Healing Isn't Always Making The Pain Go Away

​A dear friend recently said to me, "I get the impression that a lot of what you write is sometimes difficult but it's also incredibly inspiring to the rest of us."

Writing is healing for me. It's a large part of my therapy. In many ways it's my best friend; so often I wake up in the middle of the night excited to have coffee with my morning friend - writing.

But to be truthful, sometimes writing - that friendship - it IS difficult. Because many days I am writing about the most difficult parts of me. That has certainly been the case as I write the final chapters of my life story.

Writing about the hard things I've experienced.

Writing about my failures and endless flaws.

Writing about my fears.

Writing about the truth that life almost always feels more like a fight than a journey to me.

But I had coffee with a friend yesterday morning and I was reminded that's what best friends share - the hardest experiences, the failures and endless flaws.

The fears and the fights.

I have come to know this about my writing without any doubt: God gave me this gift. A gift not for me so much as a gift for others. Because God has given me the wisdom to so deeply understand the depths of my own struggles and pains, and the capacity to express them in ways others understand, it blesses me with the chance to let so many others know - I do truly understand your fights in life.

Many can not read what I write without feeling themselves within my words. To any degree that is healing or inspiring to others brings great healing to me.

I have been asked many times if I find healing in writing because it allows me to release my pain. The truth is, I have pains that I accept will never ever go away. Many of us do. But I've come to believe God is far more interested in USING my pain than RELIEVING it. And I haven't always been able to say it, but I can now; I love God for that.

God watched his son suffer in pain on the cross.

Because God's a fan of pain?

No.

I think it's because God needed us all to understand as clearly as possible that what people long for most in life is someone who can see beneath all that hides their pains, and into the hearts and souls so overwhelmed by them.

When Jesus says he understands our pain, because of the pain of the cross we have no reason to doubt him. And we have no reason to not find comfort in his understanding.

I am glad I don't have to suffer on a cross to say I see you all. I am thankful that God has given me another avenue to express that to you.

I am thankful that so many of you have given me purpose in my pain, for in that purpose, there is healing. Because as Pastor Larry Brey says, "Healing isn't the absence of pain, it's the presence of purpose."

It's something any of us struggling to heal might want to explore. Am I not healing because I'm waiting for the pain to go away? Am I not healing because I've come to believe there can't possibly be any purpose to this pain?