“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” a heartbroken person recently said to a friend of mine.
When I heard that, a new thought came to mind: “Time doesn’t heal any wound.”
It’s our choices that define what happens to our wounds.
Over time, a wound can fester and become bitterness and emotional gangrene.
Or, with work, it can heal.
Time is not the agent of healing. It is simply the space in which the choices we make grow, to create an outcome.
When wounds are fresh, our feelings may be intense. Expressing our emotions doesn’t mean we wallow or allow ourselves to sin. But we resist the temptation to put a pleasant face on our situation and ignore the bad. We allow ourselves to acknowledge and process our natural emotions without denying our humanity.
With time, if we choose not to obsess over heartbreak past the point when it’s healthy, our wounds may dim to become scars.
With time, we can learn how to heal from abuse and mistreatment.
But this takes a lot of work. It’s not something that passively happens. We must actively engage in our own healing, especially for deeper wounds, if we want healing to happen over time.
We may not have had a choice over what happened to us, but we have a choice now. It is a sacred gift God has given us.
Lord Jesus, today I bring my woundedness to You. I ask that You would enable me to have the strength and courage and perseverance to work through the repercussions of these wounds and come to the other side, to experience your healing and victory even in the midst of pain and suffering. As the Psalms say, "Whom have I in heaven, but Thee? And besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." (Psalm 73:25–26) Please strengthen my heart. Please nourish me. Please bring me back to a sense of Your abundant life. In the strong and powerful name of Jesus we pray, amen.
