A time to re-heal

It has struck me that one of the most difficult and painful things to do in life is to re-heal.

Let me give an analogy. Say as a child, you break your arm. Instead of going to the hospital or doctor, you just strap a piece of wood to your arm to hold it stiff. Over time the bone will repair the fracture and you will heal. However your arm probably won't be straight and the bone may be very weak. How can you repair it? Only one way. You have to break the arm again and allow it to heal correctly. A doctor would set the arm and help your body heal properly.

So it is with life. Often we go through different sorts of trauma and heal in wrong ways. Maybe we ignore the problem and after awhile it seems to have gone away. Or maybe we blame ourselves for the problem. We do heal, life goes on, but we have healed wrong. Part of becoming a better/well person involves identifying times when we have been hurt and looking at the ways we have 'healed'. Looking back often has the effect of re-opening old wounds. This is painful, for we think that the way we healed worked, but it hasn't. Poorly healed old wounds quickly become new. Only a well-healed wound can endure another injury. Therefore, we must open the old wounds so that they may heal.