What Does Healing Look Like Part 2

"LORD, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress." Isaiah 33:2

For most people, healing from hurt is a process. It takes time.

I believe we have this place deep inside of us. The place where we put things that are to painful to process, things too difficult to bear. They stay there until God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy puts us in a place that it is safe to bring them out. When it's time to bring the pain out into the light, we often fight it. In part because our bodies held it there to protect us from overwhelm. In part because in looking at our pain we have to process the emotions tied to that pain.

When it was time for me to start processing the deep traumas, I sat on our porch for months, almost every day. I sat there with my notebook and my Bible. The things I wrote were dark and desperate. I had buried so much. I had to, it was the only way I could survive my toxic childhood.

As I began unpacking these things, I knew I needed help. Physically my body was suffering. Mentally my brain was wired like my finger was plugged into an electrical socket. Emotionally, I couldn't figure out which end was up. I was experiencing violent nightmares. I couldn't sleep. I was filled with fear. Fear that those who hurt me could hurt me again or hurt our children.

It was during this time I learned what it looked like to seek the Lord for the strength to get through each day. I had done that to a certain extent before, but not like what I needed then. My body had buried emotions so deep that my mind had no clue they were there. It literally felt like I was falling apart and I wasn't sure I would survive it.

It was also during this time that I found a good psychologist to help me process things. He was able to for the first time in my life, set me free from the constraints that so many well-meaning people had put on me. Well-meaning people who wanted to live out the words of the Bible. People who had no idea the complexity of what I had endured. I am thankful for them because they helped get me to where I was, but the advice they gave me fell short of my need.

Sometimes healing looks like professional help. For all those who think that God is enough and no one should need more.....let me say this.....please don't say that out loud. You have no idea how much damage you may be doing to people who have deep-seated pain that they need help processing. My body and my brain had been stuck in flight or fight most all my life. Children don't know how to process parents who don't protect them. Children don't know how to process family members who hurt them. Children don't know how to protect themselves from adults with bad intentions. And when those children become adults they need help learning coping skills. They need safe spaces that don't hold judgment and a long list of things they should do to forgive. They need space to process hurt and pain and emotions that don't make sense.

When I sought God for strength, God sent me to get help...the help I needed. So please, if you never read another word that I write, hear this. God is the one who gave my psychologist wisdom to tell me what I needed to hear, He was a psychologist, yes, not a pastor. However, that psychologist shared the Word of God with me with insights that no pastor ever had. He helped me see that God had given me tools in His Word and strength to stand even when people judged me for my choices. He helped me see that people are imperfect and sometimes offer bad counsel, which I know I have done before too. He taught me that honor and love mean boundaries, not a free pass for people to keep hurting me.

I pray today that if you are reading this and you are where I have been that these words will encourage you to seek help. I pray that God himself will use my words to speak hope to you. I pray that you will find the help that you need to heal from the things that hurt you. I pray that God himself will speak over you tonight as you sleep and fill you with a hunger to heal. Don't ever let things people say keep you from seeking the Lord's strength to do the hard work needed to be whole.