There is so much to be said on this topic of healing.  Healing comes in layers.  God heals a little bit and then you may revisit the same wound later to refine the healing and go deeper than before.  If any of this resounded in your soul I encourage you to seek out healing.  Begin praying for it and asking God for it.  Read books on healing, go to talks on healing, attend a healing mass, bring it up to priests and lay people who have experience in the healing ministries.  God IS the Great Healer.  He only waits for your invitation.