Change and Healing

What is the purpose of repenting? Is it to simply suffer? Is it to be embarrassed, like when your mom caught you fighting with your friend and made you stand there and say, “I'm sorry?” In the word "repent," whether in Hebrew or Greek, is the idea of change--in your thinking and in the direction of your life. But it's not just any change. It's change for the better. And sadly, during Lent, we often focus on how the change makes us feel, rather than its purpose and how best to achieve that.

What prompts change? For most of us, we change when we realize something is wrong. You change direction when you realize you are going away from your destination rather than towards it. Or you realize you missed a turn. Or, in some cases, you see your destination and realize that's not what you want. When I was a kid, my family took a camping trip to Canada. Mom had all our stops researched and chosen from the AAA TripTik. But the weather turned miserable. One late afternoon, we found ourselves putting up the tent in the rain. Well, it was mostly my father putting the tent up. The following day as we entered the next town on our itinerary, we were greeted by a giant neon thermometer and a sign proclaiming the place as the “Coldest Spot in Canada.” “Oh, hell no!” said my dad and drove on. That night we stayed in a motel.

Sometimes you get to a point and say, “Is this right? Is this where I should be?” And you can either resign yourself to it or change. I have observed, both as a nurse and as a Christian, that what usually makes people change their lives is pain. When the pain becomes too great, people finally decide they need to make a change.

Sometimes they need to make a change in their environment. A job, or a relationship, or a lifestyle has become toxic and they need to leave. But often people don't realize that unless they change themselves they won't find peace in a new job or a new relationship or a new lifestyle. For instance, in cases where men just up and disappear, leaving behind a wife, a family and a career, when they are tracked down, they typically have simply moved to another part of the country, married a similar wife, fathered a similar family and are often in the same kind of job that they left. They haven't so much started a new life as recreated the one they supposedly hated so much that they abandoned it. And what is it they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Not all our problems are internal but even external circumstances can worm their way into our thinking and our behavior. People who come out of situations where they suffer abuse or neglect will pick up habits and coping mechanisms that may or may not have worked for them at the time but then continue to use them in new situations that call for a new approach. It can be especially problematic when those habits and coping mechanisms were created by the person as a child. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) affect the developing brain and even shape one's adolescent and adult life, often leading to chronic physical and mental health problems, as well as problems with substance abuse, physical abuse, and trouble with the law. Recognizing and dealing with such things is crucial to making healthy changes.

Principles of healing apply whether that healing is physical, psychological or spiritual. So this Lent I want to look at some principles that were originally articulated in a recent webinar by an RN, Caroline Kingdon, a Research Fellow and Biobank Coordinator for CureME. I recognized them as central to our walk as Christians. Jesus is a healer and we are like his healthcare team, bringing people to him so he can save their lives and helping them follow the doctor's orders of the Great Physician so that they get better.

Kingdon based her nursing visits to patients' homes on 6 elements, which she says are all basically compassion in practice. We are going to look at them as we think of how we can be good disciples of Jesus by putting his love into practice. The 6 Cs are, first of all, compassion, then care, competence, communication, courage and commitment. We will be looking at these during the 6 Sundays leading us from Lent to Easter.

Of course, before you can be healed, you have to recognize that something is wrong. You need to notice and be able to list your symptoms before you receive a diagnosis. You need to receive a diagnosis before you can be treated effectively. And that's what we are doing in this Ash Wednesday service. So let's not delay that part any longer. Let's rip off the bandaid and see what it's covering.