Grace Bay, Turks and Caicos--and Does God Actually Care for My Heart?

"Did you notice the name of the bay was Grace Bay?"

Jonathan said softly to me as we walked back to the guesthouse  in the bright, hot sunshine in Providenciales

 after an hour at the seashore before having to catch our taxi to the airport to meet the pastor on our way to our Mission Helps project in North Caicos.

I caught a quick snap of the name of this grocery store as the pastor was pulling out from it

after picking us up at the airport.

Graceway Supermarket.

Next to Grace Bay.

I knew I wanted that picture.

Because grace is meaning a lot to Jonathan and me lately.

Especially after spending two afternoons recently at Caring for the Heart Ministries,

a unique ministry where our friend from Pennsylvania, Brandon Byler,

had trained as an intern three years ago. That was while his friend,  Marvin Mosley, was our pastor, and Brandon attended our church the Sundays he was here.

At that time Brandon had resigned from pastoring and was considering going into counseling as a ministry. He felt that there is an area of people's lives that is not helped by merely pastoring and talking about spiritual issues.
There is also an emotional dimension that unfortunately often gets categorized as spiritual, usually in negative ways,
if not denied altogether.

In our own circles, it is my opinion that some of what goes for "carnality"
is actually unresolved emotional issues, but we do not have much room for that idea.
Brandon was courting a friend of my family,  Heather Martin, at the time three years ago
when he interned here,

and we were able to use our free miles to fly Heather out here for some time with Brandon,

and the happy couple ended up at our home the evening of the day Brandon asked her  to marry him!

He almost joined this Caring for the Heart Ministry because he felt it was what is desperately needed by many people--a ministry directed specifically at caring for the heart--

particularly hearts damaged emotionally from childhood and other wounds, causing them to block others in relationship,

build walls, and suffer in various and vicious cycles of emotional stuckness.
And if you are thinking that type of need is for someone else,
certainly not for you, bless your perfectly healthy little gizzard,
maybe you are the one who is the most stuck of all. 

Brandon had talked to Jonathan and me at our church while he was here, feeling that his ministry as a pastor would have been enhanced if he had known how to help people in ways that preaching does not help.
There is no one on earth, as children of Adam,
 who does not have some kind of emotional damage in their lives,
some more than others, of course, based on how healthy their homes, families, and churches of origin were.
This is the Caring for the Heart office building for this ministry founded by John Regier right here in our town.

Now there are 22 offices nationwide and in Canada.

John Regier, founder of this ministry writes in his transcript text of a DVD series Caring for the Emotionally Damaged Heart, which we purchased and are working through:
 "The Lord has burdened my heart with people who have come into my office, who are struggling emotionally with issues that affect them every day... anger... depression; rejected...other people have never been loved.

    "I have observed over the years that the church basically has not addressed every day emotional issues. This series is designed to help the body of believers to better understand these issues and to begin caring about the people who have been damaged and to help them spiritually to resolve their issues."

       Then he discusses four categories of issues
 1-spiritual [bitterness, temporal values, rebellion, pride, moral failure, occult and hypocrisy]
 2-abuse [physical, sexual, spiritual, and verbal]
 3-emotional [abandonment, neglect, ignored, insensitive, emotional detachment, rejection, disowned, humiliated, drained, etc]
4- pressure patterns such as expectations/performance, dominate/control, expressive, not talked to, focus on self, anger and critical/judgment

"A person can damage another by their strengths, i.e. a self-disciplined person can place high expectations on others [without love]; a dominant person may seek to control others; an expressive person may frustrate others who are not able to express themselves easily."
On the other side of the coin, people who are quiet and uninvolved and emotionally stuck or dead, can neglect to care for others, avoid others,
and can damage others such as their own children by not spending time with them, not listening to them,  not talking to them, not affirming them, and not loving them.
Unhealthy parents can either abuse their children instead of loving them,
or coddle and spoil them and never confront bad behavior or provide healthy, loving discipline for them. 
People who simply avoid people and problems, or try to cover them up, or spend their lives simply trying to keep the peace and never speak up for themselves
aren't really doing things in a healthy and loving way, either.

"Emotional damage from our past affects how we view ourselves,
 how we respond to...treat others,
how we respond to others who touch our pain,
and how we view God...
Unresolved emotional damage causes us to build walls to protect our heart from further hurt. Neither can we give love if we have been too emotionally damaged.
 Some individuals' damage causes them to self focus on themselves and their pain and they never seem to see others' needs or connect in relationship with others."

He asks,"May I encourage you to ask the question, have I been emotionally damaged? How has it affected me? How does it affect my ability to respond to others: How does it affect my ability to love? Has it affected my ability to open my heart to  my spouse/children/others?"

Jonathan gained some insight into what his wife was needing emotionally from him,

reasons for those needs (i.e. a huge buildup of emotional pain over the years)

and ways to care about his wife from his heart and to truly respect her,

being an example of God's love to me.

And I learned how I could care for some emotional needs in my husband's heart. 

This is what this ministry is about--helping couples to resolve emotional pain from their pasts

by identifying core emotional pain issues and bringing them to Jesus 

for resolving and healing

so that we can relate to each other and to others in more healthy ways..

 I took this textbook and workbook along with us to North Turk and did some reading and working on it a few times when I could snatch an hour or two here and there,

trying to gain insights into where we are right now with some situations we are facing.

This morning Jonathan and I woke early, with our body clocks struggling with the 3-hr. time change from the Caribbean,

and he found me crying and whispered about what was the matter.

I said, "I just was wondering, what if God actually respected my heart?

Isn't that in the Bible somewhere, about God respecting someone??"

And Jonathan said, "I think so."

 

And before long, in the early dawn, I was searching my King James Bible with my concordance,

looking up the word respect.

 Sure enough, in Exodus, God "had respect" for the children of Israel in their bondage. 

He especially has respect to those who are in pain, 

or under any bondage, or in distress.

"God heard their groaning, and God...had respect unto them."

Psalm 138:6 says, "Though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly."

I Kings 8:28, 39 says, "Have Thou respect unto the prayer of Thy servant...for Thou, even Thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men."

I wrote in my journal, "Lord, is it possible that rather than only commanding and demanding,

You respect Your children's hearts?

That instead of abusing or using, You respect our hearts?

II Kings 13:23, "The Lord was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them,

and had respect unto them...and would not destroy them,

neither cast He them from His presence as yet."

So have you ever wondered as I did this morning,

especially after you may have been treated disrespectfully, or used or abused or misunderstood or otherwise hurt,

"Does God actually care about my heart?

What about these things called emotions?

What about my heart?

Does God care about that?"

I hope to share more later as I post about our trip to North Caicos Island.