16 - Healing

I had spent over a year accusing God of all the things he had done wrong and all the reasons why I should never trust him with anything precious again. I was getting really good at being cynical and it came easily to me. Someone challenged me to try to write out all of the reasons why I should trust God instead of why I shouldn’t. I didn’t know what the harm in that could be since, at the time, I didn’t expect that list to be very long. I didn’t feel like there was very much I had to say positively about God, but I decided it would be good for me to try to remember specific times where God proved to me that he was trustworthy. I didn’t know if anything would come of it, but at least it would be a change from cynicism. As I started writing, one memory after another began to flood my mind. To my grumpy surprise, the list kept getting longer and longer.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that something supernatural was happening as I wrote that list. The Holy Spirit was relentlessly bringing to mind one memory after another of times God had provided, counseled, or simply showed up for me. As I sat there writing, my accusing finger pointing at God began to drop. I saw on the page before me evidence of a good God, not a bad one. There was a spiritual change happening in my heart as I sat there looking at all the times God had come through for me.  He had been...good...to me?  That realization struck my heart. He was not the villain in this story. He was the hero. He was the friend who showed up in my fear, anxiety, and sin. He was the companion who moved mountains to show me how deeply he loved me.  That supernatural moment realigned my heart with who I knew God to be. I still had questions and I still wanted answers from God, but I wasn’t accusing him anymore.  In that moment, the Holy Spirit took me from standing opposite him with my arms crossed, to standing beside him with my hand in his. I had forgotten who he was, but I was beginning to remember. 

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God continued to heal my heart over the next few months.  I was blown away by his healing and redemptive powers.  He didn’t just prove that he was trustworthy and move on, as if he was only concerned about his reputation in all of this.  He went through and spoke to specific hurts and accusations that were deep in my heart.  Like open heart surgery, he went in and rewired my heart again. We went through each emotion, each hurt, and each memory together and he began to heal me. This took time and work. It wasn’t instantaneous. It is easy to be angry. It’s hard and painful to put in the work to reconstruct, in a new beautiful way, what has been torn down.

When I was angry and hurting, I so desperately wanted to get back to how I lived my life before I went to Palestine; the blissful, free, and careless Susannah that left America.  I wanted to rewind and get back to her.  I thought closeness with God meant getting back to that.  What God did, though, was what he does best; He made me new. He didn’t take away the pain and the questions and the wounds, he healed them. I was transformed and new, just with a few scars that tell a story of wrestling with God. Being in a healthy place didn’t mean returning to the person I was before trauma, but allowing myself to be healed and made again into a new creation - one that looks more like Jesus than it did before.

When I reflect on this time of my life, sometimes I wonder why just one year hit me so hard. Why did I have to come home and take so much time to heal over such a short amount of time overseas? When my roommates from Palestine were still living and working in the Middle East, why was I so broken? I could sit and compare myself all day long, but what it comes down to is that this is the story God was writing for me.  I believe God allowed me to feel the weight of human suffering so deeply that year.  My roommates and I experienced many similar things, but God was doing different things in all of us.  With me, I believe he shared his deep grief of war and pain and suffering.  I believe he allowed my heart to feel a fraction of what his heart feels when he sees war.  He shared his heart with me.  I believe my tears, grief, and anger were not wrong.  I think many of those emotions were matching his.  My anger at the injustice I saw was from him.  My grief over human suffering was his.  My tears over my students and friends were a mirror of his own.  

About a year after I came home from Palestine, I took a trip to Germany to team up with some workers there and help with the refugee crisis.  One morning, a German team leader came and prophesied over our short term team.  When he got to me, he said, “You cry the tears of people.  You are able to feel people's stories along with them and be with them in their stories.  The Lord wants to use that”.  I was affirmed that my pain and the grief I felt wasn’t just my own, but it was divine and an image of Jesus in me. I may not be the blissful, free, and careless person that I was, but my compassion was deeper and my heart felt more real and authentic than it ever had. 

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I still wrestle with the sovereignty of God and the presence of evil in the world today.  I probably always will. It matters deeply to me, and I want to gain as much insight on the topic as I can this side of heaven. It may be a mystery, but I want to know as much as I can about that mystery until the day it is made plain. However, I’ve noticed that when I’m close to Jesus, my accusations and questions are much quieter in my mind - they begin to matter less as I walk in deep partnership with him.

I believe I could bounce around theological answers to my questions all day but in the end, my theology didn’t save me.  My theology had been shipwrecked.  My intimacy with Jesus was the only thing that could withstand the storm. When the winds and the rain came and pounded on my house, there was a lot of damage, but the foundation was on solid ground. Not perfect theology, but deep intimacy with the Almighty.  The answer to my questions while I am here on this earth is being close to Jesus. It’s what he spoke to me in my crisis of faith a few years ago: “Look at me.” For now, that is my answer.  

And, oh, what a gracious answer.  

One day in heaven, I believe I will see all God was doing behind the scenes in every world crisis. I believe I will understand even more the “why’s” that I ask here on earth. But I think, in reality, when I get to heaven, those “whys” and all my questions will fall away as I look into his eyes. When I actually see the face of God on that day, all my questions will be satisfied in that one look.