It’s not easy to make the decision that you want to be well. Honestly, avoiding healing is much easier. At least in the short run. You push the pain away. Run from it. Distract yourself from it. Put something else in its place. But to heal, to press in and cry and scream and get angry, ending up a wasted heap in the floor of your home, lying across your bed, or in your car parked in a back parking space at Kroger, well who in the world wants to do that.

But the realization I had this week regarding healing and pain, is that God is so faithful not to make us deal with something until He knows our heart is ready. Did you hear that? If you didn’t, read it again. I’m not going anywhere….

I remember September a year ago hearing news that if I had heard a year earlier would have devastated me. A friend apologized profusely for not telling me earlier and I told her simply, “I couldn’t handle it earlier and the Lord knew that.”

So when another revelation of my past came flying into my present this past week, I realized it wouldn’t be here if the Lord didn’t know I was ready to handle it, face it, repent of it, deal with it. It hurt. I won’t lie to you. I know I write fiction, but I try to lie as little as possibleJ Because to confront this truth meant I had to confront my own lie that I had told myself for almost seventeen years. And how do you do that? How do you admit you’re that wrong?

But yet in that moment I knew this was pivotal in moving forward. And I knew that if God had waited all this time to bring it to the surface in this way and at this time then He must have in me the ability ready to deal with it. So I did. I left my friends house whose probing questions had made this truth rush to the surface and I climbed into my car and I cried the entire way home.

Me and God had a long wailing conversation on how sorry I was. How I had so missed Him, even when He had tried to protect my heart. How I had simply ignored Him. I thanked Him for redeeming what probably didn’t deserve redeeming and for giving me another chance at living. By the time I got home I was pretty spent. But I knew that revelation, that experience, that acknowledgement would change me forever. And would allow me to walk into the next chapter of my life free.

So often in our journey God will come to press us. He will graciously lay before us a revelation of our past, of our choices, of our character, and to confront it would be to have to break up in the face of a lie that we’ve believed about ourselves or others for years. To do it would be to admit we were wrong. To do it would force us to experience pain, admit failure, to hurt. And so in the middle of our forward progression, we stop all movement. Because we don’t want to move forward through that.

My sweet friends, it wouldn’t be here, right in front of your face if God hadn’t wanted you confront it head on, and if he didn’t know that you were more than capable. You haven’t gone backwards because something has surfaced in your life that might be old and painful. Instead, you are moving forward and God is saying, “We’ve got some great places to go and we’ll get their faster and easier if you keep letting go of these bags you’re carrying around.” And so as we drop one and then another and then another the way gets easier, lighter, kind of like “my yoke is easy”. He really meant that you know. And He’s trying to make the journey easier. Let’s help Him out.

May you cry? There’s a possibility. May you get angry? You very well may. May you have to admit your wrong? I’m thinking you might. Will you die from it? No, you might actually begin truly living.