Healing Takes Time
I’ve been thinking about healing.
Healing takes time.
I’ve been out of my marriage for eight and a half years, and just when I think I’ve healed, something else comes along and rubs that scar the wrong way. And I realize I have so much more healing to do.
It used to frustrate me when that would happen because I would think, I thought I was over this. I thought I was done being affected by what happened in my marriage. What happened after my marriage.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that the triggers will continue. That no matter how much I think I’ve healed, there’s always more healing to happen.
Those triggers don’t mean I’m weak. They just mean there are areas I still need to surrender to God. Areas where I still need His help.
And some of those areas may never be completely healed.
And that’s okay.
Because perhaps they are the thorn in my flesh. Perhaps they are the very things that remind me how much I need my Father.
Healing Takes Self-Awareness
Healing takes time, but it also takes self-awareness.
It takes a willingness to admit when you’re coping with something in an unhealthy way. A willingness to look at yourself and your life and recognize what’s working and what’s not.
There is a humility that comes with healing because you have to admit that you’re broken in order to be healed.
The more I think about it, the more I realize how much denial can keep people from healing.
When people refuse to acknowledge that they need healing, when they refuse to admit they’ve done something wrong, that denial often becomes evident in the way they negatively affect the lives of others.
And sometimes you can see it in the way they look at other people.
They develop this mindset that if you are one way, you’ll always be that way. If you’re broken now, if you’re acting out in unhealthy ways, then that’s simply who you are. You’ll never change.
And perhaps it’s because, in their minds, they will always be that way.
It’s just who they are.
It’s how God made them.
I remember Bo telling me, “This is just who I am. This is just how God made me.”
But when you say that, you’re taking away God’s power. You’re essentially saying that this is who God made you, and He can’t take the broken pieces of you and make you whole.
And often, those same people look at others and pigeonhole them. They put them into a box and can’t even fathom that they might be changing.
They look at someone and think, You’re never going to be another way. You’re this way, and now you must always be this way.
As though there’s no chance of that person ever becoming better.
No chance of God redeeming their story.
I think when we think that way, we’re stealing something from God.
We’re telling God that He can’t change someone.
We’re telling God, and we’re telling ourselves, that the enemy has won.
Healing Requires Both Hope and Discernment
Now, there is some merit to having a viewpoint that’s based on reality.
When someone’s pattern of behavior has remained the same, when it continuously looks the same and never changes, I think it’s safe and rational to say that person may never change.
But I think that’s very different from saying that person will never change.
There’s a difference between recognizing someone’s patterns and giving up all hope for restoration or healing.
Sometimes we say those things out of anger. We’ve watched someone act a certain way. We’ve been hurt by them so many times that we can’t even begin to fathom them becoming someone different.
But there’s another side to that.
Sometimes we can become so caught up in our hope that we fail to see reality.
We hope beyond hope that someone will change, and that hope keeps us from looking at their patterns with discernment.
It keeps us from recognizing their behaviors, their lack of healing, and their lack of personal growth as things we should approach with caution.
There’s a balance here.
We can believe that God has the power to change someone without ignoring the reality of who that person is showing us they are.
Healing Takes Intentionality
Healing takes a growth mindset.
You have to be willing to change. You have to be willing to grow in order to be healed, in order to continue on a healing journey.
And it takes intentionality.
Because when you start to slip, when you find yourself falling back into coping mechanisms that you know aren’t healthy, it takes intentionality to stop.
It takes intentionality to tell your mind, That’s not the truth.
To stop those toxic thoughts and unhealthy thought patterns in their tracks.
It takes intentionality when you’re triggered to surrender those things to God.
And it takes intentionality to recognize when your own brokenness and your own need for healing have hurt another person.
You can be a broken person. You can have been a victim. And you can still cause others pain.
That’s part of the tragedy of being a victim.
Because you desperately don’t want to hurt anyone. Yet because of your own hurt, your distrust, and your reactive behavior, you can end up hurting others.
And so the cycle continues.
A victim hurts another person, creating another victim. And that victim may go on to hurt someone else.
And yet, it all started with one person. One perpetrator.
But the pain doesn’t necessarily stop with that person.
It creates a cycle of victimhood. A cycle of hurting.
Healing Takes Hard Work
Healing takes time.
It takes self-awareness.
It takes intentionality.
And it takes hard work.
It’s tiring.
It’s a brain drain and a brain game.
Especially when there’s a lot of healing to do. Especially when there’s been emotional abuse and emotional damage.
Because the scars left on the mind, on the way a person thinks and feels, can last so much longer than physical scars.
And those are the scars that can leave us doing damage to ourselves long after our perpetrator is gone.
Think about the psychological damage that comes from abuse.
The people who inflict that damage can become so skilled at what they do that, eventually, they don’t even have to be there anymore.
Because now, we’re doing it to ourselves.
Think about every time you second-guess yourself.
Every time you don’t trust your own intuition.
Every time you gaslight yourself.
You don’t even need that person standing in front of you anymore to cause you to distrust what you’re hearing, what you’re seeing, or what you’re saying.
You simply do it.
Because it’s become instinctive.
Because it’s been ingrained in you.
And recognizing those patterns, challenging them, and learning to think differently?
That’s hard work.
Healing Takes Vulnerability
Healing takes time.
Healing takes self-awareness and a willingness to see our own faults and our own brokenness.
Healing takes intentionality.
Healing takes hard work.
And healing takes vulnerability.
Because unless you’re willing to become vulnerable with yourself, with others, and with God, healing can’t happen.
Even for people who don’t hold space for God in their lives, vulnerability is still necessary.
When someone goes to counseling, they have to be willing to make themselves vulnerable with their counselor.
Because you cannot deal with things you refuse to acknowledge.
You cannot heal from things you keep hidden in the closet and in the dark.
You cannot heal from things you cannot name.
And you cannot heal and deal with those things when you keep a wall up around yourself.
Because when people can’t get through that wall, when God can’t get through that wall, you’re left inside it.
Stuck with yourself.
Stuck with your own brokenness.
With no way in and no way out.
And that is a prison unlike any other prison.
A prison that is self-made.
What a miserable place to be.
A Question to Consider
Where are you in your healing journey?
Are you allowing yourself the time, self-awareness, intentionality, hard work, and vulnerability that healing requires?
Or are there areas you’ve kept hidden behind walls, unwilling or afraid to acknowledge what still needs healing?
♡ Katie Marie
Real Life with Katie Marie
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