The place where I am healing

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This is the place where I am trying to heal. This is the place where I have gone each morning the for the past year. Where I have risen many mornings before the sun comes up to stretch and exercise. Because I need to get stronger.

I've had plantar fasciitis for 3 1/2 years and I keep waiting to write a post about it once I am healed. I'm not yet. But I am close.

Since I painted this chalk board on the wall, the only thing that has adorned it is a verse written in my prettiest handwriting. It's been all fancy and pinterest looking for over a year. I haven't wanted to erase it because it took so much time to construct it. Each detail and design. It looked good.



After a walk this morning I felt it was time to take it down and to etch into that chalkboard the verses that I have been declaring over my life and over my feet. My feet are an outward symptom deeply connected to where I am spiritually. I have known that for a while. Although the pain is in my feet, I have since learned through therapy that one of the causes has been a weak core. A pretty good analogy for where I am spiritually too- weak at the core. I tend to focus on the symptoms and overlook the core problem.

After years of praying for healing it's been hard to keep believing it's possible. It's hard to not discouraged. It's a strange chronic pain because unless I talk about it, no one knows it's there. I don't have a limp. I don't have a scar. I don't have any sign that I am in pain on the outside.

I find our spiritual battles are like that. I am often filled with fear and anxiety and stress. I work hard to hide it- to seem like I have it all together- like I fully know what it means to trust God. Only- I am simply just learning to trust him. Like a little baby taking their first steps and continuing to fall. But I don't want people to know that. I want to be like my little chalkboard- cute and pinteresty and instagramable. Pretty, together, happy.

God is tearing those walls down. Today, I wrote the verses I have been clinging to like the last little threads hoping all won't unravel. But each life is pretty much a mess of threads, all unraveled and falling apart and our only hope is God taking those threads and weaving them into great beauty.

After I scrawled out those verses, I stepped back and there right in one second saw the ways I have been trying to strengthen myself physically juxtaposed to the ways God is strengthening me spiritually and I couldn't help but be moved to tears. This is what my life is really like- a mess of words not fancily aligned scrawled out in desperate hope, but that point to a good, good God.



I have waited to write a post until I have full healing because there are fears surrounding being on the journey and letting others in. In some ways, I feel like I've failed or I am never going to get better. Or that it's my fault somehow that I am not healed. That I am not doing something right. Healing it a tricky thing.

One thing I know and cling to: one of God's many names is Jehovah Rapha- the Lord who heals. This is who he is. He can heal. He loves to heal. There is no sickness and pain in heaven. But I'm not in heaven yet and I don't always fully understand what happens on earth. But I know my God. I know he loves me. I know he will never leave me. I know he will heal me- if not on this earth then one day when I meet him face to face I'll be running and not growing weary.

But for now- I will honor the journey. I will give God glory for all that he has done so far- in my body and in my soul. I've been in physical therapy for 4 months and I am very close to healing in my feet. He has shown me the incredible ways he has made my body and the ways he has designed bodies to heal, bodies to get strong, bodies to bend and bodies to stretch. I am in awe of my Creator.

I have found him at the gym- exercising right there with me. Making me stronger- body and soul. I have found him in the mornings doing Pilates. I have found him in exercise classes when I push myself and find I can do it. I found him when I broke my finger and I watched him heal it during the Lent season. He is there in the brokeness and the pain. Healing- always healing.

I am getting stronger. Day by day. This is the place where I am healing.



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