At the end of the session presented in the Eileen: “Immanuel Interventions” DVD, Eileen was in a three-year-old memory in which she was sitting in Jesus’ lap and listening to His heart beat as He spoke words of reassurance and blessing. At this point in the session it was obvious that Eileen had received some powerful, beautiful healing work, but it was also clear to me that there was a lot more that needed to be done, especially regarding trauma related to her mother. I didn’t say this out loud, but I was thinking, “If we had more time, I would coach Eileen to press into this remaining trauma.” As I was having this thought, and also thinking about how I might encourage Eileen to pursue this healing work in some other setting, she made a spontaneous comment along the lines of “Jesus is saying that for right now He wants me to just stay in His lap and enjoy being with Him, and then at some time in the future we need to do more healing work about my mother.” I thought, “Wow. That’s interesting. Jesus is obviously aware of the healing work that still needs to be done, but He also seems very clear that right now is not the time to do it.” So I let it go and closed the session.

Another part of this story is that in addition to her participation in one of our mentoring groups, Eileen would also come in for an occasional individual session. She did a lot of Immanuel healing work in personal prayer times with just herself and Jesus, but occasionally she would get really triggered, be unable to resolve the problem on her own, and then come in for a consultation session for help with getting unstuck. This happened every two to three months, and with each session we would start by helping her to establish an interactive connection with Jesus, ask Him to show us where to go and what to do for the rest of the session, and then just follow His lead. This seemed to be working very well so I wasn’t worrying about setting the agenda, and I had forgotten all about the comments from the end of the mentoring group session.

And then, in a session about a year-and-a-half after the healing work presented in the training DVD, Eileen established a good connection with Jesus, asked for guidance, and reported, “Jesus says that now it’s time to do the healing work about my mother.” Somehow the matter-of-fact way she stated this, and then looked at me with calm patience (as if she was waiting for me to take the next obvious, logical step), gave me the impression that she expected me to know exactly what she was talking about. It felt as if she were referring to something that had happened to both of us just a few minutes earlier, and that I should know what she meant by “…the healing work about my Mom.” I had no idea what she was talking about, and I’m sure I looked as clueless as I felt, because she eventually explained, “You know, the little girl – she’s been sitting on His lap, building capacity, learning to trust Him, and just enjoying being with Him – and He says that now it’s time to go and work on the painful memories.” I’m still totally lost. “Okay,…uhm,…ahh,…I’m not sure I’m exactly clear about which little girl and which memories we’re referring – I think somehow I missed something.” So she explained further, “You know, the three-year-old child part from the memory in the kitchen, where my Mom was doing dishes and I was trying to get her attention, but she was so depressed that she was just starring blankly out the window. And Jesus told the little girl that He wanted her to just sit in His lap for a while, but sometime later we would need to do more healing work about my mother.”

The lightbulb finally went on for me, “Oh! You mean from the session a couple years ago – the session on the DVD? You’re saying that the little girl child part from that session has been sitting on Jesus’ lap all this time? She’s been sitting on Jesus’ lap for the last couple years, building trust and capacity, and now Jesus is saying that it’s time to work on the traumatic memories regarding your mother He was referring to at the end of the session?” “Exactly!” says Eileen. “She’s been with Jesus all this time, and Jesus says she’s ready to do the healing work now.”

Oh, wow. Amazing. I had never seen this one before, but in light of the dramatic fruit in Eileen’s life after the earlier session (and also in light of the other things I had been seeing the Lord do in Immanuel sessions), it all seemed quite possible. So making direct eye contact, I spoke directly to the three year old child part and asked if she would be willing to cooperate with whatever Jesus wanted to do regarding the painful memories with her mother. She promptly said “Yes,” and within minutes Jesus had taken her to some very intense memories in which she had been terrified that her mother would die. After this point, all I did was coach her to focus on Jesus and ask Him for help at every point in the healing work, and the memories were resolved in less than twenty minutes. As we finished working through the memories, I remember thinking that this was some of the smoothest, easiest work I had ever done, when working with such traumatic early childhood experiences, and I especially noted that Eileen did not have any problems with disconnection or inadequate capacity.

As I pondered this session, it became increasingly clear that Jesus is an excellent therapist, with a very high level of skill and excellent clinical judgment. He had made a very good clinical judgment call at the end of the initial session in directing us to wait before trying to work with the traumatic mother memories, He had obviously been very skilled in building trust and capacity with the child part as she spent 18 months sitting in His lap, He obviously made the right call in saying that she was now ready to work on this material, and He did a beautiful, gentle, extremely effective job of leading us through the healing work when Eileen finally did go to the memories. Furthermore, I am convinced that this healing work would have been much more difficult if I had tried to get Eileen to go to these memories prematurely. I’m sure we would have encountered complicated problems with inadequate capacity, and it would have been slower, messier, and much more painful. In addition to the theoretical reasons for letting Jesus lead, this kind of practical experience has taught me to deliberately lean towards letting Jesus drive as much as possible (regarding non-process aspects of the healing work).

Karl Lehman, M.D., personal collection of Immanuel stories