Why Don't We Heal Each Other

Why don’t we heal each other?  As my blog header says, I’m a failure.  While my failing has almost nothing to do with finances or position, the changes I’ve experienced are measurable in those ways.  I have less money and a lower position than I thought I would at 44.  I’m midlife, and typical midlife measurements say I am a failure.

I know, I know, it’ll get better, I shouldn’t worry, God is at work – and look at all the other failures I can minister to.  There is more to the story.  I’m not really being sarcastic.  At least within my sarcasm, I do acknowledge a different reality than what appears on the surface.  I get it.  It’s through the difficult times in life that we are humbled, learn to rely on God, grow in character, and stumble over the important truths we would never otherwise gain.  All that is most definitely true.  Seriously.

But that’s not what I’m asking.  When I ask “why don’t we heal each other?”  I’m asking a heart question, a relational question, a community question.  I believe all that good and true stuff in my head.  My brain runs that program.  But, sometimes it feels like a defense mechanism.  It’s like a mantra to protect me from dealing with the fact that failing hurts, even if I’ve failed at things that I’m better off not being a part of.  It leaves scars.  Doesn’t everybody know this?  Don’t most all of us wander around with wounds from our mistakes, betrayals and deep disappointments?  Don’t we all wish they would be acknowledged with gentleness and some kind of magical touch that would make the pain go away – or at least make it matter?

Talking about it helps.  It’s a big part of why there are so many (unread) blogs.  But it’s not enough.  There needs to be a deeper acknowledgement of our heart condition, time to travel through the awkwardness and humiliation to the wound that we can no longer help that its there.  It doesn’t really matter how it came.  Wounds are in every heart.  They need to be healed.

Don’t feel sorry for me.  I don’t need sympathy or pity.  All that stuff in the second paragraph is true.  And the reality is, you know whether you are a person that could speak into my life on a deep level.  If you can, we already have relationship or a strong hint of one.  You also know whose life you can speak into and who can speak into yours.  I’m suggesting that.  Something beyond words and normal, measurable human capacity needs to be applied.  I’m not sure what it is.  Jesus did it.  He made it possible for us.  I think we need to do what he did.  I sure do.  I’m not healed and I don’t know anyone who is.  I want to be and so does everyone else I know. 

That’s the proof.  Jesus has deposited something in us that needs to be utilized.