Jan 7, 2012

Healing

Everyone wants to be healed and whole and happy. It is the deepest human desire and one that is often challenged and pushed aside when aches and pains rear their heads. Sometimes we try to heal ourselves, and for the little hurts, it works, but sometimes it's like putting a band-aid on a broken heart. We can only do so much for ourselves before we are overwhelmed and turn to despair. We can try to bury it, but it will never truly leave us alone and affects us even when we are unaware. We cannot and should not go through this life alone. God put us in families and gave us the desire to be loved and needed for a reason. He also gave us the beautiful tool of prayer. When all else fails, He will not, He will not. It is we that distance ourselves from Him, He will never turn away from us, never tell us we don't matter, never deny us His outstretched arms, never betray us, never do anything that is not for our good, and never allow us to be given more than we can handle.
He gives us angels in our families and in our lives around us, people to hold us in their arms when we need it most. Counsel to help us through our darkest times. Eyes to see what was so crucial for us that we could not see. Ears to listen when we need to tell our deepest desires. Love to comfort us and let us know that we are not worthless or hopeless or wrong. No matter what we do we can be whole again, no matter what we experience or what others do to us, we can be whole.
But the Lord will never take away our agency. We have to want to be whole, we have to come to others, to open up our vulnerability and let others know that we are not perfect. Which is almost silly because no one, save Christ alone, is perfect. "Everybody's got stuff." Trusting others is hard and frightening, but the peace and healing that comes from it is worth everything. The Atonement is real, all our pains can be swallowed up and we can be whole. Truly completely whole. All we have to do is let Him in, open our hearts and lean on others. That's why we are here, to lean on each other, everybody needs somebody.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one,     not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this. - C. S. Lewis

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