A lot of times, you'll hear someone say that they just want to heal from a bad experience and move on with their life. This would make sense, as it would be kind of silly to think that you wouldn't want to heal from something. Why would you want to continue to hold all that pain close to you like that? Well unfortunately, there is something that can keep everyone from healing. Most of the time, it keeps a lot of people from even beginning the healing process. This thing is called pain.
People don't like pain. In fact, most people try to live their lives in such a way that they don't have to encounter pain. Why? Because as humans, we don't like getting hurt. But most of the time, if not all of the time, we have to go through the pain in order to reach that state of healing. If we never go through the pain, we will never get to the heart of the problem and allow ourselves to heal. Let me tell you a story.
When I was a young girl, my birth mom decided that she no longer wanted to be a part of my life and left me in the hands of my birth dad. My birth dad struggled to take care of me the best he could for a little while, until he eventually decided to give me over to the hands of my wonderful parents now, and at the age of 4 1/2, they adopted me. Though many things happened in between, once I learned that I was adopted around the age of 12, I really struggled. I had lots of questions and felt rejected and upset a lot of time. Unfortunately, this lead into me acting out. I felt so hurt and rejected that I was being very rude and disrespectful to my loving parents. This continued for years until I recently had the opportunity to visit my birth dad in Nebraska over the summer. Always being a Momma's girl and being rather clingy, I wasn't thrilled at the idea of leaving home to spend time in another state for any amount of time. I really struggled in those upcoming weeks before heading to Nebraska. I had never talked about being adopted with my birth dad and I wasn't planning on talking to him if and when I did decide to head there. But that was the thing, I didn't realize it then, but once I went there and went through the pain, I was going to come back a much better person, and would be healed from a lot of my past wounds. But at the time, I didn't want any part of this thing called "Healing" if it would be painful.
Lucky for me, I didn't really have a choice in the matter. My parents knew it would be best for me to go anyway, and off I went to Nebraska to spend a week there. To be honest, it wasn't easy. But it was good for a few reasons. Firstly, it made me put my trust in God because I was too scared and too out of my element to do anything else. One of the things I was worried about was not having very good cell phone reception. Funny enough, I didn't have very good reception. God's way of saying, "Hey, I'm right here. Come to me, I'm with you." God has a funny way of working sometimes. And ya know, I did get a lot closer to God because of my time in Nebraska. Sometimes my stubbornness can get in the way of what I know is the right option, which in this case, was going to God. It was also good for me because while I was there, I was able to have a heart to heart talk with my birth dad about being adopted. A conversation I had been dreading having for years, ended up being a conversation I am going to remember for the rest of my life. It put a lot of things into perspective and allowed for me to see that God's hand was really in everything. My beginnings, everything that happened early on in my life, and everything going on in my life now. He's simply, always there.
When I came back from my trip to Nebraska, there was a lot of healing that had taken place. I started seeing everyone else in my family differently because instead of being worried sick they were going to hurt me or leave all the time, I realized that they were all my family who were going to love and support me regardless of what I was going through. From then on out, I have been able to continue to heal my relationships with them.
So that's the thing. As humans, we don't like pain. Most of us run from the idea of something being painful or unpleasant. But sometimes, we have to go through the pain and through that tough time in order to reach that state of healing. Luckily though, we are not asked to go through it alone. Jesus says that he will never leave us, so we need to remember that he is going to be there regardless of what we may be going through.
"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9
So I just wanted to take the time to encourage you girls today. Sometimes we have to go through things that are going to be hard and unpleasant. But instead of being afraid of those times and wanting to run away from them, we should turn to God instead. He understands our fear and knows that some things might not be so easy. But he also says that he will give us his strength.
"He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak." Isaiah 40:29
So girls, stay encouraged. God never promised that as followers of Him we would be free from pain and suffering. Not at all. But instead, he promised us something even bigger than that. He promised us eternal life to everyone that repents, He promised to never leave, and He promised that He would always take care of us. For me, I'd much rather have some pain and suffering if it meant having an all knowing, all loving God who is always on my side, looking out for me.
~ Angelica
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