Be Well, Stay Well

Wednesday Wanderings with Dr. Sherri is biweekly and a time we set aside to wander in the Presence of Jesus and ponder His truths. When you are ready, prepare your mind, body, and soul to have a transformational encounter with Jesus.

Watch the Wednesday Wanderings Welcome for this week.

Now that we have cleared our minds of the clutter, we can wander on the journey with Jesus.

PREPARATION: In our last Wandering with Dr. Sherri, we examined Thought Idols. This week we will investigate Being Well and Staying Well. When you are ready, you may begin the dialogue with Jesus and state: “Jesus, I invite you to help me to leisurely wander into your Presence. Prepare my heart to receive, and illuminate my spiritual senses to encounter you.”

PROMISE: Isaiah 53:5 Amplified

⁵  But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing];
The punishment [required] for our well-being fell on Him,
And by His stripes (wounds) we are healed.

God, the Promise Keeper pledges to us that our injustices fell on Christ and because of His trials, wounds, and sufferings we can be well and stay well.

Spafford experienced the trial of complex grief with the loss of his son and then the loss of his four daughters at the same time. Yet, his response was controlled by the confidence that Christ was wounded for his healing. He was able to arrive at the proclamation It is well with my soul in spite of his trials because he took time to grieve his loss. Everyone experiences loss but not everyone assesses their grief and does the work to be well and stay well.

PARABLE:  Our world is mourning and we are ill prepared to deal with the tragedy of these complex losses. Whether it is the loss of loved ones, the many losses of normal experiences and expectations of COVID-19, the injust loss of African Americans at the hand of police brutality, or the loss of a marriage or relationship, the recovery from loss is a necessary process. We can journey on the road to recovery knowing that because of Christ’s sufferings, we will receive holistic wellness.  So how do we recover from loss and learn to be well and stay well? 

We can journey on the road to recovering from indirect and direct loss with the assurance that because of Christ, our soul is well.  Though our soul is made well supernaturally in Christ, because we are human, we still have to do the physical work to grieve our losses in order to be well and stay well. We can begin the process of living well (being well and staying well) by examining the impact of grief and intentionally implementing a self-care plan to attend to our emotional, social, physical, and spirtiual losses that come with the trials of life.  The soul training activity this week helps to examine the impact loss has had on our emotional and spiritual well-being. 

PONDER and WANDER:  If you choose, Ponder the question: What direct or indirect losses and unresolved grief have occured in my life that are restricting my living well?

The soul training  loss history graph exercise can assist us to identify the unresolved losses within our life. To begin to answer the question, we need to define grief. According to John James and Russell Friedman, authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook and developers of the Loss History Graph, Grief is the conflicting group of human emotions caused by an end to or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. 

Soul care training exercise: If you choose, complete the Loss History Graph exercise.

• When you are ready, clear your mind and invite the Holy Spirit to help you Recall  the direct and indirect loss events in your life. Allow the Holy Spirti to bring buried or forgotten losses to the surface.
• Next,  Record the losses in chronological order from the day you were born to the present day.
• Then, Recognize the patterns of loss that have resulted from your unresolved grief.
• Finally, Release anything that needs Resolved to Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit to direct you to a plan to resolve your grief. The Grief Recovery Handbook is a self-help tool that can help you to begin to be well and stay well as it relates to grief recovery. You may also want to consider seeking a counselor to help you mourn your unresolved grief.

PRAYER: Jesus, your promise is that I am healed by your stripes. Help me to do the grief recovery work to be well and stay well. Remind me that no matter what loss I experience on this earth, it is temporary. Meet me in my grief, heal my wounded heart, and get the glory from my loss and all the losses we are facing in this world. In the healing name of Jesus I pray, Amen.

PRAISE: Now that you have emptied your mind of the clutter and wandered with Jesus, take a closing moment to breathe and let the work of your wandering fill you with peace.

Then take the mindfulness of God’s presence cultivated in these last few minutes of wandering into the next ones and beyond.

Until next time, be Resonant.

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_{Image Attributions:
Be well and stay well – Pixabay photos with text added
Grief photos: Pixabay}