Fully Healed

Walking through life as an abuse survivor and walking into healing is an all-encompassing journey.  So often most people have no idea what you’re feeling or even the way you hear comments because those who are abused hear things through a filter.  Unfortunately, that filter is all the horrible things their abusers have told them through the years that just aren’t true.  But just because they aren’t true, it doesn’t mean that we don’t believe them.  When something is said to you over and over, you really consider if it’s true and you’re never quite sure if it is or isn’t until it is fully thought and prayed through over time.  Worse yet, is that critical internal dialogue is also running rampant through our brains.  Even with all this chaos in our brains, there is a desire, I believe, in each of us, to be fully healed from the wounds of the abuse and hurt.

The worse part about this, though is that the idea of ever being fully healed and not bound by the words and actions of those who didn’t show love to me, feels like a magical, mythical place somewhere far into the future.  Something like the land of Oz.  It looks beautiful and perfect from a distance, but once you actually start to walk to and through it, you find, like Dorothy, that you may be in what appears to be paradise, but you still carried so much of the pain and confusion with you.

I want so much to reach that place of euphoria when I am fully healed from all the abuse.  If I’m being honest, though, a part of me wonders if that is even possible.  I guess what I really think is that the scars will always be there, but that they will eventually only be a remembrance of what was and that the truth of who we are will be so deeply entrenched in us that those remembrances only serve to remind us of God’s healing power and love.  I think they also will help serve to remind us how precious each life is and to not treat anyone as if they were less than.

As I’ve written about in several of my posts lately, I am struggling with nightmares again. Unfortunately, some of them are starting to take a turn to really scary stuff and I’m not sure why.  I said in one post that God told me that these nightmares would be with me for awhile, but I know that doesn’t mean that He is giving me the nightmares.  It means that God is allowing them.  Everything that happens in life is sifted through His hands first and, since He loves us enough to not make us robots, He gives us all freewill to choose our paths, whether to follow Him or not.  With that gift comes a lot of destruction, because there is evil in the world and there is sin, people are hurt, killed, abused and have many other horrible things done to them.  But for those who love Him, He will work all of these things for good.

So, I don’t hold on to the mythical Oz.  Instead, I hold on to the knowledge that God is healing me and giving me the resources to fight for freedom.  It’s hard work, but I know, in the end, I will be fully healed.  If not in this world, in Heaven with Him.  This is the same promise He gives to all of us who call Him Lord and it’s available to everyone alive.

~ Joanna Lynn