The whole false self, our “lifestyle,” is an elaborate defense against entering our wounded heart. It is a chosen blindness. “Our false self stubbornly blinds each of us to the light and the truth of our own emptiness and hollowness,” says Manning. There are readers who even now have no idea what their wound is, or even what false self arose from it. Ah, how convenient that blindness is. Blissful ignorance. But a wound unfelt is a wound unhealed. We must go in. The door may be your anger; it may be rejection that you’ve experienced, perhaps from a girl; it may be failure, or the loss of the golden bat and the way God is thwarting your false self. It may be a simple prayer: Jesus, take me into my wound.
Eldredge, John (2011-04-17). Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (p. 127). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
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.
Eldredge, John (2011-04-17). Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (p. 128). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Masculinity is bestowed by masculinity……..well Eldredge says that you need another man to tell you, that your a man……….. by words and confirmation through action and commitment.
But do you have that man in your life? Your friend, who confirms you when your wife or daughter or son makes you feel like sh_t!!! And then you start to question yourself, lose your confidence, doubt your abilities, sometimes you get angry and sometimes you depressed and very passive and other times you withdraw……..from your wife and your friends and your God?????????????
I really can’t tell you how many times I have heard or been told that my Christian Brothers or other male acquaintances or friends……and that would be Pastors, Millionaire Businessmen, Teachers, Single Men, Married Men, Divorced Men, Homosexual Men, Heterosexual Men, Black, White, Red and Yellow Men…………..…don’t have a real friend……….a male friend who can and will confirm their Masculinity!! And I can’t tell you how many times, men in my life, have been embarrassed for me to know that they are frail and “made from dust”…………just like me.
But isn’t that exactly what we need to do………..to the feel the wound and get the healing???
But its obvious to me that few of you are seeing the need (see below) since I got zero responses from last week………now that’s a shame!!!!!!
DEATH HAPPENS!!!……….and you get wounded!
Frederick Buechner’s father committed suicide when he was ten. He left a note, to his mother: “I adore and love you, and am no good . . . Give Freddie my watch. Give Jaime my pearl pin. I give you all my love,” and then he sat in the garage while the running car filled it with carbon monoxide. It happened on a Saturday morning in the fall. He was to have taken Frederick and his brother to a football game that day. Instead, he took himself forever from their lives. What is a ten-year-old boy to do with such an event? A child takes life as it comes because he has no other way of taking it.
The world had come to an end that Saturday morning, but each time we had moved to another place, I had seen a world come to an end, and there had always been another world to replace it. When somebody you love dies, Mark Twain said, it is like when your house burns down; it isn’t for years that you realize the full extent of your loss. For me it was longer than for most, if indeed I have realized it fully even yet, and in the meantime the loss came to get buried so deep in me that after a time I scarcely ever took it out to look at it at all, let alone speak of it. (The Sacred Journey)
That is the way we are with our wound, especially men. We bury it deep and never take it out again. But take it out we must, or better, enter into it.
I entered my wound through the surprising door of my anger. After we moved to Colorado, about eleven years ago, I found myself snapping at my boys for silly things. A spilled glass of milk would elicit a burst of rage. Whoa, John, I thought, there are things going on inside; you’d better have a look under the hood. As I explored my anger with the help of my dear friend Brent, I realized I was so furious about feeling all alone in a world that constantly demanded more of me than I felt able to give. Something in me felt young—young— like a ten-year-old boy in a man’s world but without a man’s ability to come through. There was much fear beneath the surface; fear that I would fail, fear that I would be found out, and finally, fear that I was ultimately on my own. Where did all this fear come from? I wondered. Why do I feel so alone in the world . . . and so young inside? Why does something in my heart feel orphaned?
Eldredge, John (2011-04-17). Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (pp. 125-126). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Just like Frederick Buechner, my father died early when he was 32 and I was only 7. It wounded me!! And I am still wounded! My mother then fell deeper into her alcoholism and the wound got deeper! And I buried it just like Eldredge and every other young man or young boy. I was a boy full of fear….not sure of my new Dad at 9 years old. Afraid to call him Dad for a year or more but finally I did. Afraid of my mother’s craziness, I became inward, closed, quiet, extremely insecure and very confused! I was never really pointed to Jesus, just attended the Methodist club and sang in the choir. But I really never understood my wound and hurt and confusion…….and it only got worse as they split mulitple times and he finally left and moved to Savannah for me to move the family and a drunk mother by myself to Savannah. Not fun but good for character building.
Sooooo, what’s your story? You have one ….just like me! Have you entered the wound? Have you been healed? Jesus Stands at the Door and Knocks……..
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