Healing your Alter
Next Part Various Types of Alters
Every reader will benefit from the next few paragraphs, but in particular I would like to address every reader who has Dissociative Identity Disorder.
1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Ephesians 5:30 for we are members of his body.
John 15:4-5 . . . No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Just as an alter and host are an inseparable part of each other, Jesus is an essential part of every true Christian. And just as an alter endeavours to remove pain from him/her host, Jesus longs to remove your pain. Infinitely more effective than any alter, however, Jesus has the power to fully absorb and kill in his own body every sinful act that has ever hurt you.
Sin is the issue because anyone hurting or violating you has violated God’s loving laws and sinned against someone God passionately loves – you. The Bible uses various word pictures to portray how utterly Jesus will remove from you the sins that have hurt you. In an era when ocean depths were as inaccessible as the furthest star, Scripture speaks of God burying sin in the deepest sea (Micah 7:19). In another part, it speaks of sin being removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12).
The ultimate Scapegoat longs to put an infinity between you and everything that has ever hurt you. However, because God is not a thief and is the exact opposite of an abuser, his lofty morality and deep respect for you compels him to hold back until you give him full permission to take your pain from you. And because God is a God of love and truth, he cannot operate in an atmosphere of denial and mistrust. He waits to be welcomed into your deepest secrets and pains so that he can do what he yearns to do – gently and lovingly remove everything that is hurting you.
Of course, the Almighty already knows everything that has happened to you, and every good and bad way you have responded. Not only will he not be offended or shocked, he will cherish you sharing with him painful, frightening or disgusting things that are so significant to you that you find them hard to speak about. Because he loves you unreservedly in utter purity, unselfishness and respect for you, God treasures you telling him all about these things. He esteems you sharing the intimate details as proof of your love and trust.
Not only does the Lord have every answer you desperately need, he is tender and gentle. He reels in pain when you suffer needlessly by you holding on to burdens and distress that Jesus has already suffered to make their removal possible. Christ exposes his heart when he cried, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34). He agonizes for you, yearning for you to stop living in denial or backing off from his tender compassion.
I know it takes great courage for you to hand your secrets over to him. You’ve been let down and ridiculed by people for as long as you can remember. You fear God might be like all those other humans, but wait a moment: God isn’t human. His warm, personal love and tender devotion and faithfulness to you is flawless. He has none of the sinful, selfish, fickle ways of the people who have hurt you. Make Jesus’ day: let him extinguish in his own tortured body your burning grief and pain.
If it were with any pride that I told Alice’s alter of my new revelation about Jesus being the alters' alter, it was short-lived. It turned out that God had already told her that a couple of days earlier. In yet another e-mail to one of Jake’s alters, she wrote:
I was sitting on the sofa this morning reading in the Bible about Jesus’ death when Jesus appeared and knelt down in front of me. He pointed out that his torture lasted all night. He was naked, he was beaten, he was rejected and shamed. They mocked his body.
I asked him if any of his suffering was sexual. He said, “I was a naked target. What do you think?”
He was betrayed and hurt beyond words. His friends denied him. They were ashamed of him. He was sold for money to be tortured.
Jesus leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “I know.” He let those words sink in. “I know all the pain you have suffered and I have been through it.”
He is holy and glorified. He has won and he knows the way to victory. His scars are a badge of honour that he took that pain. Just as we took the pain so that our host could move on, Jesus took the pain so that we can move on. He is our alter. I don’t feel alone and scared anymore. I have an alter to bear my pain.
Being pain-free is really wonderful. When two of Alices’ other alters got upset recently, I wasn’t so full of pain that I couldn’t help them. I was able to bring them to Jesus. It was amazing.
This dear alter is finding increasing fulfilment in using her insights gained as an alter to minister in the power of Christ to other alters. Interestingly, her host has an intercessory calling upon her life. True intercessors sometimes feel intensely the pain of others but they don’t hold on to the pain. Their privileged task is to bring that pain to Christ and leave the pain with the One who suffered to set people free.
When we are in too much pain to think straight, we long for a quick fix in which all memory of painful events vanishes. Nevertheless, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder know that this simply does not work. They tried to kill memories and some almost seemed to achieve it for a while, but it brought them no real peace.
We need to be free from pain but we need to retain our dignity and humanity by being able to mentally come to terms with the experience. Moreover, for the memory to disappear would render all our past tragedies a useless waste. Our tears are too precious to God for him to let them be shed in vain. He longs not only to remove our pain but to transform our past suffering into something valuable, even as Jesus’ suffering is of inestimable value.
People who have let God heal them of Dissociative Identity Disorder find themselves uniquely placed to understand the power and compassion of God and to bring this tender love and healing to other hurting people. They find themselves co-labourers with Almighty God, doing things of eternal significance for people who are of infinite value to the God of love. They know that their past tragedies have uniquely empowered them for this intensely fulfilling privilege and they will spend eternity in awe at how God turned something that hurt God horrifically – your own suffering – into something that brings them endless glory.
Next Part Various Types of Alters