December 2021 Touchstones Ministry Theme: Healing
December 1: “Healing is a mystical, undefinable experience that is part of being human.” ~ Susanna Barlow
December 2: “Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
December 3: When you don’t give people the chance to say, “I hurt,” they end up saying, “I hate.” Don Wheat
December 4: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~ Rumi
December 5: “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
December 6: “As my sufferings mounted, I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation—either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
December 7: “And in the end, we were all just humans… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” ~ Christopher Poindexter
December 8: “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” ~ Marianne Williamson
December 9: “Everyone keeps telling me that time heals all wounds, but no one can tell me what I’m supposed to do right now. …I know all about time and wounds healing, but even if I had all the time in the world, I still don’t know what to do with all this hurt right now.” ~ Nina Guilbeau
December 10: “Somewhere we know that without silence, words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.” ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
December 11: “The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it’s been broken into a million pieces.” ~ Robert James Waller
December 12: “Did you want to see me broken? / Bowed head and lowered eyes? / Shoulders falling down like teardrops. /Weakened by my soulful cries. / You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I’ll rise.” ~ Maya Angelou
December 13: “The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.” ~ James Frey
December 14: “We don’t want to survive. We want to be healed.” ~ Joyce Meyer
December 15: “My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable.” ~ Anne Lamott
December 16: “Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” ~ David Richo
December 17: “Maybe we just live between hurting and healing.” ~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz
December 18: “A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” ~ Steve Maraboli
December 19: “Don’t ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.” ~ William Paul Young
December 20: “It’s not forgetting that heals. It’s remembering.” ~ Amy Greene
December 21: “The soul is healed by being with children.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
December 22: “Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing.” ~ Jennifer Brown
December 23: “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~ Pema Chödrön
December 24: “Hearts are breakable. …And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before.” ~ Cassandra Clare
December 25: “It takes skill to be real. Time to heal each other.” ~ Tupac Shakur
December 26: “The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it….” ~ Nicholas Sparks
December 27: “The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed…. The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning. …As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation, and had them received, heard, and validated…, I found healing.” ~ Sue Monk Kidd
December 28: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” ~ John Muir
December 29: “I have found deep meaning in the Hebrew phrase Tikkun ha’ olam, [which means] ‘repair of the world,’ for surely the world, wonderful as it is, is broken.” ~ Richard Gilbert
December 30: “It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.” ~ Sara Teasdale
December 31: “They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.” ~ Cassandra Clare