Healing
Healing Your Past
Healing Year by Year
Hurts in the Womb
Early Childhood
The Teenage Years
Early Adult Years
Middle Adulthood
The Twilight Years
Healing the Generations
Healing Prayers
Pray It Forward
Pray it Forward Prayers

"O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore You. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me, tell me what I should do. Give me Your orders. I promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me and to accept all that You permit to happen to me. Let me only know Your will. Amen"

These are the years when we need most support and encouragement yet they are the neglected years for many. These are the years when, as teenagers, we certainly don't need an over abundance of material things in order to 'keep up with the Joneses' or to appease the conscience of absent parents substituting with gifts. Rather, our teenagers need those most precious gift parents can give - time and physical presence, patience and understanding, encouragement and praise when due.

The hurts we store up in memory, some of them buried deep within the sub-conscious, gnaw away at us in a silent but deadly fashion. We need to be able to take them out, see tham as fruitless and worthless baggage, forgive those who may have caused them and move on, with a deadly weight gone from the shoulders. It's really surprising how much physically 'lighter and freer' we feel when we've 'dumped our load'.

Scriptures teach us on forgiveness, when Jesus answered Peter's question about forgiving seven times.

"Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times but seventy-seven times" Matthew 18; 22

Of all of the virtues forgiveness must be one of the hardest to put into practice. Our hurts can run so deep and painful that somehow we need to justify them with both anger and hatred against those who caused them. But, you know, anger and hatred are the most destructive of emotions and actually lead to physical illness as well as a heart never at peace.

If we could but let it all go, hand the hurts, angers and hatred over to the Lord and say: "Lord, the burden has become too heavy for me, please take it onto Your shoulders. Help me to forgive those who hurt me."

For some of us that hatred is directed towards God. The loss of a loved one, particularly a friend or sibling, leaves us so angry with God that we turn away from Him. That's OK too and all part of a normal grieving process. But there comes a time when we must let go of those harmful emotions and rejoice in the good memories we have of the one lost to us.

Perhaps we feel a certain guilt and direct the anger inwards, unable to forgive ourselves for something we may have done. There can be things in our past that we feel ashamed of and feel we are unworthy of forgiveness. Our Beloved Father in heaven waits for us to turn away from self-loathing, anger and hatred and say: "Lord help me to forgive myself."

Hurts, fears and resentments from our past that have been stored up and not released through forgiveness can lead to all sorts of problems - physical, emotional and spiritual. So today, let us ask the Lord for His help in shedding them, the courage and strength to be able to forgive and the trust that, difficult as it will be for us, the Lord really will take the burden from us.