getting over it God's way

We all want healing for our heart wounds. We want the pain to go away. We want to be free from the destruction that our wounded hearts have caused, don’t we? And praise God! He will heal us and set us free, but we can’t stop there. We must work to be whole, so that we can be wholly His. When God has your whole heart, then you can stand firm in your freedom and never be in bondage to the pain of woundedness again. The question for you is this, “when God heals you will you rebuild what sin has torn down?” When we are healed, but not rebuilt it is like having an amputated body part. The wound from the amputation may be healed well enough for the pain to be gone, but the part is still missing. The wound is healed, but the amputee is disabled, because she isn’t whole. To be whole she needs that part, so what does she do? Amputees replace the missing part with a prosthesis that they put on when they need it, but take off when they don’t. We can let God heal our wounded hearts; we can forgive the one who wounded us; we can be living without the pain that we once felt very deeply, but we can still be missing a huge part of our hearts. For years I lived healed, but I was incapacitated by the pieces of my heart that were still missing. My parents had stolen my innocence, my childhood, my self-confidence, my security, and my ability to feel safe. They did not value me as a unique person. I was insecure in relationships—as much as my sweet husband loved me and showed it, I found myself doubting his love. I didn’t trust anyone, and was suspicious of everyone. I was unsure of myself, even in the areas of my greatest strengths. I was afraid to try new things, so my life became a rut of walking in only the familiar. Part of that stemmed from my expecting failure because my dad told me I would never amount to anything. I didn’t try because I didn’t want to prove my father right. I felt very insignificant to everyone, especially God, so I was not able to reach the full potential for which I was created. Because I was missing parts of my heart, I couldn’t function and flourish fully as I was designed to. My life was totally different with the pain gone. God had opened the door of my prison cell and I was free. I had opened my hand and released the anger that held both my parents and me hostage. God had healed my wound, but there was still work to be done to put the missing pieces of my heart back together. Trying to live without a whole heart is like trying to sew with a sewing machine that has no thread or needle. The machine works, but it can’t do what it is designed to do because it is missing something essential. I did just what an amputee does. In public I put on whatever I needed to compensate for the parts of my heart that were missing—I plastered on my prosthetic smile and my prosthetic air of confidence and self-assurance. I learned to use my prosthetics well enough that others had not idea that I was missing huge parts of myself, but when I was at home the prosthetics came off. When I trusted God to heal my wound, I felt the pain go. My heart felt free, but my self-confidence, sense of security, innocence, ability to feel safe, value as a unique individual, and worth as a person did not come tumbling back into my heart. My fear of failure and rejection did not instantaneously go away. Those all had to be restored as I rebuilt my heart with God. God promises in Joel 2:25 (AMP), “...I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust have eaten...” He promises to restore what has been stolen from us in our woundedness. God doesn’t just want to take away the pain in your heart; He wants to put your broken heart back together. I knew what had been stolen from me and I wanted it back, but I wasn’t sure that I trusted God enough to believe that He would put my heart back together, and I was scared to death of what my rebuilt life would look like. I know that sounds silly, but I knew how to live life with my broken heart.