"healed"

Last night at dinner, my sweet boy looked at me with his big blue eyes and said, "Mommy, is healed a good word or a bad word?"

Caught off guard completely, I asked him to clarify what he meant.

He responded, "Is healed a bad word, Mommy, because it makes us cry?"

Wow. This was not the dinner conversation I expected. Was it possible that my two year old had picked up on the prayers and even well wishes of others who speak to us that often in the use of the word "healed" in reference to Ellie, there are tears?

How was I supposed to give him a simple answer he could understand to such a complicated question?

I'm nearly thirty years old and I have a very difficult time grasping that healed may not mean healed on earth - God might choose to heal Ellie in heaven.

We are also very careful with our wording with Will. (Semantics are very important to him!) I do not want him to think that he needs to be healed because he has hand & feet differences. There is nothing wrong with him - it's just the way God made him. It's different from the typical person but that doesn't make it wrong. Ellie, on the other hand, does have some internal issues that we are praying for miracles regarding. She does have joint/tendon issues which, while she has hands and feet, the joint issues will cause them to perhaps look different. We don't see that as something "wrong" or in need of being "healed." We are asking for healing I suppose from whatever is affecting her organs and whatever might affect her capacity to live. I don't want Will to somehow infer that we are asking for healing for her "hands & feet." I need him to know how much we adore limb differences. We adore each of our children's bodies. They are each fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of the Creator. Even if Ellie does not live on this earth or is never "healed" from whatever it is she is battling, she is no less valuable or significant or precious in His eyes or ours.

So the idea of "healed" is very complicated. I tried to remind Will that healed is a good word & explain to him kind of sort of what it means. I also tried to remind him why we cry sometimes when using that term. I reminded him that sometimes God says "no" to our prayers.

These are some complicated faith issues for a little kid. For his mommy & daddy too.