healing is often a painful process

Seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? I mean, if you're healing, you're getting better, right? But in matters of body and in soul, often the process of healing a gaping hole in your heart is more painful than simply living with a gaping hole in your heart.

We can bury these wounded areas under years of justification and attempts at making it right on our own. We can numb them with quick fixes. But it never lasts. And before long, we start to see the world through the lens of our woundedness. We grapple to control the frustration, the internal conflict, to stuff the emotions and control the wave of hurt.

I say "we", but what I guess I mean is "I".

I long to be authentic and vulnerable. That is why I share this struggle. In hope that you who know me will better know how to pray for me. In hope that you who don't know me, will see the complete picture of what God is doing in me - the ugly and the pretty.

So today I've been undergoing the painful process of healing. Day after day God has been using circumstances to bring to the surface major heartaches that I have not dealt with properly. I think he is doing this because he sees the damage I am doing trying to fill the void on my own. That and he's like the master restorer and can't imagine his kids walking around all dysfunctional and broken when he knows the remedy. And he sees the life that is possible when we are whole.

So, while flipping through a notebook searching for a page to write out my prayers today, I read this poem Aron wrote almost 4 years ago. I think God gave it to him for me, today. You see, I've been battling feelings of abandonment, feelings like, no one really cares. Feelings of being excluded or left out. Feeling forgotten. Not always, just when the moment strikes, and my heart begins to bleed. And those feelings, left to settle in and take root, grow bitterness and resentment. So I needed what Aron had to say:

Don't let the past turn you heart to steel
And steal the last hope of joy you could feel.
The cold of another's shoulder
Jades your heart with ice.
Forgiveness in the hand of beholder
Resolves to act on love's advice.

Who are you? What are we?
Where to find identity.
In the hand of a man or the hand of a god or
in the hand of the God of Man of God

A poisoned heart; a poison within
A house divided cannot defend.
Hope is lost on the wake of the wind
A million to one - foes to the friend.
Only a choice can make it relent.
Choose to love - till it makes you sick.
Heap those coals on stranger or kin
Watch it cover a multitude of sin.

ejk