I started my day off with some great conversation with a friend at Hypnotic Donuts.

Tough questions and tough topics.

Like what does it really mean to be healed? If we ask God for healing, what should we expect?

It’s tough because for many of us who live with serious ongoing health struggles, our doctors may tell us that there is no cure. Just management. Does God heal those kinds of things? And if we ask God to heal us and nothing happens, what does that mean? Was our faith not strong enough?

Or does healing mean acceptance of our ailments and illnesses? Learning to live and cope with them? Discover the gifts in them?

I believe God heals people… but not always in the same way. Healing can happen through relationships, a sense of hope, or peace. Healing can be forgiveness and reconciliation. Healing can be physical, mental, and/or spiritual. I have seen prayer work in people’s lives. Do I always understand how it does? Of course, not. People can get stronger when they are surrounded in prayer and love by their family and friends. People also find permission to let go and complete their life’s journey through prayer. All of that can be healing.

In Gerald May’s book, Addiction & Grace, he flips the script on addictions and brokenness. After recognizing that we humans can never achieve a state of perfection, no matter how hard we try, we must see “that the incompleteness within us, our personal insufficiency, does not make us unacceptable in God’s eyes.” We are wounded but that woundedness does not make us unlovable. In fact, we can think of our inadequacies “as doorways through which the power of grace can enter our lives.”

Maybe that is a better definition of healing – being reminded, through our places of weakness and pain, that we are loved, just as we are.

Peace be to those who yearn for healing – may we all know God’s love this day and each day.