What Comes After

‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.” - 2 Kings 20:5

As you travel far in your healing journey, you will notice certain triggers don’t affect you as much. That smell no longer stops you in your tracks. That song no longer makes you want to cry. That name no longer puts fear in your heart. Triggers are the things that cause a reaction in you that can strongly affect you emotionally. They take you to a traumatic moment in your past and can happen without warning. Just seeing their number pop up suddenly on your phone can cause a trigger. These triggers will begin to die down as your healing progresses. It’s a sign that you are coming around the corner. You are beginning to enter the part of your healing journey which is ‘what comes after’ There are 5 more signs that appear as you enter into this next phase.

You look to the past as lessons more than sad memories. I have found that as time went by my tears began to fall less and less. This was a huge sigh of relief because, boy, was I tired of crying. I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. But I didn’t want to rush the process and not do it right. Going through it was not easy. There were times I thought I was done but then a flashback would hit me hard and I would take me steps backwards. Even those flashbacks started to lessen. It’s like a cold. One day you’re sniffing and then suddenly you look back and realize you haven’t sniffed all day. The flashback came and went and I found myself saying, ‘I don’t want to go through that again.’ I was starting to see them as mental notes. I was ready to admit the mistakes I made and not place blame anymore. I was ready to understand the wrong turns I took but not with guilt or sadness. Only with that understanding. What happened was still sad but it felt different. The lesson pushed through more.

Peace has moved back into your life. You’re no longer angry as much as you were in the beginning. Remember that time you wished you could rip their head off and feed it to the wolves. You don’t care to anymore do you? When it pertains to the one who hurt you, thinking back you feel a difference. You don’t feel all the hurt flooding in, nor do you feel the chaos that comes with associating with that person in your mind. The little annoyances around you aren’t so annoying anymore. The peace that moves in had started to slowly fill into the hole that was in your heart when the healing began. Anger or fear was overtaking it but as time went by it started to grow and grow until one day it overtakes them. There are no perfect days of not reacting at all. Especially when you are still being poked at. But the peaceful ones outlast the others by far.

You look forward to the future again. To a big beautiful bright future. It no longer seems hopeless or dark. You are coming out to the other side. Regardless of whether you are still trying to co-parent with difficulty, you know that it has nothing to do with you. The darkness does not belong to you. You are focusing on yours and your loves. You start to make plans to do things you love. You start to have hope for good things. You know God has blessings in store for you and you are excited for them. No matter how many times you fall or life feels really tough, you still hold on to hope because that hiccup is not stopping you from your joy. It’s coming and you are excited. 

You feel more confident and stronger. For those who felt shrunken and small and afraid. It is an amazing moment when you are able to stand up strong against the one who would push you down often. There was fear every time you had to face this person. You would avoid dealing with them as much as possible. Until one day, you are forced to or on your own you decide it’s time. The first time can be scary, but after you keep doing it soon you start to grow in confidence and strength. No more running. You’ve discovered a new strength in you. 

You are ready to bless them and pray for them. The Bible says “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28). It seems impossible to want to bless them in the beginning. However, it does surprisingly get easier to do it. I believe what helps is the renewed way that you see your enemy. You see them differently. They are no longer this menacing monster you had to fight. Instead, they have become someone you wish to feel the same peace that you feel. To know the same love that you know. It took me getting to this point to even think it was possible. Ask me years ago (yes years) and I would have not believed. Each day in the beginning I would grudgingly ask for him to be blessed. Now, it’s a different story.

Now what comes after? The purpose for this pain. It has begun to reveal itself to you. You begin to understand more and no longer regret or hate the moment. It’s taken a while to get here but you begin to see that there was a plan for something amazing that is going to happen to you. Correction. Something amazing is happening to you. You have survived and healed and grown and now it’s time to be purposeful. For those who are not here yet, I hope this piece brings hope that it truly does get better. It does not last forever, taking the right steps to healing, though hard, are absolutely worth it.