Table of Contents:
WordBytes on Healing from Suffering

In what we’re suffering through, the greatest healing comes when we let go of all our own ideas of what our lives should be like. By keeping our eyes on God instead of on the goal of healing, we continue to move forward. Seeing only Him, we advance beyond the limitations of our perceptions and enter new territory for healing. Seeing only Him, we can accept that the journey of healing is longer than we’d like it to be and we gladly surrender to His plan…. If we truly want what God wants for us, we will trust Him and allow Him to lead us back to the source of our wounds. It is there that we can discover He cares. It is there that we open ourselves to His healing touch. And it is there that we are finally set free from our pain! (Excerpt from Persisting through the Pain to Find Healing)

• The Healing Wounds of Jesus
  Mystical and Scientific Insights into Christ’s Actual Passion, a series of descriptions of how Jesus suffered for you, as revealed by saints and mystics through the centuries and by scientists today. The wounds inflicted on him can be healing for you if you meditate on what he did for you.

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• How to Forgive When It’s Difficult (podcast)
  Is there someone in your life who’s difficult to forgive? Terry Modica shares from personal experience and from scripture how to do it and why. In this podcast, she busts some myths about forgiveness — false ideas that make it more difficult to forgive than it needs to be. When we forgive someone, it does not mean everything is going to be okay. But it does mean that the person who has hurt you no longer has control over you. Protection is part of healthy forgiveness.

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• Are you taking the time you need for personal renewal?
  The word “retreat” often is used when an enemy is winning and pushing us backward. I prefer to go away on a “restoration” so that I can return home ready to win spiritual battles. That’s what I call real renewal! When was the last time you went on a “restoration”? Jesus wants to restore you! What do you need restored in your tired soul? Or in your wounded heart?

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• Where Is God When Disaster Hits?
  When a disaster hits us, or when we witness destruction hitting the lives of other people, it’s normal to wonder: “Where is God? Why didn’t he prevent this?” We doubt our understanding of God’s protective love. And we become depressed, despairing, and discouraged. Where is God??? Why did he allow this to happen?

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• Dealing with the Doubters Around Us
  Is there anyone in your life who doesn’t accept you for how much you’ve grown spiritually? People who are doubters because they don’t believe you about the Faith? Have you been falsely accused of doing something you never had any intention of doing? Have you been dismissed as incapable of doing what you have in fact learned to do?

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• Why Do You Condemn Yourself?
  When Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He took with Him our sins so that they could be nailed to the cross and die with Him. We all know this. It’s basic catechism. So why are we so quick to put ourselves down and beat ourselves up for what we don’t like in us? When Jesus died, so did the Father’s condemnation of those who want to live with Him in heaven eternally.

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• God, why have You abandoned me?
  I shivered in the February wind as I followed my husband and two young children to the car. Glancing at the “For Sale” sign in our frozen yard, I remembered how soft with summer grass the ground had been when we placed that sign. We had prayed confidently back then for our house to sell quickly. Why was God ignoring us? I couldn’t shake the sense that He had abandoned us. But maybe, just maybe, if I went to church today, God would finally break His silence.

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• To Touch His Cloak
  It looked impossible to reach Him. He was walking in the opposite direction and quite a large crowd surrounded Him. I wondered if I would ever reach Him before He slipped into the temple where I was not permitted because I’m a woman. So I struggled through the people with more determination, hoping to just get close enough to touch His robe.

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• When Love Hurts: Healing the Lepers of Today
  Who are the lepers of today? The people in your life who need your healing touch but who repulse you, who cause suffering. They are the people who are the most difficult to love, the ones we reject because they keep hurting us, the jerks who make our lives miserable, the trouble-makers we stay away from to keep our lives more peaceful.

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• Healing Our Image of God’s Fatherhood
  The Father is the Person of the Holy Trinity who’s most difficult to have a close relationship with. He’s the one who punishes us. He expects perfection. Right? Wrong! We need healing in our idea of his Fatherhood.

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• Getting Rid of the False God of Punishment
  If you see God the Father as a Punisher who’s always on the look-out for you to do wrong so that He can slap you on the knuckles and ground you in your room of misery, you’re believing in a false god.

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• Persisting through the Pain to Find Healing
  Why do some people follow the path of healing and then stop the process? Why do they make good progress and then slide backward and keep heading backward into old wounds, self-defeating behaviors, addictions, co-dependent attitudes and the unhealthy beliefs that they had previously overcome?

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• Turning the Suffering of Waiting into a Giggle
  We all have relatives and friends for whom we’ve been praying with the longevity of St. Monica (whose wayward son eventually became the famous St. Augustine). We all have problems that should have, with all due common sense, ended yesterday. If not sooner.

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• How to Receive God’s Comfort (a testimony of healing)
  When one has been abused, especially when it’s occurred over and over again, it’s very difficult ~ it even seems impossible ~ to feel God’s comfort, let alone be aware of His compassion and unconditional love. The question is asked: “If God really loves me, then why did He allow the abuse to happen?”

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• Why Must We Suffer?
  Our lives can be destroyed by suffering, or they can be improved by it. The miracle happens when we find God’s healing. Miracles also happen when our sufferings change not only us, but also the world around us. These miracles are possible only because “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

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• Why Me, Lord?
  Have you ever lamented, “Why me, Lord?” Sure, we all have. “I’m suffering; why me, Lord?” Or the contrasting, “I survived the accident that caused others to suffer; why me, Lord?” Usually, this comes from low self esteem. Often it’s rooted in the false belief that God actually wants “me” to suffer. 

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• How to Overcome the Pain of Frustration
  Feeling the pain of frustration? Want to get rid of it? Some people can deal with the very same problem and never get frustrated. Here are 8 steps for finding true and lasting inner peace no matter what is going on around you and who is causing it.

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• Learning from Divisions
  Are there divisions in your family or workplace or parish? St. Paul makes a startling observation in 1 Cor. 11:17-26,33. He says, “There have to be factions among you…” as if this were a good thing. Why?

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• Keys for Living Well in Today’s High Stress Crises
  We have been living through a lot of stressors in our world, our homes, jobs, and our Church. For many of us, these stressors accumulate on top of a load of unresolved traumas and suffering from earlier in our lives. Here are specific practices we can cultivate that will help to prevent or lessen stress overload.

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• Meditations for those who suffer:
  The Passion in the Garden
  For You I Carry the Cross
  My Crucifixion
  One Drop of My Blood

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See also WordBytes on Spiritual Warfare >>