This is one of my all-time favorite articles!
Healing Hurts
First,
healing hurts. When I was a young nurse in the hospital, hardly a day
went by that a patient did not ask, “Will it hurt?” If I had been
truthful, the whispered answer would nearly always have been, “Yes, it
will hurt.” I have learned that healing hurts. Life hurts. Healing
really begins only when we face the hurt in its full force and then grow
through it with all the strength of our soul. For every reward of
learning and growing, some degree of pain is always the price. Author M.
Scott Peck suggests that if you do not want love or pain, you “must do
without many things.”
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I think you would do without friendship, dating, working, getting married, or having children.
Healing Is Active
My
second lesson is that healing is active—you have to participate. Your
friend, your husband or wife, your mother cannot do it for you. You have
to face the problem and the pain. To begin healing, you must
acknowledge and feel the hurt. Only those who don’t feel, those without conscience, cannot heal.
Healing Is Private
My third lesson is that healing is private. The hymn “Lord, I Would Follow Thee” describes “hidden sorrow” in a “quiet heart.”
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Saint-Exupéry wrote, “It is such a secret place, the land of tears.”
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To say
that healing is private is not to diminish the marvelous power that
comes from the help and compassion of others. Indeed, private healing
often may not happen without the help of others. Nevertheless, much of
the work of healing is done alone, inside the heart, in the company of
the Spirit of the Lord.
Such
secret healing is not a single event. It happens as a process of
living. You cannot simply take a day off and return healed. It happens
quietly, while you face the pain, and over time as you live, work,
study, and give to others.
Healing Teaches Us
The
fourth lesson of the healer’s art is that healing teaches us. When we
have a terrible loss or pain, we may seek to get back to normal or to
the way things were before, but they will never be the same. Pain
changes us but not in the same way healing teaches us. Healing can help
us become more sensitive and more awake to life. Healing inspires
repentance and obedience. Healing invites gifts of humility and faith.
It opens our hearts to the profound complexities of truth, beauty,
divinity, and grace.
We Must Help Others Heal
The
fifth lesson of learning the healer’s art is the obligation and great
gift it is to help others heal. President Gordon B. Hinckley has
admonished: “As members of the Church of Jesus Christ,
ours is a ministry of healing, with a duty to bind the wounds and ease
the pain of those who suffer. Upon a world afflicted with greed and
contention, upon families distressed by argument and selfishness, upon
individuals burdened with sin and troubles and sorrows, I invoke the
healing power of Christ.”
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Healing Is a Divine Gift
The
last and greatest lesson of healing is that it is a divine gift always
available from a loving Heavenly Father. If you have a pain or sorrow or
disappointment or sin or just a grudge that needs healing, the Savior
simply says, “Come unto me.”
President Hinckley has promised: “Jesus of Nazareth healed the sick
among whom He moved. His regenerating power is with us today. … His
divine teachings, His incomparable example, His matchless life, His
all-encompassing sacrifice will bring healing to broken hearts,
reconciliation to those who argue and shout, even peace to warring
nations if sought with humility and forgiveness and love.”
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