Healing those Wounds

Here is a quote from Ransomed Heart ministries that I received in my e-mail this morning. It is good.

****If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you’d wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he spits on the ground and makes mud and puts that on his eyes. To a third he simply speaks, a fourth he touches, and for a fifth he kicks out a demon. There are no formulas with God. The way in which God heals our wound is a deeply personal process. He is a person and he insists on working personally. For some, it comes in a moment of divine touch. For others, it takes place over time and through the help of another, maybe several others. As Agnes Sanford says, “There are in many of us wounds so deep that only the mediation of someone else to whom we may ‘bare our grief ’ can heal us.”

So much healing took place in my life simply through my friendship with Brent. We were partners, but far more than that, we were friends. We spent hours together fly-fishing, backpacking, hanging out in pubs. Just spending time with a man I truly respected, a real man who loved and respected me—nothing heals quite like that. At first I feared that I was fooling him, that he’d see through it any day and drop me. But he didn’t, and what happened instead was validation. My heart knew that if a man I know is a man thinks I’m one, too, well then, maybe I am one after all. Remember—masculinity is bestowed by masculinity. But there have been other significant ways in which God has worked—times of healing prayer, times of grieving the wound and forgiving my father. Most of all, times of deep communion with God. The point is this: Healing never happens outside of intimacy with Christ. The healing of our wound flows out of our union with him.****

This is out of a book by John Eldredge called "Wild At Heart" which is a book for men or for those trying to figure out men. I have one husband, two sons, two brothers, and numerous male relatives, so it was a great book for me to read. I like the part about how God heals each of us differently, and sometimes heals the same person differently at different times. He is so intimately involved with each of us that he knows just what we need (better than we do) and just when we need it (better than we do) and just how it should be delivered (better than we do). Isn't that awesome! And once we start that healing journey with him, he keeps it going, never willing to let it drop until we have achieved our full healing. He allows us a few breaks now and then to catch our breath, but because he loves us so very much, he doesn't want to leave anything still festering beneath the surface. He is gentle but firm, loving but thorough, faithful, merciful, grace-full, compassionate, and very, very effective. My journey has been a long one (or so it seems to me) and at times I thought I can't do this, I won't survive, I'll lose my mind or I'll die, but my loving savior had me the whole time. Rewriting your core is not a simple task. You pretty much have to be "broken" down to your core in order to do that. That even sounds painful. But I can tell you now that it was worth it. I am not who I was before. I am brand new. And the new me enjoys so much more intimacy with Christ, and I have learned through that painful process to finally let go of my intense need to control, and just trust God. Not that he is finished with me yet. But wow ~ he has brought me so very far.

I'd love to hear your comments. And I thoroughly recommend any books by John Eldredge. Another good book is The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender. There is a workbook that goes with Allender's book which I also recommend.