“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.”
– Elizabeth Elliot

“Much of your pain is the bitter poison by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”
– Khalil Gibran

Hurt people, hurt people…
I am tattered with scars, scars that if you look closely, you can trace contours and grooves, like lines of a map. They are clues to a treasure, a quest I am still embarking. They are knitted together with love like a patchwork quilt, each part is unique and chosen.

Scars are never ugly because they always have a story.

A story of grace and healing, a story that says that though He wounds,He will bind up.

A story that says that though you were once sick like Simon’s wife’s mother, you too will be called to arise and serve those that healed you and those that hurt you.

“Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.”
– Mother Theresa

It’s true, sometimes the thorn that pierces us can leave others bleeding as they embrace us, the broken sometimes have spiky edges. But what if one day the thorn that once pierced my flesh becomes a seed that grows into a beautiful garden of compassion.What if hurt people stopped hurting people? What if hurt people could heal people?

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”
Hosea 6:1

“For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal”
Job 5:18

“But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick with a fever, and they told Him about her at once. So He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her. And she served them”
Mark 1:30-31

I have been wounded for love. I have learnt that love and pain are streams that lead to the same river, they are notes in one long symphony, they often meander and intertwine. That is why it is said that Love is as strong as death, because if it doesn’t kill you, it sure will make you bleed. To really love someone, means to suffer with them, and sometimes because of them. But, through the pain, I have cast out my blood stained robes of pride, so that unveiled and wounded, I have learnt what it means to partake of His suffering…and of other people’s.

“Through compassion it is possible to recognise that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends’ eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying… The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”
– Henri Nouwen

God uses the broken for His glory. Blessed are the cracked, for they let the light in.

Hannah had bitterness of soul over infertility and a broken domestic situation.
Elijah felt so beaten down that he asked God to take his life.
Job and Jeremiah cursed the day that they were born.
David repeatedly asked his own soul why it was so downcast.
Even Jesus, the perfectly divine human, lamented that His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow.
He wept when His friend died.

Our pain is always with purpose, there is a always a message in the mess. Our pain is the point at which, even for just a fraction of infinity, His heart touches mine because He knows what it means to be wounded for others. But, once our wounds have healed they no longer ooze with regret and self condemnation. The wound is the place where the light enters you, where we bleed out love and healing. Our wounds scream out; its because you are glorious that these things happened to you. Through our healing, we can heal people.

I pray and ask, how can I be the oil of the good Samaritan? The Greek word for Mercy is ‘eleos’, which is the same root of the old Greek word for oil. So I pray, let our mercy be poured out on the wounded. Let us stand by valiantly, even in silence, close enough to warm broken hearts, avoiding the distance of pity as well as the exclusiveness of sympathy. Our God is not a God of confusion, so let us reflect the Divine by not adding tip or trick. Having the ability to go to the place of our own suffering and meet them right where they are , having the patience to tolerate not knowing and not saying but facing the reality of the the pain in its fullness, letting it be felt.

“The path to God is a daily cross. No one has ascended to heaven by way of ease. We know where the easy way leads.”
– St Isaac the Syrian

“If God sends you many sufferings, it is a sign that He has great plans for you and certainly wants to make you a saint.”
– St Ignatius of Loyola

Greek Mythology;

‘The Greek myth of Chiron, the centaur from whose name chirurgie is derived in French and surgery is derived in English, can help us to understand. The Greek gods Apollo and Artemis taught medicine to Chiron. Chiron was wounded by an arrow from Heracles’ bow. He did not die (because gods are immortal); instead, he suffered excruciating pain for the rest of his eternal days. It was because of his grievous wound that Chiron became known as a legendary healer in ancient Greece. Chiron later took an orphaned child, Esculapius, into his care. The son of Apollo and a mortal, Coronis, Esculapius had been spared certain death when Apollo snatched him from his dead mother’s breast just as she was about to burst into flames. The orphan was entrusted to Chiron, who taught him everything he knew about the healing arts. It was thus that Esculapius became one of the two founding fathers of Western medicine.

In 1951, Jung first used the term wounded healer. Jung believed that disease of the soul could be the best possible form of training for a healer. In a book published days before his death, Jung wrote that only a wounded physician could heal effectively. In so doing, Jung drew upon the myth of Chiron, making it one of the most fundamental archetypes of human history and modern medicine.

There is always a star in the darkness of the night;

Because one look in the mirror and I see that I’m not like her. One look and I see an image far from the standard my mind hopes to perceive, far from my own standard of holiness that I’ve conceived. One look and all I see is countless failures and skin too marred to be pure.

And I circle around this mirror, day after day, with my perfectly marked measuring line to measure just how far I am from where I would have myself be. But time does not befriend me, only increasing the distance between my current state and my goal. And as time passes, the deeper I am pierced.

But the truth I evade to recognise is that who I am, my personality, is a gift. A gift to be cherished, to be explored, to be celebrated, to be rejoiced in and purified in the flame of His Spirit.

We all possess this gift. And a gift from the Giver demands that we stop condemning or belittling it, and allow Him to renew it within us so that we may use it for His Kingdom.

We may not be the quietest or the most gentle. We may like to laugh and shout loud. We may possess a feisty spirit or are radical in the way we live. But each character trait is a gift. We often equate spirituality with someone who is quiet and restrained, and so if our personality is contrary to this, we condemn who we are, determining our insufficiency.

“For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them..”
Romans 12:4-6

Mark this truth; He never created any one of us the same. And upon each of us He lavishes different gifts, different personalities. So we must accept the gift offered to us, that we may grow to learn how we can utilize it for His glory and how we can use it to minister grace to others, for these gifts He will use to save many people in this world. Because the whole world is not quiet and restrained, many in the world are loud and fiesty and radical. Our personality qualifies us to be weak to those who are weak.

To believe we are made in His image, is to believe that we are displaying who He is, even when I’m loud, even when I’m laughing so much I cannot breath. Let the quiet display His quietness; let me display His enthusiasm and radical love!

Plagued with this pride that labors for people to recognize us as spiritual, as holy people for the Lord, may we skin our knees pleading for His grace to destroy this wall of pride. Let us allow ourselves just to be. Just to be who He made us to be. Just to be the gifts He bestowed upon us. That we may purify our motives and intentions that they may become unadulterated and point solely towards Him.

I observed a man. How he held nothing back from his personality, how he was loud and audacious and spoke with words attracting great laughter. How he never tried to be quiet or reserved or anything that he wasn’t, instead he was completely himself. And in the wholeness of himself, he was Christ. In that acceptance of himself, I saw Christ.

Thus, one look in the mirror reflects only the mere flesh of myself, but one look into Christ to see my own reflection, is to see me whole, to see my real self, myself through His eyes. Where my imperfections are eclipsed by glory in the light of His eyes. Where He rejoices over me with singing and delights in my beauty. For in His eyes I am accepted. In His eyes I am known, in His eyes I am deeply respected, for all that I am.

“Being free, each human being realises the divine human image within himself in his own distinctive fashion.”
– Bishop Kallistos Ware

“Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house… thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord” (Psalm 128:3-4)

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.” (Proverbs 12:4)

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22)

“Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?” (1 Corinthians 9:5)

I pray that whoever You give me Lord would be like the following women in the Old Testament:

Eve – “Her desire is for me and I rule over her” (Genesis 3:16)

Sarah – “A woman of beautiful countenance” (Genesis 12:11) and full of wit and laughter (Genesis 21:6)

Rebekah – “Divinely appointed” (Genesis 24:15) and “very beautiful to behold, a virgin; no man had known her” (Genesis 24:16) and not afraid to get her hands dirty (Genesis 24:19)

Rachel – “Kisses powerfully enough to make you cry” (Genesis 29:11) and “beautiful of form and appearance” (Genesis 29:17) and worth “7-14 years of work” (Genesis 29:18)

Deborah + Jael – knows how to hold her own and is feisty (Judges 4-5)

Hannah – A woman who pours out her soul to the Lord, and believes He will look upon her (1 Samuel 1:15). A woman who praises and rejoices in her God with such passion and joy (1 Samuel 2:1-10)

Ruth – loyal and faithful to me and family (Ruth 1:16-17)

Bathsheba – desirable, knows how to take care of herself, and is very beautiful to behold (2 Samuel 11:2); comes from a good family (grand-daughter of Ahitophel and daughter of Eliam who was a member of The Thirty)

Abigail – “a woman of good understanding and beautiful appearance” (1 Samuel 25:3), patient (was married to Nabal), keeps me in check and knows how to talk me out of something I’ll regret (1 Samuel 25:33)

Esther – “young, lovely, and beautiful” (Esther 2:7,9), someone who pleases me so that I want to go above and beyond for her (Esther 2:9), a woman with Godly determination and faith in the face of horror (Esther 4:16)

Judith – “beautiful in stature (for me)”  and “lovely to look upon” (Judith 8:7) –“no one spoke ill of her, for she feared God and was devoted to Him” (Judith 8:8) and a woman who really knows how to pray [on the level of King David] (Judith 9)

Suzanna – “a very beautiful woman and one who feared the Lord… her parents were righteous and taught their daughter according to the Law of Moses” (Daniel 1:3)

Which my soul still seeks but I cannot find:
One man among a thousand I have found,
But a woman among all these I have not found.
(Ecclesiastes 7:28)

Lord, I want someone both incredibly beautiful and amazingly spiritual. I know many girls who are spiritual, but not physically appealing and others who are gorgeous on the outside but who don’t really motivate me to know You more. I want both, and I know You’re my Father and You want good things for me too. I don’t want to be drawn away by beauty, but You Yourself put that desire in my heart Lord. Lead me Lord. Lead us to each other and help me then lead our family to You.

It’s in Your hands Lord. I trust You.