I work in a hospital and one of the things I encounter frequently is people with wounds. We have a special team that does wound care. They attend to deep wounds and infections that people come in with. Many times the wounds get infections in them and not only require physical tending to with cleaning, balm and bandages, the patient will need special medication to fight the infection.
Some wound are small and can quickly heal, others need long-term care for months to get completely cleared and healed. Some require surgery to get scrap out the damaged tissue so that healing can occur. Other wounds are so infected that anyone who comes in the room is told to take precautions so that infection is not spread to others. Some take a machine to help the healing process.
I am not a nurse, I have no desire to see wounds or infection that are being treated on patients. Often they share their brokenness with me anyway. I see the journey and read the notes of the healing that takes place. At times I have seen pictures and sometimes patients just show me even though I have no need to see the wounds.
I thought about how this relates to the brokenness that I see emotionally and spiritually in people. As a social worker that is the wounds that most interest me. I also know that unlike the treatment to a physical wound, God is the one the heals the broken-hearted. He is the one that needs to bind their wounds.
Just like in the natural people try to deal with their cuts and scrapes, so do we in the emotional and spiritual. We often try to treat a gaping emotional wound by applying a band-aid. It surprises us when we keep getting in the same dysfunctional situation over and over again. We think that if we don’t focus on the emotional wound that it will heal appropriately and we will be fine.
Unfortunately, we have to allow God to deal with the brokenness that we experience. I can not tell you the number of people I have worked with in the psychiatric units . People in the second half of their life still dealing with trauma they experienced in the first decade of their life. They couldn’t tie the pain of the past to their current behaviors and problems. When we don’t address hurts and hang-ups when they happen, we begin to develop patterns of thoughts and behaviors around them. The reality is when it is that deep-rooted, it is going to take some serious surgery to get it all out. It will hurt to bring that ugliness to the surface and really get to how it has impacted our lives. As we address the wounds we will see how one wound impacted how we perceive other things. In order to correct our thought life, we will have to get to the roots of our thoughts and lay a new foundation.
Our woundedness can hurt other people if we don’t address it. Hurting people hurt people. Sometimes it is intentional – people so hurt that they just want others to feel the pain. Most though is unintentional. Hurt people respond to others as if others will hurt them too. Sometimes we have triggers that we are unaware of that draw us back emotionally into the environment where the hurt occurred.
We have to be willing to do the work, even the painful part to allow God to bind up our wounds and heal our brokenheart. However, for true healing to occur, it will take the work of the Holy Spirit helping us find love in the hurt, joy in the sorrow, peace in the storm, patience in the process, kindness in the anger, goodness in the bad, faithfulness to the healing, gentleness with ourselves, and self-control without excuses. God will bring complete healing if we trust Him in the process.
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