2022 will forever exist in my memory as the year I became convinced of God’s personal and intimate love for me. One of the primary ways I experienced the generosity and attentiveness of God’s love was through a channel of grace I did not ask for or expect to receive: healing. This long-overdue writing begins a series of posts in which I hope to share this story and the fruit that it has born in my life.
It began with my eyes being opened to a difficult but important truth that I had not acknowledged about myself; I had yet to cross over the bridge that would bring me from a shore upon which I understood the reality of God’s love primarily intellectually to a land in which I could know the profound nature of his love experientially. Hesitantly, I had occasionally stepped onto this bridge or felt led to walk a few paces across only to be drawn back by doubt, fear, resentment, pain, or some other trigger which convinced me I could not (and should not) attempt to cross to the other side. I had gazed longingly at the beauty that I sensed existed in that other land, had caught glimpses of light, wafts of a breeze that felt so much more life-giving than the stale air I was breathing. But these glimpses felt as rare and unpredictable as a white Christmas on the West Coast, so I refused to hope for them and cynically predicted the obvious: they wouldn’t last any longer than the snow that occasionally graced the streets of my hometown.
I watched other people move across that bridge, some returning to the barren shores of a one-dimensional knowing to try and explain the transformation that had occurred when they had experienced God’s love in technicolour. I celebrated their newfound freedom and peace, but found it difficult to relate and became convinced there was no reason to expect that a similar journey of my own to transpire. Something had me bound to the side of the bridge where God’s love was a primarily abstract concept, one that I firmly believed in because of the witness of others but did not anticipate experiencing in a lasting way myself. There was a key needed to unlock the invisible chains that seemed to hold me back from crossing to the other side, and I had no idea what that key was or where to find it. But God did. And this year, he showed it to me.
Before this year, my understanding of healing in the context of my faith was probably very similar to that of many other Catholics. Healing, I believed, was a peripheral, non-essential, and unusual experience. It was something that one might desire and hope for with the shallow hope one might place in landing a dream job straight out of school or finding affordable housing that meets all the right criteria for a perfect home. It was certainly not something to be eagerly expected or waiting upon with any level of confidence. Most significantly, my heart was convinced that while healing might be a gift that God decided to bestow upon certain chosen souls, it was most definitely not meant to be gifted to me. If (or rather, when) I was afflicted with pain and sorrow, I was certain that long-term suffering was to be my lot. God was simply testing me, I thought, and to pass the test all I needed to do was work hard to ensure that I was prepared to endure the pain well. (Given the weak nature of the human will, the obvious result was that I failed this test repeatedly, which led to a lot of shame and self-criticism. That’s a story for another day, but also part of my healing journey).
This might all sound overly dramatic, but is it not true that many of us move through life this way? Not only do we accept our suffering and pain with heavy resignation, but we also anticipate it. We even welcome the familiarity of it.
Ridiculous! No sane person seeks out their own suffering! I can hear my readers protesting now. But look back over your last year, month, week, day, or even hour. Likely it won’t take long to call to mind examples of when you were just “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” bracing for the impact of an emotional trigger that would send you into a dark and familiar place of hopelessness and helplessness, anticipating a long hard day the moment you felt a migraine coming on or a flare up of chronic pain. Thoughts running through your head might have included “here we go again,” “I don’t have the ability to deal with this right now,” “This always happens,” “I knew this was coming,” or (the most fatal lie) “this will never get better.” It is a common and natural habit to brace ourselves for the worst, drag our feet through hardship, grumble against our circumstances (and God), try to self-medicate our pain, and expect to be stuck in a cycle in which we imagine our struggles (which we cannot overcome by our own strength) to become our ultimate defeat.
Does any of this sound familiar? Don’t be surprised. It means you’re human. It also means that this series of blog posts I am working on (after a long hiatus that has included many a life-changing event that I look forward to writing about) may be just what you need to receive right now. This is the beginning of a story in which faith, hope, and love are the main protagonists. And it’s a story that does not belong to me alone. It is not bound to the confines of my life circumstances. It is a story that is meant to be shared not just in the telling of it, but in the living of it. It is a story that I pray, dear reader, God will show you how he desires to make your own.
To introduce the context for this story (which will be fleshed out in future installments on this blog), I am sharing a playlist I have been working on this year and highlighting from it a few words God has impressed upon my heart about who he is and what the healing journey looks like. Three key concepts summarize these revelations well, so I will use those to get us started, and follow this with a few reflections on songs from the playlist that stood out to me.
HEALING IS A PROCESS
Anyone who has gone through rehabilitation from a physical injury will likely agree that one of the non-negotiable (and difficult) realities that must be grappled with in recovery is that healing takes time and effort. There simply is no quick fix for a broken bone, a strained tendon, a torn ligament, or any other injury which requires long-term recovery. What is required is patience, trust in the process, and a willingness to accept that two or three steps forward can be followed by one step back. Setbacks are real and unavoidable. Frustration is a temptation. But progress is inevitable because our bodies were made to heal from injury. God designed them that way. He designed our hearts and minds that way, too. As with physical healing, healing of painful emotional wounds and memories (psychological healing) is possible. But it takes time. It takes trust in the one who is directing the process. And it takes an investment on our part. We must not only believe that healing can happen, we must be willing to engage in the process and “do the work” of healing.
HEALING HAS A PURPOSE
Once we discover the purpose of healing our motivation to intentionally engage in the process will likely increase, as we will begin to see the tangible fruits more evidently. One of the most important fruits that I have come to associate with healing is freedom. In the context of physical healing, the most basic freedom we experience is freedom from – from pain and its resulting limitations and burdens. On an emotional and psychological level this is often true as well. Healing from the wounds we incur because of our sin, the sins of others, and the general circumstances of life which cause pain and suffering as a result of living in a broken world often looks like a freedom from – usually, from the negative reactions that burst forth and the unhealthy coping mechanisms we grab onto when something or someone pokes at our wounds. But the most important freedom we experience in the healing process is a freedom for – a freedom to live for others and God, the way we were created to live. This freedom allows us to serve more generously, give less hesitantly, experience life more richly, and give and receive love more selflessly and openly.
HEALING IS PART OF GOD'S PLAN FOR OUR LIVES
Pope Benedict XVI boldly states in Jesus of Nazareth that “healing is an essential dimension of…Christianity…it expresses the entire content of our redemption.”
This is an easy truth to reject in the midst of pain and suffering, but it is a truth nonetheless. All one has to do is read through the gospels (or practically any book in the canon of Scripture) to discover that healing and deliverance is God’s normal response to the suffering of his people. Does he sometimes permit trials and misfortune to befall those he has chosen and loves? Yes, but in the context of salvation history and the story of God’s people throughout time these afflictions almost always serve the greater purpose of leading souls to repentance and conversion or drawing them closer to God’s heart by awakening them to their need for his mercy and sustaining grace. Not to mention that, as I have head it wisely put, Jesus’ answer to requests for healing in the gospels is never “no.” It is always either “yes” or “not yet.” God’s healing may not always look like we expect it to, and it may not be fully realized until we reach heaven, but if we ask with faith (believing that our God is all good and all powerful) we can be confident Jesus will answer us.
The evidence in the gospels is clear: Jesus’ ministry was a ministry of physical and spiritual healing (healing of the body and healing of the soul), and this ministry was intended to be passed on to his followers (if you are a Christian, that means you!):
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up.” – Matthew 11:5
“And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth from him and healed them all.” – Luke 6:19
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” – Luke 5:31-32
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord…today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” – Luke 4:18 (quoting Isaiah 61:1-2)
“And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.” – Matthew 9: 35
“Whenever you enter a town and they receive you…heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.” – Luke 10: 9
“And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” – Matthew 10:1
“These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them…preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.” – Matthew 10:5, 7-8
Jesus also worked many, many miracles of healing physical, spiritual, and psychological maladies in the gospels. Here is a list of some examples that I would encourage you to meditate on in prayer (the opening verse of each passage is listed)*:
The Nobleman’s Son (Jn 4:46), The Man with an Unclean Spirit (Mk 1:21, Lu 4:31), Simon Peter’s Mother-in-Law (Matt 8:14, Mk 1:29, Lu 4:38), The Healing of the Leper (Matt 8:1, Mk 1:40, Lu 5:12), The Healing of the Paralytic (Matt 9:1, Mk 2:1, Lu 5:17), The Man at the Pool of Bethesda (Jn 5:2), The Man with the Withered Hand (Matt 12:9, Mk 3:1, Lu 6:6), The Centurion’s Servant (Matt 8:5; Lu 7:2), Widow’s Deceased Son (Lu 7:11), Demoniacs at Gadara (Matt 8:28; Mk 5:1; Lu 8:26), Woman with the Issue of Blood (Matt 9:20; Mk 5:25; Lu 8:43), Jairus’s Deceased Daughter (Matt 9:18; Mk 5:21; Lu 8:40), Two Blind Men (Matt 9:27), Mute, Possessed Man (Matt 9:32), Daughter of Canaanite (Matt 15:21; Mk 4:24), Deaf Man with Impediment (Mk 7:32), Blind Man at Bethsaida (Mk 8:22), Epileptic Boy (Matt 17:14; Mk 9:14; Lu 9:37), Man Born Blind (Jn 9:1), Man, Blind, Dumb, Possessed (Matt 12:22; Lu 11:14), Woman Bent Double (Lu 13:10), Man with Dropsy (Lu 14:1), Lazarus (Jn 11:11), Ten Lepers (Lu 17:11), Blind Bartimaeus (Matt 20:29; Mk 10:45; Lu 18:35), Malchus (Lu 22:50)
There are other examples in Scripture that support the idea that “healing is an essential dimension of Christianity.” Here are some texts pulled from various books of the Old and New Testaments in the Bible:
“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” – Malachi 4:2
“For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord.” – Jeremiah 30: 17
“For neither herb nor poultice cured them, but it was your word, O Lord, which heals all men.” – Wisdom of Solomon 16:12
“I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you.” – 2 Kings 20:5
“In his illness you heal all his infirmities.” – Psalm 41: 3
“He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3
“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him.” Isaiah 57: 18
“And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month…their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” – Ezekiel 47: 12
“On either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” – Revelation 22: 2
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power…he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” – Acts 10: 38
“Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” – James 5: 14-16
And now, for short reflections on three songs from my playlist. I hope you benefit from listening to it as much as I have!
"Let You Go" by Will Reagan and United Pursuit
Help me let you go
Help me give up control
Of the God I’ve made you
When my fear has contained you
He is different by far than our broken conclusions
You are not the God that my pain has conceived
You are deeper and stronger than my eyes can see
This lyric takes us back to the primordial wound humanity incurred in the Garden of Eden:
"Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 397, emphasis mine)
“Our broken conclusions” (for example, the belief that our suffering will never end, God is distant and does not care for us, etc.) are born out of two fundamental lies the devil tells us about God: he is not good, and he cannot be trusted. When we do not trust someone, and we do not believe they have our good in mind, we are extremely reluctant (and rightfully so) to give them any freedom to act in our lives. We desire only to take as much control away from them as possible, hoping in this way to mitigate any damage they might do or pain they might cause us. We are afraid of people we do not trust because we are not confident that they will not hurt us. And so it is with God. If we do not trust in his goodness (and all of us have a tendency towards this relationship wound) we will not have any desire to entrust our lives or the journey of our healing to him.
Control is usually a result of fear. Fear of being hurt, fear of being seen, fear of having our shame and weaknesses exposed, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of powerlessness…the list goes on. Thus the healing journey necessarily involves begging God for the grace to relinquish control by taking away our fears and revealing his true identity to us. We must pray for the ability to see not “the God that our pain has conceived,” but the God of infinite mercy, power, and goodness. This is the God whom we can trust. This is the God who is fighting for our healing and is simultaneously loving us and holding onto us in the waiting.
"Help me to feel again" by Judah & the Lion
Oh my heart, don’t you know
Healing starts when the unraveling unfolds
Emotions are messy, inconvenient, difficult to control, and painful to sit with. Therefore, many of us choose the default position of running from, dismissing, or refusing to acknowledge our sadness, shame, fear, anger, etc. In a culture that is hyper-focused on being put together and in control, the avoidance of displaying or even experience such difficult emotions is very common. But it is not healthy.
It was only this year that I came to understand that the clinical definition of anxiety in psychology is related to a building up of unprocessed emotion over time that is then triggered by a current event. This episode of The Place We Find Ourselves podcast explains it well: if there are certain emotions we do not learn how to deal with in a healthy way during our formative childhood years (this includes adolescence), we experience anxiety when those emotions arise in our present day life because we are subconsciously living through layers of that same, unprocessed emotion from events in our past.
Part of the healing process is learning to be curious about our emotional experiences and asking God to reveal to us what lies beneath the surface of our negative emotional responses. This is not a neat and tidy process, especially if we have undealt with emotions from our past that are tied into our present condition. It will not be comfortable to enter into these places of our hearts, because it will feel like we are unraveling a long string of yarn that makes up our emotional memory bank. But self-knowledge and a compassionate response to our own suffering will only be able surface if we are willing to “feel our feelings” and allow there to be a release of the emotional pain that we feel.
"Broken and Open" by Nicole Serrano
What if broken just means I’m open?
What if this is what it looks like to receive?
Though my journey is filled with sorrow
What if this is where you want to meet with me?
What if this is where you show me I can be free?
In order for transformation or healing to take place in our hearts, we must first be open to the change that is required in this process of transformation. This openness is only achieved through vulnerability, through exposing our weakness to God’s healing mercy and being open to whatever may happen as a result of this exposure. A heart that is open and receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit - to the healing action of God's grace - is necessarily a vulnerable heart. And vulnerability is risky. While exposing our wounds and weaknesses to the Lord is a frightening process (especially if doing so in human relationships has only brought us more pain), God wants to meet us in our broken places so that he can show us how to exist in freedom here. He needs us to release our grip of control over these areas of our hearts so that he can take over. We need to be willing to let our barriers and protective layers be gently broken down so that something new and beautiful can be built up in its place: “for you to have your way / something has to break.”
Behold, behold, behold what love can do. Behold, behold, he’s making all things new. “Behold” by Mission House.
*Source of healing gospel passage references: https://wailingwomenofprayer.org/jesus-healings-in-the-gospels/
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