Healing Hands

Healing takes time. It doesn't happen all at once.

If I've learned anything in my time at Union Mission and over the past several months, it is this. And as much as we want heealing to take place overnight, it doesn't. It comes slowly and you have to be in a place where you can take it as it comes. You can't force it or be there in the way that you want all at once. Healing takes place according to its own time table and in its own way.

I think that healing takes place in two ways. First, inside of yourself, meaning that you have to want it as it happens. Not when it happens, but as it happens. Healing takes baby steps. But if you don't want it, then nothing happens. So you pray and wish and hope for movement. And slowly, painfully slowly, it begins.

Second, other people become part of the healing process. You can never be quite sure who they will be and are usually surprised as hell when you find out. You would have never guessed it would have been ... that person! Healing usually involves a set of healing hands.

Then, there are those who show up wanting to help or console and as they talk to you you pray that the floor would open up and they would just go away. Overly emphatheic people hender healing.

And you always think that you are further along than you really are. Even when you find yourself in a beautful and perfect set of circumstances, you can suddenly be reminded that you are not yet healed all of the way. These are discouraging and frustrating times. A lot of people walk away from the healing process when such things occur. Those who heal, keep at it anyway in spite of the short comings and the disappointments.

So this sounds like a sermon. No funny stories or broken angels to describe. Just the things that are in my heart from what I learned yesterday.