Forgiving Brings Healing // Forgive and Forget, Part 4

How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don’t hurt anymore. Well, today, we’re going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell.

These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing.

On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent of them were asked to participate in some workshops on forgiveness. The psychologists who conducted the research concluded that the forgiveness resulted in dramatically reduced anxiety and depression. I quote, "We've never seen such strong results."

Abuse, sexual, physical, mental, emotional is actually much more common than we think. You probably don't know Lorraine Watson, but as someone who's traveled down that road I was interested in talking about this whole forgiveness thing through with her. Lorraine, welcome.

Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here Bernie.

Berni Dymet: Now tell us a bit about your earlier years. You had a tough time of it.

Lorraine Watson: Yes, I was born the sixth child in a family of nine.

Berni Dymet: Obviously New Zealand.

Lorraine Watson: Yes, the first daughter after five sons. So that in itself was a problem. But it was an extremely dysfunctional family as well.

Berni Dymet: In what ways?

Lorraine Watson: We had no money and we had no emotional things going on in the family. We had no support and there was also sexual dysfunction, as well.

Bernie Dymet: Now you are saying that you went through some abuse. What form did that abuse take?

Lorraine Watson: It was sexual; it was within the family and without. There were people like my father's friends and other people in the area. It was a very small area and it was a very, I would say, incestuous area.

Berni Dymet: How did that feel when you were growing up? I guess as a kid you don't know any different. Can you remember the sort of emotions and the feelings you were going through with all of that?

Lorraine Watson: I did know it was different. I did know it wasn't safe to bring my friends home and when I went to any other person's house it was like I lived on a different level to them. There was just no recognition for me, that I was a person in my own right really.

Berni Dymet: So, you grew up and you came out of that. What impact did that have on you as an adult?

Lorraine Watson: Well, the first thing I think was that it was being sexually dysfunctional myself. I did not know how to relate to people on the level that was healthy. I didn't know how to form relationships. I longed for them, but what I really found was that I wanted to be loved in the way that I knew love, it was definitely sexual and nothing else.

Berni Dymet: Ok, so you got married, had a husband, you had kids. Did this affect your relationship with him?

Lorraine Watson: We married very young and for all the wrong reasons, but we did love each other and because of my faith, that my mother had passed on to me really, I knew that my marriage was forever. And so we worked very hard on our marriage. But we had six children very quickly and I definitely was not a good mother. I did not know how to relate to them either. I just did not have relationships skills at all. So that was very hard for me. But I worked very hard. It was what I thought that you did to get on was to work hard.

Berni Dymet: So how does all this come to a head? I mean you sit here and talk about it very calmly now. What happened to you?

Lorraine Watson: Well, I was always a churchgoer and my husband also had joined the church. I had a belief in God, not a personal belief, but I knew He was there. But during the pregnancy of my sixth child my body started to really dysfunction physically. So my back started to act up, I could not sit down often. They had me in a surgical corset.

Berni Dymet: It must be hard when you're pregnant.

Lorraine Watson: It was very hard when I was pregnant and there was a lot of pain. But if I stopped it would be worse so I pushed myself very hard. But during the later stages of that pregnancy my back stopped functioning altogether.

Berni Dymet: What does that mean?

Lorraine Watson: I just sat down one day and couldn't get up. And the pain was horrific but then I lost all feeling from my waist down. At this point I had cried out to God. If you are there God, and I knew He was, but it was certainly desperation, if you are there somewhere there must be something more than this.

Berni Dymet: It's kind of a difference between knowing in your head and knowing in your heart, isn't it?

Lorraine Watson: It was really. So when I lost the feeling in my body they took me off to the hospital in an ambulance with oxygen and all the bells and whistles. And when I did arrive there they found that I was having labor pains.

Berni Dymet: It must have been pretty scary; you're losing the function of your legs and your feet. You've got five kids, one on the way. That would be exciting.

Lorraine Watson: It was really bad because that's the only thing I remember about David's birth was that, how on earth am I going to look after six children from a wheelchair.

Berni Dymet: OK, so you cry out to God. What happens? The baby is born…

Lorraine Watson: I'm not sure of the timing really, but somewhere among that God heard my prayer and I found Him in a new way through a pray group, through a Pentecostal prayer group. And I gave my life to Him in a new way and I was baptized in the Spirit.
Now that brought a lot of joy. I was very excited about that and thought that life was never going to be difficult again. But six weeks down the track everything fell apart and the first thing the Lord did with me was through His word showed me the power of forgiveness; that I needed to forgive every person in my life.

Berni Dymet: How do you do that?

Lorraine Watson: Well, really it was a decision to start with. But I was very sure that this was God's word and that somehow I needed to do it. So, I really, in my head really, made that decision and sat down and went through every single thing that I had gone through and consciously forgave. I said the words that “I forgave these people.”

Berni Dymet: What happened next?

Lorraine Watson: Then I had a real sense of God saying to me that if I was willing to forgive totally my father then he would find God, which subsequently he did forty years later. But it wasn't an emotional decision really, but there was a lightness in myself after I had done that. But then the unexpected happened that my body healed. My back was totally healed. I have had no problem with the back since then.

Berni Dymet: So you forgave, how long after that forgiveness, active forgiveness did you become well?

Lorraine Watson: After the forgiveness it took a long period of time because it kept on coming up, other incidents kept coming up. And so I guess the process took a few months really; gradually my back just got better and better. And then I realized I didn't wear my corset and there was nothing wrong with my body. Not only my physical body but there was something happening emotionally for me.

Berni Dymet: People say, "Oh Ok, she had a sore back and it got better. Is that a real healing?"

Lorraine Watson: I know it was a real healing because there was no pain at all and I can't remember not having pain in my back from a teenager. The only time I might get a twinge is when I know my stress levels are high and I need to deal with something. And it's just tiny, not an ongoing problem at all.

Berni Dymet: That's really great! Thanks so much for that. I'd love to catch up with you again tomorrow. We're going to talk about a different sort of forgiveness to do with the death of you son just not that long ago. So it will be really great to catch up tomorrow. Thanks so much for that.

Lorraine Watson: Thanks Bernie.