healing

I wrote to a friend:

The first question is, what do I mean by healing when I say I have been surprised to find that healing is possible? I don't mean putting the broken vase back together as good as new, and I don't mean becoming the person I would have been if I had not had a painful childhood. To me, healing is putting all that I am together in a positive way. It means reaching a point where there is no longer a child inside me suffering all the time. Not because I left that child behind but because that child has gotten what she needs and can be happy. For me, part of the experience has been that those unmet childhood needs can be met now by a therapist who loves me. To my surprise, that does fill the hole inside me, not as if it never existed but making it into a beautiful lake instead of a gaping wound.

Today I heard a story that somehow fit with that for me:

During the Thirty Years War, theology professors spent a lot of time speculating that the second coming was at hand and Jesus would soon return to earth. One of his colleagues asked Martin Luther: "If you knew with absolute certainty that Jesus would return tomorrow, what would you do today?" Luther replied: "Plant a fruit tree."