Day 7 — Healing as Grace
- Scripture: 2 Kings 20:5 — I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you.
- Reflection: Our whole being is interconnected. We can be healthy or carry hurt within our bodies, our souls, our minds, our hearts. Thus healing combines attention to the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
Our culture often shames our bodies. We are bombarded with messages about beauty and perfection of outward appearance. Conversely, we are tempted by ways to ‘fix’ ourselves physically.
So our bodies, designed in the image and likeness of Godself, carrying our scars, wounds, imperfections, feelings, and memories, deserve compassion. And respect.
Did you know our bodies heal in micro ways every day? Our faith honors how medicine, psychology, exercise, and mindful & contemplative practices such as prayer work together to promote wellbeing.
Sometimes healing includes acceptance of a ‘new normal’ when the capacity of bones and soft tissue and organs and physiology change with time or circumstances. Injury, illness, or age may require us to adapt. Sometimes we are called to embrace and live full with an altered reality that comes with different capabilities and expectations. Such changes may be challenging to navigate, yet pushing the limits of new situations, by first accepting them and then exploring all that is possible, can become a sustainable way of being satisfied in our ever-changing bodies.
Today, honor your body. Just as it is, for all that it has allowed you to experience in the fullness of your years, regardless of the ways that it may also experience compromises and setbacks. - Practice: Offer gratitude for your body today—not for how it looks, but for something it allows you to do.
Song:
- “Brave” by Sara Bareilles: https://youtu.be/QUQsqBqxoR4?si=gc818QltfCGU7DIt
In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past … begin the process by helping … patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure … help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements … The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves. — Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma