Healing Issues

This is a two-part topic on some implications on healing decisions that one will face in life. In this first part, I want to cover part of how the heart is impacted by different approaches we take after we experience deep pain in our lives, and in the second part, I’ll address the iterative cycle of healing. This first part deals more with a horizontal view of healing; the second will deal with more of a vertical view of it.

There are a few ways we can face significant emotional pain when it occurs in life. We can:

• Leave it alone (ignore it)
• Run away from it (avoid it)
• Walk through it (face it)

A wounded heart might be shown as follows:

Here is a visual of what the heart might look like long-term when wounds are ignored:

The main problem with ignoring wounds is that they remain and still have an effect on the life. The saying that “time heals all wounds” is flawed—time is a component in healing, but it takes much more than simply time. When one ignores wounds in the heart, one lives with a heart that is still very painful in places and thus it is difficult to live whole-hearted. Those places shown above in red are places one would be very careful about stepping on, because they would elicit very painful reactions as they are unhealed. Not only that, but such unhealed wounds can grow, and become much worse.

Here is what a wounded heart of an avoidant might look like:

One big issue with avoiding wounds is that we create regions in the heart that are “off limits”. You can’t go there, and neither can anyone else. The problem is that the more wounds one takes, the smaller the heart is that is free to love and to live. When we wall off regions of our hearts due to pain, we then live even more a partial-hearted life and can never experience freedom and life as I think is intended by God.

Here is what a heart that faces wounds and walks through them into healing might look like:

The scars a wound leaves will always remain, but unhealed throbbing that we tend to ignore or run from is no longer present. We are better able to live whole-hearted—damaged, but still with the whole heart. The scars might be tender, some wounds less healed than others, some larger than others, all still having some affect in our lives. But the active pain, the “electric fence” that is erected due to avoiding pain is no longer present, as we courageously walk into and walk through those painful places and experience healing.

What I want to emphasize in all of this is that while it is painful to walk into healing and to feel the effects of wounds, it is worth it in the long run. We are able to live whole-heartedly, instead of walling places of our heart off that are “off limits”, or avoiding painful places, or being caught off guard because untouched wounds still remain. It enables us to minister from the place of woundedness, as we have walked through the pain and healing of that pain, and thus can better empathize with others in their pain and wounds. And we can live in greater freedom, not in bondage to wounds, but with the awareness of their impact, the thankfulness for their healing, and the maturity from the wisdom learned.