Healing Takes Time
A few weeks ago I mentioned my fall between flights. That fall resulted in a grade 2 sprain, which my doctor let me know would likely take about 6 weeks to heal. I was given a brace and instructions for stretches to strengthen it. Part of the instructions involves me, after a few weeks, not relying on the brace so that my ankle can begin to regain strength on its own.
This past weekend I went to Target without the brace for the first time. Halfway through my shopping trip I could feel my ankle swelling and noticed the pain in my foot increasing. This seemed normal based on the damage to my ankle, but it also felt frustrating.
This experience reminded me that healing takes time. I don’t know about you, but I want healing to be immediate. I don’t like when it takes time. I don’t like when it hurts.
Of course, there are times when God intervenes and does heal us immediately, but I have found that those moments are rare. It seems more often that healing comes as we journey with God through whatever hurt we have endured.
Physical pain and emotional pain are two different kinds of hurt.
When we are hurt physically we can usually see the wound, and our body feels the deep pain from that injury. I know that my ankle hasn’t finished healing because I can still see the swelling and feel the pain in my foot when I’ve been on it for too long. But I also know it is healing because it is no longer purple everywhere.
It can be harder to pinpoint the healing with emotional pain. When we are wounded by words or actions we might know at the moment that those things hurt us, but we might not realize they are still hurting us months or years later. We can think we have moved on only to discover that those wounds went much deeper than we ever realized.
Thankfully we can invite the Holy Spirit into all of these broken spaces. God in his graciousness meets us in those places and reveals to us how those wounds have been keeping us stuck. As we process this information we are invited into another layer of healing.
It reminds me of Eustace in C.S. Lewis’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Through a series of events in the story, Eustace becomes a dragon. And when he begins to wonder how he will become a boy again, the lion, Aslan, meets him and tells him he’ll need to take off his dragon skin. Eustace claws at his skin until it comes off only to discover there is another layer, and another under that. He discovers that he needs Aslan to help him remove the skin because, in his own strength, he can’t get to the root of the problem.
We are the same. We need Jesus to get to the root of our wounds. We need Jesus to help us see what needs to be released, what needs our attention, and what changes should come from the experiences we have had. We need Jesus to help us excavate those hidden things so we can experience restoration and healing.
The healing that happens might look very different than we expect. It might take longer than we expect. It might be more painful than we expect. But, if we are willing to walk with Jesus through the process we will be transformed.
~ Melissa