What is Healthy?

"Healthy people deeply enjoy God, expressed with occasional bursts of ecstasy followed by long periods of quiet allegiance. Their lives are anchored in him. They know that in their deepest parts they have felt His touch.

That touch increasingly liberates them to be more fully involved with others. They are free to enter into other people's lives, openly and vulnerably, with neither protection nor defensiveness, because they are not threatened by the pain of disappointment and conflict that inevitably occurs in rich involvement among fallen people. This inevitable pain does not cause them to back away behind walls of appropriateness ("I'll do what is expected of me") or spiritualized retreat ("Well, we must pray about it"). Mature Christians don't retreat, they increase the level of their involvement.

Healthy people do understand the importance of timing and discretion as they move toward people with whom they experience conflict. And they know, as not-yet-glorified saints, that their efforts at involvement will never be perfectly timed or thoroughly discreet. But still they move toward, not away from. Involvement, not retreat, is their lifestyle. And therefore their lives have quiet power. Their very presence is felt by a few people in a way that makes them want to live more nobly.

Healthy people are not afraid of confusion. They have given up their claim to independence and control and can therefore tolerate, even welcome, uncertainty. Confusion deepens their vulnerability to being led by someone who is not confused. They enter warmly into their inherent dependence as finite beings by defining faith as the courage to move on in the absence of clarity.

They struggle - and sometimes fail. They feel some temptations more deeply than less healthy people - and occasionally they yield. But they know what it means to repent from the core of their beings, to tear down the idols to which they looked for satisfaction, and to return to the God of life through whom relationship and impact are available.

Healthy people are not free of the common symptoms of emotional trouble, but the symptoms do not control them, at least not for long. Sometimes they feel profound loneliness and unbearable hurt - and at times it seems as if they are touching reality more honestly than when they are feeling good. But they go on, aware of a reality yet to be grasped that will replace loneliness with satisfying intimacy and hurt with sheer pleasure. Their styles of interaction with God and others are varied as snowflakes. But one thing they have in common: a growing ability to be touched by God and to touch others. "

Understanding People: Why We Long for Relationship - Dr. Larry Crabb