The Healer's Lens

       People have a hard time extending grace to others, especially people they don't like or people they think they are better than. It's hard to extend grace and mercy when you think someone doesn't deserve it, but in all honesty grace and mercy are never something someone deserves. Then they wouldn't be grace or mercy. Grace by definition is something you could never earn. 

     Because of our poor ability to extend grace, many wounds are never healed and many relationships are broken permanently. We fight amongst ourselves over selfish desires and ambitions and damage our friendships and loved ones. We don't open doors for people who have made mistakes, and we don't forgive hardly anyone who have violated our boundaries or our sense of correctness. 

Gracelessness makes the world harsher and even more brutal than it needs to be, or could be. There are a few inhibitions to our ability to extend grace. The major ones I've noticed are fear, disgust, judgement, and condemnation. These are the major reactions to offenses or disruptions in our lives, and they cloud our minds and inhibit our ability solve some major problems. They are major inhibitions of grace and mercy, and major inhibitions of our ability to understand situations and each other. 

If there is one lens that is probably the most valuable, and most useful, way of looking at the world, it is looking at the world through the lens of a healer, or the lens of a repairer. This changes how you see the problems of humanity. You see the worst of things as not so much just a disgusting evil to be punished, but in itself a brokenness needing healing or a darkness needing light. 

The lens of a healer is the lens of a problem solver, not just a person that is driven by reactions that never actually solve anything and often cloud our thinking, but driven by the desire to find reparative solutions. Those inhibitions I mentioned above (disgust, fear, judgement, and condemnation) are often detrimental to problem solving. They cloud our minds and take over our decision making. They are not always rational, and hardly ever compassionate.

The most important thing to realize, though, is that they are all emotions and states of mind that are overcomeable. I've seen many people overcome fear and disgust, and I've met many nonjudgemental people.

They are very counterproductive to the ability to heal, and the sooner you can master them, the better you can solve many serious problems in life.

Looking at the world through a healer's lens fundamentally changes how you see problems, and fundamentally changes how you approach them. Few ways are more graceful and merciful at solving problems then the methods of a true, genuine healer.