I receive a daily devotional from Ransomed Heart Ministries (link is listed on the left side of this page). Here is the one I received yesterday. I pray God will use this "wound" to teach me and others whatever He wants us to know and that we will listen to Him.
April 17, 2010
Most of Us Have Been Misinterpreting Life
Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. “I think I’m just trying to get God to make my life work easier,” a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We’re asking the wrong questions. Most of us are asking, “God, why did you let this happen to me?” Or, “God, why won’t you just ________” (fill in the blank—help me succeed, get my kids to straighten out, fix my marriage—you know what you’ve been whining about). But to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of ? In truth, God has been trying to initiate you for a long time. What is in the way is how you’ve mishandled your wound and the life you’ve constructed as a result.
“Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful,” notes Robert Bly in Iron John. Like a man who’s broken his leg in a marathon, he finishes the race even if he has to crawl and he doesn’t say a word about it. A man’s not supposed to get hurt; he’s certainly not supposed to let it really matter. We’ve seen too many movies where the good guy takes an arrow, just breaks it off, and keeps on fighting; or maybe he gets shot but is still able to leap across a canyon and get the bad guys. And so most men minimize their wound. King David (a guy who’s hardly a pushover) didn’t act like that at all. “I am poor and needy,” he confessed openly, “and my heart is wounded within me” (Ps. 109:22).
Or perhaps they’ll admit it happened, but deny it was a wound because they deserved it. Suck it up, as the saying goes. The only thing more tragic than the tragedy that happens to us is the way we handle it.
(Wild at Heart , 104–6)
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ReplyDeleteCandy,
ReplyDeleteYou know my husband was diagnosed with leukemia five and a half years ago, when he was 35 and I was newly pregnant with my 3rd child. Today, he is as healthy as a horse, and the doctors think that the odds that he is totally cured are better than 95%.
I tell you that because it helped us SO MUCH to hear from people who had been through the ordeal and were over it and back to "normal". I'll begin praying for you....praying that this ordeal will be over as quickly as possible and that God will give you the peace that passes understanding.
Please feel free to call if you want to talk to someone who's dealt (almost) first-hand with cancer. 210-8283
Love,
Dina Tate (This is my son's google account)