The Art of Healing

   

   
     When I was a little girl, I could never quite understand why doctors couldn't just repair broken bodies. I would hear stories of people whose bodies were injured in car accidents or by illness and I would wonder, 'Why can't they just sew up that heart or lung? Why can't they just put that broken piece back into place and things should work just fine?' I was always questioning in my immature mind and wondering things that most adult people understand fully. I had no medical training and no way of understanding things that were just too big for me to try to understand. I wanted things fixed and healed. I couldn't understand why doctors couldn't just return broken bodies to their original state with all the medical technology known to man. In some instances we were able to do miraculous things like put men on the moon or take photographs of things that were completely out of this world. We could clone animals and skydive and put planes in the air and submarines in the water...how complicated could it really be to sew up a body? I was so naive. The art of healing was something much bigger and complex than I could have imagined in the smallness of my frame and the childlike mindset I worked from. The art of healing would take time for me to understand and it would take growth, experience, and life to teach me of these complexities. And even now, as I type, there is a plethora of things I do not understand. Rest assured, though, I do understand a great deal more than I did as an eight year old. Perhaps life really has taught me a thing or two about the art of healing in more ways than one. It truly is an art, I think.

     As I sit, soaking up the sun, I am reminded of so many ways that our bodies just cannot be healed. For me, it's Lyme disease, for others it's cancer or paralysis. Others experience blindness or developmental delays. These things cannot always be healed. Still, others, experience broken bones like arms or legs or ribs. They will heal, but it will take some time. Healing, if possible will take months of casts, medication, physical therapy, and sometimes even surgery, but in these instances where healing is possible, we hold onto the hope that a broken arm will function well again or a broken leg will be able to sustain the weight of walking once more and probably will function close to its optimal functioning before the injury occurred. Close enough, right? It's easy for me to ponder how resilient the human body is. We can fix things. Most physical issues will take time to heal, but they will heal. I wonder, though, can we learn something from this physical process of healing? Is there something more here that teaches us about life and healing?

     If I close my eyes and think about the last year, I am reminded that my last several years of life have consisted of many difficult circumstances. Things that have shaped me, molded me...changed me. I've been injured in more ways than one. My physical body has gone through hell and back again as it attempts to fight disease. I've had my fair share of doctor's visits and have understood that not all physical things can be healed and return back to normal functioning. My body has experienced new ways of needing to compensate each time I find myself dealing with the effects of Lyme, again, and each 'remission' looks totally different from the last. I have needed to understand that my body will never be the same, and that's okay. However, when I look back on even the last year, I recognize that I have gone through a lot of very difficult things. I don't need to spell it all out in a blog, but my bet is that some of you reading have experienced some pain as well. Many of us find ourselves in the midst of painful chaos, not knowing how to move on or how to find healing. I know I have and most days I find myself still crawling out of the rubble of the last year or even several years. It's as if we've been emotionally or spiritually crippled and it seems as though it takes as long as the physical trauma we've suffered, if not longer, to find 'normal' again.

     The art of healing, both physically and emotionally, is a long road sometimes. Things happen to us and in us that make our invisible suffering as painful or more painful than that of a broken limb and somehow, when people go through deep emotional suffering, those of us on the outside forget how difficult it can be to put one foot in front of the other. We see people all around us, hurting, suffering, limping along so to speak, and we give them a few weeks to snap back to normal functioning, forgetting that suffering takes time. Suffering, just like a broken limb or a diseased body, is an inconvenience but a broken limb is easy to see and understand. I don't think this is always so with internal suffering. As I ponder my suffering over the last year, I am reminded that just as my diseased body needs more rest than when I am in remission, so does my bruised heart. Just as I need to do physical therapy to rehabilitate after surgery, I may need to do some heart therapy to rehabilitate a broken or bruised heart. Just as I need to be patient with the healing process of my broken body, I also need to be patient with the healing process of my soul.

     I wonder, can a broken bone ever completely return to its original state? I'm not sure it can. It's those rainy days that cause a broken and now healed bone to ache or the overuse of a bone that has healed but is not quite as strong as it used to be. I wonder if this is true of a broken heart or a bruised soul. In times that I have walked through the darkest of valleys, it has taken time to heal, but it is a continuous process, I think. Even years later, when a once wounded part of my heart is pushed on too much or exposed to the things that have once wounded it deeply, my heart can easily begin to ache again. Things that I will carry with me for life...moments of pain, loss, loneliness...suffering; these things are always with me long after healing has happened. There are some things that linger on for a lifetime; things that cause us to make a daily decision to face and find more healing. Like a broken bone, a broken heart will heal, but the scar tissue is always present.

     As I reflect on this last year of life, I am continually changing and finding a new normal. Who I was yesterday is not who I am today. As I grow and heal, I am different. next month I will be different from last month because over and over again, I am being healed. The art of healing is recognizing that each day of healing looks different. The art of healing is understanding that as I heal I must find a new 'normal' and I can never return to the person I had been before the breaking of my heart or the bruising of this life. Suffering changes us, whether physical or internal. The process of healing will take place, but sometimes the art of healing is a lifetime of changing and a life time of discovering all over again who we are in the midst of trauma and pain.