Shortly before Valentine's Day, I stopped in Wal-Mart to buy a last minute gift for Father Mike.  After I had paid for my purchase, I noticed a plant with pink blossoms near the garden section and walked over for a closer look. There were several plants, but upon closer inspection, none of them really interested me. I wandered down the aisle where I noticed two boxes with amaryllis bulbs. One box had its top partially open. I peeked inside. There was a green stalk curled around in the box. At the end of it was a bud. I opened the other box. I saw  a stalk three inches tall with a bid close to opening. Neither of the bulbs had had any water or sunshine in many, many months. They looked so different from the bulb at my house I had  been watering and talking to since Thanksgiving which had produced two stalks three feet tall and six breathtakingly beautiful blossoms eight inches across. I burst into tears right there in the store.

 The boxes were marked down from eight dollars, but there were two more on another shelf. I didn't have the courage to open the other two. I didn't have twenty dollars to liberate them all.  I found a manager and showed her the crippled amaryllis.  She thanked me and promised to care for them.  As I was leaving the store, I realized my tears were not for the bulbs but for all the children who grow up crippled by lack of proper nourishment, both physical and emotional. Like all the tears we shed, my tears were for myself.
 
 

 I am at a workshop.  This morning one of the speakers led the group through an experiential exercise to get us in touch with the wounded part of ourselves.  First she described a movie she had seen about an autistic child.  Filmed over a two year period, a young woman therapist tried to contact a four year old autistic girl.  Each time the therapist approached the child, the child would run away - on tip toes.  The therapist mimicked her.  When the child fluttered her hands, the therapist fluttered her hands.   At one point after months of such attempts to enter the child's world, the therapist touched the tip of one of the girl's fingers with one of her own fingers, and, for just a moment, the girl let the finger tips touch before she ran away.  Many more months went by.  A moment came when the therapist was able to touch the palm of her hand to the palm of the little girl for a moment before the child ran away.  The child had not looked at another human being all this time. She would avert her eyes and turn her head, but for the briefest part of a second, the therapist was able to establish eye contact.  After two years of such work, one day as the therapist was pursuing the child, the girl turned and threw herself into the arms of the therapist.  Now, the therapy could begin!

 We were instructed to reenact this progression by first walking around the room avoiding looking at or touching anyone.  Then we were to touch only finger tips.  The next step was to touch palm to palm.  Finally, we were to hug each other warmly making full eye contact as we approached.  I was unable to follow the directions.  I sat in a chair doubled over with emotional pain, sobbing.  I was flooded with memories of the physical and emotional abandonment I experienced at age one and a half.  Others in the group courageously passed by touching me first with their finger tip and then with their palm.  I kept sobbing.  When someone came and leaned over trying to hug me as I sat in the chair, I was able to come up out of my pain enough to stand up and hug the person back.

 I had several important thoughts from this whole experience.  One woman who approached me was seemingly in even more pain than I was.  I was able to pray for her asking God that my woundedness might enable me to very effectively channel God's love to her.  I embraced my own woundedness and kissed it;  it can be a source of healing for others.  My tears are a blessing, the means God is using to heal me.  Twice in the past I had wept as I listened to the story of a young man who, upon taking a job as an attendant in a mental hospital, chose to eat his dinner every evening in a rocking chair next to a patient who had not spoken to anyone in at least ten years.  Even on his days off he would appear and rock in perfect rhythm to her rocking.  After several months of this, one night as he got up to leave, the woman said to him, "Good night, Tom"  I realized that I was that woman.  Father Mike's words "I pray for you several times a day", have penetrated my fear, hurt and isolation.  I realize I am not alone.  I believe I am loved.  I know that God has always been with me.  I feel only compassion for my parents who had experienced five miscarriages and the death of a baby born prematurely without being able to adequately grieve any of these losses.  I rejoice at God's healing work in my life!
 
 

 Self mutilated.  That's what I did this summer in Amarillo. I found an electric cord and hit myself with it on the back until I saw red welts in the mirror.  Then I went out and broke off a branch of a tree.  I sneaked it into my room sure that anyone who saw me would know what I intended to do.  I stripped off all its leaves and tried hitting myself on the back with it.  The physics was all wrong.  It worked just fine on my thighs, however.  I beat myself until the fronts of my legs were red with welts.

 I enjoyed the pain.  I enjoyed the sexual arousal that came with it.  As I looked in the mirror I saw not a smile but a terrible grimace.  The words I heard playing in my head were "Bad, bad, bad, bad girl."  I was reenacting childhood abuse trying to "get it right this time".  I was disappointed with the welts.  I had no internal permission to draw blood.  I had to stop.  I knew  as soon as the welts went away, however, I'd beat myself again.  I was frightened at what I had done and at the realization I was powerless to stop.  I was in the grip of a true obsessive compulsion.

 I sought help.  I called Father Mike, who had struggled for years to get sober.  "I can only quit for myself, not for anyone else," he shared.  "If I feel shame about what I've done, it only strengthens the compulsion to repeat my behavior.  What works is the first three steps of the Twelve Steps.  I admit I am powerless.  I acknowledge my Higher Power can help me.  I surrender the problem to my Higher Power."

 The next time I wanted to hit myself, I toyed around with the thought.  I discovered I could become sexually aroused just imagining hitting myself!  I experienced no shame.  I had to fight the urge to pull up my dress and show off my welts!

 When I decided to try the first three steps, they worked!  I prayed, "I can't stop this. You can; You can do ALL things .  I'll let You stop me."  My Higher Power was right there.  The sexual arousal was removed.  The compulsion was removed.  I didn't hit myself.  I put the cord back and broke the switch into small pieces and threw it away.  I have not hit myself since.

 I did experience the desire to hit myself again.  I let myself explore the feelings knowing I would not need to act on them.  During several previous months I had been experiencing a twitching in my legs when I relaxed.  Now as I lay on my bed remembering my father using a switch on my legs to punish me as a child, my lower body convulsed, and I realized the sexual arousal was caused by fear of being hit that had been stored in my body as sexual tension.  Over a period of several hours of letting myself remember and convulse, I was able to release much stored tension.

 Next, I lay on my bed and gently stroked my legs.  When I lightly touched places where I'd been hit with a switch or a belt, my legs would twitch releasing more tension.  Every time I prayed the first three steps, they worked, though sometimes I had to pray them several times in succession.  In a few days I was completely freed from the compulsion.

 After returning home, I took myself for a massage, some healing touch from another.  I expected lots of tears and twitching.  I experienced little of either, but after the massage therapist had finished and left me alone on the table, I reached down and gently touched my legs.  I burst into tears.  I was able to tell my Higher Power how sorry I was for self mutilating.

 Earlier in the summer during a prayer for healing of memories, I'd gone back to age three remembering being switched on the legs by my father for "being sassy". I realized then that I had not done anything deserving of being physically abused.  My father was overwhelmed by his feelings about my mother's alcoholism.  He had permission to express anger but no other emotion.  I was just an easy target for his frustration.  During the prayer I had imagined talking back to my father in the way no three year old would dare, telling him he was hurting me, I didn't deserve to be hit, and that he should stop.  I had imagined Jesus walking up to my father and embracing him.  My father had burst into tears.  Seeing my father cry during this prayer experience was very healing for me.  It removed some of my fear and released me from the need to act out his fear I have carried as anger.  I had been able to tell my father I forgave him for physically abusing me.  My summer vacation was not boring!  It was a time of much inner healing for me.