The Healing Power of Kindness
This year has been full of the unexpected. The first part of the year was unexpected in some very painful and confusing ways, and the latter few months have been unexpected in the most beautiful and healing ways. God has a way of turning things around so that even initially bad things end up going somewhere good. This, of course, he promised: "...God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them." (Roman 8:28, NLT)
Much of this past year I carried unmetabolized pain in my heart, which all came to one great, unavoidable head when my visa was rejected back in January. In retrospect, I feel blessed that this forced me to face pain I would otherwise have continued to ignore. Pain we don't process doesn't simply go away- it stays inside us and ferments, distorting how we see the world until it is dealt with. Thus I am grateful that I was forced to work through it. While I was in England, processing all this, I was surrounded by a wonderful YWAM community who were, unwittingly, part of my healing process. How, you may ask?
They were kind.
You see, without realizing it, I had come to expect the world and people to be cold and harsh. Though certainly these are things we encounter in the world, they are definitely not true of everyone nor every situation. But my heart expected these things and was braced for them. It left me rather unwilling to show vulnerability.
These people were so much different than what I had come to expect. One powerful moment sticks out in my memory. On a particularly rough day, after lunch I left the table to return to my room. The house leader followed me up the stairs and stopped me. "I felt like I should follow you," he said. "How are you doing?" He then proceeded to say, without my answering him, that he imagined things were pretty hard and confusing right now, and he, his wife, and another staff lady were all available to talk if I should need someone. I, who hate crying in front of people and was so unwilling to be vulnerable, fell apart crying.
That was one of many moments in that community in London where God used the natural warmth and kindness of people to heal my heart and change my expectations. Teaching me cruelty is not the norm. Showing me how kind people can be.
Next, I went to Kosova to join my base's DTS in the first half of their outreach. This was something I was really apprehensive about. My first experience leading a DTS outreach was difficult and painful. It was where I began to expect the world to be harsh. And here I was co-leading another outreach?
Again, I was surprised by something wonderful:
The second time leading outreach is exponentially easier than the first, and our students this year are incredibly sweet and teachable. They welcomed me in as a leader and friend. We were a family full of humor and affection, with almost no conflict. Once again, through people, God spoke to me about my expectations: "See how easy and positive leading can be! You've seen how hard it can be- now see how good it can be." And my fears about leadership were melted away.
After Kosova the outreach team went to Bulgaria to help out and teach English in a transitional home for at-risk young men. From there I returned home to Vienna. I will briefly visit the DTS team in Romania next week and then the rest of May will be dominated by an accelerated German course until the DTS students and leaders also return to Vienna for debriefing and graduation.
I want to leave you with a few thoughts from this journey through pain, healing, and renewed perspective: 1) It's interesting the way experiences can shape our beliefs about the world- sometimes into perspectives that may be largely untrue. Often we have a strong experience and from that make "rules" in our minds about how the world works, what people are like, and what to expect. That "rule" may be correct or very incorrect- or only true in one specific context. But we tend to take that "rule" into the rest of our life, watching for it to be confirmed and "seeing" it confirmed, even if what we "see" isn't actually true. As they say, "You find what you're looking for." That's the great importance of emotional healing, isn't it? Healing removes the inaccurate lens pain created so we can see the world with fresh eyes, free from distortion and false assumptions.
For example, a girl who has been painfully rejected by other girls might go out into the world expecting other girls to reject her. Many genuinely benign interactions with other girls may feel to her like more rejection. She may be convinced she is being rejected again and again, when those other girls are not rejecting her at all. It is only after this girl has gone through healing that she can see that her experience was an isolated incident, and can learn to expect acceptance from others, which is in reality more common than outright rejection.
2) Sometimes healing is found in tears, sometimes in talking things through or other forms of processing. But maybe just as often, healing is found in the kindness and love of other people- God melting away the hurt and giving us a chance to remember there's good in the world.
Never underestimate the impact your kindness can have on someone. <3
