How Knowing The Holy Spirit Heals Shame And Restores Identity w/ Carrie Ann

We explore how a living relationship with the Holy Spirit restores identity, reveals the goodness of the Father, and empowers practical healing from fear, shame, and past trauma. Carrie Ann Barrett shares personal stories, clear teaching, and grounded steps for lasting freedom.

• Holy Spirit as daily comforter and guide
• Knowing God as the perfect Father beyond performance
• Why many churches miss the Spirit’s active role
• Listening prayer and hearing God with confidence
• Suffering, evil, and hope in a fallen world
• Deliverance, fear, and walking in authority
• Tongues explained as Spirit-led prayer
• Reinstatement into God’s family and sonship
• Trauma processing with Spirit-led memory work
• Practical steps for forgiveness and freedom
• Resources and books that deepen healing

To everyone listening, if today’s conversation spoke something deep inside of you, please share this with a friend, leave a review, and let us know what resonated the most

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Theme: Identity In God
• 1:57 Meet Carrie Ann Barrett
• 2:55 The Missing Piece: Holy Spirit
• 7:03 How Churches Reengage The Spirit
• 10:23 Listening Prayer And Prophetic Life
• 11:27 Knowing God As Perfect Father
• 14:09 Wrestling With Suffering And Evil
• 19:45 Demonic Influence And Deliverance
• 23:22 Speaking In Tongues Clarified
• 25:56 Reinstated Identity And Sonship
• 31:08 Practical Healing From Trauma
• 38:20 Mapping Memories And Mother Hunger
• 42:04 Final Encouragement And Ways To Connect

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:50

Welcome back to Mind Force, where we unpack powerful stories and truths that fuel our emotional, spiritual, and personal growth. In today's episode, we'll be stepping into a deeply redemptive conversation about identity, healing, and the power of knowing who you truly are in God. Today we'll be exploring what it means to truly know God as the perfect Father, the powerful reinstatement of identity through Christ, and how we can walk in lasting freedom from past trauma, shame, and guilt. I'm excited for this one. This past weekend was Father's Day. This will release in the future, so it won't necessarily be near Father's Day, but awesome segue for the perfect father. So let's start with a guest introduction. Let's begin with your story. Who are you and what message has God placed on your heart for this season of your life?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

Sure. I am Carrie Ann Barrett. I'm a wife, a mom. I am a counselor, but I've just stepped down from my business. But I'm mostly a child of God. And I love to start that off with that's who I am, because that is the most important thing to me and to God, that I'm his child.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

Absolutely. That's perfect. And just for reference, where are you calling in from?

SPEAKER_01: 1:57

I'm actually from New England, Massachusetts. And uh it's cloudy and rainy out here. Not that wonderful.

SPEAKER_00: 2:05

Nice. Uh I'm in the UK. It's been pretty hot. It's eighty degrees today or whatever it is in Fahrenheit. I haven't quite figured it out yet. Twenty-three or something.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14

Yeah. Yeah. No, from the United States of America. Yep. We are over here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:19

That is awesome. Okay, before we go any deeper, I'd like to flip the mic. What's one question you wish more people asked about God or identity?

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

I think most people, I would love for them to ask about Holy Spirit. That really is my thing right now because I feel like the Lord has been showing me that, you know, for a long time I focused on the fatherlessness of people, how people don't have a father, they don't have a good earthly father, so they don't understand the Holy Father. And they have this empty space where father needs to fill that relationship with father needs to fill that space. But recently, the Lord has been sharing with me how the Holy Spirit is the comforter. They call him the Easer in the Old Testament. And that word easer is the same as Eve was in the Old Testament, and it is the same as women are called. So we are the Easer and the Holy Spirit is the Easter. And so when we think about the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is more of the mothering side of the Trinity. And I feel like the Lord is speaking speaking to me about the emptiness that a lot of people have, at least in my Gen X generation, where we didn't have a mother at home. Didn't have a mother at home mothering us, caring for us, tending to us. At least in America, it was go outside, I'll see you at dusk when the lights go on, go drink out of the hose, go do things, go to school, I'm out, I'm working, or at least I'm not present in the home. I'm not attending to, you know? So a lot of children, and I think it's lifelong, generations long, the whole time long, have been missing some of that healthy, perfect mothering. Even if they have a mother, the mother isn't perfect, right? So there's a lot of like emotional stuff that goes on. There's sometimes abandonment, rejection, all kinds of things because moms aren't perfect. So there's this other hole the Lord has been showing me that is the mothering piece. And it's interesting that we've been so focused on fathering, but I really think Holy Spirit is the missing piece as well. And a lot of churches specifically, I don't know how it is overseas, but over here, a lot of the churches are missing Holy Spirit. So they'll say they have Holy Spirit and they acknowledge that Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity, but they do not have a walking-talking relationship with that comforter. They don't really understand that the Holy Spirit is talking to us right now, presently, all day long, that they can have that perfect relationship with Holy Spirit that actually leads us to the Father and into the fullness of the Scripture, right? So Holy Spirit's the one that brings scripture to mind and helps us to interpret that scripture. Holy Spirit is helping us through every situation of life. So I wish people really could understand the depth and breadth of Holy Spirit and the impact of us today. I'm actually writing a book that's not finished yet. It's almost finished. It's the one thing that changes everything. And the one thing really is our acknowledgement and understanding of Holy Spirit, which is the way we get to Father. You know, we have to walk through the door first of Jesus, but then we go connect communication-wise through Holy Spirit to Father. So that would be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

Yeah, that makes sense. That's a that's a good one. It's interesting too. It's funny that you mentioned like the different generations and whatnot, because my mom, I picked her up a couple weeks ago, and you know, the kids are, you know, on their iPads and doing whatever, but just kind of comical how how different it is. Because I remember riding my bike and wanting to be anywhere other than the house, really. And now it feels like they only want to stay at the house. We try to get them out to the grocery store. Very simple things, and no one wants to go anywhere. So it is interesting how things shift over time. I remember, yeah, not wanting to really be at the house at all. But it is interesting how we were, you know, raised by the outdoors almost. And it's interesting that my recent move overseas from well, I guess, from Japan to Florida, now overseas again. But we drove by my town that I grew up in, and I realized how far it was that I was allowed to ride my bike, and now being a parent, I'm like, I would never let my kid ride this far. But times are different, and times are a little bit scarier. So I don't know. I guess we felt more comfortable. Maybe it was just as scary back then. I I don't know. But seeing the distance was a little, a little alarming. One question I wanted to follow up on. You said missing the Holy Spirit. So as a church or an organization that, you know, is working on that or should be working on it, what are the ways to actually get after? You said it is missing, but how how do we fix that?

SPEAKER_01: 6:46

A lot of teaching about what scripture says about Holy Spirit's presence in our life. You know, a lot of us focus on Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, but really in scripture, Jesus is gone. He's in heaven, he's seated next to the Father. He's not the one that's day-to-day. And I think that's a false teaching that we're supposed to be connected with Jesus every day. We're not. We're supposed to be connected to Holy Spirit every day. And Holy Spirit is our connection to the Father. Jesus is done. He's had his victory, he is seated, he's enjoying heaven, he's enjoying the Father. And I know that's super different, but when you look at scripturally, he said, I have to go. So the Holy Spirit will come. So the Holy Spirit is our helper, right? And then that's helping us through the rest until we go be with Jesus, our big brother. Till we go and be seated, fully seated. We're supposed to be seated at a place of rest spiritually now, victorious in his victory, but we will then go and be with him, seated at the table in heaven, in the victory of God, with the fullness of the Trinity, partnering with and fellowshipping with then. But that's one thing is we can really look at what scripture says about Holy Spirit, but then teach about how do we interact with the Holy Spirit. You know, what are people doing? How is the Holy Spirit showed up? What does the Holy Spirit do? No, Holy Spirit is the power that we have as Christians, right? We're supposed to be like Jesus, doing the things that Jesus did. He said, raise the sick, cast out demons, you know, do all these things. We can't do that without the power and authority of the Holy Spirit. And so if we don't know that Holy Spirit is a power and authority, then we're not gonna ever think we can do any of those things, like, oh, that was Jesus. Well, Jesus did it with the power and authority of the Holy Spirit. He did it with power and authority that wasn't his own because he had laid all that down. And so the only way we can do it is that same way through the Holy Spirit. So teaching about that, but then teaching it how to how to sit and be still and how to listen and actually have faith that he's gonna talk to us. You know, actually have the faith that if I sit in quiet, I can hear, not with my physical ears, but with my spiritual ears, I can hear Holy Spirit talking. Holy Spirit not only wants to communicate with me, but I hear Holy Spirit every day. If I'm if I'm making an effort to listen and I'm not, you know, totally distracted with life, I can hear Holy Spirit every day, off and on throughout the day. And if we're not teaching that that's real for anyone who's a believer, anyone who's entrusted themselves as a follower of the Lord into the Father and the Spirit, into that oneness of the Father and the family, you know, we have to teach that that's an option, that we can in fact do that. So those are the kinds of things I just did a uh teaching on how to hear from the Lord. That's on on uh YouTube. I have a link that I can share. But I really just want people to understand that it's it's real, it's right now. And so a lot of pastors and teachers are sharing, well, yes, when we go to heaven, we can have all those things, you know. No, Holy Spirit is right now, the kingdom is now. Like, yes, there's a final kingdom for the rest of eternity, but the the active present kingdom of us reigning here on this earth for the Lord with his presence and through the spirit is right now.

SPEAKER_00: 9:56

That's good. Yeah. I think it's a good reminder to the the listening piece. You know, you get up, I start my every morning, you know, going through uh the you version, reading the Bible in a year, and you know, some of the daily stuff before I go off to work and whatnot. I think it's one thing that gets lost a lot. Like we mention prayer a lot, and we always think of prayer as the verb of us talking. It's like sometimes you gotta not talk and allow, you know, ability for the ability to listen and actually, you know, bring information in. So it is very interesting. It's a good reminder.

SPEAKER_01: 10:31

Listening for the lion, and that is something I actively decided to do a couple years ago, is just spend time in quiet and and listen to what he has to say. You know, I now people say, Oh, you're a prophetic. Well, I think everybody can hear from Holy Spirit. Everybody can do then with that that they hear whatever he says to do. So that's prophetic. And I think in part we can all be prophetic, if that's what you want to call it. I think it's just relationship with God through Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

Yeah, that makes sense. We'll move into your first pillar, which is the perfect father. When did the idea of God as father, father figure, become personal to you rather than just theology?

SPEAKER_01: 11:10

I think that's a long process. I'm not sure if I have like a defined time. Uh I know personally I struggled because I didn't have my father in the home. I had a father, but he wasn't in the home because my parents had divorced. So there's a lot of uh awareness that I had and the need for father. And it was just I was aware of that. So as I read and read, I would know, okay, father, you know, I could see that he was different. He was good and he had loved us and he wanted a relationship. And the Lord, more and more showed me that the really the end-all be all is for us to have that perfect relationship with Father. The end-all be all is not for us to be perfect, but to have relationship, perfect relationship with the Father. And so it's been a journey of me learning more and more of Father. And I think talking to Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit reveals the goodness of the Father. So I've learned more and more about that perfect father and how good he is and how much he wants his children to know him. And uh, Jesus is the vessel through which we do that. You know, we know him through Jesus. Jesus is the example of the father's love for us, right? That that self-sacrificing perfect love that he would lay down his own life. And that is a picture of Father's love for us. But most of us are hiding from Father. Most of us doubt the Father's goodness. We are building our own castles, our own kingdom, thinking that if we do enough things, Father will approve, instead of knowing that Father's approved anyway. We're we're creations of dust that he loves and he sees us as children. And it's kind of like I love my my children when they're one, and I don't think, oh, you're a bad one-year-old. No. And if we were supposed to live to thousands or eternity, you know, we're babies. And he sees us as silly babies messing up along the way, and he loves us anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 13:03

Yeah, and I think that's another thing, another good reminder as well. Like our works are not what earn it anyway. So I think that happens a lot where we resort back to like, if I could do enough, if I could, we could never do enough. That's not how it works. Um, grace is the important part. And it's interesting because this last Sunday we had a preach at church and she was talking about the connection, like you had mentioned, on how people have not had a father or had bad father figures. And so the connection or that gap between, you know, the perfect father and then a father is just too wide or confusing, or I think that's where people kind of get lost along the way. So, what would you say to someone who had a broken relationship with their earthly father and struggles to trust God as that perfect father?

SPEAKER_01: 13:53

Sure, is the truth of his goodness. And I know sometimes it's hard if you jump into like, I don't know, chronicles or kings or or something random, and you're like, oh my gosh, he's he's like killing people. He's, you know. But the the broadness of the whole scripture is the goodness of the father and his love for us. So it really is to just keep going through scripture and learning from the beginning to the end is really the whole picture of his goodness. You know, he slaughtered animals in the beginning to cover them with the the skin so he could fellowship with them. And consistently, again and again and again, he has made sacrifice and saying, I know you're not perfect, I know you're not good enough, but I am going to make things right. I'm going to make things right, and he actually did. Whereas a lot of fathers say, Yeah, I'm going to be there on Sunday, and they never show up. But God has consistently said, I will, and he does. If you look at scripture and say, He says, I will do this, and he did. I will do this, and he did. He finished everything he said he would do. He consistently did. Now we could say, Well, he wasn't there for me when this happened. Okay. You know, I know that gets really personal when he wasn't there. Like I I lost a child. So I for my first pregnancy, I lost that baby. And I could say, God, you weren't there, you didn't save that baby. Instead, I know that we live in a fallen world and things didn't go right. I also know he was with me every single moment through the process and has loved on me and healed me and taken my grief from that process. So as much as things are hard, he says, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. So we have to look broader than our small view of pain. And I know that's hard to do.

SPEAKER_00: 15:41

Yeah. So I'd like to ask a follow-up question, not to be overly personal. But one thing I've struggled with, I've heard this kind of thrown around from different, you know, coworkers or people that I work around. And I don't know if I have a great answer. And so I'll fire it your way. I have someone that I work around that lost, uh, lost a child, or it might have been twins. I don't know all the details. But he said the worst thing to hear, everything happens for a reason. What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

Well, I mean, it's definitely not true. It's definitely not true. Satan came to kill and destroy. That is not God's will. And I think one of the issues, actually, that you bring that up, one of the biggest issues is that nobody acknowledges Satan's hand in the problem. They say, Well, God, you didn't. And he's like, Well, look, you live in a fallen world because Satan came down and you decided to follow him instead of me. And I'm trying to rectify the problem all the way through. But you already, as a people, chose to follow that God. And so I can't fix every problem because he's here and that's a problem. And I think, you know, we will continue to live in a fallen world where Satan is reigning until we step into the reigning instead. And that's I put that in put your crown on. It's about us reigning with Holy Spirit inside us. Yes, we're gonna we're gonna have pain. My dad died at Parkinson's. It was horrific. Okay, bad things happened. It was one of the worst experiences of my entire life. But I know consistently through the whole process, God showed up again and again and again. And so we do live, like I said, in this fallen world. And it says it throughout scripture, you know, that we are living in this fallen world. There were people getting raped and murdered and pillaged and whatnot all the way through scripture. And yet he loves us and is taking us through it. And I know, like, I I have a friend that lost a baby too, and and she said, Carrie, he took my grief. No, the bad thing didn't stop. Obviously, that baby died, and that's horrific. And that wasn't God. He didn't plan that. He wasn't, he didn't want that child to die. But we live in that fallen world, and yet he took her grief so she could move forward. And she's an amazing woman of God, amazing woman of God, full of the Holy Spirit and full of joy. And so, you know, we journey on through this world, we work our salvation up with fear and trembling. We we press in to hear God and to pursue goodness throughout the process. But this is not a perfect world. If it was, you know, we wouldn't need Jesus, first of all, and there wouldn't be any Satan, there wouldn't be any demons. You know, those are still real in this world, and we we need to deal with those as well.

SPEAKER_00: 18:23

Yeah, some of them are are really difficult. I just finished up Job in my Bible in the year, and I think so much we want good people to get good things and bad people to get bad things, but that's that's not how it works. And so that is a difficult one. I've read through the Bible last year and then this year, and so coming up on it again, it's like it's just such a difficult thing. We want the karma, we want the, you know, that kind of justice system that just isn't how it works. It's not built that way. But I think that is a good reminder, you know, Satan and the devil, you know, how that works. I think a lot of times you are right. It's like he was God was missing or whatever, but there's multiple things going on and hands in the pot and things like that. So maybe not the lack thereof, but there's other things in there. That is interesting. Um I don't think a lot of people do kind of mention that, you know, there is the evil parts of spirit spiritual will warfare.

SPEAKER_01: 19:18

Yeah, we actually walk around with what I say as an entourage. You know, in scripture, it's very clear there are demonic entities in this world. And a lot of times churches just don't talk about them. And I think because they're afraid to because they don't know what to do with them, right? And so instead of saying, yes, it's true, the Bible says so, so it's true. And this is what we get to do about it. We are told to cast out demons. And so we're going to do that because we don't really know totally how to do that. We there's no like uh 10 steps to casting out demons. We just kind of see Jesus walking in his authority and we're like, okay, I guess we do what he did. So churches don't talk about it, but it's real. And you know, a lot of the work that I've done with people that have had the most change, the most impact, are when they've been delivered. And I mean Christian people. I personally don't deliver people who are not Christian because there's no sense. If we're empty vessels, temples, and there's you know, if we clean it out, the Bible says that demon will go out and find seven more and say, Oh, this house is clean, let's go in there. No, we need to make sure we are we have Holy Spirit and clean the house. I know people say, Well, if I have Holy Spirit, I don't need to clean the house because he's cleaned the house. Like, well, no. It's kind of like if you sell your house, then someone else owns it, but there might still be squatters on the land. You need to get rid of the squatters, like a spirit of fear. I was actually delivered 20 years after being saved, 20 plus from a spirit of fear. And I didn't it's because I wasn't trusting Holy Spirit in all of the my life decisions. And like I literally am a counselor, I would have said, Oh, I don't struggle with anxiety, but I made a lot of decisions based on fear. So fear, the spirit was leading me instead of me following the Lord. And every time I did that, it was leading me off track and I was further apart from the Lord and I was out of alignment. So when I was delivered and that was cast out of me, I have been free. Not that I don't battle once in a while, because it does want to come back, but I have much more victory to be able to stand on that. And I've asked the Holy Spirit in to fill that gap and to help me with it. I'm telling you, even the next morning I woke up after going through that deliverance and it was quiet. And I was like, oh my gosh, my whole life I had had this kind of chatter of, oh, what about this? What about that? What about this? What about that? Have you thought about this? And I was just, I thought it was just normal because my family had it, my mom had it, my dad had it, you know, it's like and so it's a generational demon, you know. And then once I cast it out, or not me, my pastor, his wife, and my husband cast it out, it's been ridiculously different. And I think people just don't understand because they don't see it. And there's not taught in churches, it's not a thing. Some churches it does, don't get me wrong, but a lot of them they don't. So we're walking around limping, the entourage is in control, and we're wondering, what the heck's going on, God? Why aren't you helping us? And he's like, Well, I gave you all the ways to get through this, and you're supposed to help each other. So, what's going on? It's you guys, it's not really me. And that's hard to hear. We don't want to hear it, it's us, you know, it's him. He's supposed to do it. He's like, I gave you the power, I gave you the authority, I gave you the ways to do it. Go teach people who and it it's I make it sound so simple. It's not simple. You know, we do these things based on scripture and it's a process, but I you know, we were talking before, I think, you know, it's just not taught. It's not taught. And so that's why I wrote the book, put your crown on so we can walk in that authority and learn from the Lord on what it is we're supposed to do to reign in the kingdom today.

SPEAKER_00: 22:47

So another thing, maybe this is a completely random question, but another thing I think that's not talked about as much and maybe confused. I've heard a lot of different stuff, you know, growing up in the church myself, and you know, ask my mom, and we probably have different viewpoints on this one. But what are your thoughts on speaking in tongues?

SPEAKER_01: 23:06

That's a funny one because I was actually in seminary, and at the time I was dating a gentleman who I didn't end up marrying. We were just dating a little while, but he spoke in tongues, and I was like, Well, I better figure this out if I'm gonna be a pastor's wife, and he speaks in tongues. But it's funny because I did a a paper on that because I was like, I gotta really figure this out. This is a big deal. And in figuring it out, you know, I figured it out with my head that that yes, scripturally, culturally, tongues is a thing. It's a it's not just speaking in another language, it's actually having the Holy Spirit talk out your mouth. It's giving him reign to speak in this earth right now. And so that was a learning process for me. And then to actually allow myself to let him speak, him or her, or whoever we want, Holy Spirit, to let Holy Spirit through speak through my mouth was uncomfortable. But once I started to do that, you know, which is what the scripture says to do, then I found it impactful. You know, there are studies that say that the brain actually does amazing things while people pray in tongues. And so um it it it supersedes our control and our own plans, our own desires. And the Holy Spirit speaks into this world what Holy Spirit wants to bring forth into this world. And it's not they'll name and claiming, because it's not me naming a claiming, it's me allowing my mouth to be used by Holy Spirit to do what Holy Spirit wants to do.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

Interesting. So you think everyone has the ability? Because when we talk about spiritual gifts, I think sometimes, you know, we only get certain ones, but that one is open for everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 24:43

He says, I'd rather all of you, right? So you know, wait, is that right? Is it all of us speak in tongues? But anyway, he makes it Paul makes it so like of course, of course you speak in tongues. But what about this? You know, and so it's I I don't think tongues pass away until there's no need for tongues. And that's in heaven. There's no need for tongues in heaven, you know. Um it's a in heaven there's no need for visions and dreams and scripture. There's no need for anything of that. But now we allow Holy Spirit to speak into situations, to speak into our life, to speak into our surroundings, and that's how he created the whole earth to begin with. So you know, it's pretty powerful when we think about it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:25

Absolutely. Some interesting things that kind of get misconstrued along the way. Your second pillar is reinstatement in the family. So let's talk about identity. What does it mean to be reinstated into the family of God through Jesus?

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

Yeah. So we were talking a lot about um how we have been separated from that family because of the fall, because of our sin. And our sin really is just coming out of alignment. It's going off track and going under really Satan's authority, these demonic entities' authority, choosing. They, Adam and Eve chose to follow Satan instead of choosing to follow God. And every time we do that, we we rend the relationship. We separate ourselves and misalign ourselves from that relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Really, Father and Holy Spirit, because Jesus is our brother. And so it is our process in life, our goal in life to reunify with the Father as our father, and like the prodigal son story, right? To come back into relationship with the father. Now both prodigals were out of alignment. The one that was home thought he was doing all this stuff, but he didn't have a relationship with the father. And I think you'll notice he was actually not in the house, he was not in relationship. He actually asked others, what's going on in there? Why didn't he go to the father? Why didn't he go into the house? Why wasn't he in the house already? Then the one that was a prodigal, he wasn't at all there, and he came back and he wasn't until the father communicated very strongly, like, hey, I'm putting the ring on your finger, I'm putting the robe, you're back in the family. I think he was still like, What? You know, how can this possibly be true? But only in that third place where we have the robe, we have the ring, we have the connection. Cat fatted calf had been sacrificed, can we be back in that relationship? And again, under his authority as Father, as our king, as our Lord, as the one we follow, you know, instead of following, like I said, Satan or these demons or that thing, or building this thing, we're following the media, we want everyone else to love us. Well, what about Father? Father is the perfect love that fills every Holy Spirit and Father fill every niche of emptiness inside of us because we need that. As much as we need life and breath, we need God and Holy Spirit's connection. We need to be part of that family. And until we do, we keep building and seeking, and we're that orphan seeking something. You know, we don't even know what we're seeking until we have that perfect father, and then we can stop seeking because we're we have it all. We're seated at the table with that robe, with that ring, and this table is set with the m the spiritual milk, the spiritual meat, the oil of joy, the the bread and the water and the wine, all the things set in front of us, and all we have to do is gather the rest to the table of the Father.

SPEAKER_00: 28:14

Yeah, it's a really great story. That was the preach that we had for Father's Day was actually the prodigal son. And it was interesting because I'd always focused on the one returning, and she was mentioning some of the same things where the son at home was lost as well. And so we always think of the other one being lost. Right. And some of the minor things, it's always just so interesting and so cool to me in the Bible and how things are written, where some of the smaller details are really impactful to me, and maybe it should be like the larger things, but she had mentioned one smaller detail, like the son that was at home doesn't even use the word father. And it's like that's interesting. The one that was lost, he's like, oh father, oh father, and he's trying to figure out like he knows his identity, knows where he fits, he knows his place. Even though he's gone astray, he has come back, but he knows that he's a son under his father. The one that's been there the whole time didn't even use the word father to, you know, indicate where he was in the family, and then, like you said, not even in the house. So some very interesting things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 29:14

He was out in the fields.

SPEAKER_00: 29:17

And all the inheritance was ultimately his, so it was kind of funny. He's like, oh, you took my stuff. Like, it's yours anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 29:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 29:24

Just gotta just gotta hang on. But you had mentioned something, you know, we kind of lose stuff over time. Was there a moment you felt like God was restoring something you didn't even realize you had lost?

SPEAKER_01: 29:36

Wow. I'm not sure. I think just more and more as I I guess well, I mean, when I didn't know Holy Spirit, um, for a very long time, I would I so I became a Christian in name only when I was 13. And at 23, I actually gave my life over to the Lord, as far as He was my Lord and my Savior, my God. But then for I don't know how long after, for more than a decade, I didn't know Holy Spirit. You know, I knew Jesus was my savior and I knew the goal was Father God, and yet I didn't know much about Holy Spirit, you know. And so as I learned that Holy Spirit was such a big factor, I feel like that's been a huge revelation and just a a real peace to know that we have Holy Spirit throughout the process. It goes back to what we were saying before. And uh I think. You know, I was in these cessationalist churches that didn't talk about Holy Spirit. And so I kind of had to find Holy Spirit on my own. It's funny because I had for seven years a friend would come and bring video teachings to my house and my husband. We would watch these teachings and he brought people that just started to share these things. And I was like, oh my gosh, those are the missing pieces. That is stuff. I didn't I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who the Holy Spirit was. You know, and I was watching uh people like Chris Blackaby and and some others that were uh really intentionally talking about our identity in Christ. And it's just been incredible to learn my identity in Christ and to understand that that's my identity doesn't matter anywhere else, except through Christ as the door and with the Father as his daughter. Nothing else I could build here on earth would matter. Uh nothing I could do. I can't I can't do anything to earn his love, to earn his approval, just in being his enough.

SPEAKER_00: 31:37

So you had said you'd gone a while and you hadn't found that Holy Spirit portion of it. Was there one of those videos, or was there a pinnacle moment or video where you're like, this is it, or you know, what was the aha?

SPEAKER_01: 31:50

Yeah, it really was. Chris Blackby did a talk in Sri Lanka, and I watched that video, and I was like, I just my jaw was at the floor, and I'm like, I can't write notes fast enough. I'm gonna and I watched that video several times, and I've shared that more than any other vision video ever. Still, I'm sharing it here because Chris, I was like, he gets it. He gets who we are, and we have always been children of a living God who loves us. It's just we're so um our understanding is so skewed by this world because of the enemy Satan, who has his goal is to distract us so that we don't come into relationship with the Father. That's his whole goal, is to keep our relationships severed and to keep God looking bad and keep us looking broken. And as long as he can do that, he writes. And as soon as we come out of the understanding, like wait, wait, wait a minute. It's kind of like Narnia right Narnia, he got it. When he wrote Narnia, he got it. Because it really is awakening us to the place of sonship, as as far as an heir, I'm a daughter, but I'm I'm really a son, sonship, so that we can step into our authority, step into our place here. We were always meant to reign here and to do that through our authority in him, through our power of the Holy Spirit, with humility and grace and love and mercy and all those things. Like if the people like that can go into any place of business, any place of government, any place of authority, and they actually have that love that they're carrying out for other people as a child of God, as a righteous child of God, with good heart and intention, I mean, that does change the world. It changes everything. But it isn't all of us that are awakened to know who and whose we are. You know, Leif Hetland's another one I've talked about, his uh book about the orphan spirit. We just walk around with as orphans, which is what Satan would love us to be. Orphans, you know, you don't even have a father, you're just a broken child on the side of the road. That's true. Even if I was homeless, I'd still be a child of God. Even if I was living in a garbage dump in India, they are children of God. They are sons of God. They are royalty, even though they live in a dump. They're royalty. And I think if we can look at each other with eyes, knowing that even in our brokenness, we are royal. It changes so much.

SPEAKER_00: 34:19

Yeah, that's good stuff. That's a powerful message. Your third pillar is freedom from the past, trauma, shame, and guilt. On the show, I try to highlight practical things. I think a lot of books and things kind of go through hypotheticals and things that sound nice, but I really like to ask like practical, actionable things. So, what practical or spiritual practices have helped you stay grounded in healing, not just have a breakthrough, but walk it out daily?

SPEAKER_01: 34:47

I'm going to share first. I have a book that I'm almost done with that is about to be published. It's called Free to Thrive. And it's uh I'm a trauma counselor by trade. And so the whole book is about how people who are survivors can get free from their past and walk forward. It's three parts, one's for the survivor, one's for a helper, like a pastor or counselor or somebody. And the third is a Bible study. So that's that's something very much on my heart. I think it just really goes back into practical is how, Lord, how do you see what happened to me? Because I may see it through the eyes of a three-year-old, because that happened when I was three. But how do you see that? So I take a lot of clients or I've taken a lot of clients through um Faustic Ministry, which basically for me was to meet with them and Holy Spirit and say, okay, Holy Spirit, what memory is broken in understanding? That is harming, hindering, you know, keeping them from joy. What memory is remembered unhealthy, unhelpfully? And so we go back to that memory and ask Holy Spirit to tell us what is true about that memory. Now, of course, bad things happen. So it's not saying, oh, well, that didn't happen. No, it happened. But what have we come away from that memory with that hinders our peace, joy, ability to connect with father, ability to connect with others. So in each individual person, there's a skewed understanding of themselves or God, the father, or the situation. And once that skewed understanding can be rectified and in alignment with what is really true, then there can be healing. So, like some people I've talked to, they say, Well, I was abused when I was five, and I know it was my fault, and then and I know that if I could have dressed differently, or if I could have not been there, if I had told somebody, if I had, if I had, if I had, if I had, and so all that trauma is on them. So they're carrying around the guilt of the trauma that someone else caused, for example. That's not always the case, but it very often is, you know, especially even on date rape and those kinds of things, the women are like, well, if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't gone there, said that, did horn this, you know, whatever. And so the guilt is on the wrong person. Okay. And so if they can rectify where guilt really should be, which is on the abuser, on the whoever did the thing, and then to understand their whatever guilt they might have, you know, let's say their virginity was taken or whatever, like they could say, Well, I'm guilty now in front of the father. Well, father doesn't think that way. Like that was something taken from you. So you know, or if you if you gave it away, let's say whatever guilt there is, it's all blood covered. We can put it all under the blood. And so therefore, we can be free of that. And then it's just, I shouldn't say just another step is to ask for forgiveness for that person, not just yourself. And that's really hard. You want to talk to people that that have had trauma, they didn't know forgiveness is super hard. But I I really tell them, I said, the whole reason to forgive is not to let them go. It's to let them go to the Father and let the Father deal with it. So you don't have to anymore. You don't have to carry that around in a bag to remind Father what they did. Or remind someone else what they did. You could say, you know what, Father, you deal with it. You're the best judge on the planet in the universe, and you're gonna judge them. I don't. And that frees us. And honestly, hell is a pretty big judgment. It's either the blood or hell. So they get judged with one or the other. Either they're covered in the blood, in which case that's all on God, and you we have to decide that that's gonna be okay, or they get the other. And we have to let God's judgment be enacted and not our own. But what we're holding on to judgment, like, no, I want to punish them. Well, okay, but it's really not gonna do anything. Our grudge, even if we murder them, so it doesn't make us feel any better. You know, it's still gonna be messy.

SPEAKER_00: 39:08

So as a counselor, I've talked to quite a few different people. And a thing that I've seen, I don't know if it's a trend, but it's enough where it generates a question, I guess. How do you help like uncover, because you said if you had the pinpoint at a certain age or things like that, but I've talked to quite a few people and they feel a certain way or they react in situations, you know, maybe in their at their house with their loved ones, or things like that. They have the the symptom or the reaction, I guess, but they don't know exactly what it was that was caused. And a lot of people, I had a good childhood, I was fine. But I think, you know, sometimes we think of the trauma as some large event, like a car accident or something really big, but it could be like smaller, right? Like, you know, someone telling you you weren't good enough or things like that. How do you uncover when you're not sure what it is?

SPEAKER_01: 39:58

Oh, the practice that I I was sharing, I just I'm closing actually this week. I used to work with people and bring them to do a history of really from beginning to to present. Okay, what are the things that have happened? Like if you just write an outline list of the things that happened throughout your life. And when you write those things, you know, go back to the number three or five, or whatever it highlights to you is like, nah, that's a big deal. And then say, well, why is it a big deal? What is it that I'm feeling connected to that thing? What are the words that I'm using to describe that thing? And is there some sort of I I usually look for, you know, resentment or abandonment or there could be hate, you know, there could be all kinds of things that connect with that experience. And I ask Holy Spirit to clarify what is the thing that's making that sting? What is the thing that that's really got teeth on it that's making that still a sticking point now? And it's kind of like that theophosy where I say, okay, Holy Spirit, help us to understand what you want to rewrite in our minds. You know, what is it we're thinking in a skewed way about that experience? Is did we take on a label that wasn't for our us to take on? Was it a lie? You know, or was there a really painful memory? And sometimes it could be like, well, everybody has that. Gary, you're right. Most people are unhealthy. Most people have pain. Most people have, you know, we're carrying around now this bag. So if you say, well, everybody has that, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay to carry it around anymore. Maybe you should get free of that. Maybe there's some understanding that the Lord wants to bring you through just to get rid of that. And it's a process, everyone's process is different. But if you can go through that, and I'd encourage everybody to do that, everybody to journal out their stuff, not because they need to like chew on it and stew on it, but because if Holy Spirit highlights something from that list, you can go back and say, okay, Holy Spirit, what do you want to do? What do you want to work on? How can I think about this differently? What do you want to say about it? What does your word say about it? What do Christians in the world that have walked with you? What do they say about such things? You know, going back to people who have written books on those subjects. And so, for example, I'm reading a book now, McDaniel's the last name, on mother hunger. And so, what is she uncovering? Now, she's not Christian and she goes into some things, but she understands the cause and effect of mother loss. And so I feel it's interesting to think about how the brain works and what is our reaction to events and pain or loss. And so it does change us. Pain and loss, even simple loss changes. I go back to when I said, you know, my parents divorced. So then my mom was working, my dad was working, and I was a stay-at-home latchkey kid for a long time. And being alone is really hard. Now, everybody was a latchkey kid, right? I mean, it was a normal thing. That doesn't mean it wasn't hard. That doesn't mean it didn't affect me. It did. I turned to food, I turned to television, I watched MTV and soap operas, and that's how I learned how to live life. Kind of broken. But is it normal? Yeah, maybe, but it doesn't mean it's good. You know, we can all be impacted anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 43:17

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, we talked about a whole lot of goodness through your three pillars today. I'd like to try to bring it all together. If someone's listening feels stuck in shame or distant from God, what would you say to help them out take one step closer to freedom today?

SPEAKER_01: 43:35

I think really trying to find out about how God loves you through scripture or through a book about God's love and trying to listen to Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit will bring Scripture to mind and will elaborate on Scripture and explain to you how that scripture, excuse me, relates to you, relates to your needs, relates to your understanding, relates to your concept of life and your concept of Father. And you know, that's it's really scripture plus spirit. So that spirit can tell you the truth.

SPEAKER_00: 44:16

I think that's perfect. And I think it's a good reminder throughout all the things that you've really said is the love of the father. Because I think, like you, I think touched on briefly, was like the fire and brimstone and killing, and you know, some people see, you know, certain aspects where they just pull certain things and they've heard certain stories, but it really is just the love always being there, always showing up, and the love of the father. So this was a powerful reminder of grace, healing, and belonging. Thank you for opening your heart. Before we wrap up, where can people connect with you and your message?

SPEAKER_01: 44:51

Right. So I'm Carrie Ann Barrett everywhere. So I'm Carrie Ann Barrett on YouTube, Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, all the places. I am Carrie Ann Barrett.

SPEAKER_00: 45:01

Perfect. Well, to everyone listening, if today's conversation spoke something deep inside of you, please share this with a friend, leave a review, and let us know what resonated the most. I love you all. See ya.