Status Updates From Healing the Eight Stages of...

Usually we can forgive ourselves only after we have forgiven our own parents for being hurt and human rather than God. The problem isn't making mistakes but rather not trusting one's mistakes to a God who heals and whose infinite care can create new life in any time of hurt.

Only when a person feels affirmed can she hear and risk a new challenge... Intimacy needs both the accepting love that nurtures gifts and the tough love that challenges another to try new gifts.

...men who have been raised to compete with and dominate others may understandably perceive sin as pride... the remedy is seen as "dying to self." But, "for a woman sin is not pride, the exaltation of self, but a refusal to claim the self God has given." Thus, for a woman, whose growing edge is to assert her... "dying to self" may simply deepen her bondage to sin rather than heal it.

The sign of a healed will is the movement from I should love God to I want to love because God loves me so much.

He does not confront the prodigal but permits him to go off and make mistakes with the inheritance. Yet in an atmosphere of trust where "everything I have is yours," the father does confront the mistakes of his eldest son. Tough love that confronts one son will destroy another son who needs his freedom affirmed.

Jesus knows where we need to be healed. We don't even have to remember how we got hurt... all we have to do is go to where we're most hungry for love and Jesus will meet us there.