Broken then Healed

Have you ever felt so broken, so hurt, so alone, that you somehow convince yourself that the Almighty God cannot heal you, that you are unlovable, that you hurt others so much that you don't deserve to be forgiven because nothing can fix it, or anything like it?

In the spirit of being honest, I have. It is a temporary feeling that can feel like forever. Mine only lasted about an hour, quite awhile ago. And, it did come back, intermittently, over the last several months, of course with different variations - I got bored with the same attacks at my happiness, so new ones came in and tried to disturb my peace, and they would. Yet each one was temporary.

I think I learn easily from things like immediate metaphors - stories, hikes, and just experiences in general. Just a week or so ago, I had a horrible experience donating blood. I've donated before and gotten sick most of the time, but this time I had thought I had covered for every known reason people get sick after donating.

Anyway, as I was lying there, I was fighting so hard to stop hurting. I was praying so hard, I was listening to the phlebotomist person - keeping my eyes open and whatever else he said, and doing anything in my power to stop it from hurting. And I kept hurting, for what seemed to be forever. And suddenly, a very peaceful voice said to me "Just let it hurt, it will end." So, I relaxed my head a little more into the pillow - I even closed my eyes a little bit (I'm a rebel... haha). And the immediate pain washed away.

Sometimes in life, we hurt a lot. We feel incapable of living the life we want to for whatever 'rational' reason we come up with. Life takes a lot of time. We love the idea of immediate gratification. We don't ever want to hurt. And our attention spans and memories are quite limited. But, as we all know, life takes time. They just cut it out in the movies.

I just had a lesson on President Uchtdorf's "Forget Me Not" talk, and know that it is inspired of God. It talks about 5 things we should never forget... or at least learn to remember them quickly.

One that stuck out to me was "be happy now" because it is something that I've already been working on. I can't seem to control much in life, contrary to my belief that I should be able to. So, for the last few months, I've been working on me. Not in a selfish way, but keeping Christ as my main priority, and the person I remember most, and then remembering to be happy now.

For example, I recently started teaching ballroom dance lessons. I love to dance, but even more, I love to teach it. Anyway, I will talk more about my dance journeys over here. It took me a long time to actually decide to teach it because I felt I couldn't possibly be qualified to teach and no one would want me as their teacher. A lot more was involved than just me wanting to start teaching dance, that was just an easy example, and relevant to what I'm doing now. Recently, I decided, I didn't have anything to lose. I decided that I loved teaching enough to give it a try, but it didn't come until a lot of prayer and thought.

The moral of this rather long story is that I healed, I learned to trust in the Atonement, enough to let it fully into my heart. But, the takeaway of the story is that it took me a "long" time. I would have said I was healed long before now, and yet, I still have healing to do. If you remember this post, I talk about Christ chipping away my sins and weaknesses and the potential for a beautiful work of art is already inside me.

We are all "works in progress" and we all heal at different rates, and we won't finish the process in this mortal life. Yet, we can heal, we can move forward, we can let it hurt, and we can let us feel joy. We need both, because we are all going to need a lifetime of experiences to teach and shape us for eternity.

Come home, come back to Him. Let Him heal you of your doubts, your hurts, your pains, to give you strength to keep moving forward, to experience different pains, different doubts, different hurts, and remember to come back to Christ and heal a little more. Life hurts, but we have an eternal hope for happiness, and I know in whom I trust.