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A HEALING TIME – HOPE FOR THE HURTING

Stepping Stones Devotional

And with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

Healing comes in increments and through watershed moments. Healing often starts with a desire that says, I don’t want to live like this anymore. There is a pressing need for healing for those who have suffered intense loss, abuse, neglect, broken relationships, or an unwanted divorce.

Painful memories are an unwelcome burden that keeps on giving. We think we are doing fairly well until a crisis reduces us to tears or angst, again, which plunges the thoughts back into a cesspool of injured emotions.
What to do?

Pain can be submerged. Some do it for years. I was a master at it. I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know what it was. I was working faithfully at church and at keeping my marriage together. There had been some major upsets and struggles, but I carried on like a brave person. Then the bottom dropped out. I lost my job and my mate.

A rough year ensued which helped me figure it out, what was wrong with me. The problem over the years was, I never knew what to do with the pain, which, in time, caused a deadness within me. My strong spiritual bearing hid the pain. I had believed I was doing all the right things. That year of unemployment was pivotal. I had lots of time. God’s Word spoke to me. I listened and journaled.  I specifically asked God to heal my wounded emotions.

One day I was walking and praying when a memory began playing in my thoughts. It was painful. I was remembering the first time my mate said to me that he didn’t love me and was going to leave me, some twenty years earlier. Is this one of them? I asked God. Then I began to weep, the pain was alive. I wept so hard my heart hurt. The feelings resurfaced of feeling unloved and unwanted.

When my tears were spent, the thought came, by my stripes you are healed. I pictured Christ on the cross bearing my pain, hurting when I hurt. I thanked and praised him. Days later I noticed something was different in me, an absence, an emptiness. Then I knew. The inner pain and my sorrow were gone. Never again would I experience that silent pain of sad, suffering sorrow.
God answered my prayer.

Painful emotions on their own accord do not remove themselves from our psychological makeup. We must seek our own healing before we can access recovery or healing. Often there is confusion for the spiritually alive person–they may believe living a life of faith is enough. If that is the case, why does our internal pain still cause us internal anguish and emotional suffering?

The healing of damaged emotions comes through a process of understanding our pain, then taking steps to remediate its hold on us and its effects in our psyche and sense of well-being. Healing also comes through an earnest seeking of God as the ultimate remedy and solution to what ails us.

Dear Father God, for my many sisters and brothers who suffer in silence,

I ask you to touch their wounded souls and give them peace.

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