The Camaraderie of Healing

In a New Your Times story,

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17case.html)

Caitlin Kelly writes about her experience with physical therapy to recover from injury. With PT the patient is expected to suffer through the recovery process in a room with other people. She also recognized that no one is immune from this experience. People of all ages, all walks of life can be found here. Suffering the humiliation of the struggle to heal. 

Ms Kelly also sees that " healing takes work and it takes time."

Camaraderie is a byproduct in a place where people suffer and reveal their true weaknesses in the effort of attempting to get well. When you see the person who needs help to pull up their pants the raw human condition can unite and inspire us. After a severe injury, people you struggle with care and cheer when you are able to finally sit up without help. Not that its without effort. It is the exposed and common struggle that I believe is powerful.

At Fellowship I believe we see a similar community. Here people drop the facade and reveal their spiritual and emotional struggles. The effort to forgive, or love or give is as real as the struggle to sit up. People in process working things out in community. Trusting, healing, failing and struggling to do it all over again. 

Without ST, Spiritual Therapy the healing will be without restoration.  It is more likely that healing will come with a reduction of the person without the effort to regain freedom from the injury. We become people with a limp, pretending that we are whole and healed.  It reminds me of the Monte Python movie, The Holy Grail. There is a scene where king Arthur has a sword fight with the Black Knight. Arthur continues to cut off the Black Knights arms and legs off while the knight pretends, "Its only a flesh wound!" We have all been wounded and are in need of ST. Some wounds are just more obvious then others. 

I need you in order to see where I am still limping or sometimes hemorrhaging. In a community of authenticity we have the power to heal more fully. Join me in this effort of becoming well. I am struggling to reveal where I am in need of your help. In my heart I know I need to ask you for help. Together we strive. Together we struggle. Together we cheer, and weep and learn and heal. With all my heart I believe that we are truly better together.