Still More Healing To Do

I had another “still more healing to do” moment.

Recently, while sitting with friends, I was sharing. I felt myself getting passionate about the topic, wanting to explain, be heard, and share a story.

Once again, my face was getting red and I knew this was another moment to remember where I am on my journey of healing.

It was a moment for compassionate care and a deep breath.

There’s still more healing to do.

Complex traumatic stress is real. The triggers and pain and moments are real. They take your breath away.

It takes new self-awareness, self-regulation, and a lot of self-care.

I took a walk and a nap.

My word for 2024 was restore and I knew that for 2025 my word wouldn’t change. I needed still more of His restoring.

I wrote it in my journal at the beginning of January and prayed, “Lord, please keep restoring and healing.”

He is continuing to restore in obvious ways that have a physical reaction, signaling a growth or healing point.

I have to keep going, keep moving through this process. There really is no way through but through.

I am in this with you. I’m on the healing journey.

In fact, I’ll probably always be on a healing journey with still more healing to do.

I plan to heal and grow and change and lean into more of Jesus my entire life. I want to let him challenge me, try my reins, and push my story forward while I say, “It is well with my soul.”

There’s ALWAYS more healing to do.

At the end of last year, I wrote a post for A Life Overseas called, “The Person Just Ahead of You.” I wrote that from the perspective of how I used to write all the #behindtheprayercard things for our missions journey.

I share a comment that was made a long time ago, asking me how I could write about life overseas when I was just arriving and beginning. It was hurtful, condescending, and lacking understanding.

Taken aback at the comment, I didn’t have an answer for her other than, “I just write what I’m currently learning.”

So, when I recently heard about another comment being made from a previous friend about my coaching and how could I think I could coach others when I’d just been through a divorce, I thought the exact same thing.

Unfortunately, this actually happens a lot in Christian circles, previous networks of friends, co-workers, and family.

How can she be doing what she’s doing?

Wow, she’s changed. What happened?

Why does she write those things?

I just write what I’m learning. I coach what I’ve been through.

And yes, I’ve changed. So much. So deeply. Thank you for noticing.

I do not coach from a perfect place. I coach from experience, my training, my own personal counseling, coaching, and ministry as God leads.

Just this week, in a coaching session, a client said, “How do you know this so well? You described exactly what I’m feeling!”

My answer?

“I’m on this journey with you. I’m just a few years ahead of you in the process of finding my voice, saying no, building boundaries, and requiring health in all areas of my life. I can talk about it because I know it very well.”

I’m certainly not coaching everyone to make a decision like I’ve made or do things how I do things. Everyone is on their own healing, growing journey. Not every story turns out like mine.

But I can absolutely without a doubt understand confusion, covert abuse, blurred lines, mistaken responsibility, enmeshed family systems, and all the guilt, shame, hurt, misunderstanding, resentment, and anxiety that comes with the thought of making a change.

The tools and steps of healing are the same.

I know the fear that goes with setting a boundary.

I understand cognitive dissonance and how it can be traumatic to sort it all out.

Podcast: When Loving Him Hurts

I know the fear of holding firm, staying steady, and requiring reciprocity.

I know the heartache, the harm, the destruction of broken relationships and disrespected vows.

I’m the person just ahead of you in the process.

I’ve walked a “never in a million years” path.

I can hold the story with you as you soundboard ideas, feel the hurt, gain strength, and learn new skills.

I can offer books and resources and support.

Whether this applies to a marriage, another family relationship, a work situation, a health journey, parenting, complex neurodiversity, missions, ministry, or the grief of loss, we can do the healing things together.

I can write and coach and teach and help from right where I’m at in my process of growth.

I can trust that God is at work when there’s still more healing to do.

Because of that, YOU can trust that God is also at work in your story today.