Grieve the Wound..........and a Response

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners.  Isaiah 61:1

Is that you? The Brokenhearted? A Captive? A Prisoner?  Well……Good News…..…..that is exactly WHO Jesus, The Messiah, has come for!!  He has come to heal your broken heart!!  Now that you have finally admitted that it is broken……..this is tough for men! You don’t cry and you don’t admit weakness and you sure as hell don’t admit that you have been wounded and broken and beat down!!!  But Real Men Do…………….And we saw last week from the response……….that Real Women do too……….

Eldredge makes it quite clear:

That is why we must grieve the wound. It was not your fault and it did matter. Oh what a milestone day that was for me when I simply allowed myself to say that the loss of my father mattered. The tears that flowed were the first I’d ever granted my wound, and they were deeply healing. All those years of sucking it up melted away in my grief. It is so important for us to grieve our wound; it is the only honest thing to do. For in grieving we admit the truth— that we were hurt by someone we loved, that we lost something very dear, and it hurt us very much. Tears are healing. They help to open and cleanse the wound. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “The tears . . . streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested.” Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. We let God love us; we let him get real close to us. I know, it seems painfully obvious, but I’m telling you few men are ever so vulnerable as to simply let themselves be loved by God.

Eldredge, John (2011-04-17). Wild at Heart Revised and   Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (p. 130). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. 

 Eldredge, John (2011-04-17). Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (pp. 129-130). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

So…….it is time for us to Forgive our Fathers and our Mothers………… (Eph 4:31)  My Father was a good man, But not a Saved Man, Not a Man of God…….and not necessarily a Giving Man, But I loved him because he spent time with me and taught me and encouraged me and was there……He died over 29 years ago and I still miss him.  My Mother is certainly the source of most of my wound for many reasons of which will not edify me or you by reciting them……But I have learned to forgive her and understand her situation and grieve her inevitable Death, soon and very soon.  What a shame, what a waste of a life……..consumed with Fear and Sadness, full of addictions…..But I have no control of her life…….only my actions, my choices, my decisions, my stupidity and I have to remind myself of that daily…..Since I like to control people and things just like everyone…

I have quoted this song before but it always hits home with The Heart of the Matter:

The more I know, the less I understand, 

all the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again.

I've been tryin' to get down 

to the heart of the matter

but my will gets weak 

and my thoughts seem to scatter

but I think it's about forgiveness, 

forgiveness

even if, even if you don't love me anymore.

These times are so uncertain

There's a yearning undefined

.....people filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness

How can love survive in such a graceless age?

The trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness

They're the very things we kill, I guess

Pride and competition

cannot fill these empty arms

And the work I put between us doesn't keep me warm

There are people in your life 

who've come and gone, 

They let you down, 

you know they've hurt your pride.

You better put it behind you; 

'cause life goes on.

You keep carryin' that anger, 

it'll eat you up inside baby,

I have always asked you to respond to the message each week since I learn and others learn from your comments…….most of you don’t but some of you do and here is a response from the heart…………(I share this with her permission)

"I read your weekly emails however, and although I am not "one of the guys," may I first reply to your last question, and then after that I have a comment.

Yes I had a wound, and yes I entered it, and yes, I believe God healed me.  I was once an orphan, always looking, until my 30's for a close female relationship - a "best" friend, and I thought I had found one  but what I was really looking  for was the unconditional love of a mother - a wise, totally loving and understanding parent, and God said "No, you won't get it here in this life, but you'll have it by and by - wait and hope in the resurrection." 

And in the process of finding that out, I nearly left my family and God, I was so mad at God. But at that crucial point of confrontation with the Almighty One, two things happened: 1. Someone, only partially aware of my struggle, asked me "Do you love God?" and 2. God, in what I can only call two visions, revealed first, the blackness of what departing from Him meant, and it scared me to death; second, He revealed the blackened heap of crushed humanity  Christ was reduced to when he lay dead, in darkness at the foot of His cross.

And this extrovert can be alone now, knowing communion awaits me soon enough.

Now my comment:

I know you both quote your book's author and make your own comments.  More than several times I have been confused, as I started reading a paragraph, who was speaking - you or the author.  This is a frustration.

You can set off a quote like this gmail feature of indenting the paragraph, or use some other feature to set off your quotes at the start of the quote.

Do you feel like you are called to shepherd these 30 or so men on this list?  Do you sometimes directly address them in emails, or pray for each by name? I assume you do, and that is why I read a frustrated note in your emails - why don't these guys care for and pray for you as much as you care for and pray for them?  The sheep never do, Keith.

Praying for my children and grandchild and your children and grands "Hope in God." These lostlings have yet to be confirmed in their faith and desperately need our intercession!

I have to quit typing now. I am doing this with one finger because my sprained left wrist is worse than ever, and I can't type or eat with it. (had an X-ray - not broken they said.)”

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!!!!!!