It’s important to understand that healing involves more than the wound. A wound can usually get better; and most pain will eventually subside. Situations resolve, and life goes on. But the need for healing remains. Why?

The need for healing remains because of what happens to us when we are harmed. Perhaps you are critically injured in a car accident. After surgeries and painkillers and then weeks in rehabilitation, you get your life back. Only it’s not the life you had before. The life you return to has absorbed a whole new realm of fear and helplessness. The weeks of dealing with pain have changed the way you operate from day to day. The recurring memories of the crash have formed new, disturbing patterns inside you. Long after the scars fade, you will need healing.

We are shaped by what happens to us. Every wound—the death of a loved one, a lost friendship, a long illness, a disruption due to change in job or income, a dashed dream—each event and emotional season works on us at every level. If we do not allow God to infuse every day with fresh faith, life can devolve into a misshapen and fearful existence. If we do not cultivate trust in God’s constant care and the Holy Spirit’s ability to renew us constantly, our lives might become mere long memories of hurt and disappointment. If we do not walk with the compassionate Jesus, inviting his friendship to strengthen our hearts and minds, we could easily become more defined by our wounds than by our gifts.

It’s quite common to hear someone say, “Oh, I’m over it,” when referring to a difficult situation she’s come through. “I’m moving on now, but thanks for asking.” Our culture is so focused on action and productivity that we feel an obligation to recover quickly from whatever has hurt or discouraged us. But if we get quiet and sit with our deeper wisdom, we become aware of how profoundly we’ve been affected by events. We may need to cry or take a walk or stare absently out the window.

When we come to such a moment, it’s time to pray. It’s time to ask God for the healing that can reshape what the hurt distorted. I confess that ever since the accident I am much more fearful of driving. You admit that since that horrible break-up you have shut out nearly every person who’s tried to get close to you. We are living out patterns that owe their power to bad memories. God means for us to live out patterns energized by hopefulness and peace.

The exercise for the week is based on Lyn’s chapter, “Hoarding Our Gifts” (available at right and here).

Does being wounded block your service to others or your ability to receive God’s gifts in any way? If so, describe how it does.

Set aside time this week to be quiet and in prayer. If necessary, do this with your spiritual companion. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the patterns in your life that indicate a need for continued healing.

To learn more about Lyn Doucet, author of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius, or explore additional healing resources, click on the tabs at the top of the page.

To take advantage of special savings on this month’s book, use the discount code at right.

Related posts:

1. God in the Wounds
2. The Past We Cannot Change

I can honestly say that both my parents loved me very much when I was growing up. I can also say that both my parents wounded me when I was growing up. When you put people together in a life, imperfection happens. We hurt one another in ignorance, through thoughtless mistakes, out of our own blind spots and imbalances, and during moments of weakness. We may have the best intentions; then again, anger and insecurity might inspire us to scheme and hurt another on purpose. In addition to all of that, we are living together at different ages and stages. And so the parent, who is wrestling with career problems, does not notice the teenager’s subtle cries for help. Or the child, who heard only snatches of a conversation, interprets those phrases in the worst possible way, and never thinks to ask the adults for clarification.

Years later, we can still remember the day no one listened or helped, and our minds carry echoes of cruel words and cold silences. As adults, perhaps we better understand why such things were said. We have the ability to look back on events and see them from more than the perspective of a six-year-old. But understanding does not automatically result in the healing of old hurts; sometimes the hurt makes no rational sense. Surely I should be over this little incident by now—why, that was thirty years ago!

Ultimately, wounds reside in the spirit, in the deepest part of us. That’s why God must do the ultimate healing. The Holy Spirit can apply grace down through the layers of memory and emotional habit. The wisdom of Jesus can open our eyes to a scene that is larger and more complex than the one we tend to remember on our own. We cannot change the past, but we can invite Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit to revisit the past with us.

It’s important to remember that with God everything is present-tense. We live in time and space, but spiritual reality is not limited by those dimensions. It is possible for God to heal, in this present moment, something that happened decades ago. It is possible for you and me to remember the past but with a mind that has been renewed by Jesus, a mind capable of grasping that memory now in a different way.

“I Was an Invisible Child”—this week’s story from Lyn Doucet’s book (available at right and here)—provides a wonderful example of God healing a wound from the distant past. I hope you take courage from this and begin to re-remember the moments of your childhood that still cause you pain. Ask Jesus to go back there with you.

If you are facing traumatic memories, you might need to make this journey with a counselor or therapist. Modern psychology is one of God’s many gifts to us; another tremendous gift is the right person to listen to you and accompany you on what could be a frightening journey.

Our prayers go with you during this time of healing and hope.

Our exercise this week incorporates some of Lyn’s questions from “I Was an Invisible Child.”

What were the most trying circumstances of your childhood?

In what ways was God present in your childhood?

When you were a child, was there a special place or a particular activity that was a real retreat for you? Can you revisit a similar place or activity now?
To learn more about Lyn Doucet, author of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius, or explore additional healing resources, click on the tabs at the top of the page.

To take advantage of special savings on this month’s book, use the discount code at right.

Related posts:

1. Illness and the Spiritual Life
2. The D Word
3. Finding God in Our Past

One of the most difficult aspects of physical illness is that you can never escape your body. If pain revolves around a relationship, sometimes you can at least get away from that person; if it revolves around a bad memory, you can simply put that memory out of your mind. But if you’re battling cancer or kidney disease or a degenerative illness such as multiple sclerosis, you are living right on the battlefield, so to speak.

Your body itself can get in the way of merely living. Emotionally, you may be having a good day, but sheer fatigue prevents your visiting with a friend. Your faith might be strong and your gratitude growing, but it’s hard to tell for sure, because the illness (or medication for it) has messed up your brain chemistry, triggering confusion, depression, or irritability. When the body is sick, we are more aware than ever of our complete vulnerability.

How to relate to God at such a time? How to pray when staying alert—or even awake—can be a huge challenge? What to do when the body that is me is also the location of great pain and disorientation?

God probably expects me to cry out, as the psalmist did when suffering torments of every kind—sleepless nights, pain deep in the bone, loss of hope, intense fear. My only prayer might consist of moans and groans with a “please” thrown in. Can I even find the words for what this illness feels like? Can I trust my pain-fogged mind to put together a cohesive request? All I can do is be here.

If I follow the example of the psalmist, I will bring to mind God’s help in the past. This requires discipline, and sometimes it helps to have a friend along to aid in this practice of remembrance. Many of the psalms begin with cries of complaint and lament, only to move into remembrance of God’s care. By the end, the psalmist proclaims hope that God will again hear prayer and answer.

It’s not easy to find community when physically ill. Sometimes the situation requires isolation; at other times, people are hesitant to be in the presence of a situation they cannot fix. Our culture does not prepare us to be with people who suffer. It takes faith to sit with someone we cannot help in any tangible way. Perhaps we can help with a practical task or two, but faith allows us to be with the person while placing the burden for healing upon God.

If there is anything to gain from physical illness, it’s probably the sheer practice of living in the moment, of learning gratitude for every breath, movement, and conversation. When we are ill, we do not make grand plans; we are humbled down to getting through an afternoon or an hour. In this state, maybe we can recognize life in God that is outside of time and activity. Maybe we can grow into a quietness of spirit that does not rely on achievement for its sense of satisfaction.

Then, when healing comes in whatever form, we return to ordinary life, but we will never feel ordinary again.

Here are some questions from this week’s chapter of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius.
Read the chapter “Talking with Roberta about Breast Cancer” available at right and here:

Are you or is someone close to you suffering from cancer or another life-threatening illness? If so, how have you dealt with the suffering? How have you tried to make sense of it—or have you not tried to make sense of it yet?

What situations, if any, are beyond your own fixing? How could you abandon these situations to God’s care?

To learn more about Lyn Doucet, author of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius, or explore additional healing resources, click on the tabs at the top of the page.

To take advantage of special savings on this month’s book, use the discount code at right.

Related posts:

1. The D Word
2. The Past We Cannot Change
3. Spiritual Healing

I think it’s safe to say that society as a whole is plagued by a certain cynicism when it comes to topics such as faithfulness and commitment. Thus the breakup of marriage unions sets the tone in which all of us live, regardless of our personal beliefs, behavior, or situations. Even if your own marriage is strong, all around you relationships crumble and you must deal with the fall-out of divorce among friends, colleagues, extended family, even community leaders. Divorce is everybody’s problem.

As Christians, we practice mercy. We portray to the world God’s endless forgiveness. This means that we must welcome and love people no matter what their situations. As much as we’d like divorce not to exist in our faith communities, it does, and it’s our responsibility to show hospitality to those wounded by broken relationships. People find healing only when there is a safe place in which to heal. A safe place comes to exist in the presence of understanding, empathy, and hope. We create a safe place when we help a person imagine life beyond divorce and when we open our lives to her healing process.

As Christians, we also practice truthfulness. We have the courage and freedom to see reality for what it is. This means that when a husband has betrayed his wife, or vice-versa, we call it betrayal, and we help the one betrayed call it that. A person does not find healing by denying how bad things are or by forcing herself to “just have more faith.” She admits that she has been harmed deeply, and she brings to God her hurt, anger, confusion, and all the rest.

Even when divorce does not involve infidelity, the damage is pervasive. We must find language for how we feel and for how life has changed. Also, we must identify how this change has disappointed our long-held dreams and goals. If we have children, we must help them navigate their distinctive set of changes, hurts, and disappointments.

I like that Rebecca, the woman in this week’s story (”A Healing after Divorces” available at right and here.), found help in something as simple as gratitude. It does seem that gratitude will not share space with bitterness. If a person can begin a practice of gratitude for small, daily things, that gratitude will soon extend to the larger picture of her life. When we walk with her through a healing process, one thing we can offer is a sense of celebration—for every small triumph or move forward. Maybe we help her repaint the bedroom—and then invite a few people over for dessert. Maybe she gets through her first day without crying—so we congratulate her and mark the calendar with a symbol representing this noteworthy event.

If people of faith do not confront divorce with honesty and hope, what do we really have to offer our neighbor? If we do not face divorce in our own lives, uncovering the pain and developing gratitude, this tragedy will remain with us even as we try to relate to God—like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one dares mention.

Exercises:

Draw your family tree. Be sure to include the divorces and remarriages as well as the births, deaths, and original marriages. Take a highlighter and mark every branch of the tree affected by divorce. Then write out a prayer for this entire family of yours—a prayer for continued healing and also a prayer of thanksgiving for the love that has survived through so many changes.

To learn more about Lyn Doucet, author of A Healing Walk with St. Ignatius, or explore additional healing resources, click on the tabs at the top of the page.

Related posts:

1. Illness and the Spiritual Life
2. The Past We Cannot Change
3. Shaped by Our Wounds

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Related posts:

1. Illness and the Spiritual Life