The heart needs time to heal

Your heart was not designed to be constantly beaten up without having time to recover and heal. Even if you are in a season of life where you are facing an endless succession of difficulties—indeed, especially if you are in one of those seasons—you must find ways to let your heart regroup, slow down, and mend.

Healing for our heart is not an option. When our hearts go too long without recovery, the color starts draining from our world, our perspective gets skewed, and our ability to accurately discern reality diminishes. It is dangerous for us to linger in that place because the longer we are there, the more impressionable we become and the more easily we fall prey to the taunting whisper of our greatest fears and discouragements.

Our hearts are the wellspring—the source—of our life, and when the source gets damaged or drained, we must find ways to recover, or else we risk believing lies, doubting God, and becoming stuck in perpetual pain.

Obviously, we cannot completely heal while we are still in the middle of a storm. The nature of storms is to beat incessantly against the hull of a ship or the edge of a coastline, and it would be naïve to suggest that we can live completely pain-free when we are experiencing such a storm. We cannot fully heal until the pounding subsides.

However, we can still find ways to breathe. We can still worship and let God’s courageous heart wash over our trembling, faltering one. We can sing, until our soul begins to believe the words that we are singing by faith. We can sleep, because sometimes hearts heal in the night and everything looks brighter in the morning. We can let friends carry us, we can seek wise counsel, or we can see a doctor who can medically alleviate some pain.

The possible strategies are numerous but the strategy is less important than the decision: we must regroup and allow our hearts to heal. We are not as strong as we think we are, and we cannot endure constant criticism, disappointment, failure, opposition, or regret, without taking time to be restored. You are too valuable to get tainted and colored by your pain. So, please rest…please talk…please smile if you cannot laugh…and please position your heart to eventually come back to life.

“Do you not know? Have you not heart? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-31)