My teenage son is going through hard things. I’ve been watching old videos of him in his toddler years. I need connection. To remember that little boy when things were simpler between us. I want to protect him and shield him from hurt and pain. But I cannot. He has his own path to walk with his savior. A path that is not mine to navigate.
But I see that his need for deep healing is connected to my own. And my desire for him to find it increases my own understanding of my need for it. The need to show him through my own life that it’s possible.
This is how I love him best. By passing on to him a legacy of hope in the hard things. In the healing.
I go there with him by going there first myself.
Honesty. Authenticity. Vulnerability. Transparency. This is the stuff of healing.
With God.
With ourselves.
With each other.
Real. Healing. Raw and organic. Tucked away in boundless courage which can only come to us through the cross and be realized in our submission to it.
It’s where I am today.
A time exists– as it has for me in my own journey– when we as believers cannot be in this place. Not yet. There is more work to be done. An inner change that has not yet blossomed into visual splendor. But wait. He is working still. And when we are ready– when we are in this new place, not only in our minds but in our hearts. When without hesitation we have chosen our destination and decided to not look back. Then we are no longer bound to the things that once were. There is no time constraint. No hurrying. No what ifs.
But just to be here.
In this breathable place.
With him.
Each small step becomes a huge victory. And the steps backward which will surely happen are no longer death sentences. But simply roadblocks we face head on with the one who never lets go of our hand.
We are going somewhere else.
So what about the seasons when we are not yet ready? When our vision is fuzzy at best and our hearts cannot see past our pain?
What then?
We trust the process. However slow or incredulous it may seem. We wait on him. And we believe we are exactly where we are supposed to be, right here. Right now. Because he is always on time. He is simply never late. And neither are we.
The much bigger picture we miss in our performance-anxiety-ridden hearts is that the way there is often even more valuable than the destination because it teaches us two things which are the lifeline that connect us intimately to our savior.
Hope and trust. And do not miss this–
We cannot learn them on our own or without first desperately needing someone and something to hope and trust in. That means there is a time beforehand when we have the need but do not yet know it until we are so desperate in our wanderings that he becomes our only answer.
And he is our answer. He’s everything we need and all we could ever hope for. He put every deep need into our hearts that we have. Why? Because he knew he was the only one who could ever meet them. So it’s his gift to us to bring us back to him.
And that is the deepest healing of all.
