What Is Inner Healing?

by Jill Joshu

Many people who hear about Tree House Healing Ministries want to know more about inner healing. After all, that's the sole purpose of every program that Tree House sponsors.

Inner healing is the emotional and spiritual equivalent of physical healing. Imagine that a person grows up and experiences the usual range of childhood ills - measles, chicken pox, a cold, a scratched knee and on and on. Now, imagine that somehow not a single one of these childhood ills was ever healed. By the age of 35 this person is suffering from five or six minor illnesses, has band aids on eighty-four cuts or scratches, both arms are in slangs, all ten toes are bruised and she has a pounding headache! Her ability to perform as a whole human being is impaired by the unhealed injuries she is suffering. The amazing thing is that this person believes that being in pain is normal. No one is surprised that this suffering person isn't able to enjoy life.

The emotional injuries we suffer as children prevent us from experiencing satisfying fulfilling adult lives. They sap our inner strength, make healthy relationships impossible, and keep us crippled with loneliness and despair. Such hurts can be delivered by parents and other relatives and siblings, teachers, other children, neighbors - anyone a child encounters. Children don't know how to process their negative feelings and most adults don't know how to support a child's need to cry or be angry. Experts agree that what happens to us as children is not as traumatic as the lack of opportunity to express our feelings about the event. Whether an injury is the result of an unintentional slight or severe and deliberate abuse or molestation, the child who was hurt remains frozen unless the pain can be experienced in a safe environment. Once the feeling has been experienced, the inner child can be freed and the adult can make decisions from a new position of strength and wholeness.

Inner healing is simply allowing God access to all the emotional hurts of our entire lives - from birth on - so that He can heal the wounds life gave us and restore us to emotional and spiritual health. God creates each child with many talents, bursting with the confidence and humility and trust to say, ''Oops, Abba, l goofed! Help me!''

Emotional injuries distort that natural relationship into misconceptions that prevent God's children from seeing healing. Some of the falsehoods we say to ourselves are ''What happened to me was my fault." "I don't need God or anybody else.'' "l'm too bad.''

No one is ''too bad'' because everyone was created by God and God doesn't make anything bad. You might feel bad. You might believe that you are bad. But you can't be bad because God made you and God does not make junk! And, God wants to reclaim each of His children and make them whole again.

The purpose of Tree House Healing Ministries is to provide the environment and the people needed to help God accomplish this work. Through praise and worship, teachings and guided meditations, we seek God's healing. Inner healing is a process that takes time. God heals in a slow, gentle way as we become ready. Tree House programs can be an important adjunct to other personal growth practices such as 12-step meetings, individual counseling prayer and daily Eucharist. Tree House is a place where many have come to know the Father and Jesus in a personal, loving way.

Since the ministries began in 1985, Sister Cecelia Ann Loomer, founder and director, and teams of volunteers have traveled throughout the Midwest and as far as Massachusetts and Mississippi to conduct healing programs. The teams go wherever they are invited and offer a range of programs including weekend retreats, nine-week Healing Clinics and Dream Courses, and one-day events that meet the needs of the community requesting their assistance. The ministries also offer audio cassettes and video-taped programs that have helped hundreds of people all over the country.

To find out more about Tree House programs, call 314-427-7768.