Sweet Healing Moments

It had been quite a while since my first trip to Presque Isle.  Being a farm kid from Western Pennsylvania, family beach trips were few and far between.  Though I had a love for the ocean, I was raised in a landlocked cornfield with no water in sight.  Ugh! One of the simple fixes for that dilemma was the three-hour jaunt to Erie, Pa, a place that had nearly everything my heart desired, save the salt.  The Great Lakes are a wonderful blessing to those who don’t live on the east and west coasts.  It is an oasis we can run to, a place of refreshment.  Fishing, sailboats, the tide. . . it’s all there on smaller scale.  I’ll take it.  I crave being at the water’s edge. 

This week was one of those moments.  We packed the car and took ourselves on a much-needed break.  An adventure for a four-year-old, a beach chair for me, a good book in the hands of my wife, we were looking for some R&R.  When we got there, I found a long-lost friend.

Memory lane.

I drift in thought. My toes poke in the sand.  It is warm on the surface, cool underneath.  We face the waves; the wind graces us in a gentle breeze, one just discernable.  I can recollect times when it was much stronger. . . gale force in fact, a gale I wish never to repeat.  Today though, the trickle of God’s fan blades streams the slightest sweeping air into my face.  It is perfect, like a breath of life.  I bask in the beauty of being at the tideline in which God says, “no further.”

Looking back, memories roll through my internal filmstrip.  The portrayal is fuzzy; captured but blurry images resemble a likeness that cannot seem to focus.  Photos with tattered corners and faded color still seem to press close to my heart.  They are the faintest hints of early moments here, ones still hanging on in thought.  Regardless, even the faint memories are important.  I treasure them.  A pirate trove to reminisce through.

I keep looking.  A fog begins to clear, a mist tries to lift as the lake breeze attempts to sweep it free.  I try hard to peer into this haze of mixed messages my eyes and brain decipher.  Bits and pieces of great moments.  Fragments that are joined together.  The building blocks of a life that came together.  I filter through the mix of sun and shade, this blanket of old thoughts I try to process.  The young love that knew no hardship.  A life free and easy.  Laughs.  Smiles.  Holding hands.  Filleting fish on a balcony and leaving the scales for the rain to wash away.  A life without struggle.  A future without the knowledge of anything less.  Innocence.

It's hard to walk beside old footprints.

And then there are the ones I can remember more clearly.  I breathe steam on the lens so I can polish and buff it clear.  Peering intently, there are moments here that I have saved and cherished for years.  I was a youth pastor then.  Each year we brought a bus, a team of teens, the expectation of good times and a sunny day.  So much good happened on these trips.  The pictures and memories are sharp.  I can still see them.  Laughing.  Fun.  Some guys are buried deep in the sand.  A hole that took hours to make.  Girls bicycling with others.  Frisbee.  Football.  A group of kids having pure fun.  Staying to watch the sun dip below the horizon.  The memories of bonds with people.  Real people.  Sharing my legacy with them.  All of you out there reading this know who you are.  Each one of you made that place special to me.  You watched two boys grow through the years.  You shared these times with me and my family.  Thank you.

Another film flashes before me.  Times spent in the ways that life is supposed to happen.  Health.  Smiles.  The gleam and sparkle in a woman’s eye.  Walking a young boy down the shore as a wife snaps the photo behind me.  Two kids who knew this place to be special beyond all others, for that is where their parents took them.  That is where the magic happened.  Bonding.  The glue that held the sweetest times together.  Love.  Sunsets.  Family.

Until it shattered.  And one evening while watching the sun slip away, I wished beyond all hope that I could grab two boys by their hands and walk us all across the wave crests into heaven’s waiting arms.  I would have done it without thought.  The world had nothing for me anymore.

Pain followed hard.  Stacking itself one upon another.  Soon, the place of peace and safety, love and sweet memories became a place of bitter turmoil.  One that I wished not to look into anymore.  How could I go there?  To face the torment, that prick to the bleeding heart, I could not stop the damage done.

And in anger, questioned a God who unknowingly never left my side.

But does God leave us in the ache of agony?  I saw no end in sight.  The madness of what my life had become was enough to make me want the end.  

But God is good. And he always can turn things around.

Healing is slow.  We all want a quick fix.  Don’t we long for our scars and hurts to be bandaged up quickly?  Don’t we want God to just “speak the word” and have all the emotional and painful hurts of life vanish away?  When the hurt is bad, and we are bleeding out, all we look for is to have the pain stopped.  We want to be happy again.  We want to see peace.  But little do we know that God is perfect at what he does, and that he is the best medic around.  Often, he takes his time.

Healing takes time.

In all honesty, we should WANT our healing to be slow.  It might be hard to say or admit, but we should want God to heal us slow, to take his time, to do things right.  It is a much better healing that way.  It gives God time to do what he needs to do.  In the heat of the moment, when we are bleeding from the heart, we only see the big gashes.  We see the deep cuts that are pumping out blood.  We don’t see the microfiber tears.  We don’t see that there are things about our heart and wounds that, in all reality, God needs to take his good old time and mend things delicately.  Honestly, we don’t even know how we need healed. We need to trust the one who knows.

Most of you know that I have married again.  This week I went on the same trip to Presque Isle with my wife, Faerie.  She is amazing.  She is a diamond of the brightest kind.  I love her with everything I have.  I have to give her credit.  She was handed a mess, one that God is still doing a work in progress on, and has loved me through this healing process.  I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again, that our go to verse in our relationship is Ephesians 3:20-21:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

I could have never dreamed that a woman like Faerie existed, much less that God would join us together.

There are those of you out there who are hurting really, really bad.  You have lost loved ones, as I have.  You may have lost important things in life, as I also have.  Maybe you have lost your health.  Maybe you have lost important relationships in life.  Maybe your job was taken out from under you.  Possibly a pet.  A home.  A church.

I’ve been there.

Healing takes time.

Do I still think about the good times of the past that have been taken away from me?  Yes.  Our two sons Brad and Justin know one particular beach on Presque Isle as “Mom’s beach.”  Those memories can never be taken away from them.  They never should be.  But God does this wonderful thing called healing, and he does it really well.  If we let him, he can do things so perfectly and wonderfully that we can enjoy both the old and the new.  God will blow us away by what he can accomplish in our lives.  I experienced it.  I am living it.  It is sweet.

No, I am not off the surgeon’s table yet.  There are places in my heart that are still hurting and God has more work to do.  Though things have gotten better, much better, by the gracious Lord’s hand. . . he has a bit more work to complete.  But this week, after going to Presque Isle, I can testify to how good the healing work of the Lord is.  That exact message, God’s healing power, is what I want to share with you.

I just spent a day with my precious wife, Faerie, and my beautiful stepson Michael on a beach once filled with pain. Who would have ever thought?

On this trip, there was no sorrow.  There was a sweet embrace of new things sharing ties with old memories.  Though my brain injury still prevents me from doing everything I want, I was able to soak in the good times that a God blessed me with. . . ones abundantly above anything that I could have ever asked or thought of!  God is so good.  In fact, he is so good that he can bring your healing in his perfect time, and do such a perfect job that you couldn’t have ever asked for anything better. 

He did it with me.  He can do it with you.

Just to set the record straight, God does not bring trauma and bad things into our lives.  But. . . and I can shout this from the rooftops, he can take what the enemy meant for bad and turn it into good.  I’m a living testament to that.

I don’t know how far a post like this can travel.  My heart’s desire is that it travels to each and every soul that has ever stood on that strip of sand with me.  This post goes out to all those who hurt, and are hurting, the same hurt I felt.  To those who have lost someone special.  To those who after a church split occurred, have never allowed yourself to enter another church building to date.  To those of you who boarded that bus with me, made the trip heading into a day of smiles and sunshine. . . to you, I plead, don’t get off the bus quite yet!  There may have been hurts.  But God isn’t finished with you yet.

Healing takes time.  And God does a wonderful job.

Take a look into the face of what God has done for me.  She is a perfect attribute to everything God knew I needed.  She fits me perfectly.  She pushes me to press into God and the purpose he has for me.  The love we share is incredible.  In a world where the devil tried to steal from me, cause death and hardship, and destroy my life. . . God was able to turn things around.  As bad as the hurt was that caused so much pain, I can see now that he is repairing and healing and turning things around even beyond that.  Above anything I could ever ask or imagine, a beautiful woman was brought into my life who respects and admires the past I have.  That could be done only by a God who knows I have a thing for brown-eyed women lol.

My pain was bad.  But God’s healing is better.

To you, those hurting, hang in there.  Jesus Christ is waiting with open arms.  Embrace him.  Let him do his work in your life as well.

Healing is slow.

But God knows what he is doing.

(I even found sea glass this trip)

By Chuck Carr