Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but this is fresh, so it’s what I’m going to share today.
When you are healing, you are delicate. My doctor used to say, “It’s like you come in here every week for open heart surgery, then at the end of your session you have to resume your life.”
Everything beats on, despite how hard you were crying last night or if the shame of relapse is slumping your shoulders or if the lingering fear of a nightmare is giving you chills. People keep being people.
My husband and I had a VERY difficult weekend. With dissociative disorder, we play things by ear, there is no telling how long that aspect of me will be out, if I’ll be able to speak, or if I’ll come back at all.
Last Saturday night, we thought I might not come back.
My husband prepared himself to spend the rest of his life waiting for my proper conscious to return.
Sunday was hard. Monday was a little less, but then…
This may seem small, but someone was mean to me.
Icy, stand-offish, mean muggin, every-word-dripping-with-disdain: mean to me.
And just like that my house of cards toppled. My fresh stitches felt violently torn from my chest.
Monday night was a mess. I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t be comforted.
The lie that I had been working to stop believing slammed down hard and pinned me: “People treat you this way because you aren’t WORTH anything else”
How does this relate back to healing?
Lots of ways.
1.Don’t let anyone steal from you the work God is doing in your life. It’s YOUR response that matters to YOUR healing. Forgive and make a boundary, you don’t have to fix their attitude. (For those of us who struggle with co-dependency, we can read this one at least three times)
2.If a lie has enough authority over you to get you into a sleeper hold, it’s not being healed by God, it’s evidence that you are trying to “heal” yourself by setting out to prove a lie wrong instead of let God speak truth.
3.In the same way you want the benefit of the doubt, give it to others. Just ask, “Have I done something to offend you?”
And if you can, ask right then; them not eating breakfast and snapping at you is no reason for you to let their actions spin around in your head for days. And if it is serious, it needs to be dealt with, maybe you weren’t so nice yourself.
Yes, you are healing.
No, you can’t live in a plastic bubble (SO Tempting, but I’m no John Travolta).
Yes, you can make little changes that make the gaping exposed wound in your heart easier to deal with.
Healing is a posture of worship, so if all else fails, sing!
Psalm 13:5-6
advice, anxiety, Boundaries, Christ, Christian, Christianity, comfort, complex trauma, courage, depression, God, Grace, healing