When Healing Hurts

I had surgery eleven days ago... so we are in the weird stage of healing that includes strange twinges of pain, itching and overall not exactly comfortable.

I am also in a season of emotional healing and changes, which also hurts. Since KGB #111, I have experienced a lot of new social interactions, feelings and stuff. (I hate that word 'stuff' it is so vague and pointless but I don't have a better word.) Growing pains, just like in childhood, are uncomfortable but necessary to get to where we need to be. My growing pains have been startling, uncomfortable and somehow reassuring that God is in this process. People have had to use stern voices (aka yell at me) to get me to hear and see the Truth. I have had to cry. I have needed to be held and reassured. It has been weird and hard and it HURTS.

This hurt though has the promise of freedom on the other side...

My urge to runaway is high. I want to stay in what I know, it is comfortable even if it is not what is best for me. I do not want to live in who God has created me to be, because it is scary and unknown. I want to live in a tent in the woods avoiding human interaction and the changes that come along with these growing pains.

When healing hurts, it is confusing... We spend so much time avoiding pain, but the pain that comes with healing and change is necessary and shouldn't be avoided. I guess all of this proves that with my physical healing from surgery that I cannot avoid should be the same approach that I should take with my emotional healing. I cannot make my physical healing stop. It is doing what my body was made to do. Cells are regenerating, incisions are closing, pain is receding. I suppose I should apply the same to my heart... Let healing take place on the plan God has clearly set before me.

When Pain Changes

So my last post was about being in pain both physical and emotional. I was a few days away from surgery at that point.

Well, my surgery took place four days ago and was a huge success on many levels. The constant pain I had in my left side was gone before I even woke up in recovery! My pain had already changed from constant and chronic pain to surgery and recovery pain. And the recovery pain is way easier to deal with and it gets better every day.

I would like to apply this same principle to emotional pain. I would like to have it removed from my heart and wake up and feel different. Unfortunately for me, and everyone else, that is not how wounds of the heart are healed. Wounds of the heart are healed over time and Truth being applied. This is a process that often takes a lot of time, tears, blood, sweat, running and returning. During my physical recovery my heart has had its own moments of being touched and growing. I chalk it up to being tender from the actual surgery and the drugs that I got sent home with. Whatever it is, the past four days have been full of moments that I needed. Moments of clarity about who I am, what I am called to and the community where my heart already is have filled the last 100 hours or so.

I have wanted to live in Kokomo since leaving Logansport in August of 2009. These four days here have been kind of amazing. I have never been more sure of wanting to live here and be here than I am right now. Being here changes some of the hurt and baggage of my past. This is a place of community, true community, of love, grace, growth, freedom and becoming who each of us were made to be through Christ. This is where I belong. Maybe this move is the surgery I have longed for to remove my emotional wounds, depression, anxiety, and junk. The pain is changing, which inevitably means that it is leaving me a new person.