You have probably heard it said, “Time heals all wounds. That saying has been around for so long that I cannot even find on Google who said it originally. Our culture wants to tell us that time is the only thing we need to be emotionally healed. Is it just me, or would we all actually love for that to be true? I mean, doing the hard work of healing doesn’t seem fair. When you are the one who has been wounded, shouldn’t you get to relinquish responsibility for the healing of a wound that someone else inflicted?! If we could simply give our heartaches some time and they would be magically healed… doesn’t that just work better for you? Yeah, me, too.

I remember literally begging God to let me go to sleep for a year in the throes of my most painful moments because I thought that if I could just have that much time pass over me, then the pain would not be so paralyzingly excruciating. I am so glad that He didn’t answer that prayer.

Because the...