Flower Garden of Healing

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT) “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

Isaiah 43:19 (NIV) “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

I get so frustrated with myself sometimes. Though I know the truth about who God says I am, at times I still succumb and catch myself falling back into old patterns of thought and behavior. There are days when the voice of the enemy seems so much louder than the truth of God. It can be a battle not to give in to the lies of the enemy and there are times when I feel as though I’ll never “get there”. Can any of you relate?

Though I have difficult days, I have come to realize that our spiritual journeys are continuous and we will never truly “arrive” this side of heaven. If we choose to commit ourselves to becoming the person Jesus wants us to be, we are leaning into a journey of constant growth, learning and healing. In my mind, choosing Jesus is the easy part. The difficult part is making the conscious decision to lay ourselves at His feet and allow Him to begin to mold and shape us into the person He wants us to become. Thankfully, He is a God of healing and restoration.

Travel back in time with me for a moment and I will share with you a glimpse into my journey of healing—back to September of 2016. I made the trek to Ohio to spend a weekend with my best friend and sister in Christ to attend a women’s conference (Propel Women founded by Christine Caine—check it/her out if you’re not familiar). It was then that God really began to stir in my heart and call me out into a personal relationship with Jesus rather than living the life I had always known. I returned home that weekend with a changed heart, a renewed sense of life, hope and excitement for the future. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was just how marking that weekend would become as God used it to catapult me into a significant season of sanctification that has led me here. It was such a hard season, but I am so very thankful.

The first few months after the conference were wonderful. I was reading, sharing and growing. After several months of experiencing this new life, I chose to be baptized in January 2017. Though I was baptized as a child and have always known God, I knew I was experiencing Him in a way I never had before and wanted to make a renewed commitment to serving and honoring Him with the rest of my life. I am so thankful He led me to the waters of baptism as the next year and a half of my life would see me dive into a season of digging into the roots of my fractured heart to reveal the broken parts of my soul that God wanted to heal.

If you’ve ever spent any time in a flower garden you know how frustrating it can be to manage. Each year spring rolls around and we are so thankful for the sun and warmer weather, yet we step outside to see the effects of the harsh winter and the weeds that have overtaken the entire bed. And of course, the deeper the roots the more difficult they are to uproot. So we commit ourselves to a couple hours of work to prune, think we’ve got it and yet we return a couple days later to see those pesky weeds growing up again. It is only then that we realize what it’s going to take—getting down on our knees to dig deep and uproot them completely in order to allow room to plant something new and beautiful.

I think our spiritual journeys are very much the same. We neglect our hearts and allow lies from the enemy to take root and overtake anything beautiful that God wants to plant in our lives. These “weeds” present themselves in so many ways and they send us off the narrow path onto one of ultimate self-destruction where we believe anything the enemy whispers to us. You’re ugly. You’re dumb and will never amount to anything. Nobody will ever really love you. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what the enemy wants us to believe. But God.

The process of sanctification is hard. It requires digging deep, shedding the old, planting the new and tending to it every day. But with Him we can choose not to allow the weeds to overtake our lives. I found myself stepping into this process for the first time at 30 years old. Imagine how weeded my garden had become by that point? I had already experienced so much life. Graduated college. Gone to PT school. Started a new job. Bought my first home. I was surrounded by a multitude of blessings and so many people who loved me yet I began to realize just how broken I was and how much it was keeping me from experiencing the life God really wanted for me.

Shortly after January of the following year (2017), I began to meet regularly with a Christian counselor, which proved to be the vehicle that God would use to lead me to healing. I was also diving into God’s word for the first time and it was there that He would meet me and carry me through some of the most difficult moments of my life as I began to face the lies I had allowed myself to believe for so long. As I started to develop a greater understanding of the true nature and character of God it allowed me to begin to uproot the lies from the enemy.

Fast forward to September of the same year. I was still engaged in a process of spiritual growth and healing when I began having some pain on the right side of my pelvis that was new. It wasn’t excruciating and I could deal with it, but I knew it was something I hadn’t experienced before. I dealt with the pain and figured it would eventually just go away. After several months of this new off and on pain, I saw my doctor for my annual exam and mentioned the pain to her. After sharing a little more detail she didn’t seem super concerned because of the nature of my description but agreed we could do an ultrasound if I wanted. Because I wasn’t fully prepared that day, I decided to hold off. About a month later the pain returned again, a little more significant than it had been previously so I decided to schedule the ultrasound. After a quick visit to the doctor’s office one morning in May 2018 I received a call that afternoon which revealed the presence of a significant cyst that would ultimately need to be surgically removed. I specifically remember my surgeon saying to me “Katie, the cyst is not causing any damage to your body right now; however, if we continue to allow it to grow there is potential for it to rupture and cause significant and permanent damage”. I was absolutely blown away.

I walked out of the office in awe of God. What I had only told a few people up until that point was that God had foreshadowed all of this in a dream I had woken from one morning several months prior to the onset of the new pain. At the time I hadn’t understood it from a perspective other than God helping me see that he was healing me spiritually and emotionally from the inside out. There I was, having just come out of a season of significant growth, yet I knew God wasn’t done. He was truly healing me from the inside out, not just emotionally and spiritually but also physically. I am thankful to say everything with the surgery went wonderfully thanks to a fantastic surgeon, an amazing support system and a guiding God who allowed for quick and complete healing.

At the end of July I will be a year removed from surgery and September will mark three years since that weekend in Ohio where God met me in such an unexpected and beautiful way. Though I am not where I want to be, I am so thankful I’m not where I used to be and that God chooses every day to be with me on this journey. The pruning of my flowerbed of healing is a daily task, but one that has seen God provide and grow beautiful things in ways I never thought possible.

It has been a rollercoaster of hills and valleys, but I haven’t for a moment been without the guiding grace and love of Jesus Christ. Because of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we are all born as sinful creatures into a broken world. Yet, in another garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus fell to His knees and cried out to the Lord in prayer just hours before He was nailed to the cross where He died so that we might live and be saved. It is through the cross that we can all freely receive the gift of Jesus’ unconditional grace and love if we just choose to follow Him. It won’t be easy and it may require you to fall to your knees and ask God to help you dig up the old, but it will be worth every moment. He will take the old and use it to create something in and through your life that is more beautiful than anything you could possibly imagine. He has done that for me and He will do it for you. All you have to do is say yes to Jesus.