When Healing Takes Too Long

My mind had wandered. I knew it, but I thought I could control my thoughts. I was wrong. It sucked me back in and replayed in my mind, this thing that had impacted me so.  I tried in vain to remind myself that  that I was safe, I was sitting in science class, and everything was fine.

By the time I made it outside I could barely breathe for the panic, but when I took a deep breath of the late spring air, it did a lot to revive me, and I focused on my breathing the whole way to my counselors office, glancing around as I always did, for some reason paranoid that someone I knew would see me. Not a lot of people knew I was in counseling, or that this thing had impacted me so much. But it had, and I felt trapped.

I talked to my counselor and after my appointment with her, I bought lunch and took it outside with me. I took deep breaths of the fresh air and felt myself relax. Still, I couldn't let go of the feeling that it was taking me too long to heal from this.

"It'll take time." People kept saying that to me, but they never mentioned how much time it would take or where the fast forward button was. When you're hurting and healing, people always mention time, but never how much.

Healing takes a lot longer than you anticipate sometimes. And thats okay, because when you take time to process things, you can process them in a way that recognizes that God works all for the good for those who love him and are called according to His purpose, (Romans 8:28)

When I was healing, I couldn't write like I usually did to process things. I didn't have my catharsis. So I had to find a new one.
Drawing and quotes became my new catharsis, my new release. During my time of healing that seemed too long, I did a lot of drawing. and I did a lot of praying. A little crying, to be honest. I couldn't focus on much while I was healing, so I had a lot of time to just talk to God and try to process it all.

And it took a long time. A long time. a lot of tears. A lot of recited bible verses. A lot of talking to friends and a lot of phone calls to family, but my God is faithful, and even when healing takes a long time, He uses this time to grow us, in ways we couldn't possibly have fortold.

I don't know how many tomorrows healing takes, 

But I do know who holds my tomorrows. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I will live for my child

 “I would die for my child.” A well-known, often said sacrificial statement. I didn’t really know how my fierce love for my child would manifest until the first time she was extremely upset and I didn’t know why.  Readers, I would have cut off a finger to console my baby.  I would die to protect her.  Both are strong, love-filled sentiments. And both, God willing, are unnecessary.  But there’s a daunting task that is absolutely necessary. At times it needs to be a conscious decision. Sometimes it’ll require taking care of yourself so that you can better care for your child. Sometimes, for some, it will literally seem harder to do than to die for your child.  It’s living for your child.  Postpartum depression can sneak up on anyone, and I’ve heard heartbreaking stories of just how deeply it affects moms. Good moms. Awesome moms It’s too early to tell for me, but unfortunately, I have almost every risk factor there is. But I also have a rocking support system and wonderful physicians loo
Read more

The Immersion Method

Several things occur to me when I think about the method I'm using to learn French. The first-I'm never going to succeed. The second-I think I've heard of this before.  The method I'm talking about is the Immersion method, meaning that you basically 'immerse' yourself in the language, surrounding yourself with almost exclusively that language, and you learn out of necessity. This is the same way that children learn their first language, by doing. It  sounded promising, so I decided to give it a shot. I switched my facebook page to french. Bold move, yes, but desperate times call for desperate measures. In addition, I found french episodes of my favorite cartoons ever in the history of the world-courtesy of the wonder known as youtube, of course.  In order to learn a language by the immersion method, you almost have to forget about thinking about anything else and only focus on the language.  This reminded me of Christianity. Why? well, think about it. In
Read more

What shoddy internet can teach us about multitasking

       I've been spoiled for the past several years by lightning-fast internet whenever I wanted it. Even in my parents' basement, (I am a true millennial, after all), service was somewhat spotty, but overall reliable and I was usually able to do whatever I needed or wanted to do on the internet, whenever I wanted to do it.       And then we moved to the boonies. No more lightning-fast internet. No mas. Now are internet needs are served by cellular hotspots eeking out a surfable speed from one MAYBE two bars of service.       It's usable, certainly, but I had to learn to go back to the days of dial-up internet (told you I was a millennial), when you could only do ONE thing on the internet at a time. You couldn't even be on the phone! pictures took forever to load, and playing music was nigh impossible.       This situation is an improvement, but I still had to train myself to remember that no, I actually *don't* need to be playing music while I write, surf the inter
Read more