Jesus reveals root of anxieties and eczema to prayer counsellor
S constantly felt that something bad was about to happen to her and worried about her future. She doubted God’s goodness, despite having studied the Bible thoroughly and living as a Christian for decades. Her head knowledge of God did not match what was in her heart. All these inner anxieties made her pre-existing eczema skin condition worse until she sought the Holy Spirit’s counsel. God led her back to a forgotten moment of great fear and emotional pain and brought her on a new path of healing, both emotionally and physically. Praise God!
(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣向祷告辅导员揭示焦虑和湿疹的根源 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌向禱告輔導員揭示焦慮和濕疹的根源)
I was helping a friend with a project when I mentioned that I was frustrated because I struggle with eczema and she suggested we pray about it.
As we entered into a time of prayer, my friend saw a vision of a dagger in my chest and saw a rag doll with one arm torn off, thrown onto the floor. When she said that, my immediate reaction was, “Does the doll have red hair?” I suddenly remembered that I once had a doll made out of fabric when I was about three or four. While my memories about the doll were hazy, sadness started to well up in my heart.
When I was growing up, my parents fought a lot and they did not do a very good job of helping me to accept my younger siblings when they came along. For a very long time, I felt unsafe, unprotected, and unloved. I had already gone through several renewal prayers and so I thought I had laid every painful memory at the foot of the cross.
But I still suffered from eczema which made me think there were still unresolved hurts in my life.
Aside from the physical discomfort, I also felt sad and angry because every time I prayed and searched my memories, I came up with nothing new. When I remembered the doll, I felt relieved but also blank inside. After the initial sadness, I felt peace as I invited the Holy Spirit to reveal more about the lies that entered into my young mind because of this doll.
I was confused because the peace I felt from the Holy Spirit’s presence was real. In fact, I thought I did not need more healing because I felt the Holy Spirit’s presence and peace every day. But as we kept waiting in prayer for what seemed to me like a very, very long time, more sadness started to well up from deep inside of me and became a “big” kind of sadness that I did not know was there.
I learned that if we are used to suppressing our emotions, waiting in prayer may be a good and necessary exercise.
I also realised that while I do pray often, I have a tendency to do something else after asking God questions. In my past experiences, God often answered my questions “later,” and yes, sometimes I have had to wait hours, days, or even months for answers to questions. This is part of the discipline of waiting on God.
But perhaps now I need to develop the ability to sit and wait—for more than a few minutes at a stretch!—to hear God’s answers. Waiting in prayer may allow deeper emotions to rise to the surface.
As we prayed, my memories about the doll remained unclear, but I started to remember the emotions I felt toward the doll.
I knew that it meant a lot to me and when its arm was torn or when it was finally thrown away, I felt incredibly sad.
Of course, the adult part of my mind understood that my mother or another adult probably threw away the doll because it was torn, stained, dirty, and probably did not smell very nice. But the emotions I felt were from the child who lost something precious and whose feelings were ignored or dismissed.
The lies that I came to believe were, “If I love anything, something bad is going to happen so I had better not love anything” and “If I cannot even love a doll, what can I love?” These lies developed into other lies such as, “No one loves me” (because if they did, they would not throw away my doll), “I am not lovable,” “I must not love myself,” and even, “My friend does not really love me.”
The root of my eczema could lie in my inability to love myself.
I prayed to renounce the lies that I am not lovable and to declare that I love and accept myself, including my body. God made many things for me to love and sometimes the things I love look silly to others.
After I became an adult, whenever I had to leave places or cities where I felt happy and loved, I felt like God deliberately robbed me of what I liked. I came to believe that anything I loved would be wrenched away for no good reason that I could see. My friend pointed out that these reactions were similar to how I reacted after losing my doll.
I prayed to forgive the person who threw away the doll and for all the times when I felt my mother did not know or care about how I felt.
I laid down the doll as well as the hamsters, chickens, and the dogs my family owned when I was a child that either went missing or died.
The adult me now understands that as a child, I needed to learn how to grieve any kind of loss. But my parents did not know how to teach me, maybe because they did not know how to grieve in a healthy way either. The unprocessed sadness—and the lies the enemy planted—made me afraid and unable to love. If God takes something from me, it is for my good. Even if people do take things away from me, what they meant may have been for evil but He will use it for good.
God also does care about what I like.
Father God comforted me during the short prayer session. His words to me were, “My daughter, I hold your face in My hands. You are so precious, fun, and athletic. I made you to enjoy life. I even created the sweet scent of the leaves that you like so much. I want you to see all the sweet things I placed in your life so that you will enjoy life. I am life. I don’t take away things to give you death. I say again, “This is a new beginning.” You must trust me because I am good. I am also specifically good to you. If you look at the broken doll, see also that I can give you better. Do not love a doll full of germs. Choose life.”
After praying, we returned to the project and continued our conversations about what it means to love or be loved. My friend sounded a little concerned that I thought she does not truly love me.
It is true that my mind needs renewing when it comes to what I think love looks like.
As we talked, I realised I found many reasons to discount the love that others show me. Because I had decided in my heart that to love is dangerous and would end badly, subconsciously, my standards for what counts as “true love” became impossibly high. For example, I thought my friend must not love me because she is also a mentor, and I am only one of the many people she mentors. I concluded that because she is Christian and feels responsibility toward me, she must not really love me.
What made it even more difficult for me was watching my mother love my younger brother unconditionally. Her open favoritism taught me that there are two kinds of love: the love that people showed me because they were bound to me out of duty, and the kind of love that my brother received simply because he existed.
In my mind, my friend “loved me out of duty” in the same way that I also thought my mother loved me out of duty.
Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world and many of us do offer imperfect forms of love to one another. But even imperfect, incomplete love is love too. I need to learn to accept love as others are able to give. This is part of how we live out God’s Kingdom in a fallen world. My mother may not have been able to show me love in a wise way, or in a way that met my needs, but this is because she went through a difficult time herself. I know that my grandmother favored her younger son over her daughters and when my mother shares some of her childhood memories, she still sounds hurt. Father God is the only One who loves perfectly.
So I find myself at the start of a new part of my journey which will involve learning to receive and give love.
It will involve declaring daily that I am loved until the truth settles in my heart, mind, and body. I now notice that I have a bad habit of tensing up my chest and jaw muscles in anticipation of heartbreaking loss that “must be just around the corner.”
My body needs to learn new habits of resting in the assurance that with God, all things will be well. Loss is a normal part of living in this world, but with help, I can grieve and let it go because I know God always has something else in store.
It’s been two weeks since the prayer session and I notice now how quick I am to assume people don’t love me. (It just happened yesterday with my church fellowship group.)
With regards to the eczema, I also find I don’t scratch during the day anymore. I still wake up scratching from time to time but go back to sleep soon. As I continue to work on accepting love, I trust my eczema will heal fully.
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