A hard day doesn’t erase all the healing you’ve already done. Give yourself the same patience God has been giving you all along.
Angel: She thinks she should be over this by now.
God: There’s no timeline on healing.
Angel: She keeps punishing herself for still feeling it.
God: I know. She’s been treating grief like a project with a deadline. Like there’s a version of her that should have already moved on by a certain date. Every time the pain resurfaces, she takes it as evidence that she’s failing at healing.
Healing doesn’t move in a straight line
Jacqueline Whitney
Angel: She isn’t failing.
God: Of course she isn’t. Healing doesn’t move in a straight line. It circles back. It shows up unexpectedly. It looks like progress for a while and then it looks like a hard week for no reason. That’s not failure. That’s just how it works.
Angel: How do we help her?
God: Keep reminding her that this isn’t a race. That the grief resurfacing doesn’t undo the healing that’s already happened. That the fact that she’s still standing after everything she’s been through is the miracle, not the timeline.
Angel: She wants to be past it.
God: She will be. But not because she forced herself to be. Because she let herself grieve as long as she needed to. That’s what actually gets you to the other side.
Jacqueline Whitney is the author Held: A 50 Day Devotional For Parents and All That You Deserve.
