Healing is pain first.
If the wound is fresh, soap and water. If it is old, you must seek it and reopen it. It doesn’t feel like healing. It’s like pine prickles wedged into your skin with tear crinkles in your eyes.
Maybe I don’t really want healing. I’d rather limp, achey step after achey step.
There are moments when you know that you’re only standing because of crutches, but then there are years, where you didn’t even know that you had a wound—it was such a normal part of life. You stopped noticing the limp.
And maybe, you said no to healing.
A soul-wound or heart-sore so deep that ignoring it eased the already chaotic life mess that defines human existence.
The physical body heals faster than the unseen life-scrapes, unless we chafe at the healing lump of scab, never permitting total recovery because the skin-binding itches; our flesh will heal. When the bandage is lifted and air rushes in, allowing an ugly scab to raise above the skin surface, healing begins. Don’t scratch. Tight, dry skin surrounding itchy scab.
Sometimes you need help to heal correctly. Someone to set the bone or weave your skin back together. Not all healing can happen alone, but it starts with you—desiring to be whole again.
It hurts—healing.
Face to face with the core of your hurt. Choosing graciousness towards your weakness and self-gentleness with your core-wound.
Is pain ever good? Maybe pain is the birthing of healing. It wails your need for a return to wholeness, instigating awareness and proclaiming that something is, in fact, not quite right with you. Pain sirens attention to your wound.
Tears bind soul-gashes with slivered hope and kneaded forgiveness, worked over with strong even if quivery hands.
Skin-scouring tears, leaving trails that you fear will callous on silk cheeks. Caress-soft tears that hint at soul agony and heart brokenness. Tears, not even reaching the eyes, but gushing strong in the caverns of your heart.
When will the pain be so much that it stirs the desire to no longer ache through life’s journey? What will it take to open to healing?
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