Not Enough Time to Be Fake: A Wellness Story You Can’t Measure in Metrics

 

 When healing has nothing to do with labs, and everything to do with love, time, and truth.

 Imagine being young, bold, full of dreams—and then facing death alone.

While giving the 2025 commencement address at Harvard University, Dr. Abraham Verghese told the story of a man in his 30s—an AIDS patient from a small southern town—who had left home years earlier, searching for identity and acceptance in a big city. He had lived hard, loved freely, and tried to outrun the shame, judgment, or silence he had grown up with.

But life has a way of catching up. And illness has a way of revealing what matters most.

When his partner died and his health began to fail, he returned to his hometown—not for treatment, but for connection. And surprisingly, what he found wasn’t condemnation. His family embraced him. They cared for him in ways that were gentle, generous, and unwavering.

His final months, though filled with physical decline, were marked by clarity. Stillness. Forgiveness. Time was no longer something to spend. It was something to savor. Relationships that had been strained for years were renewed. Words once unsaid were spoken. Love flowed where there had been silence.

Before he died, he wrote a letter to his mother. He asked her to open it one month after his passing, when the sharpest edge of her grief might have softened. In that letter, he said something unforgettable:
“If anyone ever asks you if I went to heaven, tell them this: I just came from there.”

How is it possible that a dying man could say such a thing?

Because even though he couldn’t rewind the past, he used the time he had left to make peace with the present.

His healing wasn’t the kind that shows up on lab results. But it was real. And complete.

In the world of natural health, we talk about food, movement, breath, and light. But rarely do we talk about time—how we spend it, who we spend it with, and what unresolved weight we carry through it.

“Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” —Psalm 90:12

This kind of wisdom—the kind that reframes everything—can come suddenly, in crisis. Or slowly, through grace.

Because sometimes the healing we most need isn’t from illness. It’s from emptiness. Isolation. Misplaced identity. . .nothing Jesus can’t handle.

There’s a kind of peace that comes when you realize you’re not alone in the dark. That even the worst mistakes aren’t the end of your story.

And maybe—just maybe—there’s Someone who sees all of it, and loves you anyway.

So here’s the real health check:

🧠 What weight are you carrying that no supplement can fix?
🕊️ If time ran out tomorrow, would your story read like healing—or just survival?

You can’t control how much time you have.
But you can decide how you use it.

And where you’ll turn for the kind of healing only One can truly give.