Splintered Personalities?

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

     If Adam and Eve had significance, safety and security, and a sense of belonging and lost it when they believed the enemy's lies, wouldn't it make sense that man longs to get these back.  We spend our whole lives searching for these things. 
     In my studying this morning and my conversational prayer, I think a little more of this picture is coming clear to me.  Some may say "Duh" but I have never thought about.  It makes perfect sense, though the further I dig, the more it may change or the deeper I will understand it.
     We have a spiritual life and a physical life.  We are physically on this earth, but we are spiritually in Christ.  Is it our soul that connects the two?  I heard this today and it made sense.  So, isn't this where the enemy would attack?  His desire is to break the connection between the physical man and the spiritual tie to God.  I heard a man say this, this morning, "We have all had our hearts broken, but trauma breaks our soul."  Almost like a split personality, half of our soul is reaching for God and the other half is reaching for the beliefs and desires of our physical being.  Somebody sins against us and the spiritual side wants to forgive but the physical side, set on survival, says, "I don't want to."  Is this why we must die to our old self (physical feelings) and live completely in the spiritual.  Be like Christ?
     The sexual abuse I went through started at about 7 years old.  If my soul split, or splintered as this guy put it, there is the physical life and the spiritual life and they are not connected.  No wonder I have felt like there are two people in my body my whole life.  This explains a lot of mental disorders too.  Bi-polar, split personality, depression, etc.  I see the physical, earthbound side of my soul as a 7 year old, still hurting, still scared, not maturing, but instead struggling to survive.  All she knows is the lies of the enemy.  People are bad, they hurt you, nobody loves me, I am unworthy, and so on and so on.  The Spiritual side of me struggles to grow up, to mature in Christ, but is held back by this tantrum throwing child who is scared and in pain. 
     As God was explaining this to me this morning, He reminded me of a story I wrote years ago.  I believe I wrote about it recently in my blog.  I wrote it for an alcohol counselor who used it to help grown men understand the child within them.  It was about twins banished to an island, because they were different.  They were joined at the fingertip and one would grow into a man while the other remained a child.  The grown man twin hated the child for holding him back and for being the root of all his problems, like being banished to the island.  One day one of the men started to nurture his child, hug him, bathe him, and so on.  The little child disappeared that night inside the man and they became one.  In a sense, he forgave the child.  The Holy Spirit and I had quite a laugh when He reminded me that I had written out the story almost 20 years ago without even realizing how much of the answer it held. (Check my blog on July 11, 2012  Boys or Men)
     This answers so many questions for me.  Like how can I be happy and following God one minute and the next cussing like a sailor in a rage.  Rage is a false sense of strength.  That little broken kid was trying to look big, to feel safe.    So my next question to God was, if the old self is supposed to die, what am I suppose to do with this kid.  If my soul is splintered, this doesn't make sense.  I'm supposed to kill off part of my soul?  He said, "No.  Forgive.  Forgive that little girl for doing what she knows to survive.  Tell her that I will never leave her.  Tell her to trust me.  She thinks I abandoned her which is a lie from the enemy.  He hurt her.  It was not Me.  I have loved her every minute of her life and she doesn't have to be strong anymore.  Just tell her to let go and trust me.  You are the only one who can convince her to believe in me."  This is the total opposite of what I have been doing.  I have been screaming at her to get out of my life.  I've been telling her that she is ruining my life.  All this does is throw her back into survival mode.  These are her biggest fears, rejection, abandonment, and betrayal.  This explains the constant war inside me.  One side of my soul who is believing the enemy's lies and the other side of my soul believing God's truth.  It's not God and Satan fighting over me, it's a split belief system.  It makes it a lot easier to forgive her when I truly see that broken child trying desperately to survive instead of an adult who should know better.  This also makes it much easier to love others.  If we see each other as these split souls, a spiritual person reaching for God and a broken child surviving by doing what they know, how can we judge?
     It is clear to me why the enemy attacks in this way.  One, he breaks the tie between us and God.   We have this immature earthly self who was traumatized, most likely by authority and so they rebel against the authority of God.  Authority is a scary bad thing to a child who has suffered at it's hand by sexual abuse, physical abuse, abandonment, neglect, etc.  God has been setting me up for this for years.  When I was in counseling years ago, my counselor, for reasons unknown, had me meet with him and another client who had been sexually abused along with a sibling through satanic ritual.  All these years I have wondered why he always had us meet together, but at this moment it is now clear to me why so much of the satanic rituals include sexual abuse, child sacrifice, etc.  Satan is splitting souls.  She was the only one who truly understood how I felt, like I had two people living in my body.  The good soul and the bad soul, not realizing they were one, but split.
     I was a stubborn kid.  VERY stubborn.  I knew God was real and good, because my grandma told me He was.  It took 4 predators over many years to convince that stubborn little kid that God was not safe, that God was not going to protect me, that He didn't care about me and He didn't care about me because I was bad.  I put up one good fight, but the enemy won and captured half of my soul.  When Jesus says we are to come to Him like children, I never understood how that was possible.  After all I had seen, how was I to go back to that innocence?  I don't even remember being there.  But with what God said to me today I get it.  The spiritual side of us (in Him) needs to be the one to carry that other wounded child side to Him and lay her in His arms.  Anyone who has been abused understands what a task that is.  When I get this picture of me as the spiritual adult, placing that 7 year old abused baby in Jesus arms, the first thing she does is sit up and try to run.  Authority has done a number on her.
     I continued listening to this man today and even more is revealed.  The part of my soul who is still a child, never matured and trying to survive in Satan's world, has splintered even more.  There is the bully, who will do anything to protect us.  There is the victim who always blames everyone else.  There is Miss familiar who says I won't survive without all these splinters (personalities) that protect me.  The depressed who sees no hope and no way to change this.
     As I listen to more of what this man has to say, he finally, finally gets to the part where he gives instruction to healing a broken, splintered, soul.  He says over time, God will reveal each splinter.  This part of our soul lives in darkness and it is only the Light shined on them that will reveal them to us.  When He does we are to forgive them as though they are another person, "You are forgiven. You are purified. You are redeemed."  Then in the first person we claim, "I am restored."  Then as a whole person, we repent.  He says for the first time since the splintering began we get access to parts of our mind, parts of our will and parts of our emotion that have been denied to us since the day the trauma occurred.  He says only then can we completely, because we are whole, forgive those who committed the sin against us.  Wow.  That makes total sense.  He said that until this day we could only partially forgive.
     This is how the enemy is keeping us from being whole, from being complete.  Now I look back to the illustrations God was giving of the church body as a whole.  No wonder it so broken.  I see these hands reaching out for the lost, but the bones in most of the fingers are splintered.  We can pick them up, but our own pain makes us let go.  The pain in our own splintered body makes it difficult to hold onto anything for very long.  The splintered bones in the legs of the body are painful and we fight to keep following Jesus.  Parts of the body are healthy, but how many of us are struggling because our souls are splintered?  If so many of us as individuals are divided in our souls, this has to affect the division of the church as a whole.  I think this is the wave that's coming.  I think this is the big plan God is about to wash over us and there is going to be a healing of the body like never before. 
     The enemy uses us against each other.  Many diseases are caused by unhealthy emotions.  The enemy has messed with the immune system of the church body.  The pieces of our broken souls are fighting against each other.  To bring them together is to have the inner peace God has offered us.


1 Corinthians 12:21-26

New International Version (NIV)


21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.