Cured or Healed?

Sometimes I get really pissed that God hasn’t healed my dad or my mom. I mean, why not? My dad is in constant pain, and my mom is dying. Why can’t the Almighty Healer stretch out his hand and make everything better, everything whole?

And to be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know why some people are healed, why I read all these stories in the Bible about physical healing, and why some people aren’t. Why my parents aren’t.

But lucky for me, Madeleine (yes, in my head, I call Madeleine L’engle by her first name) has some thoughts, and they bring me a little comfort.

“The woman with the issue of blood [Luke 8:40-56] was both cured and healed, and that is easy to understand, but curing and healing are not always the same thing. 

It is always all right to pray for healing. It is also all right to pray for curing, as long as we are willing to accept that this may not be God’s will, and as long as we are willing to accept God’s will rather than our own 

I think God wants us to be whole, too. But maybe sometimes the only way he can make us whole is to teach us things we can learn only by being not whole.” 

            --- Madeleine L’engle, The Irrational Season

As I look at my parents, I do see healing. I see a father who can more deeply care for the sick and the hurting because of his own pain; a father who has to more fully rely on the Lord survive; a father whose ability to preach for the past few years has truly been a gift from God, as all the factors of his disability should have made it impossible. I see a mother whose life-long struggles with depression and anger have been replaced with deep and abiding joy; I see a mother who loves more purely than ever before.

My parents have been healed, but they haven’t been cured. They have been healed, but they haven’t been made whole. And I don’t think this healing could have happened any other way. It doesn’t take away my questions of why they’re not cured now, but it allows me to praise the Lord for their healing.

So sometimes I’ll still be pissed. But at least now I can be pissed with the right vocabulary:

Dear God,
Thank you for healing my parents.
Why haven’t you cured them?
Love, Katye.