What Does Healing Look Like?

As I've been reflecting on healing, I am beginning to realize that healing doesn't always look like what we think it should. For one thing, as I mentioned before, it isn't always instantaneous. I'm beginning to suspect that Voila! healings are quite rare.  Not that they can't or don't happen, but it seems like most healing is a process...a sort of unfolding.

It sort of reminds me of the way a flower blooms. While there are some flowers that pop open overnight, most of the time, it's difficult to point to the precise moment when a flower has bloomed. From bud to blossom is a process, one that we can see only with time lapse photography. But even as we view it, there really isn't a single frame that we can highlight and say, "Yes, here is where the flower bloomed."

Perhaps that is how it is with healing, especially our emotional wounds. One day, things are just a bit brighter or clearer or safer. One day, it's afternoon and I realize that I haven't felt that awful surge of panic for several hours. I can't say that I am healed, but I begin to see that healing is possible and that perhaps the process is underway.

However, that requires trust...trust that healing is possible and the trust that is happening even without tangible evidence.  Sort of like a flower that is still in the bud, I need to trust that there will be bloom.