Healing From The Last Two Weeks

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. …³⁵ Jesus wept. John 11:33, 35

It’s been a rough couple of weeks.

First, Charlie Kirk. Then, one week to the day after his horrifying assassination, evil hit even closer to home. You may have heard about a police shooting in a little town called Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. Three officers lost their lives, and 2 others were hospitalized when a man they were serving a warrant to opened fire on them. That shooting took place about a mile from my church, and one of the men killed was our chief of security, the dear friend of dear friends.

We received word of the shooting while my husband was with another dear friend needing an ambulance for a rapidly spreading infection. A terrifying fever raged through his body while they waited for an ambulance from a neighboring town. Why the delay? All the local ambulances were on site with the officers in Spring Grove.

I was on the phone with my husband, sharing the news that our Christian brother was one of the officers killed. I heard a sob wrench from him in disbelief, then I felt something quite unexpected rise within me. I’m not sure how else to describe it, except to say that I went cold. It was as if a wall erected itself around my heart. I felt separate from everything. Numb.

I knew what it was. My heart was protecting itself from the heaviness of overwhelming emotion. Knowing how this news would impact our friends and that several families had just been shattered. Concern for our friend and his wife still waiting for an ambulance with my husband.

And something in me just wanted to check out. To not feel it. To let it be separate from me so that I could keep going. To hide my heart from what was happening so it couldn’t break me.

Have you ever been there? I’m guessing an honest answer would be yes. There are times when we just want to retreat inside ourselves so the pain in this world can’t hurt us.

And honestly, that protection is a God-given gift. He created us with that capacity for self-preservation. That’s how emergency workers are able to do their jobs and keep functioning, how children survive traumatic events and keep on living.

But a problem arises when that protection stays in place, when we don’t ever let ourselves feel the pain we want to avoid. We never process it, so we never heal. And we lose some of who we are as our hearts grow cold.

I felt that coldness the other night, and it threw me. You see, it was unfamiliar. I’ve spent the last 26 years pursuing and growing in God’s love. That means I feel things deeply. My default response has been to press in, not check out. And I didn’t like the feeling.

The next day, I gathered with some of my team members at the ministry, and we prayed. We prayed for our friends, the hurting families, our broken world. But we also prayed for our own hearts, that they would not grow cold in self-protection. That we would feel what we need to feel so that love can heal.

That’s what’s causing all this pain, you know. Hearts growing cold. We haven’t known how to deal with our emotions, so we press them down. When it gets too much, we check out, numbing ourselves with our drug of choice, like mindless scrolling or binge watching. Whatever we need to do to escape.

But that’s not who we are. God created humanity for love and connection. To live lives intertwined with the people around us, and to care. That was the beauty and strength of the early church. They cared deeply and shared everything.

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. ³³And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Acts 4:32-33

Power and grace flow through unity. When we begin to care more about the whole than merely protecting ourselves, God’s presence manifests through our image bearing. To look like that church seems impossible, but I believe it’s the very thing this broken world is waiting for. We won’t change the world with arguments. We’re meant to heal it with love.

So that’s what I’m choosing.

Jesus, help me to feel what You feel, to give like You give. Help us to burn with a purity that draws the hurting to Your warmth. Show us the power of Your love. Reveal in us the love that cannot fail.