I’ve written much over the past three years about my healing. But I realized something a few months ago.

For some, healing comes all at once…in every area of their lives. For most of us, it comes in stages…and it is painful.

My husband and I went through counseling six years ago, and I found much healing through those sessions. I considered it a complete healing up until a year and a half ago. That’s when I started having breakdowns over my memories of the childhood gun incident. I started seeing a new counselor at that time, all while extended family tensions grew increasingly worse.

While the past year has been wonderful in so many ways, including realizing a dream and passion God gave me, it has been nothing short of hell on earth. I’ve realized there are deep wounds that still need healing.

On my last visit with my counselor, which was about three months ago, I asked her why I was so certain I had experienced complete healing several years ago, only to now feel as if I were being hit with a massive onslaught of other areas that needed healing. She suggested that I had experienced a level of healing I needed for that time in order to strengthen me. She went on to say that once I had been strengthened, God uncovered other areas that still needed healing. I had to be strong enough to endure the pain of the healing process.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve begged God to completely heal me…to rid me of the hurt that lingers from my growing-up years, as well as present-day circumstances. He simply hasn’t answered those prayers. Maybe it’s a long, drawn-out process, and I just can’t see the progress. But something happened tonight. Actually, let me back up and start with last night.

My husband had gone to pick up our two oldest girls from their friends’ houses. I was craving chocolate, so I moseyed down to my oldest daughter’s room to pick through the stash of candy she keeps tucked away in her closet. I picked out several pieces of chocolate, and stood to back away from her closet. There on a shelf at eye level was a toy pistol someone had given her as a joke for her birthday. I freaked. I’d forgotten she had it, and immediately my mind began to race as to how she’d have a gun in her closet. It only took a second or two for me to remember where she’d gotten it and that it was a toy. But by that point, the memory had been triggered {what an awful, unintended, but somewhat-appropriate pun}, and the breakdown was underway. Within a matter of a few seconds, my mind jumped from my present reality to being seven years old then back to present reality with harmful thoughts that could only come from Satan. I regained my composure {and sanity} before Mark and the girls got home, but that little incident has wreaked havoc on me for a solid twenty-four hours now.

Earlier this evening my church choir led in a semi-annual worship event. I’d been functional all day, but as soon as we began to sing the first song, one thought led to another until I was quickly remembering being seven years old. I could barely sing. Hell, I could barely stand there. I wanted to run as fast as I could to my car and leave. I stood and sang for about an hour with tears streaming down my cheeks in what I suppose probably appeared to be a zombie-like state. The entire time, I was alternately begging and demanding God to heal me or take me to be with Him in heaven. A lot of wrestling was taking place.

In his article, “The Cost of Wrestling with God,” Daniel Parkins said, Often…(God) uses the hurt in our lives to bring us back to Him, to put us in our proper place, so that we cling to Him in our weakness and He shines through. So I silently scream and wrestle and beg and demand…because if He’s going to use all this hurt so He can shine through my weakness, well, I want Him to hurry up and do what He needs to do. I seriously need to see some good from all this.

There was no breakthrough tonight. I lost the wrestling match. I didn’t experience miraculous healing. In fact, on my way home, I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and wept. And I’m left wondering if this is one of those hurts that will never be healed. Is it sort of like Paul’s thorn in the flesh?

But there was this, and for now, I guess it has to be enough…

A little something I saw as I scrolled through my Facebook feed this evening: Sometimes you’ll have to fight for it or be still enough to hear it or feel it but it will be there. Like a light breeze across your face, something will mysteriously whisper that you are loved, and tell you the story of how goodness and beauty prevail. (posted by Jim Palmer…from Ecclesiastes 3, The Religion-Free Bible Project)

You are loved. Even in the hurt, in the wondering and wandering, in the wrestling, He keeps reminding me of that.