It’s like a virus.  It might stay dormant or hidden for some time.

You can close your eyes, ignore the symptoms for a little while.

But eventually, it spreads.

It effects everything – your speech, your mind, your lungs, your heart.

It festers, pusses, pops.

It creates sores, rashes, lesions.

The sickness envelops your entire being,

making you nauseous, nervous, neurotic.

It’s causing sepsis, leaking, seeping into your organs, your blood stream, your thoughts, your words.

Everything is shutting down.

You’ve become an island, shut in an empty room  with sterile walls and frozen fear.

The diagnosis is obvious – simple, really.

You know the answer. But to admit, to speak, to tell is terrifying.

No doctor is needed…no specialist, no surgeon.

The chronic condition needs to be purged.

Your secrets are making you sick.

The solution appears dangerous and the risks question the survival rate.

The answer seems harsh, radical, and feels like it should be tested first.

But the prescription guarantees a true cure.

No placebo.

Just truth. Real, raw, transparent, vulnerable, 20 seconds of bravery,

TRUTH.

Your body is closing shop.

Your stomach lining is ripped and acid eaten.

Your nerves are like fallen electrical wires, sparking and shaking.

Your mind keeps sending signals to speak,  yet you are silent while screams constantly erupt in your head.

The answer is yelling at you like a football coach in the quarterback’s face.

It’s time to talk.

There is freedom, healing, and satisfaction in truth telling.

It wins the battle against isolation, pride, shame, humiliation and sin.

It eradicates the enemy pulsing through your blood, spreading contamination and pain.

The restoration won’t be immediate.

Every therapy requires a process.

But with time, wounds will soothe, will scab. Will settle.

If your child was sick, wouldn’t you want him well?

If your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your friend

was sick, wouldn’t you want them well?

Your secrets are making you sick.

No more self-medicating. No more fad quack doctor fixes.

It’s time to tell, to take the road less traveled.

It’s time to trust. Find someone. You know who they are.

Make it the gift you give yourself this Christmas.

Health, hope, healing.

Less fear, more brave, ALL REAL.

---

 

My dearest friend,

There is hope for you this Christmas.  Through Celebrate Recovery, a program that uses biblical principals to help people face their hurts, habits, and hang-ups, I have been able to talk about my pain openly and find that I am NOT ALONE.  There is freedom in being REAL.

We ALL have hurts, and often we feel alone in those hurts. But my friend, you are NOT alone. 

I’ve had cancer, lost my father, been addicted to food – just to name a few. Everyone suffers somehow. But we don’t talk about it. We keep it secret, thinking we are keeping it safe. But those are lies from the enemy.

Right now, I am praying for you – whoever you are – that finally, this Christmas, you can let go of that dark secret, that painful past, that searing hurt – and give it to our precious Jesus, the one who heals.

My prayer is that your joy will be made complete through the healing of Jesus. He will forgive and forget. Then the healing process will begin as you choose to be brave.

I heard it said once that the only way out of pain is through it.

Choose.

It is your time to heal.

Love you,

Carrie

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