Embracing Healing: The Importance of Recognizing Those Who Celebrate Your Growth

Warning: some of y’all may find this gross.

I used to scratch at and pull the scabs off of my wounds. For some reason, I just couldn’t let them be healed. They could be wounds from a bug bite, accidentally running into something, whatever, I couldn’t let them be. If you look closely at my arms you can see the scars.

This was mostly in my teenage years and early 20’s around the time I was learning what it meant to live with endometriosis and fibromyalgia. While everyone was living their best young adult lives, I was laid up on a couch or bed somewhere with a heating pad counting down the hours until I could take my next nap. Now I know it’s a symptom of anxiety and OCD called excoriation disorder, shout out to therapy! 🙌🏾

I thought about skin picking the other day while talking to a friend from college about having hard conversations, changes in relationships and how to communicate with someone you’re in deep disagreement with, and he reflected on a situation he had recently been through. He said, “Randa, those people knew me when I was wounded, they don’t know the healed version of me. So when we talk they only want to console me and talk about my wounds. They haven’t figured out how to be in relationship with the healed version of me.”🤯

Metaphorically, at a certain point in my own life, I was walking wounded, full of open wounds that I kept picking at and kept letting others pick at. But then, I grew up, got healed and they still wanted me to stay the wounded version that they had met, the version that they could console and give advice to. You see, it’s often easier for people to only ask about, speak to, and give advice to your wounded places because it makes them feel better about their own situations. And I 100% have done this in relationships too, but I realized something…

➡️➡️➡️ Friends, not everyone who journeyed with you in a wounded season will be a part of your healed season. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

And that’s okay. As I write this I say it to myself too!! There is beauty in the necessary endings in relationships. ❤️

We reflect, and thank God for what those relationships showed us and we celebrate them, we celebrate the healing of others, as loudly as we consoled them. So stop letting folks pick at what God has already healed, and you stop picking at it too! And stop picking at others’ wounds, trust me they know they are there, like me, they probably already have visual reminders of their wounds. But y’all I may be visibly scarred, but praise Jesus I am healed.