Powerful Peace Counseling in the Roman Catholic Church

A Lifetime Evangelical turns Roman Catholic

Introduction: Much has happened in the 25 years since I wrote from Shame to Peace (FSTP). If you haven´t read it, what I write now might be a help to understand more of my thoughts and prayers for wounded people, especially in the RC Church.[1] If you did read FSTP, you might probably be a Protestant who heard about my conversion to the RC Church. I know it has created some turmoil. The last eight years I have been rather silent and out of public scrutiny. That was necessary, as I needed time to digest all the changes in my life. What made me decide, being a lifetime evangelical missionary/pastor, Bible school teacher, and counselor and then to become a Roman Catholic Deacon? In the first place, I am not anti-protestant. The opposite is true. I am very thankful for the Protestant Church. I am who I am because of my parents and grandparents prayed me into Gods Kingdom. I am thankful for:

• the people who believed in my calling and sacrificed time and money for our ministry.
• for the Theological studies, I could take in Bible school “de Herdershof” (NL). ICI Brussels (B), Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena (USA).
• for the many people who spend time with me to share about how they experienced God.
• for the many different insights I received. It was at times also a struggle what to believe, as in the Protestant church anyone can believe or not believe what they personally experience as right. In this jungle of thoughts and dogmatic statements, God helped me to find a way where I could more or less live with.

I am humbled by the trust that hundreds of (mostly traumatized) people gave me. They taught me what was effective of my support and what not. The only reason that I became RC is that the Lord audibly called me to become RC. It is that simple. This call came in the end stretch of my life, age 73, so to say in the last final round of my life´s race. It was a voice I recognized at once as it happened twice before in my life to hear Him actually with my ears. It was the voice of Him whom I have served so many years, more about this later. Looking back I can see the hand of God in the development of my life. My ministry with sexual abuse survivors started in the late sixties in Thailand. Coming back to the Netherlands in 1975 I met more and more survivors. God taught me a way to help them. At the end of the eighties, I had met Dr. Vibeke Möller in a Hospital Christian Hospital meeting in Denmark. She invited me to teach her and interested people about helping people who were living in abusive situations. Challenged to write a book, I developed a draft in English so that it could be translated into Danish. I told about my encounter with the Powerful Peace of God who also can heal what the body still remembers, even if our mind has forgotten why we do sometimes rather peculiar things. I wrote From Shame to Peace in 1990-1991 as a practical counselor, working in a Christian culture with Adult Survivors of Early Sexual Abuse. It covered my experiences from 1970 to 1990. This was a time that professional counselors had hardly discovered sexual abuse. One psychiatrist told me in 1977 that there might perhaps be some cases but he had never met any. We know now so much more about this painful reality. I wrote about: 

• my observations, with many case studies,
• what I saw that the Bible said,
• how these principles harmonized with psychological principles that were emerging in these days[2].

While the knowledge about the neuro-plasticity of the brain had not yet been discovered, I noticed already in the seventies that the Lord guided me to work with the body. I felt led to pray especially for the brain. This resulted in the premise that traumatic incidents in the early youth left scar-type of residues in the brain. These facts of trauma may be ´forgotten´ but the emotional feelings were still there. This kept a part of their reactions locked in the age when the  ´scar´ was formed. I also observed that stress makes us usually react at a lower emotional age. This was also for me one explanation for how it would be possible that married couples in stress situations would turn on each other like little children. I also noticed that if people would physically calm down, they would heal much quicker. Christians shared Gods Peace throughout the centuries. This helped people grow emotionally, mentally and spiritually. After all psychiatry and psychology were modern concepts introduced in the last 200 years. The Church has had the burden to help the many traumatized people for nearly 2000 years. The regular confessions and the authoritative assurance that they were forgiven is still one of the attractive sides of the RC church. As a Protestant, I observed how these scars were affected or healed as I shared Gods Peace. I learned to listen to what body parts were telling the client and/or me. I felt that God led me to bless the brain:

• the sides (now I know the importance of the amygdala for emotions).
• the ´bridge between the brain halves´,  connecting the left and right brain.
• the facial muscles, the nose, the hands, the skin, the spine,
• the intestines and the feet.
• Speaking good words to counselees and specific body parts “in Jesus name”[3]resulted in dramatic changes.

Preparation for ministry How did I get into all of this? I had taken a two-year Bible school training prior to going in 1963 to Thailand as a missionary. After an on-the-job further training, I became ordained in 1965 by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C. & M.A.). In Thailand I met leprosy leprosy that was then as much feared as HIV is today. Coming across sexual abuse stories that raised many questions, gave me also some answers. After returning to the Netherlands in 1975 I took further studies (1977 – 1980) through ICI in Brussels, Belgium and received a B. A. in Bible and Theology, then followed by Fuller School of Cross-Cultural Studies (Pasadena, USA) where I got my M.A. in 1986. These were tough years in which I had to develop a strict discipline of self-study (20 hours per week), in addition to having two half-time jobs. I learned that there were brain studies that confirmed my premise about what happens in the brain when one is traumatized. I started to look at the ´culture of abuse´ and found ways to reach out to people who lived in that culture. This helped them to change their paradigm of living from being a victim, to learn how to be a survivor and then to show them ways to become more than a survivor: a new way to live and thrive, to live well, unhindered by the burden of the past. How to face these realities are still today the same as 25 years ago when I wrote: “From Shame to Peace”.

Notes:
[1] I use many stories as composites of different people in order to protect their privacy. [2] Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: In „ The Body Keeps the Score“, 2014 gives an excellent overview of these scientific studies. [3] Mathew 8:14-18

“Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name”