You can heal, and you will heal

Tell me, when you cut your leg, or bruise your arm, do you have to think about your skin coming together, the swelling and the blood normalising, for those wounds to heal?

You don't, do you?

Healing is part of what you were designed to do.
It is not alien to your body, or soul, or spirit.

The truth is you were made to heal, you can heal, and you will heal. The biggest thing in your way is yourself.

It's our ideas and assumptions and expectations of what healing is like and how it will happen and what will be its result, that keeps us from doing the work.

Because the truth is, healing will take you somewhere new. It won't look like it used to. It won't feel like it used to. It won't be like it used to. But don't be afraid, this is not bad news. God always said that God would make all things new*, and healing is one of the ways this newness comes about.

Instead of trying to control the method and the outcome, surrender to the way healing outworks its wonder in your life. Let go. Relax into it. Choose it, but don't bully it. Resist bossing it around, telling it how and when and in what ways it needs to work.

And I need to say, because I know that some of you, like me, have experienced in your own body, or in the bodies of those we love, where physical healing may not have taken place, and things ended the opposite way you hoped and planned and needed them to.

Take a breath. Hold space for that grief and pain and sorrow in your heart. There is no script for certainty. That is not what I'm talking about here. Ultimate healing is a matter of the heart. Sometimes our bodies heal, sometimes they don't, and sometimes after we heal, we look different, see different, feel different, believe different.

But always, healing is ours, if we choose it.

Cheryl Strayed said:

"The place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. It's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it."

I know that's a hard thing to read when you're on the bitter end of things that have happened to you, or that you have done, and you feel powerless to change any of it. But trust me when I say that this is the beginning of whatever is beyond this. This is where the rest of your life begins.

At the heart of it all, healing begins with forgiveness.

Desmond Tutu said:

"It doesn't matter whether you are having trouble moving forward from the wrongs that were done to you, or whether you need the courage to admit the wrongs you have done. Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts."

Starting with your own.

If you were designed to heal, then you were created with the capacity for forgiveness. And that's across the board - whether its forgiveness for yourself, for the unexpected, for someone else, or simply for the way things are.

Forgiveness is not letting people or situations, or even physical illnesses, or mistakes that you've made off the hook - it doesn't nullify or cancel out any of that; it doesn't dumb down the impact. You are not responsible for the trauma that has been perpetrated against you, AND healing is within your reach.

If some of the pain you're in right now can be traced back to you, dear friend, this pain is not your enemy, or your punishment, or your shame to bear. It is your teacher. And healing is still, and always, within your reach.

The truth is, forgiveness is how healing begins.
Forgiveness is the birthplace of miracles.

(This post is an excerpt from The Practice Co App series called "Things That Are True", available to download for iOS and Android! It includes daily devotionals, FREE Mindful Prompt notifications (no subscription needed), phone wallpapers and more. Start with a free trial or subscribe to get access to each new series as they come out.)

Mindful Prompt: Forget about healing yourself, and just let yourself heal. Surrender to the wild power of forgiveness. You were created to heal. Your healing will take you somewhere new, somewhere whole, somewhere where your trauma and your healing integrate to create wisdom and peace. This is how you heal the world, by committing to your own recovery.

Written by Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco