Growing Stronger: 12 Guidelines Designed to Turn Your Darkest Hour into Your Greatest Victory (Morgan James Faith) - Softcover

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Mary Beth Woll, MA, L.M.H.C., is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor at the Meier Clinics in Bothell, Washington. Prior to joining Meier Clinics in April 2005, Mary Beth was the director of a pregnancy center, worked at a child and family agency, and was a seminar coordinator. She helped introduce an abstinence until marriage health curriculum to the local public schools, where she taught and coordinated a district-wide program, recruiting and training pastors and others. She also has been active in Celebrate Recovery, enjoyed numerous speaking engagements and served in the church alongside her Music Pastor husband, Bob. Her favorite career has been mom to four wonderful children.

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The fact that you are reading this book indicates that either you have suffered a crisis or have a heart for helping hurting people. All of us experience times when we are hurting and need help. As a therapist (Mary Beth Woll, MA, LMHC) and a psychiatrist (Paul Meier, MD), we love helping people during those tough times and have devoted our careers to doing so. We love our jobs because it brings such great joy to help others. And that is obviously why you are here right now---learning to recover or to support others in their recovery---through Growing Stronger. No doubt you will also find camaraderie in this program with people of like mind and calling.

As the name “Growing Stronger” suggests, this ministry has a very definite purpose and goal---to help women in the church provide healing support for other women experiencing crises so that they can recover and return to a life of effectiveness for God and even become 30,60, and 100 times more fruitful than before! (Mark 4:20).

The following pages offer a glimpse into the vision the Lord has given me (Mary Beth) as a result of years of counseling ministry and experiences of walking through my own times of crisis, trauma, suffering, and grief.

A number of years ago, I was attacked and nearly killed by a stranger. Even in those most frightening moments of my life, the Holy Spirit filled my heart in a militant, powerful way and comforted me with His presence which more than compensated for the nightmare I experienced.

Through God’s miraculous intervention, I was able to escape. The attacker turned himself in to the police with a full confession and was sentenced to prison. After serving the criminal sentence, he was found by a jury to have a mental abnormality or personality disorder which made him highly likely to reoffend. He was civilly committed, indefinitely, as a sexually violent predator.

During the lengthy and agonizing process of recovering from the attack, I was reading through my prayer journal. I discovered an entry with a Scripture that God had impressed upon my heart just eleven days before the attack. “Fear will not come near you. Terror will be far from you. If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing. Whoever attacks you will surrender to you” (Isaiah 54:14–15). At the time, I had thought in terms of a spiritual attack. Little did I know that God would deliver me from a physical attack and the assailant would surrender to me, just as the Scripture had said.

At first I was just so thrilled that God had saved my life and had given me back to my family and friends. Then post-traumatic stress set in. During these painful recovery times it was difficult, even with my resources as a counselor, to find the help I needed to navigate through these challenges. Although my dear husband Bob, loving family, friends, professionals, and ministries helped a lot, I often felt very much alone.

Through these experiences, God impressed upon me the need for the local church to provide a haven for women in such situations. Unfortunately, many churches are not prepared to offer this kind of support. Although nobody wants it to happen, women in crisis often fall through the cracks of the church structure. Sometimes church members don’t know how to reach out, and the church staff may feel overwhelmed at the needs of women in crisis.

Though no one can totally escape the feelings of isolation which accompany suffering, participating in an ongoing, caring, healing group can go a long way toward easing that pain. In our national chain of Meier Clinics, we use small group therapy because it is so effective in bringing about rapid healing. Growing Stronger is designed to incorporate similar training, structure, and support to develop intensive-care-type groups in the local church that provide a safe haven for women going through those hurtful times we all eventually encounter.

The New Testament is filled with “ONE ANOTHER” concepts: Love one another, speak the truth in love to one another, exhort one another, and many others. In James 5:16, God promises that if we confess our “faults”---which includes our painful, “stuck” places---we will be healed. The Bible promises this, and research backs it up. Whether you have picked up this book because you need help in the midst of a crisis or you want to be better equipped to help women in crisis, we are grateful to God for people such as you!

May God bless you as you follow Him through this very important journey!