Emmanuel con't

...I knew from past experience that the event that caused the strong emotional response was exactly the place where I needed to press in during prayer. It was an invitation for healing. I wanted the healing, I just didn't want to look at the ugliness of the festering wound. As a matter of fact, I couldn't look at it without help. When ever I would get to it in prayer and I would sense Jesus asking me if he could help me with it, I would recoil in pain, "No! Absolutely not!" He would ask, "When have you experienced pain like this before?" and all I wanted to do was vomit!



I literally felt physically ill during prayer until, mercifully, one day in my Christian imagination, I had an image of being on an Emergency Room operating table. I was in grave danger and a very knowledgeable nurse rushed in the room to help me. She was working to save my life. The doctor was on his way, she was prepping me for his intervention. My nurse was Mary. I remember her making eye contact with me and saying, "The Doctor is coming and has to do a particular procedure. If he doesn't do it you will die. If he does, he can save you. Do you consent to having this procedure done?" I will never forget the loving concern in her eyes. I consented and said, "Yes, I consent, but you have to put me out!"



Each day in prayer after that experience, I went in my imagination to the operating room, I saw Mary there with me at my side, I saw the Divine Physician enter the room, I would give my consent to Mary and would immediately fall into a deep sleep. I would wake an hour or so later, thank the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit for their love and mercy, ask Mary to continue to pray for me, make the Sign of the Cross and go on my way.



Outside of prayer I started to notice that certain memories were coming to the surface that I thought I had sufficiently related to God in the past. They would re-occur each day and cause me each time with the mental images that came with them to recoil in disgust. I was not digging for these, they occurred spontaneously. I realized I needed to relate each image along with the particular past experience to Jesus in prayer, but I also needed to say them out loud.



All this began happening after I started praying for the grace to grieve each day the way the Father wanted me to grieve. All along I thought my grief could be isolated by situation. For instance, that my grief about Bill's passing was completely disconnected to any other type of grief experience I had in my life previously. This is not so, from my experience. In me it was like all my grief was tied together like knots on a strand. When I started pulling on one, they all started coming up, one at a time. It didn't happen automatically, it was by invitation. I had to consent. And once I did, the grace was there for me to look at each experience of grief as it came to the surface. I didn't have to go searching for it, but I could ignore it if I wanted to. Ignoring would create more pain, but it was still an option in my Christian freedom. God would never force me to heal, only invite.