Be Healed

‘Pain changes us but not in the way healing teaches us.’

 Healing.  Selfishly, I will freely admit that this is something I have given quite a bit of thought to.  Tonight I realized something – to be healed and to be cured are far two different things.  What am I really after?  So much more than a magic pill or a miracle surgery - so much more was damaged than just the old body.  If this were physically gone tomorrow, would everything be fixed?  Even though I can't physically change things, there are parts of this, all of this, that can be healed now.  If I'm up for it, that is. 

I don’t exactly pray to be healed, not anymore at least. Oh, I used to, in the beginning.  In Africa when I there was so much work to do and so many who needed me, the message I could share.  I begged God to put me back together, I pleaded, even.  This stubborn little bug I had come down with was nothing compared to the trials I saw daily, hourly, from these people.  I was convinced that this was a test of my selflessness and I would prevail.  How foolish we are when we try to reason with the Lord and His will for us, His plan for us.  That wasn’t the test at all, oh what was the test – it was a lot about the word ‘no,’ – it still is, but it was also a huge exercise in humility, in meekness, in long-suffering – to look at those people in the eyes and realize I was just as weak as them, as low, as desperate, as scared.  I’ve never been too good at tests, though and I’ll spend the rest of my life figuring out how I did, how I'm doing.

Anyway, I think one of the reasons I don’t pray for a miracle cure, let alone a healing, is I’m afraid that the answer will be a very swift and clear no.  Not in this life.  I’m not exactly sure I could handle that and I realize the good Lord knows it.  There is always hope, there is always time.  Yet even if it is just not meant to be and is not going to ever happen (and that would be okay, I would still live a very blessed life) – but yeah, I’d prefer not to know that. Line upon line, precept upon precept.

Perhaps, deep down, I just don't think I deserve to be healed, that I’m not worthy of it or that others need it so much more than I.  Wait, that changed subjects at the end of that sentence, part of me thinks that selfish, wicked, stubborn, critical, negative ole me just doesn’t warrant one.  I’m not fishing for anything here, but if I’m being honest (which we all know I can be a little too much of that on here), that thought has crept in my mind. It’s just a thought, it’s there, and I’m sure I know from what power it came from.  Satan, get thee hence.

 Tonight, I was thinking, maybe I’m too scared to be healed. Maybe I'm just not up for the work it is going to take to really come out of this having gained what I needed to - there is just so much to learn.  I read a great talk tonight by Elaine S Marshall. I am soooo not one of those people that reads past talks but this one just found me and I know it was no coincidence.

‘Healing hurts,’ she said.  I hadn’t thought about that. The surgery need to cut out the bad part will make the pain worse, first, and then so much better, so to speak.

‘Healing is active.’  It doesn’t happen overnight and it certainly won’t come unless you are working towards it.  It's not going to come in a pill bottle and it's not going to come unless you are humble enough to know what do with it.  The Lord can't speak to us unless we are still enough to hear Him.

‘Healing is private.’  I get that.  As is suffering, usually.  No matter how many amazing family and friends I have around me (and I do! I do!), most of this road I have to walk on my own. It gets lonely, it gets overwhelming, but these are the battles we have to face head on, solely relying on (after realizing it's there), our own strength and resilience.

‘Healing is not healing by abandonment. It is not only private, it is sacred.’  It is the miracle of the Atonement working, it is the power of the human body finding restoration, it is physical, it is definitely emotional and it is spiritual. It is God's work.

How do I say this...  Sometimes healing takes on an entirely different form and many are healed right out of this World.  How I wish such things as cancer could be undeniably cured and no would have to suffer a long and terrible illness before being taken from this Earth, young mothers leaving behind their children, babies succumbing before they ever knew this life.  It is tragic, it is horrible, it is confusing. I think the Lord wants us to see these things with an eternal perspective, however, that there is so much life in the hereafter, some are just needed there sooner than others.  In the end, we are all healed.

 “No pain that we suffer … is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of … patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer … , especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we [came] here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.”   Orson F Whitney

Tonight I knelt down and asked to be healed.  And then I asked it of myself.  In whatever form or time it may come, I'm working really hard towards it.