By Ife J. Ibitayo
A well-known pastor once said that “the church spends most of its time focusing on physical healing when the most important healing we need is emotional and spiritual healing. We can find joy with a broken body, but no one can find joy with a broken spirit.”
I’ve dealt with my share of physical ailments, from habitual headaches to nagging joint issues. But these pale in comparison to the emotional pain I’ve endured: crippling discouragement, crushing rejection, and corrosive loneliness to name a few. Yet my life in my ways has not been exceptional. We all have some measure of healing that we need from the LORD.
Reframing the Past
One of the first steps to healing is reframing the past. We need to actively and aggressively search for how God was working through the events that continue to haunt us.
Reframing the past doesn’t mean putting on rose-tinted glasses. The cancer really was that bad. Being fired really was unfair. We shouldn’t trivialize the suffering we experienced. Rather, reframing is our freedom to choose the aspects of our past memories that we focus on.
I’ve shared quite a bit about the past seven years of my life. If you’ve followed my blog for long enough, you might conclude that my undergraduate years were nightmarish, my graduate years were hellish, and my COVID year has been unspeakable. But there is another side to my story that I’ve done great disservice to.
Reframing My Past
While attending the University of Texas at Austin for my undergraduate studies, I entered into a deeper relationship with God than I ever had before. I grew in the amount of time I spent in His word and in prayer. I found solace and comfort as I poured my heart out to God every night in my closet. I found friendship and community that I didn’t ask for but really needed. God released the snares of pornography from my soul. And I received a world-class education that I’m still benefiting from today.
When I attended Purdue University for my graduate studies, God brought me into an intimate and special season with Himself. He spoke with me each day and uniquely guided even my most mundane of tasks. He protected me from harm and opened up doors at just the right moment. I accomplished amazing tasks in my last year that in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined on day one.
Lastly, this past year God has again shown up strong. As I was freefalling into isolation, He caught me in His safety net of friends and families. He’s cheered my heart with small and big news. And He’s healed my body and spirit through the strangest of circumstances: from an old mentor that reached out to used books that I stumbled upon.
Conclusion
As long as we remember our history for the evil it brought us, it will continue to ensnare us. It’s like having an arm that broke long ago and snapping it out of joint every time we look at it. We have to courageously let go of the trauma of the past and embrace our hope for the future.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
(Romans 8:28)