What is healing?

So I have been thinking about this for a little while. What does it mean to be healed?

In scripture we see people told to get up and walk, having sight returned, having leprosy healed. These seem kind of obvious that they are healed. Healing means the ailment they had no longer affects them.

But I am fairly healthy, I have been blessed that way. My only physical issue is moderately poor eyesight and being overweight. I have contact lenses, and have been working on my weight for a while, so those are really non-issues. The place I see myself seeking healing is emotionally.

I am by far not the most emotionally injured person but I have my share from simply being rejected by women on most occasions (varying from gracious No's to the girl not talking to me for 3 months), being the fat kid in middle school and getting picked on and disregarded, April 16th (was not in the building but close enough), to things I recently decided should not be placed on the Internet (though I am more and more willing to talk about them).

So I began asking what healing means...

Does it mean having no greater reaction to seeing/ hearing similar things to what has hurt me that others?

Does it mean defining myself by what has happened to and around me?

Does it mean forgetting?

Does it mean fighting against others feeling what I have felt?

Does it mean having someone with some expensive degree say I am fine?

Does it mean proclaiming to the world all that has happened then moving forward?

If I have a broken leg and it heals I can see the healing... what about this?

When I hear of a shooting in a place I have a connection to it hurts deeply. When I get an email from VT Alerts, my heart sinks. But I don't fall apart.

I saw parts of a video about 2 women who were abused as children by their family friend. His name was 'Alan.' Besides that, I felt a deep pain and anger about that story. It was not a distant person or a movie... it was very near me. But I still could function and talk and serve that day.

These two instances are why I wonder what healing means.

I do not want to become numb!!! I don't want to make jokes when I hear of yet another murder in my town, city, school, anywhere. I don't want to dismiss peoples pain... I want to feel the pain of those my Heavenly Father loves and has or desires to show himself to.

I ask myself and God what healing means, because for awhile I thought it was forgetting or having no greater emotional connection to other events that those who have not experienced what I have.

But the idea of numbing myself to that pain, seems so wrong. I want to be able to empathize, I want to be unable to ignore injustice because I feel it.

So again I wonder what is healing?

The closest thing I am aware of in Scripture about this is Jesus healing the leper.

Mark 1:40-45

I will only quote two verse here, verse 41 and 42 (NIV, emphasis mine)

"Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. "

Jesus took the step to touch the man with leprosy, a man not touched in years. I am convinced that this is to grant him emotional and spiritual healing as well as physical healing.

I wish I knew how this man lived his life past that point... perhaps that might indicate what emotional healing looks like. Did he move forward forgetting the past? Did he work to help those around the town who still have leprosy? What? All Mark says is that rather than keeping quiet as Jesus instructed him he told all the town.

I think feeling the pain of others is good, that it is not an indication of not being or receiving healing. But the 16th is an assumption as long as I live in Blacksburg, not when I leave. So with that and other things I still wonder...

How do I let you redeem the brokenness in and around me God?

How to I use what I have experienced to encourage Your children?

How do I understand how all the brokenness I still feel fits into the idea of being a new creation in You? How can I explain that to others?