Bennett and I recently joined some of my family members on a trip to Florida. The place we were visiting happened to be the same area that David and I went to on our last vacation together. This was my first vacation without him. It was my first vacation since we’ve been separated. And it was Bennett’s first vacation.
So, I knew that taking this vacation in this new stage of life would be challenging. But I boarded that plane hopeful that I was going to walk down memory lane and each memory would bring me some form of healing.
But as I sat on the beach shoving my feet into the sand, watching the waves crash, and seeing the light from the sun drift away to be replaced by the light of the moon, I glanced behind me and noticed how similarly everything looked to the place where we had honeymooned. And I broke down. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. I grabbed my phone and wrote this in my notes:
“It’s not healing, it’s just hurting.”
No matter how much healing I walk through, I always have the expectation that healing will be so beautiful, even though that has never been the case. So many times I fool myself into thinking healing will be some painless peace that washes over me as I move through another hurdle of pain. But it’s never that way. Healing just hurts. It’s painful and I find myself wresting emotions as memories come to the surface and I am forced to have mental funerals for dreams I had for my future.
In my head I pictured healing from all of this to be so beautiful and, well, healing. I remember leaving the place I had called home with my husband for three years and settling into a room off my brother’s kitchen with my infant son and pulling out a new notebook to journal in. I took my pen and in calligraphy wrote the word healing on the first page.
I was starting a new chapter in my life. And I knew life was going to be hard, but I pictured the healing process to look a little more like the calligraphy I had just written on that page; beautiful, graceful, and unbroken.
Welp. I was wrong. I have never walked through anything messier. Healing is the ugliest, most ungraceful, broken process. It’s when you’ve accepted the unfairness that has been done to you and you now try to figure out how to live in this new reality.
I like to refer to it as a roller coaster. Except it’s not very thrilling. It’s similar in ways that there are a lot of ups, downs, sharp and unexpected turns, moments when you feel like you might possibly die, and then parts where you feel content but your stomach is still in knots from the chaos of the last drop off. It’s messy. And you might process through things, feel like you’ve done the work to heal through that particular part of your story only to find it tripping you up a few weeks later.
The triggers feel relentless and like there’s a new one every day. Suddenly everything seems to lead back and connect to your situation somehow and things that you thought would never even trigger you send you spiraling downhill.
It’s frustrating and hard. You just want life to feel good again. You want this part to be over, but it seems to never end.
I don’t have some wise encouragement to help you get through the healing process easier. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you that I’ve healed beautifully through all of this, but I haven’t. I think this is just something we have to walk through, as brutal as it might be, in order for God to work through us and bring forth growth, if we allow Him to.
In a season that can feel incredibly lonely no matter how many people you surround yourself with, just know you are not alone in your suffering. No matter how much it hurts to process through each broken step, memory, or crushed dream, God walks with you every step of the way. It may feel lonely and maybe you feel like you can’t feel Him near you. But He is there.
Oh, friend. As someone who has walked through some intense grief and have carried some heavy pain over the last few years, it hurts me to know you may be feeling some of the emotions I have had to live through and fight with daily. I wish I could come sit with you in your pain and that you could find some comfort in my presence. The best I can do is provide you some words that will hopefully encourage you to keep fighting through this season.
Breathe. Grieve. Process. Cry. Take the time to do each thing as it comes to you.
Whenever waves come crashing into the shore, part of the wave and whatever it is carrying gets left behind on the shore and part of it gets pulled back into the water. As each wave of pain comes crashing into the shore of your mind, stuff your feet deeper into the sand, watch the sun set over the horizon, and boldly allow God to work through the pain. Allow Him to help you to accept whatever pain comes crashing in, process it, and let God to take back into the water that which you’ve healed through and leave you with His goodness and grace.
