Healing

Healing.  It's not a very big word, really, but it carries tremendous weight.  It's also a remarkably unclear word: people alternately use it to express medical cures, internal peace, and even spiritual renewal.  It's a loaded word.  

Interestingly enough, it's a word that's been thrown around almost ad nauseam in my intensive class this summer.  It's never meant in a way that's intentionally upsetting; my professor is a very kind-hearted woman who has seen some incredible things (miraculous, really) done by the power of the Holy Spirit.  She claims to have seen people healed (sometimes instantaneously), both emotionally and physically.  Naturally, she is trying to share her experiences in the name of promoting hope in her students--everything she's shared, I know, comes from a deep place of compassion in her.  But I still cringe every time I hear her utter the word "healing."

I know this radiates out of my own experience.  While my health problems have blessedly melted into the background of my life, I still remember how it felt to have people talking about physical healing in a spiritual context.  It was always really painful to have people equate God's healing power with my physical health, because the reality of the situation is that health still alludes me.  I still have epilepsy.  So what does that mean, when we're dealing with "healing" in the spiritual realm?  Did I not meditate hard enough?  Did I not have enough faith?  Does God not love me enough?

Obviously, I don't think any of the answers to the above question are "yes."  I may still have wayward brainwaves, but I still feel like I've been healed through my faith, and through God as I've seen him expressed in the love of my community.  Healing can be so much more than a cure; I think healing is whatever enables you live with hope beyond your circumstances.

I just wish my professor talked about it that way when she shares testimonies about the healing she's encountered.  Especially because I know everyone in the class with me has been touched, directly or indirectly, by the devastating reality of our mortal bodies.  "Healing," as she talks about it, is not theoretical--it calls to mind specific people, places, grief, and hope in everyone present.  And while I know I have found my own healing, when my professor said today that she thought "Jesus was going to heal someone in our class," it felt like one gigantic carrot hanging in front of my nose, just out of reach.

So next time she brings up healing, I wish she'd talk about it as more than just a cure. I wish she'd honor the complexity, knowing that for as many people are healed by the power of God, many more aren't--and I wish she'd talk more clearly about how that does not represent a spiritual deficit on their part.  "Healing" is a loaded word; I wish she'd use it more carefully.