It's a choice

In 2004 my father passed on. He was a man I never knew, but he was a man who was always dear to me and close to my heart. I had always hoped that we would somehow find our way to each other and have the ideal father-daughter relationship as I imagined it in my head. Upon realising that this dream would never materialise, I was devastated, heartbroken and I started asking God the infamous question…… “WHY?”.

Many told me that time would heal the wound and the void in my heart; that I would recover from the loss; and so I waited for time to do his part…but he never did. 

“Time will heal”! I have heard these words so many times, uttered as a form of comforting one who has experienced a tragedy or an unexpected turn of events that has left them searching for answers and something to hold on to. I believe I have also said these words to a friend, a colleague, a stranger I bumped into on the street and was so burdened with the lump on his/her chest that s/he poured out to the first person who came by. I have told people time will heal……what was I basing this analogy on though?

In my experiences in life, time has never been a healer. There are numerous people who can attest to this. In the bible, I’ve so many times heard of the woman who was plagued by the issue of blood. It is recorded that this woman had been in that state for 37 years. She had also probably been told time and again that she must hang in there cause time would heal. As she waited and tried all she could to help time do what it was supposed to, she must have been despondent. I know if I’d have to wait for 37 years for anything……I wouldn’t really wait. Another story is recorded of a man who could not walk and was waiting by a healing pond to receive his healing, but he couldn’t get helped, regardless of how much time passed while he sat there. Every time the angel would come and stir the water, someone would jump in infront of him……and bam……he would miss out on another opportunity to be healed.

The lives of these two people both changed when Jesus came into contact with them. All their lives they had known they had problems, and probably shared their problems with anyone who dared come near them, but people would just tell them “time heals”. I can just picture the woman whose life had been marred by the issue of blood for 37 years, jumping up and looking at all those around her asking “How come no one ever told me that Jesus heals?”.  She must have wished that somebody would have objected to the fabrication about time being able to heal, then her life would not have been left such a mess for so long.

What am I saying? Time is not a healer…yes, I said it and I will say it again, TIME DOES NOT HEAL. How can time heal what God has not healed? And how can God heal if you have not come to Him and asked Him to? In both stories as recorder in the bible, we see those who needed healing making an effort to get God to heal them. This was no different for me as well, I had to make a choice to allow God to heal me. I’ll be honest though, allowing God to heal me was not as glamorous as you would imagine. As soon as I opened up and let Him do His “thing”, things did not, by no means start looking up, and that’s because Gods healing is a process, and there are no stages you can be exempted from in this process. When God started removing the scabs from the wounds that had been left unattended and waiting for time to heal……it HURT!! Another thing I wasn’t really impressed with about God healing those broken places was what most of us fear……stopping to blame things on others and finally accepting responsibility. Before this process, I could always attribute any failure in my life to my father or this and the other problem; there was always something else, it was never me. All these wounds and bruises had become a crutch, they were an excuse for me never to be held accountable for my actions……but God, and not time, had come to rob me off my crutch. 

This is what God does, He will remove from you anything that you have held onto that you shouldn’t, He will not let you go until you have shifted all focus and control unto Him.

So, stop waiting for time to heal you……only God can heal.

I now no longer say “Time will heal you” but I rather say “your CHOICE to allow God in will heal you”.