Learning patience is hard.
Praying for patience is one of the few areas we shy away from in our prayer life. Patience in general is difficult, but I have found patience in healing to be especially challenging.
“Ouch!” I shrieked as I jerked my arm away from the grill lid. As my husband and I chatted, I reached over to put the long metal tongs back on the side table. His position made me change how I normally reach across the grill, leading me to unintentionally sear the bare flesh of my forearm. The large spot was instantly bright red, and pain pulsed at the site of the injury. It quickly became clear I had burned my arm pretty badly, to the point where I probably should have sought medical attention. Two weeks later, my forearm was still a semi-open wound. Now, months later, I have a gnarly scar that will take years to fade.
Wounds heal from the inside out.
The deepest layers of my skin started to heal first. From the outside, the signs of healing were slow in appearing. The same is true of our hearts. The deepest parts of us always start to heal first. It can take time to see the results of deep, internal healing, on the outside. We might “scab over”, no longer displaying overt signs of grief or heartache, but to be truly at peace, have joy or find freedom from the pain is a longer process.
Healing of all kinds takes time.
When we try to rush the healing process we often end up making the situation worse for ourselves rather than better. Trying to walk on a sprained ankle too early can add weeks of required rest before trying to walk on it again. Insisting the heart can handle something it is not yet ready for can also delay the healing process. Requiring ourselves to “just get over it” when we are still recovering from being emotionally hurt can lead to resentment, revisiting the hurt, and possibly even deepening it.
We need time to heal.
Paul instructs the church in Rome to wait patiently on God, hoping in what they cannot yet see (Romans 8:24-25). Sometimes a full and complete healing of the heart is not something we can even imagine. The wounds can be so deep we just don’t see how they could ever be mended. But God promises that in Him, healing is possible. 1 Peter 2:24 tells us, “By his stripes we are healed.” Jesus made a way for all kinds of healing with his work on the cross. This healing might not arrive in our desired timing, but it will come.
Just as we need to be patient with ourselves in the healing process, we also need to be patient with others.
Everyone heals in his/her own time. God is doing the work of healing in someone else in His own way and time, which is as unique and specific as the individual. We have to trust that God will bring that person to a place of healing and we must be patient in the process.
One more idea to remember is that in healing there are often setbacks.
I accidentally scraped the burn on my arm multiple times, causing it to open up and bleed. The newly raw areas had to scab over again. This extended the healing time of my burn. In the same way, circumstances can happen in life that cause the partially healed wounds of our hearts to be ripped open and for the healing process to start over again.
Patience is key in the journey of healing.
What is something you are healing from right now? Are you rushing your body, mind, or spirit to heal faster than it actually can? Is there someone in your life that you wish would just hurry up and get over it already? As you think through these questions, remember the first way God described love is that it is patient (I Corinthians 13:4). If God loves us and is therefore patient with us, we need to be patient with ourselves and with others, especially in the process of healing.
