This year has been by far one of most full - and undoubtedly the happiest - of my life, the year in which I finally said yes to my beloved husband-to-be. Yet this was one of those years that I’ve come to the end of still unsure of my Word of the Year. How to sum up these months of learning to love, to rest, to surrender my control and find security in trusting another with my future? The word that has come back to my mind over the last few days is Healing.
It’s a present active participle, a verb still in process of being done. And that’s how much of this year has felt - so much good, so much that has been healed, yet a process still to be completed. I have grown in love for my fiancé, yet the wedding is still 45 days away. Through his patient care, I have worked through old scars and deeply ingrained detrimental habits, yet these still rise to the surface at times. I have accomplished many of my goals, yet there is still so much undone. Even my physical healing from the years of Lyme disease has reached a point that I might say I am healed, yet I still feel my body’s weakness.
And this is where we find ourselves in the Christian life, in the “already and not yet,” the time between the healing of our relationship with God at our conversion and our complete healing in Christ’s presence. It is a long process, full of successes and setbacks, every recognition of how far we’ve come followed by a reminder of how deep our brokenness runs. For all the tremendous joy of this year, the yet unhealed wounds of my life and the world are no less painful, and I ache a little more for the healing to come.
It hasn’t happened yet, but it is happening. Every day, in the simple acts of loving those around me, I am participating in the healing of just a tiny bit of the vast hurt that exists in the present. I am joining God in His patient work of restoring what sin has so hideously ruined. He is healing me, healing us, until that coming Day when at last all is healed forever. May it be soon.