Not physical healing but rather healing of those things that have been transmitted through the generations that now cause me to suffer in ways that God might not intend.
The first time I came across the idea that we might be able to heal across time was in a small book about healing your family tree. I'm not even sure who the author was. At the time I thought it was an odd idea, both that a family tree needed healing and that one could do so. However, as I've grown older, the idea became more viable. After all, when we go to the doctor, one of the first things s/he has us do is fill out a form that asks if there is cancer or diabetes or heart disease in any close family member. If the propensity toward physical illness can be transmitted, why not the tendency toward spiritual illness?
As I looked back over my family lineage (with the help of a genealogy chart), I realized that as far back as I know, both sides of my family have been subject to divorce. It was hard to find a single couple that didn't experience it, and certainly none of the family branches were spared.
Another trait is, as I mentioned earlier, a tendency toward depression and anxiety. I was shocked at just how many people in the family suffered from these twin demons.
There are more, in varying degrees, that flow like malevolent sap through the tree, withering and stunting the growth of the leaves and oft-times preventing good fruit from being produced.
So I decided that my first prayer would be to ask that somehow, through God's grace, the effects of the origining sin (not Original Sin, but, say, the first time divorce entered the family) be healed and the effects be halted; that whatever suffering that exists in my life and the lives of my family members because of these familial traits be removed.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting. All I know is that I do expect that the prayer will be answered. How, when and where, I don't know. But this is the Year of Faith...and I'm trying to exercise my own, often wobby faith.
Makes sense to me. Seems to me I ran into the concept of healing the family tree at a Linn Brothers healing conference in Seattle back in the mid 80's. Memory is faulty, so I might be all wrong . . . but the concept is sound. That is, I believe, what is meant in the scripture that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children." It's not a punishment. It's a fact of life. In my own life, my sisters and I consciously worked to rid ourselves of what we called "the family disease," a mind-set which expressed inter-generational malaise. I think we may have accomplished that - with the help of a lot of prayer and guidance from other wise people.
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