Funny you should mention this, Nann, as I was just having a very similar
discussion with someone the other day.

You see, when I was first diagnosed with my lung disease, I was still
quite young and thought, ok, no big deal.  As things got worse and
progressed, and then I ended up on oxygen, I really got scared and quite
depressed.   I prayed, and prayed, and prayed that I would be healed!

Funny thing is, after a while, I started to realize that I HAD been
healed, just not in the way _I_ had thought.   I think having a chronic
illness can really open our eyes to some things that might otherwise
never be seen or never have even taken the time to see, but are seen
when one is forced to slow down a bit and perhaps re-evaluate ones life
and one's goals, etc.  Then, I think we start to realize how truly
blessed we have always been and continue to be, despite what we have to
deal with.   I myself, think I have been "healed" in so many other ways
that I could have never even begun to imagine.

Lets face it, everyone has their own burdens to contend with.  For some
of us, that is health issues, for others something different.  I can
ALWAYS see the blessings I have in my life n matter how bad things may
seem at any given moment and for this I am thankful.   Not sure I could
have made that statement  before I was diagnosed with a few chronic
illnesses.

I think chronic illness open our eyes and help us to become more
sympathetic, hopefully more understanding of others, more patient of
others in their times of need,   etc.

Not sure if that is what you are thinking of, but is definitely how I
have looked at things over the last 10+ years or so.

Hugs,  

Donna G.
.
.
.
ANGELS EXIST, but some times, since they don't all have wings, we call
them FRIENDS......

and that is pretty close to how I see it.
Harv

Ps  Nothing that I know of cures inflam.arth..   It could be in the future
with todays tech.

Ok, some of you are saying what I kept thinking - healing when you have a
chronic illness can be more a matter of learning how to have a good life that
*includes* your chronic illness, rather than wishing all the time for a cure.
And Peter and Harv's point about a difference in the physical ramifications
of a cure and of healing is very good as well.

In what I was writing down, I found myself generalizing to others based on
what I'd come to think.  It seemed like a good idea to find ouut if some
others with chronic health issues really did agree with me!  

As for you, Rosie - look out, I'll be in Florida next month!  And weren't you
a teacher?  You should know the difference between healing and heeling then!  
As for ham cures.....  well, we were discussing that yesterday afternoon when
we were putting away the ham leftover from the funeral luncheon.

Of course, as a lifelong anglican, I could also get into talking about cure
(accent on the "e"), but my fingers are kinda sore.

more thoughts about this:

i think faith is an interesting aspect of the healing of fear, brought on by
illness or injury.  it is something i often think about, without much
success in encapsulating.

first off, i'm uncertain if i mean faith, in the religious/spiritual sense
(at the  conscious or unconscious level), or if i mean it in the everyday
sense of the way we make use of or engage faith (at both the conscious and
unconscious level, as well), even though a person may not be religious or
even consider themselves spiritual.

by everyday sense of the word faith, for want of a better word, i mean
something we depend upon, the kind of acceptance and expectation we have of
simple and routine things.  for instance, turning on a car ignition with the
relative unconscious faith that the engine of one's vehicle will start; or
we could be taking a step, without worrying about falling . . . etc.  there
are literally hundreds and perhaps thousands of things we do each day with
this kind of unconscious faith in things and in things we do or attempt to
do.  and without that unconscious faithbased belief that things will work,
that we don't have to think or worry about something before doing it, we
wouldn't do many things and probably would worry about anything and
everything we wanted to do or did do.

in the religious/spiritual sense, faith is a bit more complex.  some
religions perceive faith in an external/conscious way, while other religions
perceive it as being internal/unconscious.  often, however, it's expression
is external and conscious.

it seems to me that faith (of which kind, i'm not sure) has an essential
role in healing mind and personal spirit towards wholeness or even towards
sustaining the chronically ill body so that it can live better than it would
without the inner-harmony of mind and spirit.  without faith nothing would
move at any level, in a cure or a healing sense, or even in daily living,
without a great deal of angst and inner-conflict.  so, faith is a like an
invisible tool that we may, or may not take for granted, but that we use so
often that we don't even notice when we are relying upon it to get us
through each day.

kate

yeppers.  i think they mean different things to different people, too. i'll
offer just a few thoughts for you to think about.  you'll have to pardon me,
though, because this is where i get into my "philosophizing" about stuff
i've been observing about myself for decades.  (and please ignore my
spelling or grammar, cuz i'm just going to cut loose as if i were writing a
first draft.)

 to me, there's a healing of the mind or the body or the individual spirit,
or all three, or some combination of two of those.  for simplification sake,
we can call mind, consciousness and individual spirit can be called
sub-consciousness.  but those two can be called whatever anyone is
comfortable calling them.  the body is self explanatory, but is totally
dependent upon the other two.

i.e. - someone can be completely cured of something, but if their mind and
spirit are not healed then their mind and spirit will cause their body to
behave like it is still ill or injured.  i think of curing as a practical
and measurable thing.  healing is trickier.  it is not as easily quantified,
because it goes deeper than curing and is less obvious.  so, to me, healing
and curing are dependent upon one another for an optimum result, the return
to wholeness.

i don't believe a cure is complete without mind and body being also healed.
healed of what? of the fear that was caused by experiencing the illness or
injury.  some of that healing may come with the repetition of rehab helping
to lessen resistance to reacquisiton of harmony, but mostly it comes with
the releasing of the instilled/acquired fear, by regaining and recognizing a
sense of overall comfortableness, a kind of re-establishing harmony among
the 3 to make 1 whole again and to make the person feel whole again.

when it comes to chronic illness, the disease is in the body, but doesn't
have to be in the mind and/or spirit.  i know, that's easy to say, but it
can be accomplished, by what diane called transcendance, some might call
cooperative denial, others might call it strength of character, and others
might even call it optimism or clarity or compartmentalizing or
determination or something else, which i think depends upon the individual
and how their mind and personal spirit work.  to me, when spirit and mind
are in harmony, they are powerful, powerful enough to determine how that
chronic illness is going to affect the whole person and that one's life and
the productivity of that one's life.

kate

I've been writing down some ruminations on life with chronic illness/pain
lately - not sure what it's going to develop into, but something is in the
works.  One thing I started thinking about is that I now think of healing
and
cure as meaning different things.  The first def. of both in the dictionary
is "restoration of health", though there are other meanings of heal listed
further on.

Now I want to know if others have come to see a difference between the two
words?  How do you think of "healing" and "cure"?  Is this something that
has
changed for you since you've had a chronic illness?  (or just through other
life experiences?)