Now Walk it Out: Healed Stride, Strong Stride

Discipline From The Lord Leads To Healing

Like anyone seeking to follow Christ, we all lose our way from time to time. We often wonder, How in the world did I get here? Imagine trying to understand how you got to the place where you felt your life was over: lying in bed with puffy eyes, a red face, and feeling destroyed after hearing a medical diagnosis from your overseas doctor you can barely understand. You cry and cry, full of regret and shame, and feel bewildered how a nice girl from a Christian college ended up here. This was me. As the grief of this news washed over me, all I could hear reverberate in my mind was Ruined. You’ve ruined yourself and your life.

Before this moment, living abroad in South Korea quickly turned into a life I didn’t recognize. The choices I was making and the way I was acting were equally as foreign to me as my surroundings. Little by little I gave in to the many compromises of doing what it took to connect with others. Until the day the life I was creating for myself abruptly came to a halt.

In the following weeks, I reeled in the pain and constant tears of what my newly medical diagnosis would mean. In my pit of utter hopelessness, I turned to the familiar voice of Beth Moore and Living Proof Ministries on YouTube. I listened to Bible teaching after Bible teaching night after night, as I would fall asleep with a sermon playing to soothe my sobbing.

Until one day the crying stopped.

Her teaching on Hebrews 12 sobered me up to the very stark reality of God’s jealousy for me, and His desire to be the source of all my needs. The ministering of that particular passage of scripture birthed a revelation in my heart that when we are in a pit, Christ’s love runs deeper still. This low ground is the best place for His healing and resurrection. Even though my own choices were what brought me to this point, I believed that this was the Lord’s way of snatching me out of my sin, back to Him, and into a restorative process.

Hearing that the Lord’s discipline in our lives strengthens and heals the wounded and broken parts of us, was enough for me to open my heart to repent and receive healing for the underlying wound that was crippling me all along. I had been so desperate for the connection I craved, I was blind to the damage it caused me.

Through this trial and discipline, I slowly learned that the only place we find true connection, value, and worth is in our God and our God alone. Trying to get validation or a sense of belonging any other way will never fulfill our many deep needs. I learned to ask for what I needed and to wait on Him for it.

Though I was told that my diagnosis was incurable, I knew that I was healed in a far more significant way than I never even knew I needed. Today as I look around and ahead, my thoughts reflect this truth; Restored. He has restored me and saved my life.

Reflection

What area of your life is feeling unfulfilled?
What vision do you have for this year ahead? What are you hoping for? Maybe: Have you ever feared you have ruined something dear to you?
Write down your biggest heart’s desires for you, your family, friends, and community. Don’t hold back!

Goals

Write down a “seed” you can plant EACH day in order to connect with God, connect with yourself, and connect with others:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful. Later on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet”, so that the lame may not be disabled but rather healed.

(Hebrews 12:11-13 NIV)