林’s Reviews > Healing the Eight Stages of Life > Status Update

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.

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.

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.

But affirmation is not something we do. Affirmation is a way we are. The difference between doing and being is the difference between effectivity and affectivity. In effectivity, we actively cause ourselves to move, in order to use a thing or a person to gratify our own needs. Affectivity, however, is a receptive capacity to be moved inwardly by a thing or a person, and to let that "being moved" reverberate...

Petition and the renewing of our deepest commitments heals the wounded will if it builds upon trust in God's love (Erikson's first stage). If not, the focus of prayer should be on positive memories of God's love... 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.

During a retreat we attended with eighty other Jesuit priests, all received the gift of tongues because it was so needed by these priests who had developed their intellectual side more than their feeling side... They [renewed their vows] with newly freed desires to do God's will with their whole heart and not just with their whole mind (Mt. 22:37).

Even into adult life, children may assume any of four roles to survive [in the chaos of a dysfunctional family]... "hero"... "scapegoat"... "mascot" tries to minimize the problems by joking, clowning and trying to be carefree. Finally, the "lost child" fades into the background in an attempt to withdraw from the turmoil.