Wounds and Healing

“For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth.” Psalm 71:5

I don’t know about you, but in this Covid season, I’m rediscovering wounds that I had otherwise been able to hide or had forgotten were there. They are showing up in all sorts of ways. They show up as insecurities that I would usually brush over with a full schedule, planning and executing, a whole lot of doing. They show up as grief that I numb with unhealthy addictions to social media, easy but unhealthy food, or too much caffeine. They show up as fear when paralysis keeps me sitting in front of a blinking cursor where words refuse to appear and ideas that whirl in my imagination and resist being translated into action.

But my faith reminds me that wounds are a pathway to healing. And hope invites me to believe that God is allowing me to revisit these wounds for deeper healing.

When your wounds are external or internal voices that have told you a limiting story of who you are, relax into who you are to Jesus. When this season of too much silence leaves room for the harsh words spoken over you to reverberate again, write, speak, shout out your chosen belovedness in healing defiance. Let that truth set you free.

When your wounds are loss, go ahead and cry. Jesus did. Feel the pain. Tell the stories of loss. Name the ones we are missing —because of passing and distance. Imagine what you would say or do if they were here. Name the alternate reality you would have been living if it weren’t for Covid. Lament. Light a candle. Cry yourself dry. Let the pain turn to dust.

And when your wounds are failures that have sown fear to try in a time where the only option is to explore new possibilities, new paths, new ways—rename your failures as learnings. Reclaim the freedom to experiment. Identify yourself as a wisdom seeker ready to learn from trial and error. Yes, our wounds are more vulnerable, but now is a season of healing.