time

Coming back to the thoughts about healing as a process, there is one more issue that is involved, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a gate or an obstacle to the process. It is more of a factor of the environment of healing.

Time.

You know the old saying: “Time heals all wounds.” And yes, there is truth in that statement, but what of those many people who have allowed the many years come and go and they are still as wounded as the day they were hurt? Mostly, I believe, it is because they’ve sat down by the gate of unforgiveness and they’ve never release the person who wounded them. So, let us return to time.

Recently I had a minor medical procedure done, and it got me thinking about “recovery times.” (If you must know, let’s just say there are not going to be anymore “little pj’s” in my future. ‘Nuff said. J ) Anyway. Recovery times are different according to the degree of the wound, and the source or place of the injury. My procedure required rest for a weekend, but friends of mine are recuperating from procedures that require six weeks or more of simply “recovery time,” before they can even begin to return to their normal schedule.

Like we read in the article by Os Hillman that I posted earlier, we need to take the time to heal. But during that time there are different things that happen. Whenever you’re dealing with a wound, whether expected or unexpected, your attention comes to the hurt, the pain. In the physical, your body refuses to allow you to forget that something has changed in it. In the spiritual/emotional, the pain we feel may come out in different avenues, through anger or fear, depression, etc. We must be alert to these signs our soul is trying to communicate to us its pain. We must give attention to it. Stuffing our pain won’t make it go away. In fact, just like in the natural, if we ignore pain, it will cause us more trouble later. In pain, we also protect ourselves. We cover the wounds and keep others from touching or bumping into us. We pamper ourselves to make us feel a bit better about the situation. But health does come and we cannot stay in that position forever!

The good news is that as we recover, as we walk through the gates and the process of our healings, we find that our attention is no longer needed to those areas of pain. It slowly returns to the things that matter outside of us. There is a place for paying attention to our own needs when we’re going through pain and healing. It’s important. It’s okay to focus on what we need at that time. But we can’t live there. Our focus cannot be forever on ourselves and time helps us to do that. The question will be w when time finally passes us a good report of health, whether or not we will allow ourselves to let go of the habits of self-protection that we developed during the healing process. Will we acknowledge that it’s time to look away from our painful past and lift our focus to others and the future, no matter what the risk of future pain may be? If you are in the process, take the time, allow the healing to come, but know that there will come a “time” when it will be your turn to move forward into the future health of spirit and life!