Healing without Understanding

Any good pastor will speak to God's redemptive qualities and God's power to heal and to reconcile.

This is good, because we all need healing, reconciliation and redemption--especially me.

But I'm wondering if in matters of the heart and spirit we could have been healed and yet still FEEL wounded? How do our spirit, mind, emotions and heart interact?

It's reported that the critically wounded often report phantom pain. A person who has lost his legs may feel an agonizing ache long after the wounds from amputation surgery have closed (and long after his legs have ever been around). While this person's loss is real his injuries have healed. And yet the mind and emotions continue to respond to a pain that--for all practical purposes--isn't real.

Even in minor cases we can favor an injury long after it is necessary. After I had broken my arm in high-school I went years before I could comfortably carry a suitcase with that hand. Though the doctors assured me the bones were strong I could always envision the fissure splitting again; and imagining even the possibility of re-injury made me cringe (still does). It was easier to just carry my bags with my left hand and not have to even worry about it.

And so today, in deep spiritual realms, I struggle with these notions of pain, injury and healing. I believe in a healer-God. I find it hard to believe that I am as wounded as I still feel. Perhaps God and time have indeed been faithful and yet I still cling to the memory of those painful injured legs? Perhaps I continue to protect myself from activities that would not in fact be threatening?

I do not know.

"Life IS pain, Buttercup. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

It's no wonder we often want to go hide.

May God continue daily to set us free, to lead us to places where we live faithfully and wholly. May I learn to look forward instead of continuing to reflect backward.

I have been healed (indeed). May I feel so...