What Is Healing and How Do I Get Some?

What is healing and how do I get some? Health is a relative thing. “I am in relatively good health for my age.” Healing is always just a temporary fix, because we are going to go down-hill physically no matter what we do.

Isn’t that the way it is? Everything casts a shadow. Just when we think everything is going great, there is something eating away at us, or there is something going on with someone that we love or someone for whom we are responsible.

What do we do when we don’t feel right? Often we are tempted to try to find a “silver bullet”, some kind of “quick fix” for what ails us. Many of those remedies work- for awhile. Booze works. (In those old “medicine show” elixirs, wasn’t the main ingredient usually alcohol?) Or we convince ourselves that some sort of drug will fix us. Or maybe a carton of Rocky Road ice cream will do the job? Maybe a day of shopping and spending will help. What I need is a new toy. That ought to do it.

Have you seen the “quick fix” weight loss ads? First, you can buy one of those body-shapers. Or you can drink some kind of glop that is going to send you to the bathroom every five minutes. That is, if you make it there on time. Or you can go get some liposuction or do the gastric by-pass thing. All, supposedly painless quick fixes: “No dieting! No exercise!” Do they work? Sometimes. Other times?

Guess what? I can tell you personally, that there is no other way to get healthy except for diet and exercise. There are some people who can do that on their own. I can’t. I had to report to a trainer about everything that I ate. Then, under her direction, I did some exercises that I would never have done in a million years except that somebody stood there and made me do them.

Can you see that there is a “social component” to good health? We need to help each other do this. Health is “wholeness” so all these things matter: physical, mental, social, spiritual, and financial health.

There’s been a lot of criticism about the habit of sending “thoughts and prayers”. They seem to be dismissive in the face of tragedy. And it is true that more than that is called for in these cases. But do you know what we are doing when we think and pray for someone? When we lift up someone’s name in prayer we are bringing them into the room with us. We are bringing them into relationship with us. We are healing, because health is a relative thing.

So “thoughts and prayers” are at least the beginning of healing. Physical healing is just temporary. But to be in relationship with others, no matter what ails you, is about as good as it can get.