Looking Back, Looking Forward, Healing Now: A Consistent Spiritual Response

Janis Hunt Johnson
6 min readJan 27, 2019
AFSCME Local 2822

Second Glances, Second Chances.

Have you been reassessing your life this month? Already revising your New Year’s resolutions? In January, most of us have been spending a little more time pondering the past while figuring out how to carve out a better future. The holidays are really over; a new year is in full swing. It’s slightly disorienting. We have to keep remembering to write the correct date.

It’s time to get to work, but on what? Set a goal, and go! But it’s easy to get stalled by nostalgia. Longing for what we no longer have, we may even feel resentful of the effort required to grasp the new.

It’s no surprise, then, that our month of January is named after the ancient Roman god Janus, patron of beginnings and endings. Janus had two faces — one looking forward and one looking back. Janus was believed to guard every doorway and to preside over life’s transitions.

This metaphor has been helpful to me lately as I maneuver through the landscape of my life, attempting to find the best way to let go of what’s no longer needed, to hold onto what’s good, and to explore new directions.

This process of self-examination takes us into the unknown, which isn’t always comfortable. In the irreverent New Year’s Eve comedy Four Rooms, Quentin Tarantino, as Chester the man from Hollywood, deliberates, “Like my old granddaddy used to say, ‘The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect.’” Even so, circumstances do arise when it’s time to step up and state the truth.

In her memoir Retrospection and Introspection, 19th-century mind-body-spirit pioneer Mary Baker Eddy asserts, “The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged” (p. 22). That’s not to say that we should forget all about what’s happened, but rather that we can look back with a spiritual perspective, rather than taking a material view. Again and again in my experience, this radical approach transforms the situation and brings healing.

A Healing of Intense Stomach Pain through Prayer.

Several months ago, a few days after the passing of both a dear friend and a beloved pet all in the same week, I felt a twinge in my belly that grew steadily worse, until it became a sharp pain that wouldn’t subside. Because I always turn to God as a first resort when I’m in trouble, I prayed mightily.

I soon realized that overcome by grief and fatigue, I had taken on these two great losses right in the pit of my stomach. Not only that, I was holding all the woes of my life in that same spot.

All the problems of the world were overwhelming me. I pleaded in prayer to be freed from this false burden, and gave it all back to God — that is, I turned everything over to the care of Good Itself, to Infinite Love. I persistently declared that I was letting it all go…and after awhile the pain was totally gone.

Furthermore, soon I was able to breathe deeply — in and out. I can now remember my friend and my cat without recurring pain. I can genuinely focus on the joys rather than on the sorrow.

After such a huge lesson, was everything hunky-dory? Yes. And no. Once we make significant progress like this, guess what: There’s always more to learn, and more to be done!

God’s guidance keeps us growing, which means we’re always up to the task of doing Love’s work. Jews might recognize this calling as our obligation to do our part in tikkun olam—“mending the world.” Is my work done? Not by a longshot. And neither is yours.

Markus Spiske (www.temporausch.com)—Pexels

Untying the Tangles.

Just several days ago, in prayer I came to the realization that I was allowing two particular incidents from my past to sully my present. Even though I thought I had already left those traumatic events from decades ago far behind, I saw that there was still more for me to reflect upon.

The word trauma, from the Greek, means “a wound, a hurt, a defeat”; its derivatives refer to “twisting” and “tangling,” which then cause undue stress.

Writing down my prayers during this deep-dive process, I looked at the word wound and pronounced it differently, as in “getting wound up.”

I pictured a ball of string getting all tangled up, which quickly brought me to the knots in my stomach — knots that have more than once caused me unnecessary discomfort.

With this epiphany in hand, it all became clear: For me, a wound, a hurt, or a defeat has often turned into a knot in my stomach. The solution? I decided then and there to replace every physical reaction with a spiritual declaration.

At that point it occurred to me that another word for God is Spirit; in Hebrew, the word is Ruakh, which simultaneously means “breath” and “wind”! Again, I was excited to get the message when I pronounced wind two ways — both as air, and as a winding up.

We’ve all endured tragedies and setbacks, some of us more than others. But no matter what you’ve been through, there is a solution that’s better than just swallowing the pain, or covering it up with a brave face. If there’s something about your past that you’ve never dealt with fully — no matter how much it hurt — healing is possible.

One prayer that often helps me focus is the 2nd-century Hebrew Ana B’Koakh prayer. The first line roughly translates to: “Please, God, with the power of Your great right hand, untie the tangles.”

Whatever prayer you choose, every time even an inkling of an old wound resurfaces, address it immediately with prayer: Take that wound and unwind it. Replace it with the spiritual fact — with the sustaining wind, the breath, the Infinite Life that is God — and be healed.

As Eddy muses in that same memoir, “man’s harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the universe” (p. 61). And Jesus’ words of wisdom (Luke 17:20–21) ring true here, too: “the kingdom of God is within you.”

©2019 Janis Hunt Johnson and CS Renewal Ministries. All rights reserved.

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This post is the 14th installment of my Medium series, “Christian Science Redux.” Find healing and learn to be a healing presence for others when you read Five Smooth Stones: Our Power to Heal Without Medicine Through the Science of Prayer, which won Finalist, Spirituality category, in the 2010 National Indie Excellence Awards.

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Read a sample from my upcoming second book, tentatively titled Seven Words to Freedom, Eight Days a Week: The Healing Power of Living Prayer, in which I take a deep dive into the original Hebrew of the Shema and demonstrate its power to heal.

Travel around the world and learn about the many wonderful ways humans celebrate — with my “Every Day is a Holiday” series.

For humor and newstalgia,* read my “60-Something” musings.

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*newstalgia: My word for loving the past with an eye toward a hope-filled future.

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Janis Hunt Johnson
Janis Hunt Johnson

Written by Janis Hunt Johnson

Author, 5 Smooth Stones: Our Power to Heal Without Medicine through the Science of Prayer. Transformational Editor. From Chicago to L.A., now in Pacific NW.

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