It’s not as straightforward as we hope it would be. It’s a roller coaster process.
Some days you feel like you’re on top of the world and some days you feel like you’re right back where you started from. And when you have an uphill flow going for yourself on your journey, it can be really discouraging when you backslide. Heart broken, even. It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and not feel ashamed.
But I’m finding that you can work so hard and come so far and still fall back down without warning and it doesn’t nullify your progress–not even a bit. I need to learn to love the ups and downs of this journey and give myself permission to heal in my own way at my own pace and love myself through all of it–through all the tiny attempts at patching up holes in my soul I’ve been living with for longer that I care to admit.
Because it really seems like this chapter of our story, real healing, is usually this ugly.
It’s filled with dirtiness and secrets and things I’ve let go on too long–things I’ve given up to Jesus countless times and turned around to pick right back up. It looks like a puffy face and tired eyes. It looks like many nights spent crying because you can’t keep running from the skeletons in your closet. It’s an uneven, undecided and unsure journey to the other side of pain, to a place called Better–wherever that is.
But no matter how ugly and rough this healing trail may be, I know that God is walking with you and me. He meets me in it and stays with me every step of the way. I am not going through this valley alone.
So here’s to feeling like a beautiful mess–God’s mess–and most importantly, to loving myself the way He does and never ever giving up.
I am healing every day. It just doesn’t always look like it.