Healing

Community, Healing, Uncategorized 0

There is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into one another’s pain, anoint it as holy, and stick around no matter the outcome….

The thing about healing, as opposed to curing, is that it is relational. It takes time. It is inefficient, like a meandering river. Rarely does healing follow a straight or well-lit path. Rarely does it conform to our expectations or resolve in a timely manner. Walking with someone through grief, or through the process of reconciliation, requires patience, presence, and a willingness to wander, to take the scenic route.

— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, p. 208

Acceptance

Acceptance, Growth, Healing 0

Accept that their actions hurt you deeply. Accept that this experience taught you something you didn’t want to know. Accept that sorrow and strife are part of even a joyful life. Accept that it’s going to take a long time for you to get that monster out of your chest. Accept that someday what pains you now will surely pain you less.

— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 83

Healing through Forgiveness

Forgiveness, Healing 0

The beauty of forgiveness is that it releases us from patterns in which we are caught. It releases us from being a victim and being caught in situations we do not like. Forgiveness changes our perception. When we see situations differently, things actually are different for us. Basically, all healing has to do with changing our perception and seeing things in a new light. Forgiveness allows us to live in a way that raises us above the situation; thus the situation changes.

Some people are afraid that forgiveness will lock them into a situation of sacrifice where they will continue to be abused. This is not the truth, because forgiveness actually shifts the relationship pattern, changing us and the other person. Any area where we feel stuck or any place where a person is bothering us is a place that calls for forgiveness. Every problem, temptation, distraction, and all busyness that is avoidance occurs because we are afraid to change. Guilt hides the place where we are afraid, and because we get stuck in it and the bad feeling, we do not recognize the healing and change that forgiveness brings. It is forgiveness that moves us through both the guilt and the fear.

— Chuck Spezzano, If It Hurts, It Isn’t Love, p. 3.

Healing

Growth, Healing, Trials 0

When you recognize that you will thrive not in spite of your losses and sorrows, but because of them, that you would not have chosen the things that happened in your life, but you are grateful for them, that you will hold the empty bowls eternally in your hands, but you also have the capacity to fill them? The word for that is healing.

— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 10

Nuggets of Gold on the Way

Healing, Life, Trials 0

Don’t get me wrong: grief sucks, it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of living spirit. Mostly I have tried to avoid it by staying very busy, working too hard, achieving as much as possible. You can often avoid the pain by trying to fix other people; shopping helps in a pinch, as does romantic obsession. Martyrdom can’t be beat. While too much exercise works for many people, it doesn’t for me, although I have found that a stack of magazines can be numbing and even mood-altering. The bad news is that whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you. A fixation can keep you nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since your life may indeed have fallen apart, the illusion won’t hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave, you will want to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and finally, grief ends up giving you the two best gifts: softness and illumination.

— Anne Lamott, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, p. 34-35

Exposure to Light

Acceptance, Core Value, Growth, Healing 0

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists — it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

— Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 67

For Our Sins

Faith, God, Healing 0

When people begin rethinking atonement, salvation, and the eucharist along these lines, they often wonder, “What then does it mean to say that Jesus died for our sins?” They assume the for in that statement means “as a penal substitutionary sacrifice for.” It is far more natural, I think, to interpret the for more simply. Consider, for example, these two sentences: “I took medicine for my disease,” and “I got a ticket for speeding.” In the former sentence, the word for does not mean “as a sacrifice to appease my disease.” For means “to help cure my disease.” So we understand that Jesus’ death intervenes in human history to have a curative impact on our hostility and violence, to turn us toward the ways of peace. And in the latter sentence, for doesn’t mean “to pay for.” It means “because of.” Because I was speeding, I got a ticket, and similarly, because we are hostile and violent, Christ died. God didn’t torture and kill Christ; we did. And that tells us something essential about both God and ourselves.

— Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, p. 212

Self-Compassion vs. Self-Criticism and Self-Pity

Compassion, Core Value, Healing, Trials 0

Self-compassion is a sympathetic response to your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, with a motivation to heal, repair, and improve. It brings a sense of empowerment — a feeling that you can do something to make your life better, even if you are not sure what that might be at the moment. It tends to keep you focused on solutions in the present and future.

Self-criticism is blaming yourself for your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, usually with a measure of punishment or contempt. It’s based on the mistaken idea that if you punish yourself enough you won’t make similar mistakes in the future, when just the opposite is true — self-punishment leads to more mistakes. (Who is more likely to make more mistakes, the valued self or the devalued self?) Self-pity is focus on your pain or damage with no motivation to heal, repair, or improve. It has an element of contempt for your perceived incompetence or inadequacy because it assumes that you can’t do anything to make your life better. Needless to say, self-criticism and self-pity turn pain into suffering.

— Steven Stosny, PhD, Living and Loving After Betrayal, p. 22-23