The Blog that Speaks: When Time Does Not Heal All Wounds
The phone rang. And simultaneously, grief barged through my door with its suitcases in hand. Without waiting for an invitation, grief instantly began to unpack all of its things:
- Denial was seen with the uttering of the word “No!”
- Shock as I immediately sat down so as not to fall down the stairs;
- Being dumbfounded and disoriented as I wondered how I was to be;
- Sadness as tears trickled down my face;
- Anger as the death seemed ridiculous and senseless (he fell in his backyard, and his life is now over?!?!?!).
These were some of the expected articles contained in grief’s luggage (much like our having a change of underwear and a toothbrush/toothpaste when we travel). But other lesser-discussed belongings also were pulled from grief’s bags.
- An increased sense of human fragility;
- My fearing the immediate deaths of those close to me;
- An awakened sense of powerlessness. And this was joined with feelings of apathy, peppered with a dash of fatalism that said, “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die!” (rather uncharacteristic of me for those who don’t know me).
Yes, this grief journey would be different . . . They all are.
Some may respond to grief’s unpacked items with, “Oh, just give it time. Time will eventually heal your wounds.”
Ummm . . . not helpful.
Time has no innate power to heal wounds. It is neither a bandage nor an antiseptic. Time is a human construct. It does not heal anything. I know. I hear about it from others.
There was a special bond between the mother and the daughter. Her mother, a coach, mentored her not only in sports but also in life. When her mother died, feelings of profound grief threatened to overtake the daughter’s life. But she would not have it. Although feeling the feelings would have moved her toward healing, the daughter chose denial instead and ran. Little did she know, grief has its own untamed ways. It resolutely refuses to be ignored and doggedly resists being silenced as it tenaciously beckons for our attention. So, when it is not granted an audience, grief expresses itself through other, albeit unhealthy, means. For the daughter, grief discovered its voice through alcohol, unhealthy relationships with men, and other addictions.
Perhaps she believed the American adage that time heals her wounds. However, time only marches on, relentlessly unhindered and unaware of pain. Tick. Tick. Tick. It slowly surges ahead, unabated as the present dissolves into the past. Tick. Tick. Tick. Quietly it moves. Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . . Faster and faster. First minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick. Then hours turn into days. Tick.Tick.Tick. Weeksmonthsyears pass. Tickticktick.
Time does not heal all wounds. It only slips soundlessly into an unknown future.
Even time infused with busyness, or some other distraction, does not stop the pain of grief. Grief counselor Alan Wolfelt recounts a story of a man whose wife had died and whose friends and co-workers had encouraged him to stay busy. So, he did. He worked and worked and worked. Eighteen months later he arrived at Alan’s office in Colorado laying on a stretcher. Alan leaned over the man and asked, “How are you doing?” and the man responded, “Not very well. I’m laying here on your floor.”
Time does NOT heal all wounds.
Time’s powerlessness to heal surfaces not only in stories of grief but is illustrated in the areas of conflict and trauma, too.
Time had not healed the years of tension between two main groups, Hutus and the Tutsis. The slaughtering of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus began within hours after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down on April 6, 1994. One hundred days later, approximately 800,000 had been killed.[1] This genocide tragically occurred in three nations in which 90 percent of the people testify to being baptized as Christians.[2] And I could continue with the history of tension among the Serbs (Orthodox Christians), Croats (Catholics), Bosniaks (Muslims,) and ethnic Albanians (Muslims) from among whom approximately 100,000 people had been slaughtered between the summer of 1991 and December of 1995.[3]
Time did NOT heal all their wounds.
Time fails to heal trauma, too. It characteristically refuses to forget as the trauma incessantly appears again and again and again. Sometimes it manifests in violence toward the self and other times toward those in close relationship to the survivors. Consider the Vietnam veterans who returned to the USA from an unpopular war. Upon their return, the soldiers were not celebrated but scorned, which kept their voices silenced. America wanted to forget and most likely, the veterans did, too. But the soldiers’ trauma persisted until it eventually emerged among their offspring. Studies reveal that the trauma of the veterans who had experienced abusive violence in the Vietnam conflict was linked to their children’s behavioral disturbances approximately fifteen to twenty years after the veterans’ war experiences.[4]
Similar stories are told among survivors and their families of other traumas, such as the Holocaust or sexual violence. Even though victims may speak very little to family members about their trauma, studies reveal it does not vanish.[5] Study after study suggests that survivors, who experience trauma without striving to heal (e.g., Holocaust, war, sexual violence, etc.), pass echoes of the trauma down to multiple generations. This is called intergenerational or transgenerational trauma. Silence does not squelch the pain of trauma, but like a contagion, it soundlessly infects the following generations.
Time does NOT heal all wounds.
Time is not a magical pill that removes the impact of injuries. Be it grief, unresolved strained relations, trauma, etc., time does not diminish the loss, the factions, or the distressing experiences. Instead of time removing the wounds, it offers space for the grief, friction, or nightmare to smolder. It hums in the background until something, or someone, stokes its glowing embers. It may be flaring underneath the surface until a breeze blows, creating favorable conditions to spread a fire of more pain . . . or even death.
Time simply does not heal all wounds.
If we are waiting for time to heal all our wounds, whether it is our pain of loss, conflict, or trauma, we are holding to a false notion about time and healing. As Wolfelt states, we must set our intention to heal, being active in the healing.[6] Time by itself does very little to heal our wounds. It alone does not contain extraordinary healing powers to erase the pain residing in our human hearts, be it from a death, conflict, abuse, etc. Instead, we must resist the desire to ignore the wound and purposely seek out healing.
- We must grieve the losses experienced in the wounds.
- We must tell the story of our wounds.
- We must be willing to be present to the pain of our wounds.
- We must strive to be kind and forgiving.
- We must pursue healing.
- We must seek out the other and listen so that we may understand.
This is what my spouse and I are currently striving to do as we walk our path of grief. We are present to the pain of our loss, both of our own and each other’s. We feel and express the pain. We reflect. We journal. We make use of ritual. We engage with others who are willing to also be present to the pain of the loss (without spouting catchy clichés). That is, we set our intention to heal.
As a Christian, I am reminded how Jesus’s death reveals that the triune God’s love did not adhere to the passivity of the adage, “Time heals all wounds.” In contrast, God set God’s intention to minister to and heal humanity by entering our history in the person of Jesus Christ. Instead of relying on time to heal the wounds, God set God’s intention to heal humanity by entering the human story. God did not wait on time to heal us, but rather the Eternal entered Time to heal it. The Eternal (divine) joined with Time (human) in the person (the body) of Jesus Christ in order that humanity may be healed. Jesus becomes one of us “so he could be for and with us.”[7] Jesus entered our story so that his presence would heal it. Amidst death, he chose not to rely on pithy sayings, but he remained present to the pain of loss. He died, being “in solidarity with those . . . who are dead.”[8] Amidst conflict, he chose to resist violence by succumbing to violence. Amidst the trauma of the cross, he took on shame and blame, thereby becoming present both to his wounds and our wounds. He did not sit by and wait for time to pass until our sin was healed. He entered into solidarity with our pain through his experience of trauma, violence, and death. He set his intention to heal the world by being present to human pain, both his and ours.
And so may it be said of us. May we participate in Christ’s healing ministry by setting our intention to heal. May we become people who pursue healing by telling our stories of our wounds. May we become agents of healing by listening to said stories, being in solidarity with others’ wounds. May we today participate in Christ’s healing ministry in the power of the Spirit by opening ourselves up to the pain of our wounds and the wounds of others, thereby setting our intention to heal our world.
[1] History.com editors, “Rwandan Genocide,” History, published October 14, 2009; updated September 30, 2019, as of January 20, 2021, https://www.history.com/topics/africa/rwandan-genocide.
[2] E. M. Kolini, “A Tutsi’s Hope,” Christianity Today 41, no. 4 (1997): 10, accessed January 20, 2021, https://search-ebscohost-com.fuller.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=9709184010&site=ehost-live.
[3] “Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992–1995,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed January 20, 2021, https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/bosnia-herzegovina/case-study/background/history-ethnic-tensions.
[4] Robert Rosenheck and Alan Fontana, “Transgenerational Effects of Abusive Violence on the Children of Vietnam Combat Veterans,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 11, no. 4 (1998): 731-742, accessed March 1, 2019, doi:10.1023/A:1024445416821.
[5] To read about one such study, see Miri Scharf and Ofra Mayseless, “Disorganizing Experiences in Second- and Third-Generation Holocaust Survivors,” Qualitative Health Research 21, no. 11 (2011): 1539-553, doi: 10.1177/1049732310393747, (accessed February 16, 2019).
[6] Alan Wolfelt, Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart, 2nd edition (Fort Collins, CO: Companion Press, 2021), 20-21.
[7] Aimee Patterson, Suffering Well and Suffering With: Reclaiming Marks of Christian Identity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023), Kindle, 156.
[8] Ibid.
