Healing Wounds: Part Two

He said that if he could go back and have God take the terminal cancer away, he wouldn't because he would rather keep the lessons that the cancer taught him than live the rest of his life with a bitter heart.

This is what my pastor said of a man that had recently passed away.

Healing is a beautiful thing.

We long for restoration of the heart.
For reconnection of the joy that has been lost.

It really is a crossroad:
To choose either the road to healing
Or to harden our hearts in the midst of pain.

At this crossroad, it seems easier to choose to harden our hearts.
We percieve it to be the safer path.

Bitterness and Resentment serve to slowly eat away at the soul.
To build up walls.
Whether it be in the midst of avoidance or consumption,
They are a broken record that constantly remind us of the broken condition of our heart.

That
Something
Is
Wrong.

Until today, I had always viewed bitterness and resentment as something negative to be harbored.

I still do.

But.

I do not think that these two things can be an end in itself.

It can be.

But.

If we choose to see these two things as warning signs rather than comforts in times of brokenness, they can push us to the understanding that...

We need His healing.

It is so difficult
To give up bitterness and resentment.
To admit that we are weak.
To let Him inside the cracks of our hearts that are so heavily guarded by these shields.

But when we do...

Healing is a painful, yet beautiful thing.

"I hear you say 'My love is over, its underneath, its inside, its in between the times you doubt me, when you can't feel, the times when you've questioned 'is this for real?' The times you've broken, the times that you mend, the times you hate me and the times that you bend...these times you're healing and when your heart breaks...I'll never forsake you, my love never ends'"

--Tenth Avenue North