healing is like a hurricane
June 30, 2010 | Feelings: Intentional freedom
“Healing is like a butterly”, one woman said. “It’s such a beautiful process.”
I watched the woman beside her raise an eyebrow. She leaned forward, as if she was hesitant to speak.
“Not for me,” she said. ”For me it was like a hurricane. I had torn people’s lives to shreds. My family. My children. My own life. Healing for me was like cleanup after Katrina.”
Thank goodness for her honesty. I think sometimes we get so far away from our dysfunction that we forget how laborious it was, how hard, how many times we wanted to give up.
Like giving birth. If someone asked you during the transition process, just right before the baby emerges, if you were ready to do this all over again, there is very little chance you’d say, “Oh yeah, you betcha. This is such a beautiful process. Count me in!”
No. Chances are you’d toss them out of the room. But later, when you held the child in your arms, then you’d see the beauty of what just took place.
Healing is messy. It’s hard. It’s going against your feelings. Debbie Alsford in The Faith Dare says, “we pay so little attention to the habits of our heart.”
Such a simple sentence, but seeped in truth. When you are hurting, or when you feel like a failure, or when you are angry, or you’ve discovered how to push the past so far down no one will ever see it again (but it remains unresolved), you might accept resentment or bitterness or rage or despair as normal.
When you act out, hurt others, push people away, you might come to believe (as others do) that you are unfixeable. Untouchable.
My friend Glynnis Whitwer said, “Jesus touched people. He touched women who were scorned. He touched lepers. He touched children who danced around His feet. I picture His hands always reaching out to someone.”
Even in the messes.
I think the women who described her healing as a hurricane was also sharing a profound truth. God meets us where we are, and that is merciful, because we do need clean up. We need to clean up the harm we’ve inflicted on others. Maybe that’s an apology, one laced with action rather than just words. Maybe it’s knowing that it will take time for people to trust you again.
Maybe it’s learning to trust.
But it’s certainly allowing Christ in to help us clearly see the habits of our heart and to address them with his help.
Yes, devastation once reigned, but afterwards?
That’s the butterfly part. The metamorphasis. The new birth.
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Amen… Amen… Amen!!! Thank YOU Father God for Your healing. In Jesus’ name, amen.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:39 amHalf an hour later I was holding my daughter. I told my husband I wanted to do it again the next day, to have a hundred more.
My faith walk has certainly been the same way. I’m a stubborn cuss and liable to walk out mid-process rather than endure the pain. And I’m grateful for a husband and good friends who’ll yell at me and not let me walk away from the beauty of a painful healing.
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:10 pm