67: When Healing Is Deeper Than Becoming Stronger

For much of my life, I understood faith through the language of strength.

Stand firm.

Believe.

Do not give up.

Trust that God has a better plan.

See challenges as opportunities to grow.

There is truth in all of this. Difficult experiences can strengthen us. Faith can give us courage to continue when circumstances seem impossible.

But I am beginning to realize that there may be another kind of faith for the deepest seasons of life.

Sometimes the pain is too deep to transform immediately into growth.

Sometimes we do not understand what is happening.

Sometimes there is no action that can repair what has been lost.

And in those moments, even the encouragement to “be strong” can become another burden.

We begin to feel that we must suffer well.

We must remain positive.

We must discover the lesson.

We must demonstrate strong faith.

Pain enters our life, and we expect ourselves to somehow convert it into growth.

But perhaps true healing sometimes begins when we stop requiring our suffering to become useful.

The story of Job speaks differently to me when I think about this.

Job loses almost everything that normally gives a person security. His friends try to explain why it happened. They search for reasons, causes, and answers.

But Job does something much more human.

He grieves.

He questions.

He becomes angry.

He sits in the ashes.

Eventually, the story does not give him the kind of explanation he was seeking.

Instead, Job encounters God.

Perhaps there are moments when explanation is not what our heart needs most.

Perhaps it needs presence.

I sometimes imagine standing before God and slowly removing the garments I normally wear.

The garment of achievement.

The garment of competence.

The garment of discipline.

The garment of optimism.

Even the garment of being someone with strong faith.

Underneath all of them is simply myself.

Nothing to prove.

Nothing to accomplish.

Nothing to explain.

I can simply say:

God, I am here.

Maybe I am disappointed.

Maybe I am angry.

Maybe I am frightened.

Maybe I do not understand.

And then perhaps there is nothing more to say.

Silence.

This is very different from the faith I practiced while building my life.

That faith often gave me strength to move forward.

This faith asks me to stop moving for a moment.

To allow.

To receive.

To grieve.

To be present.

Perhaps this is the difference between recovery and healing.

Recovery often asks:

How can I return to where I was?

Deep healing asks something quieter:

Can I allow what happened to become part of my story without allowing it to define my life?

That process cannot be forced.

There is no timetable.

There may be days of peace followed by days when the pain suddenly returns.

Perhaps that does not mean healing has failed.

Perhaps healing is happening somewhere deeper than our emotions can immediately recognize.

I am learning that there are moments when faith does not mean holding tightly onto God.

It means opening my hands completely.

No explanation.

No achievement.

No spiritual performance.

Just presence.

And perhaps, when everything else has been removed, we discover something we could not discover while trying so hard to remain strong:

We do not have to hold everything together in order to be held by God.