Jehovah Rapha

    I got to fix this and that about myself. I felt like every part of who I was got nitpicked as I was growing up. I could never live up to expectations, and if I did, I felt even then that I could have done better. I never felt truly happy about anything I achieved. I kept reaching, and maybe I would reach that goal, but then I felt apathy towards myself once I did reach it. I felt I was reaching for wind, and the breeze would quickly go from the grasps of my hands. I developed a long list of ways I was wrong and could never be enough. A door for me represents what I have hidden my pain behind for so long. I felt no one could possibly be there for me, that I had to be my own surgeon. I had to fix myself, but I had no doctoral knowledge of the soul. I fell into the coping through distraction for years. No one could ever know that deep down, my pain was so consuming until one day when my door opened. 

    It was at a worship event during my freshman year of college. I did not open the door myself, but someone else tried to open the door for me; they tried to remove the mask, only for me to shut the door quickly. I wasn't used to somebody seeing right through my smiling face into the pain I was feeling. I was used to people passing my struggles off as being a teenager. I was used to being the older sister whose family could not see the pain she was facing because they needed to care for my younger siblings and my pain was too much for them. I felt that no one knew the actual depths of my struggle. I was used to convincing myself and others that I was ok, and even that I was ok alone. I lived my teen years often behind closed doors, where the pain would come out. I felt that hiding my pain would make it so no one else would have to feel it; I felt like I was doing everyone a favor, but unexplainable (at the time) anger would bubble up. This girl saw right through the door I hid behind, and I felt a vulnerability I had never felt before. I was quick to dismiss it, thinking that my struggles would make me a bad Christian, but she was right. I did struggle with unforgiveness and grief. I got so good at hiding it and even convincing myself I was healed. Looking back now, I know that I was struggling so much because I was trying to contain all the struggle behind the closed door of my heart. It came out in unintentional ways. The summer after my freshman year, I started the journey of healing I am still in today. 

    The first thing I had to learn to have was a healthy perspective of healing. I felt like growing up I was always expected to go from being abused to being saved to being completely healed. I tried to go from a to b to z without going through everything I needed to to heal. Healing meant that the extremely painful stuff had to come out in a safe environment, but that involved a lot of discomfort. I was told as a kid never to bottle stuff up, but I am so good at doing it. Usually, when I cry, I don't cry for one reason but for multiple. Things naturally bottle up for the longest time. I am still working on not bottling stuff up. Here are things I thought I understood about healing going into college that turned out to be false: with believing in God and praying, healing can happen in a moment; no one can know that I am truly struggling because God's calling in my life is to inspire people to move on from abuse; and if I don't deal with the painful stuff, eventually it will just go away. 

    Trauma is something that is deeply ingrained in the body. However, just because trauma changes the way the body works, God made the body to be able to heal. Our bodies have a wonderful capacity to heal from traumatic events when we acknowledge that we need to heal, notice the patterns, and work through them with grace rather than condemnation. Some of the things I went through as a kid, if I really think about it, break my heart. I would never want another child or person to go through what I went through, but one thing that is important in healing is regaining the power we have to take responsibility for our healing. It is not our fault what happened to us. To take responsibility for our healing, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because unhealthy patterns truly are messy. It is uncomfortable to heal, honestly, but to get to the other side, it needs to happen. 

    We see the stories in scripture of people going to Jesus for healing after years of struggling with something and being healed. We need to realize that there is time before we are healed. Jesus can heal us and does heal, but it may not be a dramatic moment like I imagined as a teenager. In fact, for many people in scripture, healing from the things Jesus healed them from took years of them having the struggle. 

"As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped"  Luke 8:42b-44 NIV

Some healings happen on Earth, but some healings happen when we enter into eternal life. Regardless, our healed selves, when we glorify the Lord, will one day enter the throne room. Having a healed perspective that healing happens in God's timing rather than our own is important. I remember wishing sometimes that I could erase the painful memories of what happened to me, but when those memories come up now, I realize even more what God has delivered me from. God has delivered me from a controlling environment where I had no autonomy into a loving environment where obedience to him brings life. Yes, the memories may have pain in them, and that is not something to just skip over, but I am realizing more and more how God saved me, and I am not there anymore. 

    Something I learned more this year is that I am no savior, and I should not put that pressure on myself to be a savior. I have the tendency to carry the loads of others when I should only be bearing with them in love and bearing their burdens. The difference is trying to take responsibility that really is not ours to bear and sitting with someone compassionately without being consumed by their pain. One way lacks boundaries, and the other way leads to the compassion Jesus wants us to have. I am not a savior for anybody, but I can point people to the Savior of the World. I want to always be there for people, but I have my own limitations. I get exhausted, I have my own challenges, and I have things I have to do. I can't be someone else's savior because I am not limitless. In the same way, we can't be our own saviors. When it comes to healing, we want to be healed, but do we have the capability to heal ourselves? No. For more physical matters, there may be treatment options. For mental health, it may include counseling or professional help. For me, I always wanted to fix every perceived wrong I had of myself. I picked myself a part rather than turning to the Lord to be built up. The reality is that you can try to fix every broken piece of your heart, but the Lord is who restores your whole heart. You may numb yourself by distracting, drinking, smoking, working, etc. However, when you are by yourself, do you feel a void to fill or deep pain within? You may be actively working through things. You may be very self-aware. What if that cup of trying to keep it all together eventually can't hold everything in anymore? That is when it all overflows. For healing, you need something beyond yourself to heal. God provides doctors and counselors to work through things and go through treatment; however, God is an essential part of the healing process as well. In fact, God is Jehovah Rapha: Lord of healing. What does it mean for you to make Jesus Lord of your healing? Turning to Jesus first rather than as a last resort. If we make Jesus the Lord of our healing, we must go to him first in prayer. 

    To inspire people to move on after trauma, grief, a struggle, etc., I needed to go through the good hardship of healing myself. I can't help others move on if I am still stuck in my own past. It is easy for someone who has been through trauma to get stuck in past memories. It is important to work through those memories. In the same way, when you go through something painful, you can't just let it go. You have to work through it. I know the movie Frozen showcases Elsa singing Let it Go in this freeing song where her powers are fully revealed, and she runs off building a beautiful ice palace. The scene seems so powerful, and the song is fun to sing. However, she has to go back and face what she did and save Arendelle. Sometimes, it is easy to try to forget about the things that have happened to us, but it is important to work through them. I was told by everyone growing up "Just let it go" when in reality I wasn't to the "Let it Go" part yet.  The past will follow us if we don't work through it. When I started my journey a few years ago, I felt like I was stepping into the great wilderness of my pain. I realized, though, that I wasn't doing it alone. The Lord was with me through it. The Lord is with us as we realize the need to take responsibility for our healing. Our responsibility is realizing who our Savior is, going to him in prayer, growing in our relationship with him, and seeking out what he provides for us. Pain won't just disappear until you bring that pain to the Lord and to his people. God has provided community to help us realize from the very beginning that we should not be alone. 

    Healing also requires the realization of different truths. The physical truth is that our physical bodies won't last forever, but one day, we will enter eternity with Jesus. Our physical illnesses won't last for eternity. We may not even know when they will be healed, but Jesus knows more than we ever could. Going to Jesus in prayer over our physical bodies is important as he is both Jehovah Rapha and Prince of Peace. There is the emotional truth that healing can involve grief and hard emotions. Some things are just hard and heavy, and the emotional pain may last throughout our lifetimes. Acknowledging the emotional truth of where we are before the Lord is important. This is displayed greatly in the Psalms. The truth about emotions is that they should be acknowledged, but they should not have control over our lives. Emotions can be an indicator of needs, and ignoring emotions is not the goal. We need to become more comfortable with emotions as we heal because healing is messy. There is the logical truth that this world is just broken and that some things won't change. This does not mean Jesus hasn't already won; it means sin is in this world. There are many examples of logical truths. In breakups, for example, the logical truth could be that the person wasn't right for you, or it could be that you need to grow and heal from things. Logical truths and emotional truths may be different depending on the situation. Finally, there is God's truth that no matter what you are going through, you are loved. Even the greatest shame you may have does not even come close to the love God has for you. Your broken heart needs an eternal, loving God. God is with you through the healing. Holding the truths that our bodies physicality won't last forever though we will go to heaven one day, that we do indeed have emotions that we can't just ignore, that there is logic behind even the hard choices we have to make, and that God is here through it all is important in going through the healing journey. 

This has been the general process of healing for me. The first thing I have to realize is that the pain really happened.

  It is important to grow and heal in the Lord. Growth is not always comfortable, but there is praise in being able to look back to your life and see God's work. The cycle of healing is messy, but this is what I have noticed from healing in a way that aligns with scripture. The first thing to realize is that the sin happened. This sin could have been against you or it could have been your doing, even if it is unintentional. This sin needs to be brought into the light even when it feels uncomfortable. We have a natural tendency to hide what's bad. We don't want to be shamed, and we want to always be right. When we are sinned against and someone hurts us, we long for the pain to just go away and for justice to be served. We have to realize that in this world, when people have hurt us in deeply significant ways, "though the wrong seems oft so strong, our Lord is ruler yet". We have to let the sin in our lives, whether we have sinned or have been sinned against, come to light. 

 "For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought into the open"  Luke 8:17 NIV

    Things need to come to light if you truly want to heal. The thing is, too, that God already knows what is really in your heart. You have to continually ask God to search and reveal what is in your heart in order to really grow in relationships and break down the barriers you set up. It is ok to be a lover of the Lord, a follower of the King of kings, and to admit that what happened to you was painful. 

When you don't face pain

    If you are not willing to face the pain, you will hurt others as much as you are only hurting yourself. You may think that your numbing of pain through drinking, smoking, scrolling social media for hours on end, or whatever your other means of coping is only impacts you. Here is the truth: it affects others as well. Your unwillingness to deal with pain will affect the people you love. I thought that my hiding my pain from my family would help to not "bring down the mood". I felt I had to lock myself in my room because my pain was too much for people to deal with. The truth is that it did hurt relationships, and it hurt me as well. My lack of wanting to heal probably even impacted my first friendships in college. It was never your responsibility what happened to you, and it was never your fault, but it is your responsibility to choose to heal. Choosing to heal is not a lonesome journey, but it requires the Lord and others to turn to. 

Facing pain

    If you go at this process alone without the hope of the Lord and without the support of others, it will be a difficult process to go through. Some days will seem so dark, and that is true. It seems like such a mess that you may never get through. Jesus serves as a reminder that even in the darkest of days, during his death, he overcame in the end. There have been times when I have barely turned to God while, at the same time, he kept a strong community of believers around me, helping me turn to him in prayer. I am in this sort of stage where God is redeeming my identity, and we together are working through patterns in my life. The pattern for constant striving is being worked through this year as I realize that I should always pursue growth honoring to the Lord, but I should also pursue rest that is honoring to him. 

The Testimony

    The truth is that God works in the midst of our mess, bringing his message to people. I have had times when I have said something while in tears that has stuck with people because people are always going through their own pain. If we give people this perception of us that we are always perfect, they will truly believe that God is unreachable, especially if we lead a ministry or try to evangelize to people. We need to show that we are imperfect people in need of a Savior. We need to stop trying to prove ourselves as the good Christians we often try to present ourselves as at church and show that our life is messy too, but it is through Jesus that we have access to eternal life. Jesus is not unreachable because he humbled himself. Humans never worked themselves up to him. The testimony I have of going through the pain and facing it head-on just shows that God loves us through our messiness, he is always here for us, and we don't have to be "the Good Christian" to be gifted his grace. Our testimonies should be less about ourselves and instead highlight the fact that we have access to God because of his grace and that God is over all things and with us through all things. 

"If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" 2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV

    Healing requires a lot of humility in recognizing the need to heal and going through the process to heal. It involves worship of the Lord, who is healer through the pain. Turn your eyes from the pain onto the Lord of love, and you will see the love your heart desires. It requires us to continue seeking the Lord even in the midst of painful circumstances. Breaking off old sin patterns that come from pain can be difficult, but the Lord who heals also brings us into abundant life. Our God lives beyond any way we try to cure ourselves through coping.