How You Know You Need Healing (It's Not What You Think!)

I have a phrase that I like to say to my friend sarcastically from time to time… “Your issues are showing.”

I’ll say it to her when I can tell I’ve hit a sore spot. A hot button that’s attached to some deeper-lying issue. Completely devoid of a poker face, I can tell when I’ve hit one because instantly, her voice and demeanor will change.

It’s not just something with her though. We all do it, even though it manifests in different ways. For some, it’s anger and a hot temper. For others, it’s sadness and tears. While someone else might become anxious and afraid.

But, no matter what it looks like, the underlying cause is the same… our issues are showing.

When you first think of the term healing, what do you think of?

You probably think of physical healing - the curing of bodily ailments and wounds. But, even if you do think in terms of spiritual and emotional healing, if I were to ask you… how do you know you need healing? You’d probably give a “logical” answer like, if I’ve been though a traumatic event, suffered loss, or was hurt deeply by someone.

And while all of those are true, they are just what you can see on the surface. Yes, when we go through a traumatic event like a divorce, a miscarriage, the death of a loved one or an assault, it’s pretty obvious that there is emotional and spiritual healing that needs to be done.

But, what if I told you, there might be more going on than meets the eye?

What if I told you that some of the behaviors, habits and personality traits that we have, that we thought were “just who we are,” are actually a result of an inner wound that needs healing? What if those things actually aren’t who we are? But are just outward representations of who we became along the way because of the experiences we’ve been through? What if those things are actually just our issues showing?

Before I get too abstract on you, let me give you a practical example so you can understand what I mean.

I had always thought I was just “really sensitive” to animals. Like, ridiculously so. Not just in a “oh, aren’t they cute” kind of way. I mean, like apologizing to road kill as I passed it and being completely wrecked for an entire day (at least) if someone told me a sad story about an animal.

I just assumed that was part of who I was. I’m strongly empathetic and those kind of people tend to be sensitive to animals anyway, so I just figured it was a proverbial cross for me to bear my whole life. But, one day, a friend of mine (who is very well versed in healing and deliverance) mentioned that maybe I should pray about this and ask if there was a wound there that Jesus wanted to heal (after she told me a disturbing animal story and I told her she had to stop talking or I was going to lose it).

(Note: if you don’t know how to hear from Jesus personally, I will be doing a blog post and/or video about that soon!)

To be honest, I kind of just blew her off and thought to myself, there’s nothing deeper going on there. I’m just sensitive.

But, I did think “Well, just in case there is… I don’t want to miss something He might be trying to do.” So, I got down on the floor for what I thought would be just a quick little check-in with God. Boy, was I wrong.

Not only was there something there, it was a deep wound that went all the way back to when I was about 9 or 10. It did involve a traumatic event that happened with an animal (a family pet got hit by a car), but as it turns out, there was a deeper wound there that I was COMPLETELY unaware of.

Without getting into all of the details, I had felt completely alone in that moment as a child. I thought I had failed our pet and I felt like I was left alone to deal with the grief (or more accurately, not deal with it) because of how my parents had handled it (or more accurately, not handled it).

I honestly had no idea that I even felt this way. But, that’s what happens when we have deep soul wounds. Particularly ones that happened in our childhood and ones that we’ve buried away deep inside of us. The super-sensitivity to animals and the way I would completely meltdown when my current dog got sick were so out of proportion to what would be considered a “normal” reaction, but I had never stopped to think about why I was that way.

But, as Jesus gently led me through the whole healing process on my bedroom floor that afternoon, I realized how that one event had caused a lot of life-long beliefs about having to handle everything on my own, expecting others to fail me and feeling like a failure myself when I couldn’t help someone or something in my care.

That’s just one of the many AMAZING “healing sessions” I’ve had with Jesus in the privacy of my bedroom. (Seriously, He’s probably saved me thousands of dollars in counseling bills!) But, in every case, what was on the surface was something that appeared to just be a personality quirk, a pet peeve or an over-sensitivity. But underneath, there was always a deeper wound, going back to an earlier time when my body and mind processed an event in a particular way (usually, an incorrect one) and came to a conclusion that had since been ruling my life.

I like to refer to these things as “echoes.”

Have you ever wondered why sometimes it feels like you’re repeating the same pattern over and over again in your life? Maybe you keep dating the same type of person or you keep finding yourself in situations where you give and give and get nothing in return. It can be a myriad of different things, but you can recognize it because you have this annoying feeling like “why does this KEEP happening to me??”

Those are the echoes. God will often lovingly (and annoyingly, ha!) keep letting us repeat the same pattern in our lives over and over until we finally cry uncle and ask Him to show us what He’s trying to do through it. Again, this is often over things that damaged us in our childhoods.

If you were wounded by your mother or father when you were young, you may find yourself repeatedly drawn to friends or dating partners that mimic their traits. For example, I had always wanted to “fix” my father, so I ended up dating someone who had almost the exact same issues because I was trying to “fix” him the way I was unable to with my dad.

Or it could be the opposite. Maybe you took your parents for granted and feel guilty for not having enough of a relationship with them while they were alive, so now you go overboard extending situations with others way past what should’ve been their expiration date.

Basically, we get stuck in cycles where the echoes from the past keep happening over and over again in the present because God wants to get our attention. He wants to break us out of them. He wants to set us free.

And what amazing news that is! Right? All those things that we thought we just had to “deal with” our whole lives… the anxiety, the perfectionism, the mistrust of others… whatever it is. Jesus can heal it and He WANTS to!

Because that’s the amazing thing about Jesus. He actually wants you better. He wants you whole. After all, that is what He died for. And you DO NOT… let me repeat, DO NOT have to be healed or whole to come to Him! In fact, that kind of defeats the point! Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:31).

This is where RELIGION (NOT the same thing as following Jesus!) gets it wrong. You do NOT need to be perfect to know Jesus. He loves you right now, just as you are and He wants to know you right now, just as you are.

He doesn’t care what race, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, social class or political affiliation you are. He came for EVERYONE to have life and have it abundantly.

So, you DON’T have to live “that” way the rest of your life! When you feel those annoying or painful things rising to the surface for what feels like the 500th time… don’t just push it back down. Don’t be ashamed of it and don’t try to fight it off or “fix” it on your own.

Cry out to Jesus.

You can go to Him anytime, anywhere. He’s waiting and He’ll help you.

So, bring Him your tattered heart. Bring Him your mess… your wrong thoughts, your attitude problems and your hidden fears.

He wants them all.

He wants you.

And He wants to heal you.

Will you let Him?

To receive new blog posts and prophetic words by email, sign up here!