God's Healing

Thursday, 30 May 2002

I want to be healed. I crave it! I pray for it! I earnestly seek it every day. I don't want to feel this pain. I want my heart to stop bleeding. I want my energy to be restored. I want, I want, I want, to the point of working so hard at it that "it" exhausts me. What am I doing? Sometimes, I wonder.

I felt God asking me to write tonight but I didn't know what it would be about. I felt God telling me it would be something I would rather stay silent about. That I would be vulnerable, and it would be difficult. Would I be willing to share...? Here I am...and already I feel vulnerable. And yet, if I don't share, then what's it all for anyway? I am not the first person, nor will I be the last to feel any of these feelings. Probably some of you have already felt this way in your life, and you'll breathe a sigh of relief to know that you are not alone. Perhaps...

I want to work at this, this grief process. I want to work HARD at it. I want to get it "right". I want to turn over every dark and dirty rock and see what it says on the underneath side. I don't want anything to be hidden that might be kicked over later and revealed, causing pain five or ten or twenty years from now that wasn't dealt with when it should have been. I want to "go there" if I need to and deal with it, and yet at the same time, there's so many places I don't want to go physically because it hurts too much because of the memories. What a strange mixture of emotions. I guess I want to go to all the places in my mind emotionally that need tending to, but I don't want to go to the mall, for instance, because that hurts too much. But I did, I went to the mall today and guess what? It didn't hurt that bad. Sure, I thought of Phil, but it was easier today. Jim and I were there having lunch and then we walked around a bit. I was telling him as we were having lunch that I want to go, go, go, to so many places, but then I don't want to go because I know it will hurt. Like when you tell your doctor that it hurts when you do this...and he says, well then don't do that! :) Well, it hurts when I go to the mall, so I won't do that. Wrong!! I can't stay in my comfortable "cage" and avoid the pain. I have to eventually go out and face it. Even if it hurts.

But, you know what I am finding is the most important thing of all? The most important thing of all is to submit to God. To let the Healer heal me in His own way and in His own timing. I just read in my latest Bible study that it is more important to "know the Healer, than to be healed". Isn't that true? If my heart is never completely healed, but I know the Healer/God, I will be fine. All my work, all my ambition, will get me nowhere except exhausted, and I have plenty of that already!! But to know God better is never a waste of time!

I am a "just do it" person! The more I talk with my mom on their travels (my parents travel full time), the more I see where I got part of that from. The other day I was talking with my mom and she is telling me that they are planning on buying a raft! An inflatable raft so when they get to Lake Louise in Canada, they will be able to go out onto the lake, and other lakes they come across in the future. My mom can't even swim!! I told her she better have a life preserver because if the raft should tip over, she will drown!! We laugh, but it is the truth! Now, my parents are edging up there towards 70, but they are adventurous. They decide on something, they make plans, and they follow through with it! It's a great quality, I believe! Even if they seem a little crazy at times, they know how to live life to the fullest! Everywhere they go, they go to have a good time, and they come away having had a good time!

So here I am, trying to "just do it" through grief and it just isn't the way it's done. I wish it was! If determination was the way "through", I would be halfway there by now. Instead, there are days when it seems to have only just begun. Even though Phil has been gone 6½ months, it seems like yesterday at times. Determination is not what will get me through this. Perseverance will, but not the kind that I am accustomed to. The perseverance I need is to keep asking God for help... again and again and again.

I thought about it this way. If my heart was bleeding all over the place and I was being taken into the operating room for the Physician to fix my wound, what would I be doing? I would not be telling him how to do it, I would not be assisting him in the operation, I would not even be awake. I would be lying back on the gurney, sleeping I would hope! I would have no part in how he was going to fix it, I wouldn't even know how that would be possible having never gone to medical school. I would simply have to trust him, shut my eyes, lie back and let him repair the wound.

That seems simple enough when I look at it that way, so why does it not seem so simple when it is an emotional wound that only God can repair? Why am I not always willing to let Him fix me up, to trust Him for what I am needing, to lie back and rest in His arms until He stops the bleeding? It seems simple enough, but my "just do it" attitude keeps me from fully doing that until about now...until about 6½ months into grief when the wound is still bleeding profusely, and there is nothing I can do to stop it on my own. Until I go out for walk after walk after walk and tell God how broken I am one day, and then the next day I go out again and tell Him that today I am really broken...as compared to what? Yesterday? It's craziness! And the only way out of the craziness is to submit to His tender care. Oh, I think I have, until I submit the next time and the next time. Until God keeps calling me back to him once again.

Isaiah 30:18
But the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion. For the Lord is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for him to help them.
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And so why is it so hard to wait for Him to help me? Because in the back of my mind, I still think I can do it myself!! Somehow, I will find the energy, the reserves, the determination to heal myself.

I don't think so...not anymore. I believe God is showing me that I can only go so far on my own. Oh sure, I could look healed and act healed and go on with my life, but I want more than that. I want His healing. I don't want to be left empty and hurting and missing all the days of my life. I want to be left with His peace and His joy and His love imbedded so deep in my life that God will get the glory for what He has done. Not me, not on my own strength for a half-done job that is just a messy patch over my wound. Maybe one that the world is used to seeing and it seems fine...oh look at Diane, isn't she doing great? No! I want God's healing so that when I am alone at night and the enemy comes to torture me with thoughts that can destroy me, I will not be destroyed by them. I will have the victory that comes from knowing Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection. What victory is that, you might ask? The victory that comes with the hope we are promised. I am stubborn, but God already knew that about me! Maybe that is why He chose me for this assignment. I do want to get this right, but not my right, God's right!

Isaiah 30:19
O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. He will be gracious if you ask for help. He will respond instantly to the sound of your cries.
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I don't want to muffle my own cries. I want God to dry my tears!

Isaiah 30:20-21
Though the Lord gave you adversity for food and affliction for drink, he will still be with you to teach you. You will see your teacher with your own eyes, and you will hear a voice say, "This is the way; turn around and walk here."
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I don't want to find my own way through this. How crazy would that be when God has already provided the way and tells us "This is the way; turn around and walk here."

When I go for my walks and talk with God, I look up at the hills and think of the verse,

"Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my convent of peace be removed,"
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10

and I know that no matter what I am feeling, God's love will always be. Always! His peace will always be. Always! And He is the great Physician who can heal any pain, no matter how deep, no matter how dark, no matter what!

I expect to be completely healed from this wound. Some may say I am crazy, that you can never recover fully from the loss of a child. I am not talking about forgetting Phil, or acting like he never existed. Quite the opposite! I will always remember Phil and share with others what has happened, but I know the Great Healer, and I know He can do miracles! I know that if I stay out of His way and let Him do His work, He will fix me up better than new! Yes, better than new, because I will not be the same, but changed for the better! More willing, more able to do what I was put on this earth to do, and if that is simply to love God will all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind and with all my strength, then that will be fine. Just fine! If that is all that I will be capable of when all this is said and done, then I will have accomplished what He asked in:

Matthew 22:36-40
"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?"
Jesus replied, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."
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I don't have to conquer the world, I just have to love God with everything I have. I will start there, and let Him do the rest. He is willing.

Isaiah 30:15
The Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says, "Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength."
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That is where my strength is found. On those quiet walks with God, looking up at the hills He created and asking Him to help me. I can't do it on my own, in my strength, if I am to be completely healed. It is more than this "just do it" person can accomplish. It is a large task, and I am not able, but with God I am because He is able!

It is good to know that this will not go on forever, although at times it seems to be forever already. It helps me more than you know to pour my heart out, my struggles out, and yes to even be vulnerable to all of you with what I am going through. It is one of the ways that God heals this wound. It is an amazing thing that I don't even fully understand, but I am grateful for it.

Thank you to those of you who take the time to read these e-mails, and even to those of you who don't read them but also don't send me e-mails back to say "cancel any further correspondence, you have gone off the deep end". I know I have gone off the deep end, but with God's help I won't drown!

God was right, this is a difficult one to share tonight. I'd rather hit "delete" and go to bed, but I won't. I will pray, and then hit "send" because He asks me to, hoping this makes some sense to you.

All this, simply to say I need to submit to the Healer...
You can't say I'm short on words, just patience! :)

Good night!
Diane