If you want this to make sense you might have to read the past two days posts first.
I'm talking about healing pain vs. pain.
The inevitably of pain and choosing to open up the pain that brings healing and life verses the pain of living while dying inside.
My mother-in-law wanted to wait for surgery because she didn't feel good. And had she waited, her systemic consequences would have increased her pain and the decay process.
Her surgery anchored the broken parts. It gave the broken parts a purpose and direction. There was security in the wrapping of her wounds, and safety in the security. There is no future need to break a half-hearted healing attempt causing extra trauma because the parts were in the proper place when the healing began. With the security she now had greater freedom. When three areas of her body were broken she could lay flat. But, when those breaks were stabilized she was able to sit with help, stand with help, and walk with help. One by one the tubes and ties to the machines that provided food and circulation and waste removal were removed giving her more freedom.
Amazingly, this is what happens to me when I really look close at my spiritual and emotional conditions and attitudes. When I hang on to a sin like unforgiveness, or choose to be easily offended, there's pain, but I'm also stuck, bed-ridden, drinking and spewing what is being fed to me. It's not until I choose to let God reveal the ugliness inside of my broken self and let it go to Him where it belongs, do I find direction and healing.
I can not carry around attitudes and sorrows that are not mine to demand revenge or payment for. Because there will be no satisfaction in the failure of that person to provide what I'm seeking. I love the Psalm that David penned about his guilt. The aching, the physical damage that was being done in his body due to his unconfessed guilt, and the freedom and healing that came once he confessed.
The times that I've been at the end of myself and I've poured out my ugliness to God, or my confusion, or my pain….it's ugly. Not going to lie. There are boiling tears, words that shouldn't even be in my vocabulary spewing out of me along with snot and goo. And when I'm done, I'm spent. I lay there, exhausted and with squinty, swollen eyes, and I thank Him for forgiving me or taking my burden. And I fall into a dreamless, peaceful sleep. The next morning, the world is different somehow, or maybe it's me. And I'm aware of processes becoming normalized, a knitting together of broken bits, and I know, that there is healing in the house.
