Healing Happens

The other day I was looking back through some unfinished blog posts, and came across the following. I must have written in about two years after my first husband drowned. It shocked me to read how ‘raw’ the feelings had been at that point, and it made me realize that often it’s hard to see the progress we are making. If you are still at a ‘raw’ place, take heart. Healing truly does happen!

Singing in the Shower

It hit me the other morning as I coaxed the last tiny bit of conditioner out of the bottle in the shower:  I was singing!

I used to sing in the shower all the time, decades ago. I think it was always an unconscious, spontaneous reaction to joy deep in my heart.  I would often find myself singing without even thinking about it.

But then when the hard times came more often and lasted longer, and my heart was heavy, I couldn’t do it as often. The songs just died on my lips – if they ever got that far.

Then since my husband drowned, I don’t know that I’ve done it at all.

I never thought about it, though. It’s not like even once the thought crossed my mind, “I don’t sing in the shower anymore.” It just wasn’t part of my life.

But there I was this morning, singing, and I recognized it as a happy song from my youth, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside where it’s been hidden for a long time.

I was taken aback. I’d thought I was healing well, months ago. Yet here was evidence that there had still been healing that needed to happen before my heart was free to invite those cheerful lyrics and winsome melodies back, and to let them spill forth without any conscious effort.

Is there more healing yet to come? Doubtless. Not only from the death of my spouse, and not only from the years of difficulty that preceded that event. I have yet to heal from wounds that I’ve covered over, hoping they’ll be forgotten. I need to heal from wrongs I’ve done that I have not yet been able to forgive myself for.

Thankfully, there is One who offers to take those burdens, and who has already paid the price so that, as I accept His offer, and do His will, I can be free of the guilt, and the weight, and the pain.

Life can either be a process of hiding more and more, of carrying bigger and heavier burdens, or a journey of releasing the pain and the burdens, of discovering self, and a journey of gradual cleansing and healing. The longer I live, the more I think we each get to choose which it is.

And that thought makes me happy.

So happy that….

I now sing in the shower!