Valuing the Child Within

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Taking an Active Role in Our LIfe

As we give our Inner Child opportunities to release the pent-up emotions, caused by the pain of our past, by journaling our feelings in the presence of our nurturing Inner Parent, we feel the cares of the world lifting off our shoulders. 

Finally, someone cares enough about us to truly listen, validate our feelings and resolve any problems which still exist.

As our Inner Child takes more of an active role in our life now, we find that our sensitivity to the feelings of other people is heightened. 

We can read body language, because we are more in tune with what it feels and looks like to have a burden deep inside. 

We care more about the feelings and needs of little children, and we follow Susannah Wesley’s advice and never say “No” unless we cannot possibly say “Yes.”

Whenever we over-react to some issue in our adult life, we are guaranteed that the Inner Child is at the ro

ot of this outburst. 

Dialoguing with our Inner Child will help to discover the past issue, find the similarities with the current issues, and modify the plans or activities, which threaten the security of our Inner Child. We have more patience with other people.

If you marry a spouse who is in touch with their Inner Child, or one willing to learn about and connect with their Inner Child, you will have a much closer marriage. 

If you are already married, analyze your transactions with your spouse and identify if his words are coming from his Inner Parent, Adult or Child.

Prayer:

Father God, we can never parent our self or one another with as much grace and loving kindness as You parent us. We could never exist in this life with as much joy and peace without Your presence in our life. 

You are our Daddy God, powerful defender, mighty creator, almighty one, lord and master, provider, covering, sanctifier, peace, righteousness, shepherd, ever-present help, Lord of all, most high, all-seeing, everlasting God and our portion forever and ever.

Thought for the Day:

The goal of connecting with our Inner Child is that we learn to parent each other, understand each other’s idiosyncrasies and do everything possible to meet the needs of one another’s Inner Child.

The Inner Child's Champion

Within most of us, there is a wounded Inner Child. We stared ignoring our Inner Child as we aged and had too many responsibilities to spend much time on fun. 

Other people never grew up and continue to allow their Inner Child to control their life and dictate their activities. Both groups of people miss out on the positive qualities of our Inner Child.

What our Inner Child needs most is a champion who loves and cares about him/her. 

This champion will insist on considering the Inner Child’s needs, feelings and opinions in the choices we make throughout the day; and will validate our honest feelings and lament wounds caused by abandonment, deprivation, abuse and shaming behavior by the significant others in our life.

Our own Inner Parent and Inner Adult are the best candidate as our Champion. Our Inner Parent is the conglomeration of every parenting style we learned from adults as we grew up.

The most common styles are Authoritarian, Permissive and Nurturing. Our goal is to learn to be a nurturing parent to our Inner Child.

The Inner Adult is the adult we are now, and is often the referee, and the voice of reason in the disputes going on in our mind between the Inner Parent and Child. These champions can dialogue with our Inner Child at any time day or night.

We come to the aid of our Inner Child when activities, situations and interactions with other people cause insecurity and fear to threaten us physically, mentally or spiritually. We stop them from further crippling our Inner Child.

Prayer:

Father God, You made us as complex individuals (fearfully and wonderfully made) and I am so grateful that You allowed us to understand why we have such contradictory feelings and thoughts and how to integrate our ego states in order to be complete in You. 

You bring Your joy and peace to our life by uncovering the lies Satan planted in the trauma of our past and speaking Your truth, which never fails to set us free. We give You all of the praise and glory now and forever.

Thought for the Day:

I vow to nurture my Inner Child through my Inner Parent and Adult, so that I can become an integrated person and not fight with or abandon myself for the rest of my life.

Learning to Nurture

As children, we often adopt shame that is related to events, which are not our choice or our fault. We learn shame from our parents, if they were raised in a shame-based family. 

We also accept shame if our parent wants to prevent pride in us, so they belittle our efforts to keep us humble. Another occasion is when our parents have legitimate shame, so we learn shame-based behavior from their example.

When our parents are wounded, they develop dysfunctional methods of responding to life. They unintentionally injure us and teach us codependent methods of living. 

Then we learn to perpetuate the wounding in our own life and in the lives of our children and other relationships. We master and then teach our children how to react to, cope with and adapt to life around the consequences of these past wounds.

Healing from the pain of our past comes when our Inner Parent learns to nurture our Inner Child. We start accepting our idiosyncrasies, and we give our children and other relationships the room to develop their individual personality, goals and habits. 

We set boundaries with people who wound us, and we lay aside the habit of shaming. We love unconditionally.

Rather than trying to control life, we allow God to control our life; and we exchange worry for faith in God’s faithfulness. 

We realize we can never succeed as savior of the world, and also that we are not really a victim. We leave people in God’s capable hands and we see our self as victors in Christ in us (Romans 8:31-39).

Prayer:

Father God, help us to understand that our mind is the battleground where our flesh and the devil attempt to render us useless and totally defeat our life. We submit our thoughts to you and Your Word, as You cleanse us and make us whole.

Remind us to memorize Bible verses to combat this negative self-talk, and to realize that our identity is in Christ alone. You are our only judge; so help us to stop caring what other people think about us.

Thought for the Day:

The Serenity Prayer gives us the perfect outline for living a fulfilled life.

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.