the unintended healing

Have you ever wondered about those stories where people get healed in some supposedly miraculous way? I have. Then you hear stories about how it’s a set-up and all that. People come away from the big event relapsing from their healing or whatever. It makes you think, maybe they were never healed in the first place. Yeah, I’ve wondered also. Then I found myself in the middle of an unintended healing.

The world is full of men who have been damaged by women and have taken into their souls this destruction and in response have hated women. My soul bears the mark of the rebound effect. I don’t know exactly how all of it transpired. I only know vaguely the incidents in which I was damaged. I hold no animosity toward my abusers but I can say what they did to me was wrong.

There are also the systems of oppression that I run into time and time again in my own culture as well as others’. Maybe I was super sensitive and it effected me more than it would have another. However it happened, the effects were with me. There were physical symptoms. Symptoms that had odd symbolic character connections to the issue. There were times I went deaf or dumb. Whenever a crass joke with misogynous character was spoken in my presence, I would either not be able to hear it or I would loose my ability to respond or speak. I didn’t exactly know what was the matter with me or exactly what the symptoms were but I knew things could be better in my soul.

Then, I found a group of believers who said they would pray and discern with me. As I prayed with them about the scars on my soul, it was as if the scales dropped from my lips. My jaw was unhinged. I felt set free. But isn’t this interesting, that misogyny, oppression of women, hatred of woman turns into an oppressive silencing of the woman. In the weeks thereafter, I noticed a physical change in my lips. Before, I had never really seen their natural color. I’d always battled with chapped lips, in the summer and in the winter. It didn’t matter how much water I drank or how much Chap Stick I used, they were always bleeding or peeling. But now, suddenly, they were perfect. I habitually ran my nail across them to check for loose edges and there simply were none. It was completely unbelievable. I doubted and decided to dehydrate myself and test this unintended “healing.” After a week of diet coke and coffee my lips did get a bit chapped but not anything like before. I thanked the Lord and decided to embrace my healing.

I was so excited I took a pictures for proof.

This is not to say that I haven’t struggled with chapped lips since then. I have. Currently, I having a terrible time with them. The healing was instant but it is also progressing and relapsing. I had to choose into it in moments of doubt. Oddly enough, I had the worst case of chapped bleeding lips after a friend confessed a secret affair to me and vented to me about the anger and hatred she had for her partner. 1. Praying for God’s healing of my own soul and praying for the forgiveness and healing for a couple that had fallen into destructive relational habits became one and the same. I had never imagined the effects would be written on my lips. I had never thought that my lips would be the barometer. My mouth which would speak God’s blessing and truth into the world of chaos and negativity. How oddly symbolic that the marks of this sin would muzzle the mouth.

1. If you are reading this and you just felt a stabbing in the gutt because you think I’m talking about you, I assure you, I am not. There are a number of people that could fit this confession in my life over the past year and those of you who read this—this is not you. But if you feel stabbing guilt…Confess your sin. Grieve it. And if you already have, Christ declares you forgiven and I declare you forgiven also. Walk in your forgiveness.