The process of recovery is never an immediate one. When we’re hurt, when we lose our job, when we go under for an operation – whatever it is, when it’s over, the process is not.
If we’ve lost our job, the process of finding another one is never immediate. It can take days, it can take months, sometimes it can even take years. The process requires we pick ourselves up, brush off the sense of rejection and inadequacy and bust our tails until we find work again. The recovery takes time.
The same is true of a patient undergoing surgery. Once they have been operated on, they leave the hospital, yes. But the process goes on. It can take days, but more often weeks until they’re back to their usual selves, with no restriction on what they can and can’t do. The surgeon discharges them from their care much earlier on, but the recovery – it takes time.
How much more is this true of us, when our hearts have been hurt and scars have been left behind. Indeed, our hearts do hurt. And just as with the loss of employment or the completion of an operation, if we don’t follow the “rules”, if we don’t take the necessary steps – our hearts may never heal. The recovery may never happen.
But unlike most other things in our lives, there is NOTHING that necessitates our hearts will ever recover.
With a job loss, if we don’t recover – we eventually find ourselves unable to pay the bills, and the bank’s collectors scream recovery until we listen.
With surgery, if we don’t seek the rest we require – our wounds will become infected, our incisions may open and our state of health will scream rest until we listen.
But when our hearts are hurt, it is too easy to ignore their protests. From their depths they are pleading to be healed – they are begging for affirmation, for love, for sincerity. But instead of heeding their call, instead of listening to the truths they cry, we bury them. We erect walls so that they cannot be heard. We answer their deep longings with men who will make us feel loved, with distractions that make us forget what we lack and with substances that numb the pain – if just for an hour.
But occasionally, the hurt is too great for us to ignore it any longer. Occasionally it cries out with an undeniable cry – and we have a chance to respond. We become conscious of the pain that exists. And then we’re faced with this heart-wrenching choice. YES, it should be easy to say yes to healing. But it’s not.
It’s easy to say yes today, but tomorrow, when it gets hard and loneliness sets in, it’s no longer easy. That’s when the healing begins to take time. It means we will go through times of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are deeply and passionately loved, to times where we just feel worthless. Those are the times we cry out to the only One who can heal us, to wrap His arms around us, to give us the peace He has promised, and to once again reassure us that we are precious. That we are beautiful. And that no conversation, no phone call and no friendship can change that.
Truth is just truth.
