Exorcising Some Old Demons

There's a part in The Blue Castle (By L.M. Montgomery) where the main character, Valancy, remembers something hurtful that happened when she was little. Later in the story, she is able to rectify the old happening and the pain from it starts fading away.

Yesterday morning I woke up with two incidents in my head from when I was small. I was unjustly punished for things I either didn't understand or shouldn't have been punished to that extreme for.

It made me angry that I remembered them on Thanksgiving (why couldn't I just be grateful?) and spent some time doing some 'self-therapy' to work through it.

Back when I was in counseling, we were talking through an incident where I had been about to be punished for something I hadn't done. I had gotten so sick to the point where if I had been punished I would have promptly thrown up. My counselor asked if I would close my eyes and imagine that Jesus was there, and then try to imagine what he would say to me.

It seems a silly exercise, but it worked. I imagined Jesus holding me, and telling me that He knew the truth, and that everything was alright.

It didn't matter if I got punished or not (they knew I was really sick and not faking so I got let off), the overwhelming injustice of it made it hurtful. I have fought against injustice ever since I can remember, and I hate it. It hurts me when others are unjust or when I am dealt with unjustly.

So I woke up to these two memories.

I replayed them over in my mind, and thought, what would I do in that situation now? Well first of all, I would have respectfully insisted that it was an unfair punishment and that I should have it explained to me. Second, if they insisted on the punishment, I would have broken what they were using to spank me and went somewhere where there were other people.

So in my mind, I played the situation again and did those things. I snapped the wooden instrument, said it was unfair, and suggested another punishment. I didn't play out my parents' reactions, since I am unsure what they would have done, but it helped me be able to forgive them for humiliating and unjustly punishing me for things I shouldn't have been so harshly punished for, and to stand up for myself.

This seems really childish. But I am a person who gets hurt deeply and remembers. Instead, I need to play out old situations with new reactions, then move on to forgiveness. I was able to forgive my parents and now the memories aren't so clear. Soon they won't be still fresh wounds but healing wounds.

I wrote about these and other instances in my Secrets notebook last night. Several pages were taken up with old secrets that I didn't even know I still had. It helped.

I am, as Valancy said, "just exorcising some old demons".