The story of a friend with multiple personalities

     Tim’s excellent sermon Sunday and his comments on the evil accusations often received as a child that go into their personality reminds me of a friend I once had. She was very normal but told me the most unusual life-story I’ve ever heard. She grew up and suffered some sort of abuse as a child. And to cope, her mind split into various personalities. She had around four dominant ones, but around fifteen or so personalities in total. Each of these personalities had their own wardrobe in the closet, their own food likes and dislikes in the fridge, and of course their own types of emotions; and none of them knew what the other did. So if she wasn’t the same personality today as she was yesterday, she didn’t remember what she had done. But Jesus healed her mind and this is how it happened.

     Somehow she found her way to a church, and that church talked about Jesus. So she would pray, and she would pray in a similar way to what Dr Curt Thompson recommended in his book that I referred to near the end of my post, Neuroscience and ToB—she prayed in her imagination, seeing herself and Jesus in a meadow. And over many days and times of prayer Jesus called the smaller personalities to himself. Then one final day, Jesus asked her if she was willing to trust him with the dominant four. She said, Yes. The four came out of the trees to him when he called, and her mind was fully integrated from that day on. She had to relearn things like what hunger was, though—it’s the physical pain in your midsection—and such. It was a very powerful testimony.
   
     Some of you may have heard that Brandon is leaving us to go to northern California to a school in Redding. (He’s looking for gas money, by the way!)  That school specializes in training Christians in a method of inner healing prayer called Sozo. When our Bishop John Guernsey taught at our family retreat this year (which can be listened to here) I wasn’t able to make it but I believe he taught on how to pray for people’s physical healing. Prayer for people’s inner healing can involve a physical healing but is usually approached slightly differently, a way very similar to what my friend experienced when Jesus healed her. (If anyone is familiar with the Theophostic prayer ministry that Christians were using in counseling in years past, I think Sozo is like the new and improved version. They also have a counseling center in DC.) God has made our minds such complex things and the psychologists and psychiatrists who aren't Christians are sometimes out of their league in this area not being aware of the spiritual realm that Tim taught on. So if you think of Brandon, please pray for him that God would teach him how to set the captives free and anoint him to minister so that people, even like my friend with the multiple personalities, can live healed lives in Christ.