My dear mom fell down the stairs recently and landed on a hard basement floor. She was in pain, but who wouldn’t be after falling down the stairs? Nothing was bleeding and she could move everything, so she thought she was okay. But when she went to use the door handle, she knew something was wrong. A trip to the urgent care showed that she had broken her arm.
My siblings and I grew up on a farm, back before electronics would have fought for our attention, so we spent a lot of time outside. Even though broken bones might be somewhat common in childhood, there was not one broken bone among us ever. So having our mom have the first broken bone in our family was shocking.
Since I knew nothing about broken bones, I did a little research, and I have to say, “Wow!” I came away amazed. God made us in such an awesome, intricate way. There was a lot of terms and explanations that went well over my head, but my takeaway was that our bodies have been made extraordinarily.
When we break a bone, our body has an immediate reaction and goes right into working to heal the fracture. Our body goes through a series of steps as the bones work to renew themselves. It is a finely tuned sequence of events, but it takes time.
Mind, body, or soul, we all are a little broken. We have pain and disappointment. We have rejection, anger, and hurt in our lives. Some more than others, some more often than others. Just like bones need to heal through a process, so do we. No matter how nice it would be, it is not going to happen overnight. God works on us and heals us layer by layer. In that hard and slow place, turn to Him, invite Him in, and pray.
Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress.
Isaiah 33:2 (NIV)
Healing is a process we don’t have to go through alone. We sometimes think God isn’t working in our lives, but He is, right where we are. God has a process, and though progress might seem slow, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Healing takes time, and it isn’t easy.
There are steps we can’t skip just so we can get to the end. Each step has a purpose. Believe me, I know it can be frustrating when we are broken and aren’t seeing results or healing fast enough. We try to deal with it by ourselves because we don’t want to wait. We may even want to turn to things for quick relief or distraction from our brokenness, but those things will always be temporary. Only God’s healing is not temporary.
We have the promise that God makes all things new. All things means each of us and all our brokenness — one layer at a time, one tedious step at a time. And when the time comes and healing happens, we will be able to share our story of how God saw us through. One way or another, He will. He always does.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3 (NIV)
Trust the One who created you. Just like a broken bone, bit by bit, layer by layer, God heals.
Trust the One who created you. Just like a broken bone, bit by bit, layer by layer, God heals. -Jennifer Ueckert: Click To Tweet Leave a Comment