Healing Discipleship
I was repairing some of my fence in the backyard when I felt a sharp pain in my right palm. The 2 X 10 I was carrying had slide through my hand inserting a wood sliver in my palm. It was a pretty serious ouchie! I looked down at my hand and I did not see a splinter, so I continued working and completed the rest of my day. Upon waking the next morning, I reached for my electric toothbrush and felt a biting pain in my right hand. I examined my hand and the small scratch on my palm from the wood sliver was swollen and infected. Not good!
My hand needed “healing” before I could get full use of it. So, I got a needle and gently removed the small sliver of wood that had been lodged in my hand. A little antiseptic placed over the sore would assure no infection and I was good as new except for a few days of tenderness in my right palm.
Each of us has a type of “wood sliver” in our mental and emotional being from past woundings. Most often it is overlooked, like I overlooked the splinter in my hand. Eventually this emotional, mental pain gets infected and presents in the form of depression, anxiety, rage, and/or relationship problems. It’s at this point that we need to seek healing so we can continue to grow in our discipleship with Jesus.
Some of our woundings are small like a splinter and others are more like a broken leg. ALL of these are in need of healing. I offer you some basic healing steps.
1. Admit you are wounded. This is no simple task since we have learned that admitting we are hurt will get us rejected because we are considered weak. Here is a basic principal of life that I hope encourages you, “EVERYONE IS WOUNDED.” All have been hurt by others from milder forms of “friendly fire” to direct, intentional attacks from evil people. It will do you great good to just say, “I am a wounded and hurting person.” Take a stroll through the Psalms and you will see this idea frequently.
2. Share your pain with a few trusted friends. We are not designed to do life alone especially when we are wounded or hurt. We desperately need each other during our “healing” journey. Attachment science states that our brain is a social organ and that we naturally seek connection to others. Genesis 2 echoes the voice of God about the importance of connection when he stated, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” Your soul is too valuable to entrust to only yourself. Share your pain with your close friends.
3. Seek out those with healing gifts. For me this was my medical doctor and a psychiatrist who managed my meds and served as my counselor. I was a slow adopter of seeking these healers because I wanted God to zap me with healing power. Some of my reason for this was I didn’t want everyone to know how needy, broken, and wounded I was. God had a different plan. He provided healers in the form of doctors and counselors to remove the multiple, embedded wood slivers from my mental and emotional being.
4. Meds are a grace-gift from God. We may unpack this some more in a future blog but for now know that meds are 100% OK to take on your healing journey. I am speaking mainly about psychotropic meds: anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, anti-psychotics, etc. Why I felt guilt about taking these when I took a pill every day for my low functioning thyroid is curious. I was deathly afraid of rejection from my faith community but not now. Whatever God can use to heal me allows me to continue growing in my discipleship relationship with him.
In my next blog we will discuss different levels of care and provided more information about the use of meds. Thanks for reading my blogs!