Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW tribe. How has your week been? I’m in what many college students call “hell week”’ where most projects, papers, concerts, sports games, and workloads are all due and happening. 5 hours of sleep has been a luxury for a little while now, but this too shall pass. If it hasn’t been great for you too even if your week does not look like mine, be encouraged to know that this too shall pass, and if it’s going great be fully present for all of it. To my new readers, welcome! You are already loved here and to my regulars welcome back tribe. 

Healing especially in the early stages often demands that you spend time in solitude. It’s often not an intentional goal, but a natural progression when healing commences. A time to come face to face with the reality you have been running away from for such a long time. To admit that you do need help. To courageously swallow the tough pill of taking responsibility for your recovery. To decide that you are going to walk this journey and never look back. To embrace the turbulence found on the cruise to wellness and shedding of leaves(people) as we stay the course. These actions are often best done in solitude, away from the noise of the masses. However, to experience the healing that God already has for you, community is a tool he set in place to sustain and complete your healing. 

James 5:16 says “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” This verse is packed with many principles of healing that I want to break down. Confessing means to admit, acknowledge, disclose, reveal, or own something. I have said this so many times, the first step to healing is to admit you are sick. But the thing about confessing is that it also demands that you exercise it to another person who’s not yourself if it is to be effective. You can admit that you have a porn addiction. However, if you stop there, the cage will keep you locked up because you haven’t confessed to God and at least one trusted and safe person in your life. 

Confessing is also effective in killing shame because it brings to light what we have been keeping a secret and bringing it to light. It shuts down Satan’s pattern of mentally bullying you for hiding the struggle you do have, yet you pretend you are perfect. I have discovered that some habitual sins that are hard to break require that we not only confess to God and ourselves, but to another human being. You need a person of flesh and blood to know the area you are weak in and likely to be attacked the most. If you could break that habit or addiction alone, you would have already.

The benefit of confessing your sin to another person or a safe community is that you have more people interceding for your healing. Prolonged pain can silence your heavenly roar, opening you up to more attacks. A community acts as that hedge of protection for you through prayer. In a time where there is plenty of information on healing, we rarely hear of praying for your healing. You may even be judged for integrating prayer into your healing journey because “self” has been elevated to a level that convinces you that you can do it all on your own. If it got you sick for years and you still haven’t found healing and wholeness, that may indicate the need for spiritual integration. Prayer still works. Prayer is still powerful. Prayer still breaks chains. Prayer still releases the healing. Prayer still activates freedom and the word is still relevant today. 

I mentioned earlier that relationships sustain and complete healing, but you may be wondering what I mean by that. Healing often starts exciting and you feel energetic and hopeful for the possibility of getting well and putting an end to the inner torment. More people than we care to admit are aloof to the true messy, heavy, and exhausting work that healing will require. It offers many of us an opportunity to temporarily see ourselves as mature and aware individuals. However, at some point, we wake up to the heaviness of healing and the growing overwhelm that we can’t escape. This is the time when most people either give up on the healing and settle for a perpetually sick version of themselves or begin the frustrating cycle of hoping someone would go through that discomfort and pain for them and they just get to walk a few steps arrogantly to the finish line. 

This is where the community comes in handy. You have people who can hold you accountable for the decision you made to be well. They will validate the stretching you are experiencing and even hold your hand when the burden gets heavy, but they won’t allow you to walk away from the track of your healing journey until you are well. This part is crucial in your healing journey because you are going to be presented with many opportunities to quit. It’s really hard to heal. You lose people, you are misunderstood and judged, you sometimes feel lonely, you feel like you’re the only one doing the hard work and no one else seems bothered, yet they are sicker than you are. I don’t care how spiritual or smart you think you are. You need healthy and safe people to support you, cheer you on, and hold you accountable.

In relationships, you practically do the work to unlearn toxic mindsets and habits and apply the healthy ones. How can you know if the rage is truly out of you when you are not within the vicinity of a community filled with godly/ungodly, but irritating and imperfect people? How can you know you no longer get into role-playing when you are around people instead of being authentic? How can you know you are no longer controlling if you don’t spend and work with regular people? How can you know you are no longer gaslighted when you don’t journey along with people and go through conflicts where the work is tested? Nothing is truly confirmed and completed until it is tested.

“Nothing is truly confirmed and completed until it is tested.”

I see a lot of people convincing themselves that they have healed, but once they engage someone who disrupts their so-called “peace” they erupt into their old sick patterns and preach that avoid people who take away your peace. Now i am not claiming that to be healed means to be perfect. You and I will never be perfect and that’s a deeply freeing reality. I am not encouraging you to forcefully put yourself in an environment filled with unhealthy people and tolerate unruly behavior in the name of “maturity” for long periods. What I am simply emphasizing is that if your healing can only exist in an environment with the “perfect people” you have envisioned in your head then you haven’t fully healed. Healing is proven best by a changed mindset, heart, and behavior. In other words, a changed character. What you habitually do. 

God is perfect, yet he loves you and I who are imperfect people. I’m turn, he commands that we love imperfect people too because we are also imperfect and just because someone is sick does not mean they are less deserving of love. If anything, the sickest among us, need unconditional love the most. If your peace can be disrupted by a person who does not meet your behavior, emotion, or mindset expectations then it is not the peace that Christ left you with. His peace functions and is revealed best in the presence of chaos. The healing that is released in conjunction with our work equips us to love God, ourselves, and others better. If your healing makes you resist God, idolize yourself, and avoid real people then you may have not fully healed. Sadly many people in culture today who appear to be healed are delusional idolaters whom we worship. 

It’s easy to build a brand that encourages people to heal and honor their “peace and voice” behind a screen. It’s another thing when your words are tested and prove faulty when applied to the real world. God will never be mocked and one thing his word time and time again backs is that he honors integrity and honesty.

Healing without leveraging healthy and godly(if you are a Christian) relationships will always be unsustainable and incomplete. God made us in such a way that we need people to heal and thrive. We are made to be interdependent, not independent and the sooner you accept that the quicker God can activate the healing he has already given you. I love you tribe and I want you healed. Community is an element I challenge you to include in your healing journey. I will see you on the next one.