The Hand you hold is the hand that holds yours

​It turns out, one of the best ways to help ourselves is to help others. Not the kind of help one does because they learned somewhere along the way it's good to be helpful, but the kind of help one begins to offer as their own need for help makes them more sensitive to the need for help in others.

I've written often that I think our greatest human connection is found in the reality that we are all healing. Life is about meeting each other in our healing journeys and not waiting to meet up at an end of life party called healed.

I think there are three basic spaces we find ourselves in along this healing journey. They are essentially buried, emerging and out.

BURIED - I feel so helpless in my brokenness I can't imagine a way out.

EMERGING - Maybe just maybe I can do this life thing. I'll take a peek.

OUTSIDE - Oh, I can not only do this life thing - I can do it and I want you to believe you can too.

In my own experience, the healing journey isn't a path to healed, it's just these stops we find ourselves in along the healing road - the road we all share. More and more, I find myself OUTSIDE - truly believing I can do life and excited about helping you believe it too. But things happen, and in a moment I can feel BURIED again.

The beauty about becoming more familiar with the healing road is BURIED is no longer a dead end. It used to be. But not anymore. Because I know if I stick my head out, I'll notice others walking along the healing road. I'll be reminded that their healing hands need a healing hand to hold theirs.

And I'll remember the feeling, the beautiful truth, when I hold someone else's hand, someone is holding mine. Because the reality is, when most of us become buried it's beneath the hurtful belief there are no hands for me to hold.

If you're buried today, I encourage you to take a peek. I encourage you to know the hurt you feel is a hurt someone else feels. And the hand you reach out to them will be the hand they hold in return. What a beautiful circle that is in the circle of life.

We are all on a healing journey. Let's help each other do it on the OUTSIDE.