A few days ago, I ended a very important post by declaring, “Let the healing begin,” and promptly got sicker than I’ve been in a long time. Meds, inhalers, antibiotics, chest X-rays, o2 monitoring, and a fever that’s gone up, not down. Definite bronchitis, possible pneumonia. With already damaged lungs, it’s a less than ideal turn of events.
𝐁𝐔𝐓, here’s the exciting part: Healing is occurring, nonetheless. Not physical healing at the moment, no, but God is healing my heart. He is patching me back together piece by piece. As He triages the trauma resulting from all that followed Jimmy’s loss, He is gracing me with blessed moments of freedom and release.
It’s not a durable healing yet, but that’s okay. 𝐈𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. I read, recently, this statement, “If the pain was deep, you will have to let it go many times.” Healing is a marathon, not a sprint, especially when your pain is neither acknowledged nor remedied.
If your healing, like mine, has come in fits and starts, breakthroughs and setbacks, progress and regression…if you, like me, have crawled and limped and walked the long, hard, road of healing and forgiveness, know this: Failure doesn’t get the last word.
It is merely an avenue through which growth and glory manifest. On the other side is mending and purpose you cannot 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧 to imagine now in the detritus of your shattered hearts and dreams.
As you survey a landscape filled with remnants, shards, and fragments, just know, it won’t always be this way. Your Mender is working, even if your healing now seems negligible. 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞. He persists in His work of healing and transformation, and He won’t stop until He sees you remade.
There is life on the other side of pain, and there is victory on the other side of injustice. The pain may remain, but that doesn’t mean you are destined for a life of captivity to it. You were never meant to live bound. “It is for freedom that you have been set free.”
No matter what befalls you on this path from cradle to grave, offer it to the One whose glory trumps all. Submit to all His healing requires, and thank Him for the privilege of bearing with honor what could have destroyed you, but only made you stronger.
Resolve, now, to keep your gaze trained in the direction of the 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐎𝐧𝐞 with the power to mend and make you whole. He will use the 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 you now resist as the basis for the beauty to come, furnishing for you a new commission and calling through the rending He allows and the mending He performs. He 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 to make us new, and what He decrees, He has the power to deliver.
So, with the renewed hope that accompanies a new year, may we surrender, once again, both to the process, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 to the One Who offers breakthroughs to the broken. It won’t happen all at once, but it 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 happen. Healing may not be immediate, but it 𝐢𝐬 inevitable in Christ. Take heart, dear ones.
*Let’s heal together. Don’t struggle alone. My DM’s are open. So’s my email. It is my honor to be on this journey with you.