Healing the Wounds in our Souls

 

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A few years back I was working at a warehouse for Dippin' Dots ice cream. I was tasked with repairing a crate for a freezer we wanted to ship. I was cutting a two-by-four with a table saw and was careless for a moment.  The spinning blade caught my left hand. Several fingers got mangled, especially my index finger.

Upon seeing the damage, I immediately pulled my wrecked hand close to my body and cradled it in my other hand. I got a clean towel and wrapped it up to help control the bleeding.

My boss drove me to the ER where they cleaned up my hand and wrapped it up more thoroughly. That night a surgeon tried to repair the index finger, but was not successful. I am now missing the tip of that finger. For many weeks, my left hand was wrapped and padded, and I was careful to treat it gently. The slightest bump meant anomy.

Our natural instinct with any wound, even the smallest of paper cuts, is to pull that wounded part in closer and to protect it, wrap it, guard it and prevent any further harm.

Something similar happens with the wounds in our hearts.

We have been abandoned, abused, or traumatized in some way, and we take that part of ourselves that was wounded and pull it deep into ourselves. We wrap it with defensiveness, anger, fear, emotional distance or coldness, people pleasing, posturing, and so on. We push people away because we don't want them to see the wound, or we are afraid they will hurt us further. We wear masks and build walls to hide and protect the wreckage in our hearts. The slightest bump on that tender spot means agony.

In our hiding places we apply the salve of porn, masturbation and other acting out behaviors. And it helps, it numbs the pain for a while. We can escape and forget about the wound. Porn is Vicodin for the soul.

This is how we live, how we survive. We hide our wounds, adding layers of bandages, armor and barriers, and use addictions to silence our pain. We think our rage, addictions, anxiety, and all the rest are all separate things, problems in and of themselves, but we fail to see that at the core of it all is that wound.

If I had kept my hand wrapped in the towel when I went to the ER, the nurses and doctors could not have helped me. I had to take off my makeshift bandages and expose my wound in order for them to get to work, clean the lacerations out and stitch them up.

If we want healing in our hearts from the trauma and wounds that we have experienced, we must open ourselves up as well. We must take down the barriers, remove our masks, unwrap the dirty, old bandages and fully reveal those old, stinking wounds.

Those wounds were formed when we were in desperate need of love, but instead of receiving love, we received rejection and pain. If those wounds are to be healed, we need whole-hearted, authentic, vulnerable love. We need true emotional intimacy.

Our deepest wounds were created in relationships, and our deepest healing will be found in relationships.

This means completely opening ourselves up to someone in complete and absolute trust. Letting them see and know every painful, dirty secret. Opening the closets and letting them examine the skeletons that have been hiding in there for so long.

Finding a friend or confidant to open up with like this is not easy.  This person should be kind, compassionate, loving, and non-judgmental. We may turn to a therapist, counsellor, or a member of the clergy.

We may find a friend in a support group, like a Twelve Step group. This is where I have found some of my closest friends who have helped me find this healing.

It can take time and effort to build the rapport and trust that is necessary to open up completely. We will most likely not be able to open up and share all our secrets immediately, but over time we continue to practice and learn how to share more and more. The more of ourselves we reveal, the more healing we will find. It takes time to tear down those walls, take off the armor and unwrap those bandages. It is a process.

There is always risk here. In the vast majority of cases if you have a trustworthy confidant, they will respond to your vulnerability with love and respect, but it is possible they will respond with coldness or even rejection. In my experience, this is exceeding rare. Most people respond to our vulnerability with kindness and compassion.

Opening ourselves up and revealing our wounds is the only way in which we can experience true love and emotional intimacy. If we do not reveal ourselves completely then we know the people in our lives only love the version of ourselves we are presenting. They are in love with a character we have created, the mask we wear.

The Apostle James put it like this, "Confess your sins one to one another, and pray one for another that ye may be healed." (James 5:16)

Once our wounds are revealed, and they continue to love us, then we know their love is real and authentic, and we can truly love them in return. It is in that love that the truest healing is found.

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