My last nights at home before returning to school from Christmas break, I read through my old journals. They started the day I turned 13, and read right up to the present. Sometimes entire months, even years, were missing from their pages. But what was there was dramatic and random and sometimes downright hilarious in its youthful confusion. I was convinced at age 13 that I would be a professional dancer and poured all my prayers into trying to convince God of the same thing. If you went to high school with me, there's probably a prayer for you in the pages of my journals, so if you need to know on what day you had a crisis, I've gotcha covered. If anyone has any idea who I had a crush on in the first half of 11th grade, please enlighten me, because I've completely forgotten the identity of this all-important "him" who is namelessly prayed for (and by "for" I mean, "for me, he needs to be mine").
There is so much contradiction and hypocrisy and earnestness and exaggeration in these pages that I can hardly read them without being torn between laughing and crying. I was a mess. I wrote so many things that I firmly and whole-heartedly believed in, wanting to live by them until the end...and mere weeks later, I was thanking God for circumstances that totally contradicted the lifestyle I had claimed to want.
My journal probably knows more about me than my mom (and she knows a lot). But Jesus knows even more. He knows each word before I pen it; He knows the words that never make it to the page, the ones engraved into my heart that I can't fully grasp enough to bring out. That's a little daunting. What's He seen? What's He thinking about? Are there sins I haven't even confessed because I can't remember them?? Woe is me!!
Perspective.
"I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him." -Isaiah 57:18
I have seen his ways...
...but I will heal him.
I just want to breathe that in for a minute.
I have seen his ways. I know. I saw it happen. I knew it was going to happen. I cried. It was awful. I wish he hadn't done it.
But I...will...HEAL him.
Look at a little context: "For this is what the high and lofty One says -- He who lives forever, whose Name is holy: 'I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite...I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him...Peace, peace, to those far and near.'" -Isaiah 57:15,18,19b
What??
Praise Him, for He knows and He heals. He sees and He comforts. He is holy but He dwells with the lowly. He's read my journals and He's read between the lines, and He's seen the times I've hurt myself and others and Him, and He heals.
He heals. There is no chain so strong it cannot be broken by the blood and the power of the High and Lofty One, no place so far that He cannot speak peace to you there. He loves you...He will heal you.
He healed me.
