Healing doesn’t always happen in the ways we expect, and sometimes God begins His deepest work in the places we would rather leave untouched. Writer Danielle Finch reflects on how confronting painful memories and past mistakes has brought an unexpected kind of spiritual healing.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel as though I’m at a spiritual blockade. Over the last few months, I’ve felt quite unsettled and unsure of myself and didn’t understand how to move forward. However, I’ve come to realise that these stalling points and periods of tension can be the very times when God is longing to do a deeper work in me.
Recently, a lot of reels have been appearing on my Instagram feed targeted at a particular flavour of millennial, and I resonated hugely. It may be hard to imagine by looking at me now, but I was once an angst-filled teenager: swooping fringe, heavy eyeliner, Chuck Taylors, lip piercing and Blink-182 on repeat.
All of us will have certain songs that transport us to a different time in our lives, and mine have been popping up frequently over the last few weeks. It has shocked me to think how 20 years have passed and how so much has happened in between. It has also made me feel uncomfortable, longing to keep painful days back where they belong.
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Yet God had other plans.
Yet God had other plans. I woke up at 4am this morning feeling a desperate urge to pray for a girl I once knew. I’ve never had a desire to pray for her at all. In fact, to my mind, she had been central to a lot of my pain. But as I prayed for her, God began to peel back layers of lies that I’d happily allowed myself to believe.
He revealed that actually, even though it hadn’t necessarily been intentional, my own choices and selfishness had caused her massive heartbreak. It was I who had been the problem.
Being confronted with your brokenness and sin in the middle of the night isn’t easy. In fact, I felt disgusted with myself. As a Christian, I fully believe that Christ paid for my wrongdoings. Yet I felt compelled to ask for forgiveness and continued to pray God’s healing and blessing over this girl, who will now be a grown woman also in her 30s, who probably has a family of her own. I don’t know if I will ever have the opportunity to apologise to her for the hurt I caused. Perhaps God will lead me to do that one day.
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The temptation is to keep the things we’ve done wrong in life pushed down, hidden from sight.
So why am I sharing this with you? The temptation is to keep the things we’ve done wrong in life pushed down, hidden from sight. It is far easier when we show our shiny, polished Christian exterior. But the Lord has so much more for us than that. I woke up this morning feeling lighter, as though some small part of me had been healed that I didn’t even know had needed healing. God knows us far better than we know ourselves, and He knows the parts of our history that need addressing and restoring. Yes, Christ dealt with the punishment for our sin when He was crucified, but our sinful decisions leave their mark. And God, in His loving kindness, longs to heal every messy, broken part of us.
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In Romans 12:2, the apostle Paul urges: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
This continuous renewal of our minds is part of our lifelong journey to become more like Christ and is central to living fully in the freedom He died for. Physically, I am not yet healed. But in my soul, God is bringing healing. And perhaps that is the most important kind of healing. Can I encourage you today, the next time a memory, a thought or an emotion is nagging at you, to slow down and bring it before the Lord? The temptation in our hectic lives can be to ignore those things that make us uncomfortable and focus our attention on what we are doing for God. Maybe it is time that we ask ourselves: what does God want to do in us?
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