Healing

"When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation."  -Brennen Manning, The Furious Longing of God


I cannot fully explain how I felt four months ago. In short, I was hurting, broken...drowning.  Maybe you can see the traces of those feelings in this blog.  Of course I was put together enough to function in the life I had built in Colorado.  I had a job that I just barely squeaked by in, friends of not so great influences,  but mostly a life lived in the shadow of every major heartbreak I experienced in the previous three years.

I think that's why I was drowning.  I finally reached a point where I needed to fly, but I was stuck in the shadow of past hurts. I couldn't move.

All I know is that when I came to Poland 103 days ago I started to see just how broken I was.  Just being here I felt freedom.  Dear God, why did I have to travel this far from home to finally start feeling free?

I just finished Brennen Manning's book The Furious Longing of God. For the most part his verbiage was over my head and I had a hard time following his thoughts, that is until I got to the chapter on healing.

Healing is a response to a crisis in the life of another person.

Yup, my heart was in crisis.  Most people didn't see it, but I felt it.  It was bad, trust me.

But then I got here, and the most amazing thing happened, I was affirmed in who I was.  Not only was I affirmed in who God had created me to be but I was affirmed by people that I respect highly.  Just like that I was able to finally see things in myself, awesome things about who God created me to be and that I was valuable.

I knew that God was doing a tremendous work in my heart here in Poland.  I could feel the healing taking place, but until I read Manning's words I didn't realize what had lit the fire of healing in my heart. Affirmation.

Since arriving in Poland I have been affirmed more than I have in the last two years.

There was no doubt in my mind that I could heal...it was just how.  I tried to heal myself, me and God.  And well, it took a LONG time but I did get somewhere.  But there is just something about another human being letting the holy spirit reach out through their words to touch in affirmation.  And, not just once...but over and over again.

The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?

We humans need other people.  And we need people over and over again.  The world spews lies at us like a broken record and so we need people who are going to vomit truth right back.  Over and over like a broken record.  Because we will never really get it until we hear it 1,001 times.

I'm still a mess, but God is redeeming me with the help of His followers.  And for the first time in a very long time, all I really want to do is love people.

We all stumble on the way to maturity.  We all look for love in the wrong arms, happiness in the wrong places.  But out of it, you've become real.  You've got a heart of immense compassion for the brokenness of others.  You are utterly incapable of hypocrisy, and I am deeply in love with you. -Don Quixote