Crater Lake

Have you ever seen this picture of Crater Lake, located in Oregon?  It is an iconic picture.  I remember visiting there as a young child with my family.  It is actually the crater of a dormant volcano, filled with water, making a beautiful clear lake.  There is a lone island out in the middle of the lake, like a mini volcano, inside the volcano.  Layers of earth are connecting the two together, beneath the blue waters.

I was reminded of this visual image in my mind as I was doing some breathing exercises to help myself heal and focus on a “calm place”.  They were intended to heal my wounded inner child.  We may not all have an unhealed child living within us, but we all have an inner child.  It’s the part of our past that we carry with us, and it is up to us to make sure this child feels loved and is nurtured into maturity so it can walk through life with us rather than weighing us down by having to carry it.

Leaving it unhealed causes all sorts of dysfunction in how we proceed through life.

This may seem silly to some, after all, we can only really live in the Present.  It’s the unhealed, wounded, inner child within us that brings along the painful burdens of our past.  If you don’t understand this, then you are probably one of the lucky few who didn’t suffer developmental trauma.  You could help a lot of people to heal by being more understanding of how trauma can affect a person’s development. 

Support is critical when someone is doing the work of trying to raise up and nurture their wounded inner child to walk with them in maturity.  We must be one with ourselves, in a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ, in order to fully access the full potential He has for our life.  He moves us forward when we are in a state of Acceptance and Agreement with His Abiding Holy Spirit, but we must become One with Him, and we can’t if we’re still not One with our inner self. We have Him in us but we're not moving forward, due to the unhealed wounds we still lug around.

So long as we carry our hurts along with us, as the child-sized cargo on a big person’s trip, we can never fully live in the moment of now.  That child-sized baggage is heavier than the adult-sized burden we bring with us as we move through life.  It’s heavier because it has no wheels or legs of its own to move it along!  We’re always carrying it, like rocks weighing us down and sometimes falling out, causing us to constantly switchback to find our lost parts so we don’t feel neglected and alone. Sometimes we lose pieces of ourselves, left behind for someone else to trip over.  We walk around with a hole in our soul – missing the unhealed parts we left behind – scared and all alone.

In trying to envision a “calm place”, I saw Crater Lake in my mind’s eye.  I remembered a moment in a family vacation and I was standing with my dad, looking out at the lake.  I always felt safe and loved by him and mostly tolerated, yet unwanted, by everyone else. I was his "sissybugs", his youngest daughter who had his eyes and curly hair. My wounding began early and was solidified when the family was broken and my dad was no longer in my life, not in any real way.  I learned to wear a Goatskin for protection to survive the resulting chaos and confusion of abuse and neglect. 

But this time of deep breathing, visualizing my Calm Place, was so that I could shift from Fear to Peace.  It was an exercise intended to heal and writing about the experience is how the Lord helps me to process the past.

Anyway, I could relate to that island!

Like, I’m part of something much bigger but, most of it is hidden in the Depths. I appear all alone, surrounded by a vacant pool of Deep Water, but deep inside of a hidden, potentially explosive, Big Mountain!

The mountain is God; His Son, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit!

I’m on an epic journey of healing and transformation!

Deep below, in the hidden recesses of my soul, like the island, I am connected to the surrounding shoreline at the core of the Mountain.  I look alone but, like the island is fed through its connection to the Source of Power in the Mountain, I am deeply connected to the Holy Spirit and He is the Life Source that feeds my soul.

The island is ONE with the Mountain! 

I am ONE with Jesus Christ!

I am NOT alone!

I am ONE with the Creator of the Mountain!

clm

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