7 Ways to Cooperate With God for Your Healing

Step 1: Stand your ground and don’t run, even if it’s painful.

Our normal reflex is to pull back and run away.

When I was 6 years old, I attended first grade in a small two-room Christian school in rural South Jersey. First grade through fifth grade met in one room, and sixth through eighth in another. One of the joys of recess was swinging on one of the three wooden-seated swings in our small playground. When recess finally arrived, we children would race to the swings, eager to secure one of the few coveted seats. Those of us in first grade rarely got to swing as the older children were much faster and almost always got there first.

As children often do, we began to think of other imaginative ways to have fun, and soon we discovered the excitement of running under the swing while an older student stood on the seat swinging powerfully back and forth. Lines quickly formed in front of each swing. One by one we would dash under the swing, timing our move just right to avoid getting hit. Soon it was my turn. I raced forward as fast as my first grade legs would carry me, but my timing was off and BAM, the swing smashed full force into my forehead, cutting a gash from which the blood started to pour.

I was knocked backward to the ground and began screaming in pain. My memory of the children shouting, the principal carrying me into the school and my mother driving me to the doctor are all vague and blurry. But I have a sharp and clear memory of being on the doctor’s examining room table and seeing him coming at me with a needle that appeared, at least to my 6-year-old eyes, to be 5 feet long. As he drew closer, pushing that needle toward my forehead, it looked like he was going to stick it right in my eye.

I wanted to run away as fast as I possibly could because I was afraid. But my mother held me tight. I tried to squirm free, I begged, I cried, but Mother would not let go. She loved me too much.

It was only by standing firm—something my 6-year-old self couldn’t do—that healing could happen. In the same way, we must use our God-given judgment—and maybe even the judgment of those around us whom we trust—to choose to stand firm and not run, even if it hurts.

Step 2: Be truthful. Seek the truth. Don’t let feelings determine your beliefs.

We must be truthful about ourselves and our situation. This was one of Jessica’s problems. She felt guilty rather than grief-stricken. She hadn’t done anything wrong, so the guilt she felt was a false guilt. It was a way of taking responsibility, of trying to “control” events in attempt to “fix” or change the situation, rather than accepting the painful truth. She wasn’t being truthful that it wasn’t her fault and that there wasn’t anything more she could have done.

We must be truthful about the facts. Many of my patients who are divorced are tempted to feel like they are failures when their marriages end. But such a conclusion is a lie. The truth is that your marriage may have failed, but that doesn’t mean you are a failure as a person. What determines whether our lives end in success or failure is our current choices, not our past choices.