Healing Hearts

I looked down and saw blood. Skin was peeling off my finger with raw subcutaneous peering through.

This is how pulling weeds ended last week. So I went inside, washed my hands, and put on some Neosporin and a band-aid.

The rest of the week I tried to let the wound air out as much as possible, but sometimes, as the new skin was growing, part of it was still raw. When my finger rubbed against my clothes or anything else a certain way, it really hurt. When I couldn’t let it air out any longer, I put more Neosporin on, wrapped a band-aid around it, and walked around like that for a while longer until it felt fine enough to air out again.

Today, I looked down at my finger and realized it didn’t hurt any more. It still looks pretty rough. But the layer that was raw and painful to touch isn’t raw and painful anymore. There’s still healing that needs to happen; there’s still visible evidence that a wound existed. But with time and intention, the raw parts have closed up.

Now, this might seem a bit graphic or trivial. But this morning as I looked down, I realized that healing our hearts is a similar process.

After we get hurt - whether through a relationship, a disappointing situation, or an inevitable circumstance -  we feel pretty raw. Any mention of the thing that hurt us can immediately send us to tears or cause us to shut down (however we tend to respond to pain). Watching the natural process of how my finger healed, though, reminded me there are things we are responsible for to aid the healing process.

Wallowing in the dirt doesn’t heal us. Going back to what initially caused the pain also doesn’t heal us. (At least not right away.) Leaving raw skin exposed to be repeatedly tortured doesn’t heal us.

And yet, as I list out these things of “what not to do”, I realize that these are sometimes the easiest go-to’s when I’m feeling sad about a person or disappointing circumstance. I’ve definitely wallowed…a lot. I’ve tried to go back to things that need to stay in the past. I’ve also learned, though, that doing those things repeatedly make me feel worse in the end. So if we take to heart the lesson from my finger, here’s some things I think it would say:

Realize we’re hurt. This may seem obvious, but if we never notice that our finger is bleeding, we’ll never be able to do the next few steps properly. For our hearts, this may mean that we have to stop all of the noise. To escape the hard times and my swarming thoughts, I turn up the volume on everything else. The TV. Music. Instagram. Podcasts. Anything that will keep my mind off of what hurts. Yet unaddressed wounds hinder our growth. The first step? Awareness.

Clean the wound. As we know, dirt and toxins prohibit healing. Practically, this might look like stepping away from the person or situation for a while. In the separation, I’ve found it’s helpful to remind myself of Truth as I keep swimming through untrue thoughts and deep disappointment.

Apply a salve with healing properties. Personally, my heart salve includes sitting quietly - journaling, breathing, crying it out, and praying.

Cover the wound. This can look like giving yourself time and space to heal. Setting boundaries. Covering yourself with truth again and backing away from situations and people that aren’t helpful in the healing process. For me, it looks like being very intentional about what I do with others and making sure it’s truly life-giving.

Connect with the “body”. While the finger is healing, it’s still connected to the rest of our physical body. If it weren’t, healing would be impossible because it requires the entire body working together. Similarly, we need people - safe people - to help us fully heal. People who sit with us in the pain, who listen without judgment, who offer hope and their own stories that allow us to believe redemption is possible.

Eventually, it’s time to air out the wound. To get back out there and try dating again. To try making new friends. Sometimes, something may trigger us and we’ll need to retreat. We’ll need the salve and the covering. We’ve healed a bit, but the wound still has some raw parts. Needing to retreat again is okay. It doesn’t mean we haven’t healed at all. It just means we haven’t quite fully gotten there.

This cycle continues. We’ll keep healing as we take care of ourselves and stay close with our people, then we’ll go back out into the world. The same thing happens that caused us to retreat last time, but we actually are okay. It doesn’t send us spiraling. And that is growth. Something different happens and we do end up spiraling. That is also growth. That is still healing. It’s okay to keep applying the salve and covering the wound.

Eventually, like it did with my finger, there comes a time when we look down and realize, “Oh, this hasn’t hurt for a while. Actually, when I touch it, I’m still okay.”

At that point, the scar may still be visible. There’s physical evidence in history that the event did happen. Yet when we can look at the event, in hindsight, and see it for what it truly was without any shame or guilt or pain, we’ve learned an awareness. An ownership. An acknowledging that something painful happened and we are now better because of it. That’s when we know we’ve made it through the hardest parts. We’ve healed.