Introducing Our New Therapist...

We are pleased to announce that Pam Farlow-Wolgast will be joining Reconciliation Ministries as our new part-time licensed professional counselor. Pam is also the women's facilitator for our Mending the Soul abuse recovery program, and a valuable member of our Living Waters leadership team. She previously shared her testimony of overcoming childhood sexual abuse in our April 2017 newsletter. Pam recently attended the Living Waters leadership training offered by Desert Stream Ministries and shares her experiences from the training.

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I always considered myself an emotional person. After all, I teach about feelings, and talk about feelings, and am careful to encourage others to express those feelings - joy, sorrow, grief, amazement.

Then I realized that I don't cry often. Well, there are those Hallmark ads and dead animals on the road - I find myself teary at those times.

I began to learn that it was easier to cry about an animal, than it was about me, or what was happening in my life. I considered this and found it quite curious; I still had no answers as to where the tears were.

Then I attended the Living Waters Leadership training in January, and at one point, someone handed me a box of tissues to hold on to, because my tears came and came. Before this training, I'd done a lot of healing from the brutality of my childhood. I didn't cry as the memories came, and sometimes I wondered about this.

I'd looked at the evil represented by my father and others, and the distance and coldness of my mother. I didn't cry as I felt the abandonment and loss of love, and I wondered about this.

Then I planned to attend the Living Waters training. God told me to let Him take charge and to enter wholeheartedly into this time. "But, I don't trust," I said. He said, "It's time to trust and feel."

And God met me at ministry time - and I cried.

And God met me in the small group - and I cried.

God met me, carried me and held me - as I cried.

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He went to the deep desolate places of shame and pain with me. God showed me He is so much stronger than the pain. He showed me I was never alone in the darkness, the terror, the confusion.

He showed me how present He was - and how He cried for me when it wasn't safe for me to cry for myself.

God showed me the healing strength of tears, the power of grieving and how the loving presence of others brings light and healing.

He showed me I can trust another with the ugliness of the past, and they show me the beauty He created in me.

God showed me His face - through the faces of each person at the training. God showed me how powerful and intense His love is.

God showed me healing through each of the people I met, through their prayers, their presence and their love.

God showed me who He created me to be and encouraged me to continue allowing Him in; to never close Him out. He showed me His loving eyes, and His kind face. He showed me how love builds and encourages, and never destroys. He showed me the power of His love and taught me to receive and accept it.

God allowed me to see myself through His eyes, and I learned I can laugh with joy, embrace the beauty of His world with smiles, and cry for release, pain and grief. God showed me about the wholeness of life with Him.

I am changed, the same and yet oh, so different. I learned and experienced God in ways which are available for us all - we have only to ask Him. He is waiting for us; waiting with His kind eyes and gentle smile.

Blessings, Pam