Healing...

Today as I sit and listen to a Beth Moore teaching, I realize in all of the past 7 years, I have never once asked the Lord God to heal my heart or the hearts of my children.  I've prayed for healing and restoration of our family, but never once healing for our hearts.  How can we love God or others with a wounded heart?  How can we walk in love when we are so bound by broken heartedness?  I think of all those I say I love and yet my love for them is skewed.
I have been praying for the last few months, why am I so filled with anger, bitterness, resentment, animosity, unforgiveness, etc.  I want to be free!  And yet no matter how many times I pondered why, no matter how many times I have begged the Lord to set me free from this bondage, I was not free.  I cannot say if I am instantly healed from these things at this moment, only time will tell.  However, this very day, I understand why I could not gain the freedom I so desperately searched and hoped for.  These things are all bound up in a wounded heart.  It won't be until the heart is healed that God can begin to release me from these other things that hold me so tightly.

Lord I have hurt so long.  I've buried so much pain and tried to keep a smile on my face and walk forward.  Yet there has been no forward for me because the pain, though unseen, has held me back.  I've prayed for a deliverance from this stony heart and for a new heart of flesh, but to no avail.  I have watched relationships with my children and others deteriorate and/or die.  I today realize there can be no restoration until there is healing.  So Father please I pray begin the delicate surgery of healing my heart and the hearts of my family.  Renew, restore, and transform the relationships with my family.  We cannot walk up-right before you until there is healing...
In Your Son's matchless name I pray...

Psalms 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Isaiah 61:3 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted: He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland (beauty) instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.  So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the Lord that He may be glorified.