Most of us have
been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. “I think I am
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
winning 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 deserve 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.
Taken from “The
Ransomed Heart – a Collection of Devotional Readings
Wild at heart,
104-6
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