Jesus frees director from suppressed rage

D spent her entire life trying to make everyone around her happy without realising that it was done out of fear, rather than love. As she humbled herself to seek the Lord during a renewal prayer, the Holy Spirit led her to confess years of suppressed anger from a traumatic childhood. He also freed her from her pattern of constantly feeling the need to manipulate situations around her. D now experiences greater peace, trust, and rest in Christ. Praise God!

“Stay with us.”

I needed to hear this from my prayer counsellors. It helped me fight the strong urge to stand up and walk out of the room. This wasn’t my first renewal prayer but unlike other times, I felt rage, uncontrollable anger, and that I was being accused. 

“Stay with us. Hear us out.“ I breathed laboriously, trying to calm myself down, fighting the urge to scream.

What caused it? It was a simple question at the start of the prayer session. The Holy Spirit had given one of the prayer counsellors the word of knowledge, “manipulate out of fear of bad outcomes.” So, she asked me, “Do you think that in some situations, you try to manipulate the outcome? To make light of things and change the environment when things are tense?”

I felt outraged! Manipulate is a bad word and all I try to do is to “make things better”.

Gently, the prayer counsellors spoke understanding and comfort to my heart.

“Dear sister, your family has been cruel to you. You have drunk in their cruelty all your life and are still harbouring bitterness from childhood. You felt abandoned by God when you felt He didn’t save you from your mom and her abuse. It was very traumatic growing up in such a cruel environment. You’ve been coping all along. But we love you.”

This helped calm and soothe the rage in me and slowly through prayer, I could see it myself.

As the youngest child in an abusive, neglectful environment, I often had to “perform” to get any form of attention.

I used to re-tell jokes I’d heard, mimic people I saw on TV, be energetic and fun when everyone was lethargic.

And during the greatest turmoil of physical abuse, I would try to do things to make things better. Sometimes, I would get the reaction I was hoping for, but it never lasted and it was exhausting.

One of the prayer counsellors had an image of me holding many strings together but they were actually tearing me apart. This is how I felt at the core of my core…

No one could have known this because I had become so adept at putting up a front that “everything is okay”.

Honestly, I often saw myself as a battered performing monkey. And I loathed it. But I didn’t know any other way — I learned this way for survival since young.

No one could have known how battered, exhausted, or at my wits’ end I was… other than the Holy Spirit. I never enjoyed childhood and all I longed for was to become an adult so I could flee and be free.

To a great extent, I was so much freer than when I was in my childhood home. Yet these defensive and coping mechanisms held me back. To a degree, they kept me stuck as the child that I didn’t want to be.

While I am externally an extrovert, I don’t speak or share information about myself.

The reason is because I never learnt to talk about my emotions as a child. I felt they were negligible and everyone was too traumatised to care for me. And when I did try to share how I felt, it was often shot down as being childish.

But again, this wasn’t obvious in my social circles. Most people would think of me as being very open with my emotions – but it was just a front to protect myself.

Again, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, the prayer counsellors asked me to release any anger or unsaid words. 

My first response was “I have no more anger. I have dealt with it in all my previous prayers.” Wisely, they urged me to ask the Holy Spirit.

So I closed my eyes and started… “Holy Spirit. This is infuriating. I don’t know what they want me to say and I do not want to perform. What words do I have anyway? What is it that I need to release?!!!” 

It wasn’t the most humble prayer but it was a true prayer.

Suddenly, memories started flooding me from my childhood.

Emotions that I have felt and had never been given words for started pouring out of me. The frustration of always being accused, the feelings of being unjustly treated, the anger at being betrayed, and being made to serve. The disgust at the abuse and of bad behaviour.

My chest heaved, my voice rose in volume, my hands gestured wildly. 

I thought I had done this for five minutes but the prayer counsellors told me I had not stopped for 45 minutes! Truly, only Abba Father could have known that the child in me needed to have a voice and know she was heard and her emotions mattered.

After that, I felt the rage, the urge to flee, and a huge weight lift off of me.

It was then that I was able to confess and repent for manipulating situations all my life, instead of trusting and allowing Holy Spirit to lead in every situation.

I was also led to forgive each of my family members — choosing to forgive them even if I didn’t feel forgiving at the time.

This is my testimony of a renewal prayer done over twenty months ago.

Since then, I have truly been living freely and unencumbered by the fear of things going wrong or having to save a situation.

I have even been led to stay with my family for extended periods of time, choosing to be faithful in my role as daughter and sister and trusting that if God chose this family for me… then it’s gotta be good even if I don’t see it right now.

The biggest healing I’ve experienced since is the one I didn’t know I needed. The reconciliation between me and Abba Father… instead of running from and hiding the pain of disappointment regarding my childhood, I can now fully give it to Him and say; “I am your child, do as You will. You are a good, good, good Father to me.”

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