What does it mean to heal?

Does it simply mean to be what you were once before, before you were sick, before you were hurt, before you were broken?  Or is it like a bone, going beyond what was before and into something further, something stronger, something more?  Does healing finish when the act is done or when you realize you are healed?  Or does it not end until you have grown, grown past being less to begin with?

The dictionary simply says to return to sound condition.  Interesting that the word origin relates to Helen, a name we associate so frequently with one known for all the bits of her that did not heal....though her spirit learned to cope and more forward.

I have to say I think it means something more.  I think it means going beyond simple restoration, beyond growing, and into the lack of fear of injury, the lack of resentment toward the period of weakness.

I was once an artist.  I made things, then as now, out of the overflow of my heart.  I realize now that that overflow was pus.  Putrid, while beautiful, evidence of injury.  Of infection.  And I lost the overflow for a long time, as the wound was bound up.  It took a long time for me to heal.  A long time.  Much longer than the thousand separate instants in which I was wounded.  And I thought the scar tissue, the stretched and shiny part of my emotions, I thought that was the hole where art used to be.  But I never realized it.  I never realized that I shied away from the scar, didn't push it, didn't try.  I mean, I did in private.  I made little things, I showed around old things, I talked as if I didn't know the scar was there.

I realized a year ago the wound was gone.  And I realize this morning that I could try to stretch the old wounded area again.  But I will never know until I try and fall again.  But, God willing, the falls will eventually lead to standing again.

One things I do know, however, if why He heals.  It's because He loves me. [and you....and you....you get the idea]

**This post was hand-written when I conceptualized this blog as my return to art....aka my return to finding out if I can tolerate falling on my face.  I'm sure now that I can, but I kind of had to actually fall on my face out in the real world before I knew that.  I did want to share this, though, if not in its hand-written format (trust me, you are glad it isn't in it's hand-written format) because it is the beginning.  The first.  And I think if I can't share it, I fail.  I fail in trying to fail.  Well, trying not to fail but being ok with failing being an option.**