Healing in Suffering

There are times we find ourselves in places we've already been

Encountering forgotten scars, old wounds upon our skin

Our memories of struggling and crosses we once bore

Come to haunt the present, uninvited, as before

And so we learn to fall again, revealing wounds unhealed

Tended to, but never gone: these scars that time concealed

We bleed familiar hurt once more without an explanation

Hoping trust will enter in to force fear's abdication

In time we pray our wounds will heal through trust and heaven's grace

That rawness in our suffering will lead us to new space

Yet maybe we were made to bleed, as we were made to feel

For suffering can lead to love, and only love can heal

-C. O'Connell-