Healing the Heart’s History: The Case for Family Counseling

Family members are often the most vocal in our lives. When they affirm, it’s a celebration. When they criticize, it can be crippling. We may not even realize the degree to which we internalize and repeat a script of our relatives’ voices. The messages we internalize and the patterns we engage in from our early years often set the tone for future interactions as we mature. These are all things that family counseling can help identify.

Words roll around in our heads, rewinding us to previous familial encounters that shaped and cemented our self-views. Instead of filling our minds with the active meditation of God’s Word, we have learned to ruminate on restriction. We might find ourselves meditating on what we think we can’t do or what we imagine that we’ll never see happen, though we may have encountered Christ as Savior.

It takes growing in relationship with God and a Holy Spirit revelation to notice where a negative self-fulfilling prophecy has constructed our reality. While it appears as family history, we must recognize that we have an enemy who intends to subvert God’s plans for our bloodline and the entire family of God.

Thankfully, he is already defeated, but we are not ignorant concerning our adversary or his deceptions. We don’t have to live in the dark, without the power to make changes. Spiritually, faith in Jesus Christ grants access to the authority and spiritual arsenal that we need to make valuable changes.

To turn the light on in the obscure and dim places of our lives, we can also take practical steps to follow a different future than the past that defaults to repeating itself. Instead, we can avail ourselves of resources that promote healthy spiritual, mental, and emotional wellness, such as family counseling.

The case for family counseling.

Family counseling can help us heal in adulthood what seemed permanently disconnected by childhood and youth experiences. The trials we encounter, including healing from our family issues, may reveal a set of facts that don’t appear to favor us. However, the overarching truth remains: the Father has called us into being and does more than we can imagine, based on our small beginnings alone.

God knew what He was doing when He connected us and our family members, those who are ours by birth and/or adoption. Our relationships, with the tools and techniques we gain through family counseling, can support us individually and collectively with co-creating the abundant life we were intended to live, as led by the Spirit of God.

As we form friendships and relationships with others, we may occasionally hear the echo of our parents, siblings, or those who influenced our younger years. Sometimes, our psyche can resemble one of our programmable electronic devices. If we don’t customize our minds, patterning them after the Word of God, we will revert to a default setting lacking Scripture’s intentional input.

God’s Word is the highest authority, even greater than our family’s influence. If we want to experience healthy change, we have to be deliberate about resetting our internal script, based on what the Lord says instead of the voices of familiarity.

Despite it all, Jesus embodies new life as our perfect example. God Himself is the Creator who designed us for much more. We don’t have to make negative words the determinant of our or our family’s destiny. It requires the hammer and fire of God’s Word to break up and consume the stony places within.

Our hearts may have calcified to the possibility of change, but when we insist on staying in our current mindset, we resist the healing and refreshing that the Spirit wants to bring. Essentially, we elevate our family history as more sovereign than the God that placed us among our relatives.

Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? –Jeremiah 23:29, ESV

We limit ourselves, rarely considering that God wants better for us. His Spirit, however, won’t overstep or override our will. He will respond to an invitation, as we respond to gentle nudges, conviction, and revelation that there is more to experience with Him.

When we encounter our Savior in fresh ways, we realize new things. The challenges in our lives weren’t intended by God to highlight the impossible (Mark 10:27). Instead, they show us that He is God, both with and for us.

Next steps.

Notice areas where you think you and your relatives might benefit from family counseling, realizing that your connections may require the restoration that only God can bring. It can seem foreign and overwhelming, especially when you consider the expansive love of a Father whose character may look significantly different than what you’ve been accustomed to in the past.

Allow that truth to encourage you to schedule with a counselor here at Irvine Christian Counseling. The first step begins with your decision to heal your heart and its history, by embracing the hopeful future that God has in store for you.