Healing

Shared by Lindsey Cox

Healing (noun): the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.

I recently came across a phrase that hit me – almost like I was a bug on the highway who just encountered your windshield.

It hit me hard, and it yelled to my heart.

“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”

This phrase reminds me just how much healing I still need within myself. Everyday. And I’ve come to accept that it’s okay, BUT it must be healed in order to live the life God has planned for me.

I can think back to that day I came home to my three small children after spending 16 hours caring for hundreds of female inmates in a maximum security prison, and responding to those little begging voices that, “mommy can’t tonight, she’s spent.” In those 16 looooong hours my energy, my body, and even my pride at times, had been hurt. It was no fault of those babies needing their mommy. It was the fault of their mommy not leaving the expense of the hurt at the gate as I left.

Or maybe it’s reflecting back to that night that I watched my alcoholic father walk out on his wife and children. I lived for years in hope that “he’ll come around” – and then followed many more years of “I have no doubt that he’s not coming. Not calling. Not caring.”

Talk about hurt. It’s hurt that still to this day I am learning to heal.

It’s so easy to try to forget those hurts and keep living, isn’t it? Or maybe that’s what we try to convince ourselves. But that’s not healthy. That’s not how God intended for us to live.

This is what you need to hear: It is okay to hurt. It truly is. BUT, it is necessary to heal that hurt.

Ephesians 4:31-32 says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God who forgave you.”

Read that again. Read that over and over, day after day.

“Forgiving each other, just as in Christ God who forgave you.”

Forgiveness. Forgiveness is the ultimate step in healing. I needed the forgiveness of my small children on that exhausted and weary evening. I never intended for them to experience hurt from my lack of healing. Just as my father deserves the forgiveness of my heart. And ultimately, I owe it to myself. I owe myself a life worth living and those around me the experience of getting to know the person I was fearfully and wonderfully created to be by my heavenly Father.

Now don’t get me wrong, I never said this would be easy.

It will be one of the hardest things you do in life. Over and over and over again. The pain of those hurts over the years, one piled onto the next, are determined to have a negative effect on you and those around you. Those hurts are determined to destroy the life God has planned out for you (and I promise, it’s beautiful). Determined to inflict hurt on those you never intended. Determined to rob you of so much emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

What hurts are you carrying? What hurts seem too big to let go of?