The Healer’s Touch — “The Source of all Healing”
Chapter IX/XIV
“Kneel with me,” he said as the light outside started to fade and the world shrunk to the size of a room. He lifted her hands in a gesture of invitation. She raised her brows, but did as he asked. Their eyes met as she knelt in front of him and the Healer saw the walls she had erected against trust. The world had woken her to its cruelty and after pain and anger had numbed her, love had faded.
“There is a source of healing that is more powerful than all others,” he said and tried to reach into her soul. “It can heal every wound without exception, no matter how deep, no matter how severe.”
“It goes beyond what you are able to do?” she asked, but still held his hands as if they were a lifeline tossed to a drowning sailor.
He smiled. “My gift is very limited. It extends mostly to the healing of the body. When it comes to healing the wounds of the soul, I have found that the best healing are loving relationships. I know that this also is the source of your greatest pain because you think your family lost. But I want to help you develop a relationship that is of even greater strength, support and healing than that of family … although in some form, it is very much a family bond.”
“You are talking about God,” she said.
He nodded. “As I said, I know that he is the father of all our souls. I know he knows and cares about us and is willing to help us, but not against our will.”
“If we have to show him that we want his help…” she said, pondering, “…how do we do that?”
“We start opening our hearts to him. His heart is always open to us, his hands ever extended towards us. All we need to do is cease to resist his love and enter into a relationship with him. As every bond we form with others, it takes time to grow and requires work to maintain. But the ensuing love and healing that arise are worth every step of the way.”
“I once used to believe in God,” she said. “I guess you could call the relationship my family and I had with him a tradition. But when life tore apart at the seams, it wasn’t strong enough to uphold me.”
“What were some of the practices of faith in your culture?”
She shrugged. “On Sundays, we congregated with others of our village at the chapel. We would sing songs and hear sermons and all of that stuff. But I don’t think it was ever something more than mere custom.”
He nodded. “Worship is a form of building a relationship with God, but it starts at a much more foundational level. As with every person that we meet, we need to talk with God in order to get to know him. And since he is our Father, we talk to him as with a loving father, a mentor who cares, loves. A protector who suffers with us, weeps with us. A healer who can take all our fury and all our torment. As we come to him, he can take all those burdens away from us. And this in a much more intimate and lasting way than I was ever able with the gift of my healing hands.”
For a moment, he hesitated, then said, “Would you allow me to pray?”
She stared at him for a moment. “Right now, here?”
He nodded slightly. “I won’t pray the prescribed pleadings so many religious preachers teach, but I will talk to our Father.”
His face was a question, waiting for her approval. She shrugged her shoulders. “Go ahead.”
He pressed his lips together, then bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Father of our souls, the hour is late, but I need your help. Thank you for giving me strength to live through the wound I suffered. I thank you for hearing my plea and for the opportunity to be of support for the hurting.
“Father, you have entrusted me with more time on this earth to be of help to my sister. Only you and she really know and understand how much she has suffered and endured. I do not know why you have allowed so much sorrow to descend upon her, but neither do I ask to understand. There is only one thing I plead for.”
He pressed his eyes together, trying to understand how he should phrase his request. “There are scars I cannot heal and wounds that only you can mend. Please, Father, help her to know how much you love her, how much you care and that her children are in your safe hands. Please, grant her the assurance that you are powerful to give her a future in which she can be reunited with them.”
He felt her grip tighten in his hands. “I will do whatever I can to help her in this quest, this search for you. Thank you for saving me once before, so I could become an instrument in your hands to heal and save. Please, Father, I will do whatever I can, but I know I am nothing without your aid. Please, Father, help her gain the peace to which I can only show the way.”
A soft quietude fell after he had ended his plea, but it wasn’t empty. The fire seemed warmer and its light brighter in these dark hours of night. His pain seemed eased and his weakness less dominating. There was a sudden thought in his head that frightened him, but he pushed it away for the moment.
When he opened his eyes and looked up, he saw the tears in her eyes once more. But she held them at bay, since they didn’t originate in pain.
“Thank you,” she said.
He shrugged. “A good healer knows where his knowledge comes to a close and it is time to reach for the skill and power of another. I will help you with everything I can, but some things simply lie outside of my strength.”
She nodded and looked to the floor. “Your faith is admirable … even enviable.”
“Do you think that developing a trust in the Father could help you?”
She glanced at him again out of the corners of her eyes. “If all this is true, yes. But how can I know whether it is?”
“Do you dare to ask the Father yourself?”
It was an invitation and she understood. She shook her head but lowered her head and clutched his fingers tighter.
“Father,” she started, “… my brother has told me that you exist. That you love … and … care … and heal. If you do exist and do watch over us and care about what happens down here, then you must know what I have suffered. I am not sure if you can understand the pain, but if you are a real father, then I assume you do.
“Father, I … I don’t know for what to keep living. Forgive me my anger and hatred and that I searched for death by inflicting it on others on the battleground. I just don’t know … how to get rid of this pain. It is so much!”
For a moment, she was unable to breathe, but she felt a new strength run up and down her spine, giving her power to find inhale, to find words. “Father, do you understand how much it hurts? How …? How could you allow all this chaos to crash on top of me? Why …? Father! I do not understand why! Why did you take all my children from me? Every single one of them! How could you crush me so completely?”
She felt the hot tears break through her closed eyelids and glide down her face. Her voice was an accusation, but she didn’t want to hold back. “Father! I have sought death, but you have kept it from me. Why do you want me to live when everything I loved is gone!”
A soundless sob escaped her throat. When she continued, her voice was but a whisper. “Father, please, if you have to keep me on this earth for longer, then you need to help me find hope again. Hope that my family is not lost to me for good. Hope that life can get better once more. I can’t live a day more with this darkness. Please, at least give me the trust that one day you will raise the sun over my life again.”
A sudden thought came into her mind. The Healer is the promise of dawn. For a long moment, she just listened to this idea. Had the Healer not come at a point when she had been turned to stone, when there was nothing to keep her going other than the grinding wheel of routine? Had he not come when she had no strength to survive?
Again, the well of tears burst open. “Father, I miss my children. I miss my husband. I miss the life in peace we were granted. I miss the time we spent in the beauty of nature, the evenings when we read, the eternities when we hugged. Father … please, please help me out if there is a way. I have walked through the fire. I am standing in the wake of war and violence. I feel as if … all that is left of me is ashes. Is it ever going to end? Please, tell me, is there a way out? Please, show me the way out!”
This time it wasn’t silence that followed, but light. Her eyelids trembled, as a brightness like the noon sun warmed her face. It seemingly enveloped her like a blanket of peace. Like the Healer’s touch, but much more profound and lasting, this calm settled in her soul and drove out all the darkness. She felt her weight lighten and the chains of her burdens burst. She was taken upwards as the world sunk beneath, all its fog dispersing as she broke through the clouds.
She didn’t dare to open her eyes. All her pain and memories suddenly seemed distant. Their importance was lost and their grip on her soul faded.
She didn’t dare to open her eyes. But she saw. Light and life, sun and white havens. And then she heard them. The laughter.
She didn’t dare open her eyes. Children, shouting, chuckling, giggling. The voice of a father, a husband.
The tears pressed her eyes open. But the light didn’t fade even though she sat in a dark hut illuminated only by the fire in an old oven while the cold of winter reigned outside. The light didn’t fade, because it had taken residence in her soul.
She saw the Healer in front of her, caught in a wonderful marvel. She still could hear the ring of the children’s voices. It was a promise. A promise of the Father. Her children weren’t lost.
Her mouth turned into this long-forgotten form. A smile.
As she had reached out to the source of all healing, hope had been given to her.
