As a free-spirited extrovert, I fill my cup by being around people. The thought of being locked in my house by governmental mandate goes against every natural grain in my body and soul. That being said, I do believe that God has a plan and a purpose for every season of life and that it is wise to pay extra attention to the difficult ones.

When my husband and I saw confinement speeding around the corner, we tried to prepare both the church and our family as much as possible. We knew that some things such as baptisms, weddings and personal visits to suffering people, had to happen either before or after the confinement. It was a flurry of movement as we found ourselves doing things, like renting a hotel room near the church to conduct a baptism for a refugee couple because the room we rent for the church isn’t properly equipped. Our service was beautiful. It looked and felt as I imagine a first-century church service.

A few days later, we celebrated a wedding for a couple in the church. During the meal, we received the news. The French government announced that we were in confinement for the unforeseeable future. As the media announced progressively overnight the new organization of public life, we didn’t find out until we went to church the next day: that holding a church service would be illegal.

Yes. Just like that, we could no longer hold services. Fortunately, friends in Tahiti had been asking us to film our services for them, so we already had some of the necessary material ready. Against everything within me, I had to call people on our way to church and tell them not to come. It broke my heart. One lady responded, “The devil is NOT going to keep me from going to church.” I answered, “I am not the devil, but we have to respect the laws of the country and hold service online.” So we went to the church building and held our first online service for CC Paris.

Then we went home—the reality hit.

We could no longer go out of the house. That means, whenever there is a bad mood, conflict, fatigue, or fill in the blank, there is no escape. This can be daunting, especially knowing there is no exact end-date. If we need to leave, we have to fill out an authorization paper, or there is a fine ( $145 for the first offense; $1,613 for the second, if you break confinement). This causes a lot of stress on everyone! In the first week, the government fined over 90,000 people breaking confinement!

I’ve been reflecting on confinement and about God’s hand in this. I know God has kindness in store for us during this confinement. Not evil but good. I was reminded that God is the God of order, not confusion. Not of fear, but peace. He has a specific plan for each one of us during this season to come. Many of us will be in good health or will be mildly sick during this confinement. It will be a good time to deal with issues that we have become accustomed to saying, “I am too busy to deal with that now.” Now we aren’t too busy. We can take this time and work things out. Talk to the people around you. Internet lines will be saturated because everyone in the community is at home trying to work. But it will end up being a good thing because we will have to work differently. We will have to work on our communication, and it will be raw at times. We will just have each other and the Lord.

When you can’t turn to the things in your life that you normally do – you can deal with the why’s.

• Why do I turn to retail therapy rather than just talk things out with my teens or my husband?

• Why would I spend so much time with my friends and so little with my family?

• Why am I so given to…?

A little introspection is a good thing. It helps us to grow and develop when we bring these things to God. He can help us through it. He can use this moment, this quiet moment—or for those of us with children in the house—this very noisy moment, to speak to us. He can reach into the depths of our souls and heal those areas that need healing. We might be thankful for the confinement in the end.

A friend from China wrote to me a few days ago and shared about how mentally taxing it becomes after a while. She made it through, and by God’s grace, we can too. Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones as we all lean more into Jesus. We have God on our side. He walks with us and shelters us in the shadow of His wing. What is the worst that can happen to us? As it says in Psalm 91:1-2:

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most-High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.'”

Have you ever been broken, in body or in soul, and prayed earnestly for healing and not received the answer you hoped for? This past year could have been named “the year of the scalpel” because God removed so much from my life that just needed to be removed for my own good. Halfway through the year, I was absolutely worn out from trying too hard with certain relationships and to manage my health, but to no avail. Brothers and sisters around the world and I prayed for healing for that wonderful instant healing that God can bring. The healing that is so quick and so complete that we can forget about the pain altogether. But rather, God responded with, “I have a better plan.”

If you are looking for a comprehensive study on healing, this is not that article. This is my story of how God brought deep, powerful healing during one of the most painful moments in my life. Having spoken with people afterward, I’ve come to realize that many people are going through the same thing.

This led me to write and shed some hope, that during those dark days, God is at work often in unexpected ways.

I’ve had multiple colon disorders for years now and had grown used to the special diets, the hospital stays, the pain and all that is associated with it, and so I was surprised when last July my doctor said that I needed surgery as soon as possible. I had grown used to living with disease, and now I was at a critical point where the only option was to “cut it out.” It all happened so quickly and so painfully slow as well. I had to wait months until I was well enough to handle surgery, and during that time, everyone I knew prayed for healing. Complete, immediate healing.

The day came, and I had to go through with surgery. I remember laying in the hospital bed after eight hours in surgical suite, surprised at the size of the incision that spread across my abdomen and wondered how things would go now. Alone, in this sterile environment, far from everyone who fills my busy life, I prayed, “Lord, what is going on? This is a waste of time. I have things to do!” And in reality, my soul was whispering in a dejected tone, “You could have healed me.” I’ll never forget when He spoke so gently to my heart, “This is the sacred place I chose to heal you. I want you to sit in this quiet place, unable to move for a little while.”

The problem with healing is the pain, right?

Pain associated with the healing is congruent with the pain of the wound. And your broken body or soul becomes unmistakably vulnerable.

It is humbling, even humiliating to go through, but God can do such a beautiful work in that time of healing.

I looked to the Word to see exactly what God has to say about healing. We know that Jesus heals; He spent so much of His time on earth healing, but what about me, right now? In my silent, sterile pain? When I looked it up, the Word was a comfort to my soul.

There are verses such as Luke 9:11, “But when the multitudes knew it, they followed Him; and He received them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who had need of healing.” The Greek words used in just this verse are Therapeia¹ and Iaomai. Therapeía: “attendance” (especially, medical, i.e. cure); figuratively and collectively, “domestics:—healing, household.” And iaomai is “to cure, heal to make whole to free from errors and sins, to bring about one’s salvation.” Which, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary and Strong’s Concordance, is where we get “therapeutics” and “therapy.” I needed both, and the Lord provided both; I’ll get into that later.

Then in verses such as Jeremiah 33:6, “Behold, I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.” In Hebrew, ărûwkâh² means in the sense of “restoring to soundness; wholeness” (literally or figuratively):—”health, made up, perfected.” I also needed that divine touch that only our Maker can bring.

Therapeutics, therapy, soundness, wholeness, health… being revealed in the abundance of peace and truth. That is what we need when we are broken; this is what I desperately needed! A divine touch from our Savior.

As I laid in that hospital bed, I did a lot of meditating on the Lord and on the healing process, both on the emotional healing that had happened that summer, and what was currently happening in physical healing. Both require an incredible amount of trust in the Lord to reknit broken people back together.

Both need truth to be infused into a confusing situation. A good friend reminded me that the enemy is the author of confusion as God is the author of order (1 Corinthians 14:33). We need honest people to come around and remind us what the truth is about what our true condition is. We need honest, kind words, words from God’s own heart. To be around people, who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who truly love you. Sleep is also essential to let the body and mind heal.

As we listen to the people that God puts into our lives to carry us through this trauma, we heal a little bit every day.

God does this great work. But, we need to let God put people into our lives, the right people. When I was at my worst, God sent people from all across the world who had no idea what was going on, to minister to me. God did that. He sent in spiritual first responders to come in and bandage me up. But, I had to open the door and let them in. I had to listen to those first responders that He sent, and I had to put it into practice.

He reminds us to shed off that bitterness that would be so easy to give into because sometimes life is really hard, and we end up wounded. That is why we have to go through a healing process, right? But the pain of life doesn’t change the fact that you are loved by God. Beware, because those wounds of life cannot get infected by bitterness; they must be bandaged and then let alone. If we keep them tightly bound up in bitterness, they will never heal; and we will suffer because of it. The people or situation that caused this suffering will not be affected, but we will.

And I realized that as I let God send people in to help – there is this knitting of bonds that develops, that could not have developed otherwise; it is the Body of Christ in action. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to accept help until the time came, and it was an eye-opener. People stepped out of the woodwork to do kind things, and it brought tears to my eyes on many occasions. God used His children to speak love and good works into my family and the church’s life, when I couldn’t do what needed to be done.

So, as He walked me through incredible physical and broken-hearted pain, I started to see healing differently.

It is a God-given time that He ordains in order for us to be our best and to minister to us. During those moments, He gives us what we need to heal from the true wound. He has my back, and He has your back. Let the healing process begin, and embrace it, though it be painful; and it may take longer than we wish. God knows what we need to be fully restored, and who better to reknit each one of us than the one who knit you together in the first place.

Let’s be on our look out for the blessings that God has put in our lives to help us walk through these days, especially through the difficult days. He never tempts us beyond what we can handle, and when that scalpel is doing its work, know that those things are causing harm, and that is why God has to remove them. He loves you enough to remove the things from your life that aren’t good, and He will heal you after surgery. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile.

Notes:

¹ Blueletterbible.com

² Ibid.