Courage comes when you face your fears and choose to heal

It was 2010, and we had just moved to Dallas. Life in the city was much different than the rural surroundings we came from. We’d been in ministry for over twenty years, and we agreed to go wherever God called us, even if that meant moving our family further south. Our oldest son had just graduated high school, and our other sons were entering their junior, freshman and fifth grade years. To say it was a hard move would put it lightly. 

To manage the chaos, I leaned into control and hid my fears underneath the pretense that I was holding it all together. But there’s a lie in living like this, because the more we try to manage things, the less control we truly have. 

For me, this was true when several hard things would begin to unravel. 

This time it was my first accident. Our home was broken into and everything in our new church was unraveling into a horrible mess. My anxiety was out of control, and it led me to reach out for help. 

Yet, sometimes what leads us there, isn’t what needs to heal. 

As I sat in a counselor’s office unloading my recent experiences, there was still so much inside, as if it had been there for years, untouched. I tried to focus on what I was currently going through but my mind was racing, and my heart was pounding in pain. I wanted relief. I wanted to be a different person. I wanted to be someone who didn’t struggle with every little thing, but I didn’t know how. 

My counselor seemed attentive but before I left, she asked me to make a timeline of the losses I’d experienced throughout my life. I was dumbfounded. “Didn’t she hear me? Didn’t she see I needed help with what I’d just spent an hour sharing with her?” 

But I went away and began working on what she asked, hoping I’d gain something from it. What I didn’t expect was how hard it was to untangle my past. Three weeks later, I was still working on it and only part way done. I didn’t know loss was a part of my story. Although I’d experienced abuse and depression, loss was there too.

Healing needs to happen at the heart of the wound for us to find freedom. Yet, we often wait until things are spinning out of control before we will sit long enough to bravely process our pain. 

Over the past decade, I’ve done a lot of healing and, although it’s not been easy, it has been good. The one thing I’ve found is how two stories can be simultaneously true. Because although I’ve experienced some hurts, God has been there all along ready to bring me healing. I just had to courageously choose to heal. 

Scripture for meditation

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
-Psalms 147:3 (NIV)

Continue your devotion with a daily practice in the Dawn app

Get the Wake up Call email for weekly mindful faith inspiration