My Story – Chapter 10

Learning to apply Powerful Peace Principles in the RC Church

Maranatha: The Coming of the Lord

Maranatha is an important word that we explain in PP ministry. It can be used in two ways: Marana-tha: Come, o Lord Jesus in this situation and Maran-atha The Lord will come. It was used in Israel when the king would visit an area. Messengers would be sent out with the Manaran-atha exclamation: Prepare the way for the king, the king is coming. People who had legal problems were waiting for that message. They would call their friends: Marana-atha: The Lord will come! The need for a personal “peace of Jesus” experience makes us also say: Marana-tha, Come, o Lord in our situation.

The need for Confession

 The injustice that many traumatized people experienced, direct itself often towards the Lord: “where were you Lord when that happened. Why didn´t you act”. The need for revenge is in abuse victims rather high. To use the cry: “Come, O Lord now”, but also that one day the Lord will come back and He will take revenge, has been a comfort for many. Someone said: the best revenge is to live well! In the RC Church, the use of confession is such a help, as it does bother people that they walk around with murderous thoughts. So as the go to the sacrament of Confession a wise priest can speak them free from that burden. It hasn´t taken away the problem, but I have found that this release from guilt feelings works for RC abuse survivors much better than for Protestants who wrestle with them and do not have the privilege of hearing a priest say in an authoritative voice: “you are forgiven and released from your sins”.

One can have a whole life filled with serving the Lord, yet there can be area´s one hasn´t told anyone about it. You just talk to Jesus…. At least that was the case with me. When I went for my first confession before a priest, I decided to make it a life confession: to share anything that had happened in my life I had never talked with anyone about and it still bothered me. I went to a priest, he had the authority to say: I release you from this burden in Jesus Name. After a talk of 45 minutes, it felt like a ´ton of bricks´ fell off my shoulders…. I believe this is one thing even Protestants could do. When I still was active in the evangelical world I sometimes had teams of people with me, they would stand in different corners of the hall and people went to confess their sins. It is still a heartwarming memory when I remember how an old lady with her shoulders bend down, went to two of the ladies of my team. She shared her story. The smile on her face and her relaxed body language showed that God had touched her deeply.

One of my clients is a young adult with a messy divorce behind him. He had never really taken the time to face the major issues why this happened and what his responsibilities were. As an abusive youth surfaced he found peace with God. This helped him again to start looking at himself. Now as I deacon I can´t “hear official confessions”. Naturally to prepare him for a formal session with a priest takes time. A confession should only entail how many times one has consciously sinned, what the sins were and show a sense of sorrow. One time when he was really facing up to something very shameful he had done, he asked me if I couldn´t forgive him. I just said: brother: The Bible says that if we confess our sins that Jesus forgives us. You can tell it all to Jesus in my presence if you want. Then if you feel there is still a sense of ´this isn´t enough´ then please go to a priest and just tell him briefly what bothers you, show that you want to fight against these things and ask him to speak you free. Well, he did confess to Jesus in my presence and later went to a priest to share some of the core reasons he had gotten into this mess.

Then he came back to ask if I could help him in an annulment of his marriage. This was a new problem I hadn´t faced before. The Roman Catholic Church believes that if two people married in Church without any hindrance for a Church wedding (like a conscious desire against having children or being manipulated into a marriage) then the couple is married for life. Marriage is not anything that is based on feelings, but on a choice. . A legal divorce does not annul what one agreed upon before the face of the Lord

Through his sharing with me it became for me clear that there was a chance for him to receive this annulment, so he went into the formal request for a review of his case. That worked out fine. Recently he received the verdict that his marriage in Church wasn´t legal, as his wife had admitted that she didn´t want any children. This leaves him now free to decide if he wants to marry a wife who is committed to the Lord and the Church.

Shalom

Shalom is another important concept from the Old Testament that we use often. Its meaning is well-being in spirit, soul, body and financial. St. Paul was a missionary who needed to translate Shalom into the Greek language. He couldn´t find one word that translated Shalom, he needed two words: Grace (the goodness of God which we don´t deserve, it is related to the Hebrew word Hesed: God smiles at us) and Peace (in Greek: the absence of war). God like a father, smiles at us and tells us:

“there is no war anymore between you and Me. I know you how you at times mess things up and says: I simply love you, even if you don´t understand why I didn´t act and you were angry with Me. I invite you to still be filled with my love.  Let my smile soften your pain”

The physical felt “Peace of God” enables us to feel the emotions stored in our bodies without having to remember ugly facts of the past. Only when we are able to face ugly facts and the Lord agrees that we can face these facts (1 Cor.10: 13), can we actually look them straight in the eye. Tell all your concerns and your needs to Jesus with thanksgiving and the peace of God will protect your heart and your mind (Philip.4: 6-8).

I tell about my own experience with physical wounds in my brain that made me react like a young boy of eight. The first thing that I noticed in my healing process was that God told me, “ No Téo, don´t say that or don´t do that”. The ´wall of peace ` protected also my environment against some of my infantile reactions. I was several years ago in India and walked by a colorful fair attraction: a big wheel with baskets in which one could sit. A voice in me said: “I want to go in there…”. The Big Wheel was not in use. There was no one who serviced it. I said to myself: that can´t be done…then there was a reaction in my right leg, like stamping, it said: I want to get in there. I smiled and thought there is the “eight-year-old boy” again. I replied now to that young inner-voice: “It can´t be done”. To my surprise, he answered: “then I want to ride a sleigh down the hill”. I told him: when we are back in Austria and it has snowed, I will find a sleigh and we will go down the hill. About five weeks later it had snowed. I found a sleigh and Adult Téo with Little Téo had so much fun as we raced down the hill… I have experienced that since that time he seems to have grown older…

Powerful Peace and blessing

Who and what can we bless?

When we bless we want to share Gods love. As He loves everyone we can bless everyone as well, unless the Lord warns you not to do this. One needs to learn to make such decisions. For myself I use this rule: I need to feel in inner security that the Lord “smiles at me”. That it is O.K. If there isn´t that inner security, I can´t do much. I know that this might be puzzling for some people. I tell my students: “Live in the reality of Philippians 4: be sure that you have done all that it said there. Then, even as you thank the Lord that you don´t know what to do, you focus on Jesus inside your heart, even when there are other feelings as well. You need to be focussed on Gods Peace. If it isn´t there, then don´t act. Just tell the one who asks you to do something: “I need time to discuss that with the Lord.”

Once there was in our supporting church in Utrecht a need presented by a lady. As we were on furlough, I was a part of the team of elders. The woman asked to be anointed with oil for healing. We gathered together around her and prayed silently. After some time, the pastor asked: “does anyone has a word of faith?” None of us responded. He said: “I don´t have any impulse either. Dear lady, we need to pray this week about it”. She exploded in anger. This showed that her attitude wasn´t right. We all took time to pray and the next week there was faith and a rather humble lady received the blessing she had asked for.

– Blessing

God started to bless first (Gen.1). He saw that it was good. Blessing is sharing good words in the Name of Jesus. We are all called to be priests. There are priests in the Church who have a special calling and function.  There is also the priesthood of all believers.1  Vatican II stressed that common believers are also priests (with a task in the world). One can bless with the eyes, just thinking a blessing. They found in at least four places in the brain neurons2 that react to the feelings that are transferred through the eyes and through the voice. Through the mirror neurons, we can share our thoughts of blessing with others. If they are open to us, they can receive this blessing. If they close themselves for us, it just doesn´t work. One can bless a child, a son or a daughter. We can also bless each other in good or bad days. The Lord is with us always. One mother was concerned for her son. His mood had changed, he suddenly seemed to have everyone ´locked out´ and hardly communicated anymore. I suggested that she could ask the Lord to wake her up at night when He would want her to bless him. When he would be in school, she could go into his room, (“don´t touch anything”) and just bless his room. She did that and she stood in the hall, before his bedroom door. Softly she blessed him after ten minutes or so she went to bed again. She did this for three months. Naturally, it did something to her fearful attitude. It was changed with hope in God. She also could let him ´grow away´ from her. She also “cleansed his room, from whatever there might have been of things that didn´t belong there. The end result was a new and stable mother/son connection, with the needed freedom for both.

I once sat on a bus in California to visit a friend. It was a three-hour drive. A lady stepped in and sat next to me. We started to chat and I noted her Dutch accent. I switched to Dutch and our talk immediately changed. She asked me what I was doing and I told her that I had a biblical based spiritual approach to help traumatized people. In a few sentences, she then explained what had happened to her before she immigrated to the USA. She was all-ears as we say in Holland and wanted to know if I could help her right on this bus. I shared briefly and then she explained more in depth what had happened. I taught her some biblical principles what she could do about it. She was so amazed that she finally could tell someone what had happened. She had sought help but never could bring herself to talk about “things that happened many years before”. I explained to her that she could because she was hurt, as a young girl and that girl didn´t know English. She needed a Dutch counselor to get help. Then she understood! Suddenly she had to get off the bus, we didn´t even exchange addresses.

Powerful Peace with the help of Saints

A woman who has had terrible experiences with her own mother was always looking for ´motherly type´ women to receive love. As we talked about the reality of Maria and her amazing love, she finally was helped to experience Maria´s, unending love. This put her whole growth to a new level.

One man was so ashamed of himself, as he felt so dirty after being sexually abused. Then he read the story of St. Thomas van Aquinas and the abuse this young monk suffered. This survivor looked up to God and said: “if you have accepted St. Thomas, in spite that he was abused then I can really believe in you.” Naturally, it took time for him to learn that when a person is a child and can´t fight or when a person is an adult and resists, but still got abused, nobody can take away his chastity.3

Blessing the belly

Petra and John had the pain of losing a child and then the added pain of being unable to conceive again. They adopted Peggy a week after she was born. Peggy knew already rather young that her mother couldn´t have her (she was still in a study program and didn´t want to give that up for the sake of her child). She had always felt that she wasn´t really welcome in Petra´s and her husband´s family, although both parents reassured her time and again.  Petra felt so burdened about Peggy that she asked me for help. The first question I asked Petra was: how much time do you have? She assured me that she had enough time. She was in a mess due to a bad youth herself. I asked her what the first time was that she could remember that her father beat her up so much. She shared that it started at age 6 and went on until she married at 18. I then started to share with her about what happens in the body of a child, how the ongoing beatings later in her childhood were an added burden. I talked in rather simple German to the “six-year-old girl and encouraged her to let Petra help her”. This gave some unexpected reactions. Petra really got in touch with the young inner child. She showed her love, right on the spot. She embraced herself. Patting the ´little girl on the shoulders´ and saying some lovely soothing words like a mother would do to her baby. It was then that I could see her strong will and affirmed that through my blessing. As we blessed her belly she was able to conceive again and gave birth to a beautiful girl. The graciousness of the Lord has so deeply touched Petra and John that it radiated out to Peggy. As they shared with her about the new baby, the love and understanding brought them so much closer together.

Praying for the feet

In one of my seminars in Austria, I talked about ´praying for the feet´, blessings them with good words. I have found that this was often the only part of a body I was allowed to physically touch when women were seriously hurt. This lady hadn´t had any physical hurts, so I was debating with myself if I could bless her feet anyhow. I asked her. A bit amused she said O.K. I knelt down and told her feet: “just obey the Lord, even if she doesn´t understand where you want to go.” One afternoon she was preparing food. Suddenly she felt her feet turn, she looked down and said: “what are you doing”? Then she remembered my prayer and decided to follow her feet. They went up the stairs, to the bedroom of her one-year-old baby. There she found the child already struggling for breath as it was suffocating in a sheet… God had saved her baby by warning her. That boy is now a healthy adult!

Blessing with the eyes

 A nurse shared her frustration with the fact that she wasn´t allowed to say anything to a dying patient about God. If anyone would find out, she would be fired on the spot. Dying patients don´t initiate easily “what do you think about God”? I explained to her the function of mirror neurons. They make that we can sense what someone is feeling if we are on the same wavelength. As she knew that most of the patients had at least some RC background, she knew that she couldn´t say a word about God, unless the patient started the discussion. Dying patients usually don´t do that. If she started it and someone would find out, she would be dismissed from her job at once. I told her: “No one can stop you from thinking a blessing”. A month later as I met her again, she was radiant. She told of the situation where she was sitting with a dying patient, with a wonderful result. The man moaned and tossed around and around. She just thought blessings in Jesus name. After some time, his eyes met her. He drank in her love, shared without words. He became calm and started to smile. His breathing became slower and with a smile on his face, he died. She knew from his chart that he was Roman Catholic. She felt she had given him that what he needed in his last hour of life.

1 1 Peter 2:9

2Mirror neurons IN Wikipedia: Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, MD, who with his colleagues at the University of Parma first identified mirror neurons, says that the neurons could help explain how and why we “read” other people’s minds and feel empathy for them. If watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys–down to a single neuron–then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people.

3Eden, Dawn, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints Ave Maria Press. 2012