Wounded Healers

Newsflash: We all fail.

Sure, we know that, but we can become quite skilled at hiding our faults and stuffing our weaknesses to the point of living a life that is somewhat false. Folks can grow to resemble a movie set where a whole scene looks good from the camera but is only a façade. That can be a lonely and tenuous life as that person dreads being found out. What we need is a friend we can be real with, a person who knows failure and shame and self-disappointment and who is committed to growing together. Finding a friend like that is like a cold drink on a hot day. When grace and friendship orbit around fallible people, honest healing and progress springs to life as we travel, not alone, but with wounded healers we find along our way.

Mumford and Sons sing a song that talks about the idea of wounded healers walking with others toward health and godliness. It is called The Cave. Give a listen:

They sing of grace and unity as a speaker illustrates the failings of another and says he/she will, "hold on hope." He/she will continue to believe in the other in the midst of their mess. He/she goes on to say, "But I have seen the same; I know the shame in your defeat." This is the wounded healer sharing a hurt but not leaving it there. The chorus ends with the other saying, "I'll find strength in pain, and I will change my ways, and I'll know my name as it's called again."

Grace from the healer-friend and redemption with new resolve from the other. We all have to relearn our name as it's called again, over and over as we go through life. We too often forget who we are and slip into old patterns of failure and loss until we are reminded of what Jesus has made new in us.

This truth thunders from the pages of scripture

"If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come."

And from our experience, we know this is not a single transaction but an ongoing salvation where we grow more and more into that new creation, learning our name...again, and leaving the old behind, but it is never a straight line. Romans 7 talks about the see-saw of failure and growth, shame and gain where Paul writes as a man wrestling with an old nature that keeps wanting to live one way, but stumbling into the same swamp, over and over. Here is an honest man's heart:

"For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this is what I keep on doing."

You and I are built to play this game of life individually, but also as part of a team. I am responsible to carry my own load, as Paul teaches in the letter to the Galatians, but at the same time all of us are challenged to "bear one another's burdens" in that same paragraph. Sketch a mental picture of a person overwhelmed with a load, and a friend comes along and helps tote it for a while. That person "gets it" simply because they, too, have struggled and failed and come back to stand again. They are the wounded healers; you are a wounded healer as you respond to another's burden.

So, friend, come out of your cave and into the light of who you truly are in Jesus. Your faith life is a struggle since we are yet to be what we will be, and he is the one who makes you whole and worthy and right with God. He is the one who will remind you of your name, your new name. And in the midst of the journey, like Paul in the beginning of Romans 8, we can say of ourselves (over and over again to embed the truth in our brain)

"Therefore, there is NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

Now, that's good news. Then look around to see if there is someone nearby who could use a bit of help carrying their load for a spell. There's plain old flawed you, the wounded healer, looking a smidge like Jesus.

“Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed.” Henri Nouwen

Music for the week...

Some Mark Sherman Quartet to get us going

A little Fathead Newman for the morning

If you haven't heard of CityAlight, check this one out

Here's one more from them that ties to today's message

And the Petersens with a bit of bluegrass gospel

And a joke funny...or sorta funny

A mother wanted to teach her daughter a moral lesson. She gave the girl a quarter and a dollar for church. "Put whichever one you want in the collection plate and keep the other for yourself," she told the girl.

Sunday, when they were coming out of the church, the mother asked her daughter which amount she had given.

"Well," said the little girl, "I was going to give the dollar, but just before the collection the preacher said that God loves a cheerful giver. I knew I'd be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, so that's what I did."

...and one more for the road

When my wife caught me standing on the bathroom scales, sucking in my stomach, she laughed, "Ha! That's not going to help!"

I replied, "Sure, it does. It's the only way I can see the numbers."