Read this next line in utmost love. People need rehabilitation.
Many people are trying to function while quietly carrying wounds no one ever fully helped them treat. We either hand them advice like tools, but never check if they know how to use them; or, give instructions for healing, but forget to place the actual instruments for healing in their hands. As one that laces his shoes to both lead and follow, I can admit to have peaked at both ends of this scale, without much discipleship follow-through to balance the middle.
We podcast “set boundaries,” to someone never taught what safety feels like.
We preach “communicate,” to someone whose voice was once punished.
We post, “move on,” to someone still learning how to stand.
This is not a failure of will. It is a gap in support.
Real care is not only offering tools. It is teaching, demonstrating, and walking with people as they learn to use them. It is making healing practical, accessible, and patient. It is knowledge matured into wisdom that encourages people to eventually leap, as we lean in (ref. Acts 3: 1-11). It is recognizing that recovery is a skill that can be taught, not a switch that can be flipped.
"...recovery is a skill that can be taught, not a switch that can be flipped."
People do not heal because they are told to. They heal because they are shown how. It takes identification and observation. It takes patience. It takes remembering that our human limitations still need to catch up to The Spirit’s speed. It is labor with great recompense of reward (Hebrews 10:35-36).
Our greatest investments will be in other people, just as God has placed his greatest treasure in us, earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7). Although we aren't called to be crutches and excuses against independence, we should consider being training wheels until others can pedal without them.
May we be more cognizant & aware. May we not cause more harm forcing, instead of facilitating healing. May we remember we are not lords over people's processes (because, you'll be big mad and frustrated when it doesn't match your pace). May we become a people who don’t just speak solutions, but supply them:
Who don’t just diagnose pain, but help treat it.
Who make the patient path to strength something others can actually walk, run and mount up. May we find time. May we all be included.
With utmost love & rehabilitation,
Emmanuel Hunter