Unfixed Wounds

Some wounds heal completely. It takes a while, but eventually they are gone: no scars.

Others don’t.

Instead, we learn how to live with them. We cover scars with makeup or clothing, or we wear them dismissively. We learn to walk with a limp, or bent, or maybe we go on wheels. But we go.

And sometimes God does wonderful healings, miraculous healings. And sometimes he doesn’t.

And I am thinking that all this is true of mental and emotional wounds just as much as of physical ones.

My dad drank, making life sometimes chaotic and scary.  I learned that the world is not a safe place. He touched me sexually and I learned that I was, in some essential way, bad.

Fear and guilt: two wounds that happened early and went deep.

I still have them, and I am over 50 years old. God has not taken them away though I have wanted him to. I would love to not so easily, or often, fall into those feelings. A good Christian shouldn’t.

But maybe that’s wrong thinking.

Every time I feel guilt, it is an invitation to wash in forgiveness. Maybe the guilt is earned, or maybe it’s the hurt of the old wound, but so what? I get me to the cross and I stay there a while, letting what Jesus did – be for me.

And fear, well, it’s the prerequisite for courage. If I feel fear a hundred times a day, then a hundred times a day I get to be brave. That’s a lot of bravery training.

Guilt teaches me forgiveness and fear teaches me courage, like a mountain in my way teaches me to climb.

Like God left enemies in Canaan “only to teach warfare” to the Isrealites who needed it (Judges 3:2).

Maybe God leaves some wounds unfixed so that He can keep giving us fresh grace. Maybe we need to stop resisting and instead climb, letting our need drive us up the next step.

Over and over and over.

Since my weakness is the soil in which God’s strength grows, why would he take it away? Does a farmer take the dirt off a field?