Living Beloved: Finding My Path For Healing | Part 1 of 3
How I Found My Path for Soul Healing
When I came back to Toronto in the summer of 2017, I knew that I needed to heal myself. Or more accurately I needed healing for the wounds and brokenness in my soul, but I had no idea how I would do such a thing. It also didn't feel like something I could do. Healing felt more like something I was supposed to position myself to receive.
As fate would have it, I ended up getting a job on the communications team of a big church in the Toronto area. This church just so happens to have a style of the Christian faith that is completely different from the one I grew up with. For one thing, inner healing is one of its core values. Inner healing is based on the idea that we carry wounds and trauma from the hurts that have happened in our lives that we need God to come and work at a spiritual level to mend these hurts. This is a very different from a belief that all of our problems due to the fact we're sinners, and that once we are “saved” by believing in Jesus everything in us is fixed.
I knew that landing this job was an act of God, as if this was the way he could show me what I needed to learn for healing. So I stayed curious. As I let myself learn about the theology, philosophy and history of this church and I found myself learning about how to heal the deep wounds in my soul.
How We Become Broken - And How To Heal It
What are our deep wounds?
In life we will naturally face circumstances that hurt us. People will say things or circumstances will happen that will cause pain to us. How we react is the start of these wounds. (Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist or a medical professional by any means but this is how I've come to understand that deeply pain that I discovered resides in my soul.) When we react negatively to these circumstances, it's as though our entire physiology is flooded with this negative emotion. When the hurt is very deep, that pain and negative emotion starts to become part of our physical bodies, and part of our psychology. We develop beliefs and they become part of how we see the whole world. They colour our entire outlook on life.
For example, I grew up in a very frugal family. I don't remember specifics about what I learned about money, but as I became aware of my money beliefs, I could see that my relationship was with money was always one of being afraid that I won't have enough.
There are also certain beliefs we adopt about ourselves related to how intelligent or talented we think we are. People told us things but how successful they thought we would be when we were kids. You might have had people speak life into you and tell you that you could do big things. You may have other people tell you that you have a learning disability and that school is hard for you.
We then take these thoughts and opinions from other people and internalize them. Somewhere along the journey of being an adult we finally come to realize where these beliefs came from and we have a choice to let them go and to choose new beliefs that will better serve us for our futures and the lives that we want to build
When I became an entrepreneur at age 23 in 2014, it was the start of my personal development and personal growth journey. Being an entrepreneur and taking control of my career and my finances, forced me to also look at the beliefs I had about my life.
My supernatural encounter in Montenegro in the summer of 2017 brought it all to a whole new level. By this point I was already quite self-aware. I've been on my spiritual journey for several years. I meditated. I prayed. I had a spiritual practice and a relationship with a higher power. However, none of this could I have prepared me for the thunderous presence of God when it came up on me.
I've written previously about the revelations I had about my own brokenness and the wounds I uncovered in this supernatural encounter, so I'm not going to go into detail here. You can read and hear about it here.
Learning to live as the beloved
What I want to share today is how I found my way to healing. To true healing, not another set of “spiritual practices,” methods or healing modalities. I’ve done many of those and while they can temporarily help, this is a massive paradigm shift and a pathway that is leading my heart and soul to true healing. This is it:
I am learning to live my life as a beloved child of God.
I realized that all of my pain in life, all of my striving and my need for accomplishment was due to the fact that I was trying to earn approval and love. I didn't fully have the approval and love for myself, so I would look for it in these external ways. If I did things that people considered success on the outside, then I would get approval from others and maybe once I heard words of affirmation for others I could love and accept myself. Of course, I didn't do this consciously. My conscious mind told me that “Ah, here is a career path where you can succeed and do well so you should follow it. You have the ability to win awards so you should work winning awards. You have the ability to make more money so you should work to earn more money and then you can be one of those people who is lauded and applauded.”
Deep down though, I was hurting. I was lost. I felt a vast, dark loneliness because I didn't feel loved and accepted by others or by myself.
In my personal journey with God and through the things I learned at this particular church, I've come to realize that my path to Healing to learn how to be loved by God. When I can fully know who I am as a child of God, as one beloved by God, the striving ceases.
I have found the path forward, now I am walking it.
I know at an intellectual level that I am fully known, loved, cherished and taken care of by the One who holds the entire universe in the advanced. Now I must live it to integrate this knowing into my heart.
I am learning how to live every aspect of my life as one loved by God.
What would it look like for me to show up at work as when loved by God?
How would I wake up in the morning knowing that I'm fully loved and taken care of by God?
I would never worried about my finances because I am 1000% sure that God has my entire career and my life laid out. God can take care of me through every single twist and turn until the day I breathe my final breath, so I can rest in his love and trust. I would take care of my body as a precious and sacred vessel that God has put my soul inside. I would be thankful for my body and take care of it out of love. I would treat people with more kindness, grace and generosity because that is what a true princess does. A princess understands that she's been given a sacred gift and her job is to share that gift with humanity.
Since coming back to Toronto, I have oscillated between times where I am complaining at God, times where I don't even care about God and times like this, when I remember that God is not a requirement I'm trying to fulfill. God is the ultimate source of love and my soul just wants to soak it all up.
I intend on writing more about this topic of learning to live as one loved by God. For me this is the ultimate destination, the most fulfilling of all my adventures. As I learn and integrate to live is one loved by God over these next few years, I have the sense that I will be equipped for the rest of my life. I have lived for decades with ungodly beliefs and limiting beliefs, so I'm not expecting all of these old beliefs to follow me instantly. I understand that learning to be loved as a process of unlearning and relearning. It’s just like when you fall in love, it takes time to trust someone and trust that they’ll love you through your flaws and your darkness.
I am on a journey of reframing my entire life, so that no matter what it looks like on the outside, deep down I could put my head on the pillow at the end of each day and know that I am loved. I'm becoming totally, truly free, knowing that nothing can harm me and nothing can falsely puff me up.
I am great because God loves me. And I am humbled because God loves me.
