What is the act of healing but changing? We often treat it like changing back to a previous state. But we can’t go back. Our bodies won’t let us. They only ever change in the process.

When we lift weights, we stress our muscles, tear them, and then they heal as new, stronger. Not as before. Different. Changed.

How often do we seek, not to be healed, but to time travel? To a time before, when our bodies cooperate and moved differently. To a life we lived that isn’t now. That isn’t with these people around us, these responsibilities, that older face in the mirror.

I wonder if we would be more satisfied with our own sense of healing if we simply acknowledged that change is necessary? That we are called to love people as we are? To live in these frail forms for a time, embodying joy? And to simply live?