I am so guilty of this. I love to juggle, I love to multitask. I thoroughly enjoy doubling my efforts through efficiency and speed in a day. I am good at it, so good at it, that I have trouble slowing down. I have trouble with quiet.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good book. I love a lounge chair on a beach and an afternoon in the hammock. But these are rare occasions and things to do on vacation or Saturday afternoons once a month, right? Wrong.
It is because of our insane need for immediacy and hurry and cram-it-all-in mentality that we can’t let time heal or chronic diseases. We haven’t spent our lives yearning to relax and rest in the moment. We are always thinking of the next thing, not fully aware of where we are right now. We have trouble with quiet. We have trouble with empty space. We have trouble with waiting.
I spoke to a mom yesterday that has the disease bad. Between 3 kids, this fall, they are balancing 10 separate sports activities. Hurry hurry hurry. How much can we get done? How fast can it happen? Can we microwave our schedules to get done faster like our dinner? (don’t get me started on microwaves)
Chronic illness and healing have taught me a great deal about time and resting. People ask me all the time – I’m going to get better after 3 weeks on antibiotics, right? I’m going to be totally healed and fully functional after this two week treatment, right? When did you get better, feel better and have your life back?
Trick questions, all of them. What life do you want back? Do you want the life back that you hurried every day in? Do you want the life back where you took every single day of your health for granted? Do you want the life back spent with shallow people who have all abandoned you into this illness? Do you want the life back spent eating fast food and bonbons?
There is no fast track way to reach healing. How long did it take you to get sick? How long were you in decline? Do you want to truly heal or just trick your body into it?
The days are long in healing. There are ups and there are most certainly downs. There is frustration. There is discouragement. There is time tick tocking away. There are birthday parties missed. There are vacations cancelled. There are times where vertical is not an option.
All of this is worth it. I’m here to tell you, that true healing is worth every single quiet slow moving minute. We are still healing in our house. We are fully functional, but not fully healed. Each bump in the road is a reminder of how many minutes, hours, days, years and dollars we have spent at doctors, on our knees and on this natural true healing road to recovery.
It is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. You can do it. It is possible. Did you need to hear that today? It is possible to heal.
Let’s put it this way. James Bryan Smith talks about how to grow a good spiritual life and equates it to making a pickle. (The Good and Beautiful God) I like the pickle analogy so much and I think it applies here beautifully. You can’t heal overnight. You can’t make a pickle overnight either. A good pickle must begin as a cucumber seed. Then it must grow the plant and then the cucumber. Then you must make the brine. If you dip the cucumber in the brine and pull it right back out, it is not a pickle. It must soak in the brine to become a great pickle.
You must completely immerse yourself in the idea of healing. Don’t just put your toe in the pool and think you are bought in. You must be immersed. Surround yourself with people who live like you want to. Eat organic. Exercise. Pray. Read. Rest. Grow as a person. Leave toxic relationships, toxic office buildings or toxic homes.
Cucumbers cannot become pickles by being in the brine for 30 min a day. They must be totally immersed for weeks.
You cannot do this halfway. In order to heal, you must be committed, body, mind and soul to be immersed in what it takes to be restored. Hour by hour and day by day it will happen if you take these steps completely.
Leave hurry behind and be a pickle instead.
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist
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