Jesus lifts lawyer’s family burdens

G carried the heavy burden of holding her family together. She shares her testimony of how the Holy Spirit revealed generational curses of bitterness and regrets in her family ancestry. G prayed to cut off her family curses and forgave her mother and felt her spirit renewed through Jesus Christ. Praise God!

(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣挪走律师的家庭重担 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌挪走律師的家庭重擔)

Growing up, my parents loved me dearly – they supported me in everything that I wanted to do.

They made an honest living and provided the best education and living environment possible for my sister and me.

For instance, they even flew with me to London when I started my Masters degree and to Shanghai when I was seconded as a trainee.

However, my parents did not get along and always fought about finances, our education and nitty gritty things.

That did not bother me much because I knew that they loved me. My love language is “service” and my parents have always served me. I knew that they stayed in the marriage because of my sister and me because they are “responsible parents” and not because they love each other.

My excuse for them is that my dad is like a romantic scientist and my mom is like a practical artist, they are incompatible and share different values. I am more similar to my dad than to my mom. Like my dad, I judge my mom or anyone with expressive emotions as being illogical and hysterical.

I always felt the need to “bridge” their differences.

One example is the mortgage that I took to help purchase a flat that they are now living in, because they could not agree on the budget for the purchase.

When my mom had to battle cancer, my sister developed a mood disorder and my dad later developed medical complications. Because I was the only “healthy” one in the family, I felt responsible to glue everyone together emotionally.

After my parents retired and my sister left her job, I also became the sole financial bread-winner for the family.

I happily took on this role because God gave me the resources and the good health to do so.

As a young lawyer, I found my work really stressful and I simply did not have the time to appreciate the simplest of things, such as the touch of sunshine or the taste of a vegetable. I asked myself why I had to live when even the free gift from nature becomes scarce.

Knowing how I felt, my best friend brought me to church. Via an Alpha course, I became a seeker. I wanted to know more about God. I attended church, small group, did Bible studies and different retreats. After six years, I finally got baptised.

Since then, the Lord has done miracles in my family – healing my sister and mom completely, making my mom realise that my dad loved her. It was as if Christ has taken away the “issues” which distracted me from looking within and focusing on my relationship with Him.

As I started learning to lay down my burdens to Christ, my own problems surfaced at an alarming level.

I found myself struggling with self-love, self-appreciation, and self-worth. At work, I lacked courage and confidence despite my good work and excellent qualifications. I tried to earn approval from bosses with whom I could not get along and who disapproved of my personal successes.

In general, I felt the need to put up an image and defend my reputation which I worked really hard to build; which was that of a good daughter, sister, friend, lawyer, Christian.

I also feel ashamed of any emotion other than joy, so I swept them under the carpet or numbed myself so that I did not feel them.

Moreover, I found it hard to develop romantic relationships because intimate relationships always seemed to be a burden to me. I was more comfortable having long-distance relationships which generally do not last very long.

Soon, I felt the burdens of the heavy chains around me. All the responsibilities that I had taken on became too heavy to bear. I felt that my mind had been blocked, but that I am too risk-averse to choose another life that is less burdensome.

I also struggled with performance and perfectionism. I felt that I needed to be perfect and to perform in order to be loved and respected. 

Worst of all, I felt too entrenched for God to release me from my mental prison. I also could not understand Jesus’ identity as God and how I could relate His suffering and sacrifice to my own salvation. I felt ashamed of my unbelief as I did not have faith that Jesus can help me break free. I was in despair. I had to work hard to regain faith, fight against my own skepticism, and struggle with my relationship with Jesus.

In search of my identity in Christ, I went to Norway for Fatherheart School last March. I learnt about the need to forgive my parents and to forgive myself and the need to be a little girl again. I wrote letters to my parents and read them to my parents when I returned.

My parents welcomed my messages. That marked the beginning of a year of healing and reconciliation.

Later, I signed up for a counselling course in relation to psychological influences from our family. For this course, I had to interview my mom on her family upbringing.

My mom is the eldest in her family. She was born pretty and gifted, and was the more favoured daughter in her family. The family became more affluent as they won a lottery the day my mom was born. Despite being “loved”, she has anger management issues and is rude to her siblings, parents, and eventually, her own husband.

I always felt that my mom treated herself as a high-performing machine and a commodity, rather than a human being. I thought she was just being spoilt and couldn’t understand why the “love” and “attention” she received did not make her a better person.

Personally, I find my mom’s love suffocating and controlling. I found myself blaming her for a lot of the sufferings and feuds in our family.

I thought the set of values that she adhered to was evil, corrupted, and unjust. However, because she loved me so much, I would make up excuses for her behavior.

For example, even when my mom empathised with a piece of local news concerning a young mother who sought to take her young children with her as she committed suicide – I would tell myself that my mom was concerned that the little children will be out of care without their mother. When she picked up my cousin who bullied me, instead of me when I was a child – I would tell myself that she was being “courteous” to a relative.

My mother’s family was sympathetic with the ideology of self-reliance, hard work, independence and strong will.

My maternal grandmother was a strong woman who had great expectations of herself and her kids. She was the woman who nurtured and raised me when I was little.

She was training as a nurse when she had to stop because she was pregnant with my mom. She gave my mom and aunt names of men – “strength” and “hardness” in Chinese.

My grandmother was not happy with her husband, whom she saw as “lazy” for having retired early in his 50’s, and became slightly depressed when she grew old. I think she regretted having children so early as it prevented her from fulfilling her dreams to become a nurse or a professional.

All this family information would become highly useful afterwards.

Towards the end of the counselling course, I attended the “Love the Lord” course and signed up for an inner healing and deliverance prayer.

During my inner healing and deliverance prayer session, the Holy Spirit revealed that my mom’s insecurity came from the fact that my grandmother did not want her when she was conceived. The pregnancy interrupted my grandmother’s life plan and so as a baby in her mother’s womb, my mom would have felt it.

This realisation prompted me to appreciate the burden and hurt my mom suffered as a child of conditional favouritism and expectations.

I also realised that my mother’s struggle with her marriage comes from an ancestral idolatry of men, which led to bitterness and criticism when it comes to the other half.

Also, my mom’s inner vow is that she will not let go of her own children. This has created an ungodly soul-tie between me and her – which manifested in her possessiveness and suffocating “love”. I called out a spirit of Jezebel in my ancestry.

I now realised that, like my mom, I suffered similar burdens as the first child, having been the “reason” why my parents stuck together.

Instead of focusing on solving problems in their own marriage, I have also become my parents’ “idol”, the glue for their marriage and the bridge that filled their differences – a form of parental inversion.

During my inner healing and deliverance prayer, I surrendered my parents’ relationship and my family tree to God, confessed the sins of my ancestors, and prayed for the lifting of my burdens. I repented from my pride in shouldering burdens that do not belong to me.

I renounced lies that love is conditional.

In addition, I asked for the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of my heart towards justice and righteousness and repented from numbing my emotions, dishonesty towards myself, and excuses I made up for my parents’ and my family’s sins. I repented from my idolatry of reputation, successes, perfection, performance, my work, my boss, and my family.

I also asked the Holy Spirit to cut off the chains around me and free me from any spiritual influences from my family and my workplace (including the spirit of Jezebel). I prayed for God to uproot and replant our family in Christ. I prayed for allegiance to Christ. I asked God for rest and laying down on the green pastures prepared by Him.

After I reaffirmed my identity in Christ and His unconditional love, my heart is more realigned towards Jesus.

The Holy Spirit gave me discernment to appreciate my mother’s pain, giving me the perspective from the women figures in my family. I asked God to forgive me and my mom’s ignorance and behavior. I repented from my judgment towards my mom. I asked the Lord to open my eyes and my mom’s eyes as to how we can love ourselves more and receive the love that is presented to us. I asked for healing for myself, my sister, and my mom.

Since the prayer session, the Holy Spirit had taught me how to love my mom and communicate love to her. The relationship between my parents and me has since improved. We even watched the “Chosen” together. It was not a burden to spend time with them during COVID-19.

I have since had an opportunity to speak to my mom about our grandma‘s pregnancy. She admitted that she once read my grandma’s diary about how she struggled with her untimely pregnancy. This was the revelation I had received earlier from God during my inner healing and deliverance prayer.

I am amazed as to how the Holy Spirit can reveal so much to us.

At work, I have found it easier to surrender difficult situations to the Lord. I have had a number of successes since I brought the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to meetings. The Holy Spirit would reveal to me the knowledge and prepare me for my work.

With a renewed mindset, I become confident with my relationship with co-workers and bosses.

Now, despite political instability and Covid-19, I felt a newfound faith and confidence in God that everything will be fine.

God has done miracles in me and in my family and He will bless those who seek Him and focus on Him. I am still finding new inner vows to renounce and ungodly ways to repent of on a daily basis. I think God is leading me to a new beginning with hope in Him.

I can feel free with Christ and can picture myself spending time with Him, dancing, travelling, and rejoicing.