Need a band-aid?

If you know me well, one of the things you can most likely recall is that I love Archangel Raphael. Like, a lot. On his feast day, I wrote about him. One of my favorite things that he is a patron of - HEALING.

My entire life, this has been something prominent, whether I knew it or not. Now, please do not misunderstand me with this - I cannot lay my hands on anyone and heal them. Trust me, I've tried. Seriously. I mean, if God chose to do that through me, that'd be great. But so far, that's never happened.

Sidebar:
When I was about 20, I was in Chicago and this man (I forget his name, but he left an impression on me) prayed with me and said that God wanted to give me the gift of healing. I thought he was weird, but wanted to put it to the test. (I'm bullheaded and was very cocky at this point in my life.) So I went to a friend's side who was very sick, laid my hands on him and prayed that God would heal him. I thought I'd see light shoot out of my hands, fill his whole being, and then he would sit up and being leaping and bounding around the room singing praises like David.
That didn't happen.
He did get better, in like a week. I decided that I had nothing to do with it and didn't think about "healing" for a couple years.

Needless to say, healing has been a huge part of my life. I've studied it...mostly in the realm of psychology, knowing that a lot of healing is needed in our world and in the hearts and minds of people. Healing isn't just in the miraculous though. Yes, God's miraculous healings are amazing. People being cured of cancer, being able to walk, see, speak, you name it, He can do it. But I think that some of the greatest miracles are the healings of the heart, those which nobody really sees and outsiders never really notice that it has happened.

Healing takes time. It's a journey. But when it happens....it happens. Raphael went on a journey with the young Tobias to grant God's healing grace to his father and future bride, Sarah (please see the book of Tobit).

After walking 200 miles, going through what I'm sure was not always the most pleasant of circumstances, healing came out of left field for Sarah. A couple weeks and 200 more miles later, healing came home to Tobias' dad. It was quite the adventure for all involved in the story.

The point I'm trying to make is that healing happens. Not always when or how we expect, but it happens. This introduction is all because I went through this a couple of days ago.

I've been on my own "epic walk" of healing for a while. The one day, out of the blue, everything changed. The questions that I had wanted to ask to find what I thought would be healing after all this time for myself I didn't need to ask. I didn't want to ask. God did it. I had peace. For those of you that think you might know what I'm talking about, trust me, you don't. Sorry to throw that curve ball at you.

A couple wounds in my own heart had been festering and becoming gangrenous to my life. I knew God was going to heal me, that I had to put forth my own effort too, but for a while, it seemed endless. And then...it just wasn't. Something happened, and I realized that I had been healed for a while, and didn't realize it. I had been dwelling in the past and not living in the present where, consequently, I had been healed.

We do that a lot. We name ourselves by our hurts. "Hi, my name is (insert name here) and I (insert brokenness here)"...."Hi (name)", sayeth the group.

The truth is, we cannot live in the hurt. We do need to experience it, feel it, know that it is there, but then know something very crucial - we are not our wounds. We are Christ's. He is the Healer and He can do it. No matter what has happened in our lives, we have a Father who's only intention is to Love. Crap happens. Mistakes are made, on our own part or on the part of someone else....but we are no mistake. Love is no mistake. Healing is a free gift given by God. We have to choose to accept it, claim it, and live in it.

Why do we make it so hard on ourselves? We can get so used to living a certain way and thinking a certain thing. And then, here comes God with a real fix, a real cure (His Love and Grace) and it frightens us because we doubt and we want to fix it ourselves. We want to analyze the hell out of ourselves and find the answer...when the whole time the answer is in front of us. Trust me, I studied a lot of psychology, I know how to analyze. I asked myself all the correct "counseling" questions to get to the bottom of it, to find the cure. But I had to get out of myself and get into Him.

I'll be honest, "getting into Him" was so hard. It is hard to trust a doctor that you can't see...that's why WebMd is evil and causes hypochondriacs to repopulate the modern world. Letting go is never easy, especially when it's your own heart and it's hurts. But the "letting go" is the first step. It's the hardest. It's surrender and it doesn't sit well with our fallen ways. Coming from some one who has had to "let go" a time or two, it is the opposite of fun (and I like doing things that are fun).

Bottom line: that's where the healing begins. It begins with a step. One step leads to one epic journey. (That was for you Kate.) And one epic journey is in store for us all...to get back to Him and to get back to one another. Relationship is forged in fire. He's got more than a band-aid for the pain, even better than Neosporin. Allow Him to burn the hurts. It's gonna sting, but in the end, it is GOOD.

Healing is for everyone. There's a quote from an author that I found. (I confess I know nothing about him or his writing, but he's at least got something right:
“Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”

Today, let Love surprise you. That's the best kind - when it comes out of nowhere. I think God does that to emphasize that it's His GIFT and there was nothing you could do to deserve it or earn it. Thank God. Ask Saint Raphael the Archangel for his assistance on your journey. He is a protector and will show you the Father who loves, heals, unites, binds, redeems, etc.