When time doesn’t heal.
There’s an old saying that you’ve probably heard before, that “time heals all wounds”. Like most old sayings it’s usually right, but on rare occasions, it can also be completely wrong.
In those instances when it doesn’t work, time seems only to intensify the pain, allowing the wound to fester longer, the infection to penetrate deeper, and the scar that desperately tries to cover the gaping hole in your soul to be stretched further and further, until finally it breaks.
And the rawness of the wound is open for all to see and feel.
If you’ve never had this experience in your life, I’m pretty confident in saying that you probably know someone who has. You’ll know it by the way certain topics are off limits, or by the way that they close down when the conversation goes in a certain direction.
Maybe you’ve been present when the covering has broken, and the pain and anguish comes pouring out in a way that neither edifies nor uplifts anyone around them.
Or maybe it was you who had broken.
However you came to understand it, you realize in a moment of clarity that this isn’t going to go away by itself.
Somehow, somewhere, the person who’s soul has been wounded at its core is going to have to go through the pain and agony of finally processing a hurt that should have been worked through many years ago, but for some reason wasn’t.
Maybe there just wasn’t time, or maybe it was just too painful to face right then.
Because some pains are just too raw to experience in the moment. Instead of being guided and comforted through the experience, sometimes the person instead just learns to suppress the pain day after day, year after year, until it becomes a black hole in their soul, pulling in the light around it, until that person has become a shell of who they used to be.
Hurting, judgmental, caustic and in pain.
In our desire to help them, we often feel the urge to explain something to them, some blinding obvious fact that seems so clear to us, that they seem to be missing or unable to understand.
If we give into that desire, it is my experience that we only make matters worse, because the person who cannot right now understand something because of the pain that they feel will become the person who will not thank you for your well intentioned, but ultimately patronizing, words.
The best we can do is give them our love, our acceptance, our presence and our patience.
And when they are ready for them, our questions. I have written before about how the questions we ask determine our journey, and that the answers we find are usually just a way-point that determines the direction of another question.
When dealing with a person for whom time has not healed a wound, the greatest blessing you can offer them is a ear that listens without judgment, and a heart that loves without indictment.
If you desire to be of assistance to those who are hurting, may I suggest that you leave your own concerns, your desires, your beliefs and your judgments at the door, and walk into their lives carrying nothing but a desire to serve, and to allow them the human right and privilege to choose their own destiny and path of healing.
Because the deepest wounds are not healed by time, but by patience, long suffering, and by love unfettered and unfeigned.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings