by Clay Watts
My pastor, Jim Hennesy of Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, Texas, announced that his theme for 2009 is "Wholeness." This confirmed a word I had received over Christmas for our family that this would be a year of healing in all areas. It continues and expands a personal journey of relational healing that began for me in last fall's Bethesda class at the church.

I had the Bethesda training several years ago when my wife, superintendent of Trinity Christian School, brought in Dominic Herbst, the founder of the program, to train TCS staff and others. I shared at a table discussion an early wounding I received as a toddler that my mother had mentioned to me. But I didn't really know any details and just talking about it didn't seem to have any effect on me. It was the only thing I could think of at the time, since I couldn't remember any other significant traumatic incidents in my otherwise normal childhood.

Since then, I have learned even more about the Bethesda relational healing process through helping my wife with her dissertation on the impact of the Bethesda program in the school, and benefiting from the videos and discussion in the Bethesda class at church last fall. However, it all became very real in October when I received a letter from my mother. I think a discussion she had earlier with my wife about Bethesda might have prompted it. The letter detailed how, at the age of 15 months, I was put in the care of three other families over a six month period because of my mother's health issues that were related to my brother's birth. My father moved to another town to begin a new business, and I only saw my mother once during this time.

As I learned from the Bethesda class, this was a classic case of abandonment during the critical time that a child is supposed to be bonding with his mother. Even though I have no memory of this period, it had a dramatic impact on my personality, i.e., my soul. I changed from being cheerful and outgoing to being quiet and resentful, as evidenced by a serious habit of biting others while a toddler and having a difficult relationship with my mother even through the teen years. This continued into my adult life with the "fruit" of a critical spirit, outbursts of anger, lack of open communication with my wife and children, and a reluctance to reach out to friends and co-workers.

When I received my mother's letter, I knew how important it was because of the Bethesda training, so I traveled to Tulsa the next weekend. We had a wonderful visit and discussed my childhood and hers for several hours. I prayed for her and then she prayed for me. Her prayer was so anointed that I cried for the first time as a man in her presence. I knew from the Bethesda training that this was a part of the supernatural grieving process that would start me on the road to relational healing. The next day in Tulsa, I visited one of my sons to confess my offenses towards him. I asked him to bring up other incidents that I had forgotten so I could repent and ask his forgiveness. We also prayed and cried.

Then the following day, back in Cedar Hill, I had a similar conversation with my daughter, followed in the next few weeks by visits with my other two sons and one of their wives. It was very humbling, or should I say humiliating, to listen to their sensitive but frank memories, some distant, some very recent, of my dysfunctional and offensive behaviors toward them and their families. The Holy Spirit prompted me not to even try to defend myself, which unfortunately was not hard to do since my guilt was so apparent. Of course, I saved the hardest confessional until last, the one with my wife. She had done her homework, and I was devastated to be reminded of just a few examples of the many, many incidents in which I had offended her over our forty years together.

After each of these conversations I wrote a letter reaffirming my confessions, asking again for their forgiveness, and committing to building a healthy relationship with them and their families from now on.

This experience has been the most significant in my Christian walk after my salvation and being filled with the Spirit. While I'm ashamed to admit that I blew it so badly for so long, even as a Spirit-filled believer, I am forever grateful to my Savior who provided the perfect opportunity for not just my healing, but my entire family's. He has given me a supernatural ability to enjoy and love in a new way my mother, my wife, our four children and their spouses, and our nine grand-children, and to be more open and warm toward others. I know, like salvation, that this is just the beginning of a process, and that there will be tests and occasional stumbles. But I also know now that I was destined for wholeness in this life, and I am determined, by His Grace, to receive every good and perfect gift that He has for me.