Reflections of a Healing Heart
Notes of Encouragement, Love Letters, Pivot Points, Prayers
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Welcome to Reflection of a Healing Heart!
For years, I wrote to myself. I wrote letters of love, notes of encouragement, points of healing, and prayers of comfort. I poured out my soul, hoping to be refreshed, renewed, and reminded of God’s promises. These pages guided me through dark, lonely, frustrated, and painful moments as well as nurtured and etched love, encouragement, and support. Often, the pages I penned saved me from my guilt, shame, and remorse.
From these pages, I learned my strength. These pages identified areas I needed to grow and build, exposing areas I waded through painfully but overcame. These pages spoke life. These pages faced fears and realized setbacks while exploring truths.
On these pages is where my soul began to escape darkness and bondage. These pages allowed me to find myself, the light, through the Word. These pages saved me and activated the healing process, beginning with my heart then my behavior. It was in these pages that I experienced Psalm 34:4—“I sought the Lord, and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.”
Reflections of a Healing Heart acknowledges the hurt. Acknowledgment requires us to realize what we hold, recognize the variations of growth, and offers a choice in how we respond. Depending on God through His Word, His people, and self-awareness was vital. It was healing to love my now husband, healing to love my children, and healing to enjoy life and live to the fullest. In the process, I was able to be energized, happy, and available to support and love people, including loving me.
The Love Letters
Authoring a love letter can nurture, build, or repair a relationship. It instills hope and rekindles passion. Love letters allow the author to pen emotionally charged messages, catapulting hope for the future or a release from the past.
Writing a love letter is an opportunity to capture deep feelings and say the challenging things from your heart the reader needs to hear, know, and process. It can express care and concern while inspiring hope and commitment through the written word. The love letters that follow were penned after great hurt, resentment, disappointment, and a choice to live. They are words that soothed my soul when I felt as if there was no one else to speak to me endearingly and with love. These letters of love were the beginning of a process to heal my heart.
The Notes of Encouragement
A note of encouragement is a reminder to live. Each note of encouragement that follows reflects uniqueness for challenges, pain, and places addressed. These reflections of encouragement find their impact in what was gleaned, learned, or stirred over one’s life.
Notes of encouragement are God’s Word releasing us from the frustrations of disappointments, resentment, and perceived failed opportunities. Be good to you. Take heed to the notes. Realize the truth about yourself; not what you say but what God says. This is the beginning. These notes of encouragement are for you, for me, for us to continue healing.
The Pivot Points
Pivot points are revelations and facts that force us to do something, which can be hard to hear and, at times, harder to process. Pivot points are interactions that cause you to stop and contemplate whether to keep doing, going, or partnering in the same behavior, manner, choice for your current life. These reality checks of life require each of us to be open to hearing the heart of those who are close, regarded, and able to speak into our lives. Pivot points lead to change.
From experiences, choices, and decisions, we develop pivot points as guides through our lives. We travel through life, making choices and taking chances. The following pivot points led to healing my heart, an intentional choice. There are examples of choices to pivot for growing, healing, and becoming the best version of self. In these, there is a choice to allow God’s Word to soothe decisions and discretions while restoring hope.
A Prayer
Father, I come to You broken and disappointed. I have committed to and placed value and meaning into things, circumstances, dreams, and people who have failed me. The reminders of my work reopen wounds and create more bruises that hinder me.
Father, I need You. I need You to help me learn from and grow through this pain. I need You to fill the emptiness, make me wiser and more like You in the next chapter of my life. I know I have no broken pieces You won’t use. As You show me how to pick up the shattered pieces, I want whatever You choose for me. What you remake with my shattered pieces will allow me to fall in love with me through You and culminate in happiness
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Healing is a process, a personal process that encompasses individual strength, behaviors, actions, and attitudes. We get to decide, when, how, and why we complete the healing process. Many times, we petition for God to speak, to acknowledge, or to send a sign for the pain, challenges, and places we face. If we listen close enough or pay attention, we will find He does send a Word through a scripture, person, circumstance, or our own prayers. Unfortunately, there are times we simply miss “it”! Times when we overlook the exact thing we asked God for and there are times when we can’t recognize God’s answer amid our troubles because they feel so loud, big, painful.
This compilation of Love Letters, Notes of Encouragement, Pivot Points and Prayers are a remembrance of God’s Word speaking to the challenges, pains, and places over a young adult life resulting in hope, encouragement, and connection. Through the Love Letters we see how God’s love is revealed and supported by scripture. In Notes of Encouragement, we find God’s word releasing us from the frustrations of disappointment, resentment and perceived failed opportunities. In Pivot Points, we find God’s word soothing our decisions, discretions, and renewing hope. Finally, in Prayers we find an honest conversation with the Father.
The reflections within the Love Letters, Notes of Encouragement, Pivot Points and Prayers acknowledge the hurt which began the healing process. We all deserve to heal from past hurts to embrace the possibilities of future happiness. Recognizing that the Father will answer, that healing is possible, and He wants us to be filled with the Fruit of the Spirit is a beautiful phenomenon filled with real hope. There is a petition for each of you to lean in, to listen for, or remember when, God spoke directly to your challenge, pain, and place. Be encouraged.
About the Author
T. Monique, a psychologist with over 17 years of experience in professional and personal consulting. A military Veteran and Marine spouse, she has facilitated over 200 relationship, resilience, career and family workshops in the US and abroad. She lives in Texas with her husband and poodle; they have four children.