My boyfriend and I broke up about 6 months ago. I am still in a lot of pain and cry a lot. Am I right ,or is something is wrong with me?
Good question. It is both a difficult one and an easy one. The easy part is your question, “does time heal all things?” The answer is a simple, “NO.” Healing always includes time as an element, but time alone is not the entire recipe.
In God’s economy, the formula is Grace, Truth, and Time. Look at it like an infection. If you have some sort of infection, it takes time to heal it. But, time alone, without medicine and the proper ingredients that add nutrients to the healing process, will only allow the infection to get worse.
Emotional healing is the same way. If a hurt is treated with the ingredients such as: care, support, grieving, expression of pain, understanding, truth, working through character patterns, and movement into creating a new life past the hurt — then the addition of time ensures the process is going to help. But time helps only if these ingredients are in the mix. Time alone is not enough.
Now…the hard part. Look at your process and see what has been happening. Is it time only? Or have you done all of the above? Have you gotten support? Have you really grieved and begun to let go in a reality-based way? Have you talked out the pain? Have you understood the relationship and what it meant to you, especially in terms of old hurts that it may be tapping into? Have you examined the patterns of your personality that got you into the relationship or allowed hurtful patterns to occur, so you don’t repeat it? And have you moved into creating a new life with a hopeful future?
If all of these are present and are ongoing in a sustained process, then time is the best thing you have going for you. But if you are just “waiting” for the hurt to go away, then you are waiting on nothing, and may be setting yourself up for future hurt.
I hope this does not sound too brutal. But I have seen many people on both sides of the fence. Some passively wait for things to get better, and they don’t. Others pursue health, growth and spirituality in a vigorous way, “hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” They find a time of pain can be one of the most productive of their lives. My hope for you is you are choosing the growth path.
Maybe you could take these ideas to your friends who are worried and you could examine your process and give yourself a grade. Maybe you’ll pass! But, if they think you are stuck; sometimes that is what friends are for, to see us when we cannot see ourselves (Proverbs 12:15).
