Intense Healing

I have debated for a while now whether or not I should write this post. It feels so incredibly vulnerable to share what I'm going to share today. Sometimes you just know deep down that it is time for something, and that's what I'm feeling about this post. If this particular post can help, encourage, or let someone know they're not alone, than it is worth it!

God has a beautiful way of tenderly taking us through seasons. He knows how we are going to respond to each season we navigate before we are even walking through it. He knows what we can handle, He knows what's too much. For a while now I have felt like I am in a season of intense healing. If you cracked my journal open like I did last night you would quickly discover that the past year of my life has held some pretty intense struggles and dark days. I don't share this to gain anyone's pity or words of sympathy. I simply share it because it's the truth, it's real, it's raw, it's genuine.

I'm all for real and I'm all for genuine. But when it comes to my struggles I tend to keep those pretty close to my chest. There are a select few who get to hear about the journey, the struggle, the sorrow, the victories, the triumph. But it's not something I care to share with many. I tend to have a, "If you put your back into it you can muscle your way through anything," philosophy about life. Although this has gotten me places at times, it has also not gotten me places, or taken me places I didn't want to go.

Y'all, God's been doing something in the past year. As I look through the pages of my journal a common thread emerges. I've been broken down to be built back up. I've been wounded to be healed. I've endured hardship and faced failure to comfort others and offer genuine love. If I could go back and pick the past year of my life I wouldn't pick for it to look and feel like what the pages of my journal disclose. I don't know of anyone who if they were told their year was gonna hold heartbreak, broken dreams, loss of direction, and failure would say, "Sign me up for that." I surly would not have and I didn't, but I got it anyways. Here's what's pretty special though. You cannot know the greatness of the healing you've experienced if you don't feel the deep pain of the wound that's been inflicted. That thing I said about being strong enough and muscling through earlier, yeah, it's bull crap! You can't be strong enough, you can't conjure up hope in your own strength, you can't muscle through again and again when you get knocked down for the 100th time. That thing I said God's been doing in me in the last year, yeah, He's been teaching me how to stay. Stay through the ugly, stay through the broken, stay through the tears, stay through the disappointments, stay through the intense healing process.

I think when we think of healing our immediate response is a positive one. We immediately run to a place in our minds where the healing has already transpired and sunshine and roses abound. That isn't how it works. Have you ever had an injury or a wound that didn't hurt while it was healing?! I've had a plethora of injuries in my life and not a one of them have felt great while they were healing. They ALWAYS hurt in the process, it isn't until the healing is complete that the pain resolves. You can't expect healing in the absence of pain. Healing and pain coexist together. Pain means that healing is occurring. It means those broken bones are fusing back together beneath the cast. It means the old skin is sloughing off and being replaced with new on that deep cut. When it comes to us healing emotionally and spiritually the pain indicates that we are digging deep, that we are not settling for a complacent life, that we are pushing into Jesus and letting Him use every bit of the process as we stay!

When pottery is being created it goes through a definitively ugly stage where you literally cannot even tell what it's going to be when it's completed. If the vessel being tenderly fashioned and created decided to jump off the wheel at the ugly stage because it didn't like how things were looking it would never reach completion. Jesus is asking us to stay. He knows exactly what He's doing! The imperfections He's working out as we spin on that wheel can be dealt with in no other way. Does it hurt? Yes, it hurts like crazy some days. Does it look perfectly curated and beautiful in the process? No, it doesn't. That's the part that you have to accept. That's the part you have to embrace. Sometimes you have to stay in the tension. Sometimes you have to keep living life in the ugly and know that it's okay.

I didn't like it for a while. I fought it. I tried to fix my life up to look the way I wanted. I tried to muscle through and be strong, it left me beat down and broken. The irony of it is that when I quit trying to be strong and accepted the weak place I found myself in, when I began to lean deep into Jesus, that's when strength started to rise within me. That's when hope found it's voice again. That's when this journey of intense healing began to feel like it is actually taking me somewhere better. Somewhere that I need to be.

 If you find yourself in a place of weakness beyond what you imagined possible, it's okay!! If you feel the intense pain of the healing your body is fighting for don't push back against it, lean into it, embrace it, stay for the process!! I'm not gonna promise you that it will be fun, I'm gonna promise you that it's worth it. I know, because this is me. This is it. This is what my life looks like right now. My heart has shifted and softened in ways I didn't imagine was possible. I have hope in sorrow and disappointment that I didn't know could exist! I feel strong and sure in weakness in a way that has restructured my entire outlook on life. Most importantly in this intense healing I have witnessed and am experiencing the great healer, Jesus, in a way I never have before. That right there my friends makes it all worth it! So just stay. Stay on the wheel. Because what it is that Jesus is creating? That we can't imagine, or guess, or request in our wildest dreams!

God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:20 The Message 

Then Hannah prayed: "My heart rejoices in the LORD! The LORD has made me strong. Now I have an answer for my enemies; I rejoice because you rescued me. 1 Samuel 2:1 NLT (Emphasis added)