Five Years of Freedom

In January of 2021, I received the first red flag that I wasn’t ok. After a routine annual physical, my liver enzymes came back elevated. Because I am in the five-year mark of this discovery, I am in a reflective place, doing much reading and meditating along with my healthy eating, AA meetings, and bible study.

Me and my daddy in 1965/1966 and my Uplifters goodies!

Earlier today, I was thinking about how physical healing is much the same as spiritual healing. I have been reading “Anam Cara” by John O’Donahue this week and diving into how the body and soul intertwine.

I have watched and assisted a loved one heal from a deep physical wound. In so doing, I learned something that went against every instinct I had.

The wound couldn’t be closed right away.

If it was sealed too soon, infection would grow underneath, hidden, dangerous, and far more destructive than the open wound ever was.

So it had to stay open.

• It had to be cleaned several times daily.

• It had to be exposed to air and light.

• It had to be tended with patience, not force.

That experience changed the way I understood spiritual healing, especially my own. This actually happened in the exact same year I began my own healing journey.

In recovery, I expected immediate closure. I wanted to “move on.” I wanted the pain to stop and the story to end neatly. But healing my liver taught me that rushing spiritual healing is no different than rushing physical healing. You can look better on the outside while quietly worsening within.

The Twelve Steps in AA asked me to do the same thing. The spiritual wound is required to stay open.

• Step Four asked me to open what I had spent years protecting.

• Step Five asked me to let another human being see it. Not to shame me but to keep it from festering in isolation.

That openness was uncomfortable. Vulnerable. Sometimes exhausting. Painful.

But it was also the first time real healing had room to happen.

Each day in recovery became a kind of spiritual wound care. Telling the truth when it would have been easier to close back up. Letting God do the work I couldn’t manage on my own. Trusting that healing happens in layers, not all at once.

Over time, the wound changed. It didn’t disappear, but it strengthened. What was once raw became resilient.

The scar didn’t mean I was broken; it meant the wound had been honored long enough to heal properly.

Today, I understand that my illness, physical and spiritual, was never something to hide or rush past. It was an invitation. When I stopped trying to close the wound prematurely and allowed myself to remain open to truth, to God, and to others, my body followed.

In recovery, staying spiritually open means: continuing to tell the truth (Step 10),

staying connected to God through prayer and meditation (Step 11), and offering our healed scars, not our hidden wounds, to others (Step 12).

Healing my liver required radical honesty. Healing my spirit required the same.

The openness I feared most became the very thing that saved me.

Love, Sue

PS you can listen to my story on The Uplifters Podcast facilitated by the amazing Aransas Thomas Savas here https://www.theuplifterspodcast.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web or you can follow my Substack blog here: https://substack.com/@susanrpryde?utm_campaign=profile..., or you can read my memoir, Reversing Cirrhosis, available anywhere books are sold - here is the Amazon paperbook link: https://a.co/d/b0I7sKa

#healprydeliver #reversing Cirrhosis #Theuplifters