One of my roommates is a physician assistant for an oncologist, so I frequently hear stories of patients and their battles with cancer. It’s startling how a disease that starts out so small often spreads throughout the whole body. Early diagnosis and treatment are the keys to becoming healthy again. Certainly, cancer is not something to leave alone to run its course. My roommate recently told me that in melanoma patients, skin lesions can at times completely disappear, making it seem that the cancer is gone. Yet, despite the disappearance from the skin, the cancer can still return elsewhere in the body if not treated appropriately.

Regarding emotional hardships, we’ve all heard statements like: “They’ll get over it, just give it time.” “Just let it blow over.” “Forgive and forget.” Or we often say “time heals all wounds.” I’ve become convinced that is a lie, regardless of how well-intentioned we might be as we say those words. Time alone doesn’t heal wounds. Just as cancer and other physical ailments and wounds, emotional damage must be properly addressed for healing to occur. Anything from improperly set broken bones to untreated infections often require much more invasive treatment later if left alone early. In the realm of relationships, time left to itself either intensifies our pain or causes us merely to bury it. But such burial is not true healing, though it may seem so for a time. The wounds will eventually manifest themselves elsewhere. Without prompt and proper attention, the damage to our souls can become much wider and deeper than they at first were.

With the wisdom he often has about relationships, Henri Nouwen writes:

"Time heals," people often say. This is not true when it means that we will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on us and be able to live on as if nothing happened. That is not really healing; it is simply ignoring reality. But when the expression "time heals" means that faithfulness in a difficult relationship can lead us to a deeper understanding of the ways we have hurt each other, then there is much truth in it. "Time heals" implies not passively waiting but actively working with our pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.

God desires that his children to be reconciled to one another. Reconciliation with those we have wronged or who have wronged us requires truth, authenticity, repentance, and forgiveness. As Nouwen says, anything less is a denial of reality. That denial prevents real relationship from happening. We all know that sometimes real reconciliation doesn’t happen. Even so, God wants us to forgive and be healed. Without proper care, our emotional hurts can keep us from following the greatest commandment – to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. However, God wants to redeem our suffering in Christ. In one of the magnificent paradoxes of the gospel, our Father uses our suffering for our good. As Romans 5:3-4 says: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Time alone cannot heal our wounds but with dependence on the gospel in our lives and the lives of others, we may experience guilt forgiven, wounds healed, and souls restored that we may love fully as we have first been loved.