Wounded Healer

I’m realizing more and more how to put a name to my feelings. I’m seeing how much I've seen NTM as a family, a protective parent of sorts. It feels so much like a parent/child relationship where they were supposed to love, support and protect its children and they didn’t. They hurt,abused and let me/us down. The “parent”, the organization that looked from all outside sources to be nurturing and caring were a very different organization when they went “home” at night and wasn’t on their best behavior. That’s when I/we got hurt. The most damaging I think was that it all happened under the label of Christ. I’d have a little more compassion if they hadn't vowed themselves to be messengers of Christ. The very bearers of Christ’s message.

I guess in a great sense my eyes have been opened and now the true healing can begin. My great question is how do you even begin to forgive an organization specially when there is such a mix of remorse and defiance mixed together. It’s like an awful marriage where both parents stay together but have conflicting convictions.

It’s so ironic that both my family and the “umbrella parent” I grew up with carry some/many of the same characteristics. This doesn’t make me bitter, it makes me very sad. It makes me want to rise up and do it differently. It makes me want to create a better outcome, a better solution for my children, their future and the future of the church. It’s my responsibility to be a Christ bearer, a reflection of Christ.

I mourn though. I mourn for what I deserved as a child and didn’t get. I mourn for what a poor reflection Christ was given, and how people perceive Christ now because they were warped, manipulated and scarred.

But somehow in the mourning I’m thankful for the deep valleys because I would be nothing I am today without the wind, the waves and the pain driving me to God, the one that never for a second left me or let me down. There is a chance to redeem the past and use the knowledge collected to help and love others. I’ve been learning a lot about brokenness this year. We truly are ALL broken. Broken vessels in the hand of God. Those who know and believe they are broken beyond their own ability to fix themselves are in the perfect place Christ wants them to be. We are in a place of being able to see Christ as our greatest healer. It brings us to a place of being able to take the things we are learning and help others to see Christ.

Which brings us to a phrase that was music to my ears when I heard it, “Wounded Healer.” I have been broken, and I hope my heart continues to be broken before Christ for the things that are right and proper. I want Christ to use my life, my simple offering maybe to bring healing to others. It’s a humble request, born out of a heart on fire for Christ. I want to be used by God to be a Wounded Healer.