A while back I wrote a post about healing. I shared about my frustration that, at my age, I'm still not "fixed." I still struggle with so many things. Sometimes intensely so. And I shared my epiphany that, just as alcoholics are called "recovering alcoholics" not "recovered alcoholics," so I will always be, at least in this life a "healing Ginny" and not a "healed Ginny."
But that isn't really an accurate picture. Healing typically implies an previous injury to be healed from. And while I have certainly had my share of painful life experiences, some I have shared with you and some I have not. Some are "flashbulb" memories in my life, etched on my brain and some more vague senses of something terribly wrong etched in my soul. But there is more to all that.
While we can certainly have physically injuries we need to heal from, sometimes we don't heal from injuries. Some car crashes result in temporary handicaps. Some maim for life.
Or sometimes we have conditions that don't require healing from, but coping with.
The most obvious one I can think of is type 1 diabetes. There is currently no cure. Management is where it is at. Genetics can play a part. While lifestyle choices can create risk factors for type 2 diabetes (but not always so stop the finger wagging and shaming), that is not the case with type 1. There is no healing from type 1 diabetes. There is only management. Coping.
Thus is the case perhaps with much of one's interior life. It is certainly the case with mine. I hit the genetic jackpot when it came to mental health (I refuse to call it "illness"). My paternal grandmother suffered from severe depression. My maternal grandmother was the most anxious person I have ever known. My mother dealt with both anxiety and major depression and obsessions over health and food safety. My mother was a chronic dieter with an abysmal body image (eating disorders are 50-60% genetic). My paternal grandmother and both of my parents were only children who suffered intensely from a loneliness they could never escape.
I come by my pathologies honestly and, unfortunately have been exceedingly generous in passing them along (sorry, kids!). I have struggled since age 11 with anxiety, depression, OCD and since puberty with intense response to hormonal fluctuations. I am by wiring a Highly Sensitive Person.
A few years ago a counselor told me that part of maturity is learning to manage your biology. So that is what I have to do a lot of the time. Sometimes my intense sadness is not a result of some still unhealed soul wound within me (though there are still way too many of those to count), sometimes it is just a result of my biology or "the weather," as my husband calls the storms that slam against my soul.
Sometimes management means adjusting the dosage of my hormone patch (don't you mess with my hormone patch!) and sometimes it means taking some much needed down time to do a jigsaw puzzle or sudoku. Sometimes it means just sitting with the feelings and letting them near, without being so afraid of them. Sometimes it means waiting them out until they go on their way.
While I will always be pursuing healing for those things within me that can be healed, I need to give myself grace and patience for those things within me that can't be healed because they are just part and parcel of who I am. Perhaps some of my issues are the result of a "broken Ginny" and others are just part of "wonky Ginny." They are how I am made. Who I am.
We all have to learn to manage who we are, to work with our strengths and weaknesses. We also need to learn, to a certain extent, acceptance of who we are and who we are not. I was recently struck by these verses and a specific word in it:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. - Psalm 139-13-14
Inmost. Inmost being. Could it be that when God created me he not only decided to give me blue eyes and a small bone structure and crappy knees but also a brain that sometimes gets stuck, undulating hormones, and a sensitive spirit?
When it says "inmost," could it mean that the parts of me that some people think need healing and that I often wish would get "healed away" are the way God made me? Could it be that I can use those to speak truth and sit with another in empathy? Could it also mean that I need to manage some of my inmost being with medication (I'm talking to you, Paxil) in order to improve my quality of life and better love those around me?
I know many who sit in shame because of their inmost being. They wonder what is wrong with them that they still struggle. They don't have the promised peace or the victorious life. But what if that doesn't come now? What if "healing" and not "healed" is where it is at? What if managing our inmost beings, the wiring God gave us, is part of our accepting ourselves as finite creatures living in a fallen world? And what if those parts of us that we, and sometimes others, view as curses are actually just challenges, or even more, what if they are gifts because they make us more real? More relatable? And more dependent on God and each other?
What if?
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