Trust In the Moment of Healing… It Will Come

Quietly one morning, with no bells, no trumpets, no fanfare, and likely with no notice, a new equilibrium will begin to return to you my friend. It will not be the same as before, and it will not yet include equilibrium with people or things outside. Nevertheless, it will be the beginning of an internal equilibrium… and thus the beginning of healing.

— Nina Herrmann Donnelley

EMERGENT among the pavement shot out the shoot; a new plant. It was not there before. But now it was. The new shoot had a history. This new shoot was visible; it’s existence undeniable.

Healing is like a new shoot. From the canvas that is a hard rocky pavement shoots this living organism expressing life. Healing expresses life and hope. Where, before, there was no life nor hope, suddenly, with no hope nor warning, there it is.

This is why we can hope for healing even in the presence of hopelessness. Where at least we strive hopefully, there we find openness to experience healing. We say, “God, take me, heal me, make me whole again!”

It’s like the young lady in a group therapy session I ran some time ago. We were talking about joy. I asked the group, “When was the last time you experienced joy?” “Five years ago,” she said. Five years beforehand was the last time her life seemed to have joy in it. Others challenged her, “Surely there are moments of joy even now?” She had to agree with them, but for her, joy — as a landmark for healing — was still so far off. We just sat and pondered the grief in that. It was her moment to be identified with; a necessary step in healing — to honour one’s truth. The pain of truth comes before healing.

***

The moment, a discernible moment, is known in the moment of healing. Something has changed. Something remarkable has happened. It happened and now there is the experience. Like trying on a new suit. We check it out for size, for fit, for comfort.

This is not to say that healing is about wholeness just yet, but the shoot has become visible from within the cracks in the pavement.

With hope finally emergent as a new shoot of growth from nowhere, we come to more fully expect more. Each day is lit with a peace that wholeness is on its way. Each day there is a heavenly rejoinder. We have been won to the hope we hoped for.

Our hope was vindicated, even though it seemed, very many times, that we were wasting our time and energy on an embarrassing hopelessness.

When hope comes through as healing, through comes the healing of hope.

When a miracle we did not believe for is experienced, healing becomes the witness for hope.

Nothing will engorge faith like the vindication of hope.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.