It is a
joy for me to link up each week with Holley Gerth’s Coffee for Your Heart Encouragement Challenge. This week she asked us to
share whatever is on our heart that could help someone else.
One of the most encouraging experiences for me was learning to allow my “blind
spots,” those pockets of pain we stuff in our hearts, to come to the surface. A Christian counselor once helped me see that, "all feelings are neutral." She
would have me draw a pie chart in my journal, writing a different feeling in
each slice of pie, and then journaling about the circumstances surrounding the feeling
listed in each pie piece that day. This helped me to visualize all my feelings
on level ground, enabling them to come to the surface for healing from my Heavenly
Father.
I learned that as adults, when we have been hurt, our imagination is wounded.
As a result, alienation and belief in bad news replace belief in good news.
We may
have a feeling response that can become frozen into resentment.
We may
have an anger response that can become frozen into negative reactions of rage
or passivity.
We
might have an interpretation response that can become frozen in negative
attitudes, perceptions, biases, and beliefs.
As a
result, our imagination becomes paralyzed. Attending to our wounded imagination
is a path through forgiveness.
Forgiveness
expands our horizons, invites us to retrieve the positive, and work through
the negative. Is the glass of water half-full or half-empty? The answer depends
entirely on how you see it. “How you see it” is called “perception.” There is
the story about the blind men and the elephant. Each man named and described
the animal according to his experience of touching only one part of the
elephant’s body. The man who held the trunk “perceived” the elephant to be a
large snake; the man who held the leg “perceived” the elephant to be a sturdy
tree. In the same way, we “perceive” life—depending on what our experience is.
Our experiences generate our expectations and our perceptions. We interpret
life experiences, and we form expectations and perceptions, attitudes and
assumptions. All of this activity is the work of the imagination. It is
likewise the work of the imagination to reinterpret and reform repeated
assumptions and expectations.
Here
are a couple of optical illusions that can help us to experience “blind spots”...
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vase or faces? |
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old woman or young girl? |
Forgiveness
demands that we take another look, so that our imagination can reframe our
narrow interpretations. Forgiveness includes the decision to refocus or enlarge
the context. Native Americans speak of walking a mile in another’s moccasins.
When we enlarge the context, we refocus, or we see it through a wider lens.
Imagination is the work of seeing through a wider lens. If we stick to a
negative interpretation of an old offense, we will experience resentment
whenever we think about it, or about the offender. We will never be able to
grieve and let go; we will seesaw between rage and resignation; we will never
allow anger to surface and put us back on the journey of forgiveness. If we
insist on telling and retelling our bad news stories of the past, we simply
recycle the bad news and pass it on to the next generation. We pollute the
emotional environment; we remain stuck in lifeless memories instead of looking
for a more positive side of things long past.
Our
imagination is a powerful entity. It can cause the hair on the back of our neck
to stand up, our spirit to soar, or our face to blush. Imagination is the power
that holds our beliefs together; we believe with our imagination. The
imagination is the wellspring of faith and hope. Our biggest and best dreams
for ourselves and others rise from the imagination.
When you enlarge your perceptions, using your God-given imagination, you at least
allow for the possibility of healing. You give yourself the opportunity to turn
from the negative aspects of your past, to get rid of the excess baggage, and
to face the journey into the future with hope.
Now to
him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that
is at work within us.--Ephesians 3:20
For now
we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to
face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully
known.—I Corinthians 13:12
Has this post been encouraging to you? Feel free to leave your comments in the
box below, I’d love to hear from you!