God Has Healed
For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
First came the dream of being sprayed with bullets by someone with an automatic weapon, but only three bullets hit me in my upper gut. A day or so later I was walking the floor, holding my back and lying out on a cold floor crying like a child and begging for pain killers. I had never felt such excruciating pain before in my life. The nurses called it male childbirth. I called it eight days of hell. I was passing three kidney stones. After giving birth to the triplets, on the ninth day I cautiously accepted the peace my body began to feel. It was the questions of what had really happened that began to haunt me. I knew I’d been through something major and I needed community (a teacher or guide) to help me understand exactly what had just transpired in my body. It was a rebirth into many things one of which was accepting the gift of healing and of being healed that God granted me before I was born.
Enduring waves of pain traveling through your flesh like ripples in a pond can give you a whole other perspective on life that you didn’t know you could have. I’ve lived, for years, in a sort of darkness thinking I’d done something wrong which I myself couldn’t quite figure out. It’s that nagging feeling that haunts you, but you just can’t figure out the source of it, but over time I’d gotten bits and pieces of the nature of a possible truth.
After the pain, one of the first messages of healing the spirit sent to me was that I was carrying no weight now. I felt that whatever had plagued me for years had been settled in my mind, but it had actually been settled before I was even born. I’d been granted a reprieve that I never really needed in the first place. God had never held anything against me. I remember as each kidney stone was moving asking God to take the pain away and heal me, but the pain would only go away for a while only to return full force. I felt God was cruel and not answering me. It was not until the last stone that the doctors even realized that there was more than one. I remembered my dream and knew there had been three. In my pain, I’d felt that God had not heard me and was somewhere reveling in my pain; it did not occur to me until later that my prayer was being answered one stone at a time. In my pain, I had come to believe that God had forgotten me and it fed back into the feelings of being cursed or something; that I needed to be punished for something; that feeling that you’re always the last in line, the forgotten one, the undeserving.
An understanding came to me As Christ would say, Let him who has an ear hear. In another place and time, I’d been a teacher, a spiritual teacher—a damn good one. I’d taught and trained many students in spiritual gifts many would call psychic. I had a student in particular whom I loved deeply. I trained him and trained him well, the apple of my eye. As it was another dark teacher corrupted him out of sheer jealousy of the relationship we shared. He corrupted him simply to counter every good thing I’d taught; a pure act of malice. Over time my student used everything I’d trained him for as a healer to do evil. I ended up having to not only destroy my student, but the other teacher as well. I took no students after that ashamed and feeling the ultimate failure. I could not hear the voice of God nor the voice of wisdom amongst men and women. I was too wounded to be able to hear and this is how I died. In this life, both the student and the dark teacher returned and the same scenario has almost played out again. I sidestepped the tragedy when I confronted them both without violence; upon doing it was a feeling of drunken euphoria which left me with a sense of having altered space and time and creating a chance for healing in the present where there had been none before.
I got up off of my sickbed and recognized the power of illness to heal; pain does have its upside, which I might add is easy to say after the fact. My God sent word through the spirit that I had always been healed and that God held nothing against me but wanted me here in this place and time not to replay the past but to do a greater work of healing and re-embrace my role as spiritual teacher and begin taking on students again. For years I’d categorically rejected the teacher’s role only to accept it in the form of an English teacher, which never seemed to bring a great return for me career-wise; out of twelve years of teaching I’ve only worked one year in a full time position and that only on a year-to-year contract basis. Nothing lasting has come of it.
I am a healer. It is my calling before God and humans alike. But the illness had to be the gift to get me to accept that role once again carrying age-old guilt about what I thought was a mistake and murder. What I’d tried to do in the past was not a mistake. It was a try for the sake of light and love.
Beyond the illness a friend reminded me of the scripture above. Even more, I happened to be flipping through my Bible the other day and there inside sticking out was an old card from someone with the same scripture printed on it. God needed to remind me.
Whatever you’ve done, whoever you’ve hurt, know that God does have a plan rooted in love for you and wants you to thrive and prosper in this life. I don’t mean this in the sense of some trite Pollyannaish way in this world. You live long enough, you will have trials and tribulations, but what God promises is that trials and tribulations themselves are not God’s goal neither will your response, good or bad, change how God feels about you.
God reminded me that we made a pact before I was born. I was reminded for days afterward that my middle name is Raphael (God has healed). There are still days where I have to be reminded that God’s intention is love, not evil and that there was a plan in place for me even before I was born. When love is present you can have nothing but a future and hope. God struck out across time and history to release me from shame and guilt over the past. I’m taking on new students now free of a past that haunted me and free to use that past as a teaching tool about the power of overcoming darkness and tragedy. I’m living proof that God has its hand on not only me, but them as well, but they’ve got to believe. And they shall learn that even the pain of the past can set you free.
For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
First came the dream of being sprayed with bullets by someone with an automatic weapon, but only three bullets hit me in my upper gut. A day or so later I was walking the floor, holding my back and lying out on a cold floor crying like a child and begging for pain killers. I had never felt such excruciating pain before in my life. The nurses called it male childbirth. I called it eight days of hell. I was passing three kidney stones. After giving birth to the triplets, on the ninth day I cautiously accepted the peace my body began to feel. It was the questions of what had really happened that began to haunt me. I knew I’d been through something major and I needed community (a teacher or guide) to help me understand exactly what had just transpired in my body. It was a rebirth into many things one of which was accepting the gift of healing and of being healed that God granted me before I was born.
Enduring waves of pain traveling through your flesh like ripples in a pond can give you a whole other perspective on life that you didn’t know you could have. I’ve lived, for years, in a sort of darkness thinking I’d done something wrong which I myself couldn’t quite figure out. It’s that nagging feeling that haunts you, but you just can’t figure out the source of it, but over time I’d gotten bits and pieces of the nature of a possible truth.
After the pain, one of the first messages of healing the spirit sent to me was that I was carrying no weight now. I felt that whatever had plagued me for years had been settled in my mind, but it had actually been settled before I was even born. I’d been granted a reprieve that I never really needed in the first place. God had never held anything against me. I remember as each kidney stone was moving asking God to take the pain away and heal me, but the pain would only go away for a while only to return full force. I felt God was cruel and not answering me. It was not until the last stone that the doctors even realized that there was more than one. I remembered my dream and knew there had been three. In my pain, I’d felt that God had not heard me and was somewhere reveling in my pain; it did not occur to me until later that my prayer was being answered one stone at a time. In my pain, I had come to believe that God had forgotten me and it fed back into the feelings of being cursed or something; that I needed to be punished for something; that feeling that you’re always the last in line, the forgotten one, the undeserving.
An understanding came to me As Christ would say, Let him who has an ear hear. In another place and time, I’d been a teacher, a spiritual teacher—a damn good one. I’d taught and trained many students in spiritual gifts many would call psychic. I had a student in particular whom I loved deeply. I trained him and trained him well, the apple of my eye. As it was another dark teacher corrupted him out of sheer jealousy of the relationship we shared. He corrupted him simply to counter every good thing I’d taught; a pure act of malice. Over time my student used everything I’d trained him for as a healer to do evil. I ended up having to not only destroy my student, but the other teacher as well. I took no students after that ashamed and feeling the ultimate failure. I could not hear the voice of God nor the voice of wisdom amongst men and women. I was too wounded to be able to hear and this is how I died. In this life, both the student and the dark teacher returned and the same scenario has almost played out again. I sidestepped the tragedy when I confronted them both without violence; upon doing it was a feeling of drunken euphoria which left me with a sense of having altered space and time and creating a chance for healing in the present where there had been none before.
I got up off of my sickbed and recognized the power of illness to heal; pain does have its upside, which I might add is easy to say after the fact. My God sent word through the spirit that I had always been healed and that God held nothing against me but wanted me here in this place and time not to replay the past but to do a greater work of healing and re-embrace my role as spiritual teacher and begin taking on students again. For years I’d categorically rejected the teacher’s role only to accept it in the form of an English teacher, which never seemed to bring a great return for me career-wise; out of twelve years of teaching I’ve only worked one year in a full time position and that only on a year-to-year contract basis. Nothing lasting has come of it.
I am a healer. It is my calling before God and humans alike. But the illness had to be the gift to get me to accept that role once again carrying age-old guilt about what I thought was a mistake and murder. What I’d tried to do in the past was not a mistake. It was a try for the sake of light and love.
Beyond the illness a friend reminded me of the scripture above. Even more, I happened to be flipping through my Bible the other day and there inside sticking out was an old card from someone with the same scripture printed on it. God needed to remind me.
Whatever you’ve done, whoever you’ve hurt, know that God does have a plan rooted in love for you and wants you to thrive and prosper in this life. I don’t mean this in the sense of some trite Pollyannaish way in this world. You live long enough, you will have trials and tribulations, but what God promises is that trials and tribulations themselves are not God’s goal neither will your response, good or bad, change how God feels about you.
God reminded me that we made a pact before I was born. I was reminded for days afterward that my middle name is Raphael (God has healed). There are still days where I have to be reminded that God’s intention is love, not evil and that there was a plan in place for me even before I was born. When love is present you can have nothing but a future and hope. God struck out across time and history to release me from shame and guilt over the past. I’m taking on new students now free of a past that haunted me and free to use that past as a teaching tool about the power of overcoming darkness and tragedy. I’m living proof that God has its hand on not only me, but them as well, but they’ve got to believe. And they shall learn that even the pain of the past can set you free.
c. Raphael—God has healed
(2/23/06)
© 2006 CONRAD PEGUES
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