Once the CARR Model is complete, we will be introduced to the second phase, Five Phases of the Healing Process.

Trauma is the sudden unexpected impact of a physical or emotional injury imposed on one’s life that can wound the mind and body and can leave a permanent scar.

THE CARR MODEL

As it relates to the frailties, flaws, imperfections, and propensity towards good or evil of human nature, all human beings are vulnerable to some form of abuse, abandonment, neglect, rejection, or assault that is an insult to human decency; immoral, inappropriate, and can be traumatic. Then the painful truth is we cannot avoid the pain and shock of directly dealing with the cause of the injury. To heal from the festering disease of the aforementioned ills and ailments, we must remove the infectious bandages that we have used to hide and deny the problem. We must clean out the wound of anger, bitterness, vindictiveness, hate, and deep pain and directly treat the cause. Ouch, that hurts! It Begins With Confrontation!

Confrontation of this sort hurts undeniably. The soft inner flesh of an oyster becomes irritated when a mere grain of sand finds its way there. To get rid of the irritant the oyster will produce a substance called nacre that becomes a pearl over time. The pain that we feel in confrontation can produce a pearl of healing.

CONFRONTATION (C)—The Trauma:

Confrontation exposes our concealed-suppressed problems and reveals our willingness or lack of desire to face the issues. Confrontation also stirs up painful, sensitive emotions about our past and our family heritage. Nevertheless, to adequately evaluate the breach in relationships, we must probe our past and have a civil conversation about how we grew up; not how we were raised because we cannot blame our current problems on others in our past.

Watch yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him.

Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3, 4).

But, how can anyone forgive their perpetrators when the perpetrator has not expressed remorse, regret, or sorrow for their acts, and repented? Genuine forgiveness is always a two-way street—a reciprocal act. We never would be forgiven of our sins if we had not repented to God. Get it right.: It’s more about not holding grudges against people we don’t like and rendering evil for evil. Only God can forgive them. The best we can do is repent and forgive before God. That single act gives God the “opportunity” to work on their hearts and releases you.

Forever Forgiveness

Forever Forgiveness happens through a “personal” relationship with the Lord through faith and repentance and is about the essentials of the faith. Personal repentance and forgiveness do not have to include everyone who offended us at critical junctures of our life (Psalms 51:3-4). However, it’s important to know that when God forgives us and we forgive others from the heart, God also makes a way to forgive the others for their transgressions toward us, at that moment without them being present. In one’s life span, you may not be able to contact all the people in your past that you want to confess what they did so you can forgive them, but God can (Matthew 6:14-15). The context is mutual forgiveness between God forgiving us and the individual forgiving others. If you forgive them, according to several passages of Scripture, God will also forgive them for their infractions towards you, which means God will open a door to forgive them. Let’s look at that for a moment.

When a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, God instantly forgives them of past, present, and future sins which is the Covenant package of salvation and eternal life. But don’t take it for granted that that’s enough because life’s journey will take us over many paths where we need repentance and forgiveness for others. When God forgives us, we also should “follow suit” and forgive others for their transgressions towards us. God forgives us instantly for eternity! I know it sounds ridiculous to human logic. But, once Christ becomes our Savior, we are forgiven for life and don’t have to ask again, but we should know that repentance cleanses the heart from envy, jealousy, hate, and animosity so that we may become a vessel that God uses. The reason is that “not” repenting and asking for forgiveness in our walk of faith would cause blockage between the Lord and us. As Christians, we repent as needed for spiritual cleansing so God can use us to reach others. Not repenting makes us unusable by the Lord (2 Timothy 2:21-22).

Unforgiveness is like carrying a dead person strapped to one’s back. It is dead weight that is a burden to carry. Forgiveness releases a person from being held hostage to the penalty and power of past sins and the weight will fall off.

There are people that we met along the way who were not significant to God’s purpose and plan for our lives. They came into our lives for a while, then left and disappeared from our memory. They faded from our memories because they were not significant to the events that God would use to bring us into our purpose. On the other hand, there are events and people that God uses “indirectly” to bring us into our purpose. I think you know what I mean: Some abuses, abandonment, neglect, rejection, and assaults motivate us to prove that the perpetrators were wrong about us and we strive to improve our lives because it drives us toward our purpose. We should stop troubling ourselves with memories of “why” concerning them. Closure isn’t necessary because God closed the door! They were just people we met along the way. They neither added to nor took away from God’s purpose. So just say goodbye to them.

However, those who need our forgiveness are somewhere in proximity to our lives and concerning God’s eternal plan of salvation are destined to come back into our paths someday or in eternity, so forgive them. John 20:23, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained..” (Meaning retained by you, not God.) In the span of life after salvation if we do not forgive others in proximity to our lives, neither will God forgive us, which means we will continue to live with the burden of that sin in our consciousness. “For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins (Matthew 6:14-15).

When we fail to forgive, we give our perpetrators power over us (Romans 12: 17-21). The late Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, knew the power of forgiveness and rose from the bottom of the country to the top when he forgave his enemies. Learn to forgive and rise! That’s why we should even forgive our enemies.

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Confrontation acknowledges the need to rebuild a relationship between people.

Confrontation in this context is not a negative encounter for the sake of argument, accusations, or rebuttal to make the other person feel wrong. The reason is that those emotional issues carry subjective weight and a burden of collective guilt from the past. According to the comparison of the Scriptures, God’s unbiased desire and justice are not about who’s right or wrong because each person will answer for themselves on the Day of Reckoning. It concerns the “here and now” about a true believer’s willingness to initiate reconciliation between people (Matthew 5:23-24).

Confrontation is a crucial step towards God creating an opportunity for people (the vessels) who come together to resolve a past issue that opens a door for further dialog. The details of the conversation must be concrete agreeable information that’s shared. The purpose is not so much for an apology or admitting guilt. The purpose is to acknowledge that something went wrong in the past that requires situational analysis. (Note: Good counseling requires (like Solomon of old) taking the person out of the situation—because people can become products of their environment—and not just looking at why it happened, but examining the factors that led to the problem.)

Confrontation thus exposes the core of the problem by exploring the causes. Old issues re-appear as the participants honestly rehash their “perceptions” of what happened. Perceptions because memory can be foggy and when problems are spread through gossip and rumors the story can change. Confrontation of this sort will bring out painful, sensitive emotions that reveal our willingness or unwillingness to put it behind us and move on through embraced forgiveness. Despite the sentiment and fears of confrontation, confrontation helps the participants to face their fears which is necessary for spiritual/emotional healing.

THE GOAL OF CONFRONTATION IS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY. NEXT STOP ACCOUNTABILITY, BUT HOW DO WE GET THERE? FIRST THE INTERMEDIATE BRIDGE.