Learning the Healer’s Art ~ Part One

  Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening,

this post should take approximately five minutes to read from start to finish.

This post focuses on Brigham Young University (BYU) Devotional in October 2002, and it is called "Learning the Healer's Art" by Sister Elaine S. Marshall. This post is part one. I would like to share with you some highlights while I was reading the Devotional. 

Sister Marshall has mentioned the following; "... 

Healing Hurts

First, healing hurts. ... I have learned that healing hurts. Life hurts. Healing really only begins when we face the hurt in its full force and then grow through it with all the strength of our soul. For every reward of learning and growing, some degree of pain is always the price. 

Author M. Scott Peck reminds us that if you do not want love or pain, you “must do without many things” (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978]: 133). I think you would do without dating, graduating, getting married, or having children.

Sometime in your life you will know a crashing crisis or heavy heartache that will threaten all sense of logic or hope or certainty from which, no matter how you emerge, nothing will ever be the same. Hurts come as unique losses, unwelcome surprises, fading hope, or grief.

... Perhaps that special person did not have the same “revelation” you think you had. Maybe this is the best you will ever look. Maybe someone you counted on wasn’t there for you. Perhaps someone in your past hurt you deeply. I know that pain.

... Some of us suffer the wrenching consequences of sin or just poor judgment. ... We hurt when we see our own failures or helplessly watch the unwise decisions of others. Our lives are changed forever not only by the pain but by facing our need to heal.

Sometimes we simply have too many demands or feel like we just don’t measure up. Daily life’s hundreds of additive stresses can drain hope and energy, drop by drop, toward spiritual depletion leaving a need to heal. Pain is part of living. Pain brings us to the source of healing.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland warned: The world around you is an increasingly hostile and sinful place. ... You can change. You can be helped. You can be made whole whatever the problem. All he asks is that you walk away from the darkness and come into the light, his light, with meekness and lowliness of heart. ... (Isaiah 53:4–5; Mosiah 14:4–5). [Jeffrey R. Holland, “Come unto Me,” Brigham Young University 1996–97 Speeches (Provo: BYU, 1997), 189; emphasis in original]

We can partake of the healing medicine of the Atonement of our Savior, who promised, “I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee” (2 Kings 20:5).

"As our FAITH in the Lord increases, we trust in him
and have confidence in his power to redeem, heal, and
strengthen us." - David A. Bednar.

Healing Is Active - You Have to Be There

My second lesson is that healing is active - you have to be there. Your friend or your husband or wife or your mother cannot do it for you. You have to face the problem and the pain. 

To begin healing, you must acknowledge and feel the hurt. Only those who don’t feel, those without conscience, cannot heal. My mother once told me of an experience she had one winter morning as she drove down to check the cattle in the lower pasture. 

She noticed a car off the side of the road. Inside she recognized a young mother and three children. When my mother asked if they needed help, the woman tearfully reminded her that this was the place of the accident two weeks earlier that had killed her husband. She answered, “We are just here to feel the hurt.”

... Healing is not cure. Cure is clean, quick, and done often under anesthesia. ... Healing, however, is often a lifelong process of recovery and growth in spite of, maybe because of, enduring physical, emotional, or spiritual assault. It requires time. We may pray for cure when we really need healing. Whether for cell reconstruction, for nerve and muscle rehabilitation, for emotional recovery, or for spiritual forgiveness, healing needs work and time and energy.

Healing cannot happen in a surgical suite where the pain is only a sleepy memory. Cure is passive, as you submit your body to the practitioner. Healing is active. It requires all the energy of your entire being. You have to be there, fully awake, aware, and participating when it happens.

Healing Is Private

My third lesson is that healing is private. ... Healing is not only private, it is sacred. Private healing is not healing by abandonment. There is something so sacred about partaking of the power of the Atonement to overcome suffering, disappointment, or sin that it happens in the privacy of that special relationship between the mortal and the divine. 

Healing involves a private personal communion with the Savior, the Master Healer. It inspires a very personal reverence and awe. While on the earth Jesus often healed in private and then departed. When He healed, He often charged, “See thou tell no man; but go thy way” (Matthew 8:4; see also Luke 8:56).

To say that healing is private is not to diminish the marvelous power that comes from the help and compassion of others. Indeed, private healing often may not happen without the help of others. But much of the work of healing is done alone, inside the heart, in the company of the Spirit of the Lord.

Such secret healing is not a single event. It happens as a process of living. You cannot simply take off a day or start tomorrow like a new diet and return healed. It happens quietly while you face the pain. It happens over time as you live, work, study, and give to others." 

Stay Tuned until next time.