Forgiving My Father, Forgiving MyselfНамуна

Making Our Wounds Sacred

The choice to heal often means the painful cleansing and binding up of our wounds. Today, we introduce a new concept of making our wounds sacred. This is to dedicate our wounds to God for His use, to elevate something to the status of holy—reflecting the character and nature of God.

How would we do that? My friend Amy discovered the power of making our wounds sacred as she anguished for years over her young adult addict son. She had tried in many ways to respond with love and support through his drug abuse. 

“How, Lord,” Amy asked, “can you take my anger and bitterness toward my son and use them for your purposes?” Romans 12:2 gave her a clue: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

This verse gave her hope. God could transform her anger and bitterness into something good and acceptable. She began with honesty before God which included recognizing the sin beneath her wounds. That then led to honesty with herself. She wrote to me: I had to realize that my love for my son was tainted with selfishness and sin. Pure love would not expect or ask for anything in return, but I was angry and bitter because I expected good behavior on his part. My love for him wasn’t as unconditional as I liked to think. His bad behavior resulted in me wanting to strike out and retaliate. I wanted him to pay.

Amy asked God to transform her love into unconditional love, the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13. She zeroed in on verse 5, asking for a love that “does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered.” This prayer resulted in her beginning to anticipate how God would change her rather than how her son would change. 

Day by day, Amy saw that she was showing her son compassionate love with no strings attached. She came to a point where she was able to embrace him with absolutely no resentment whether he was high on drugs, homeless, in prison, or hospitalized or was clean and sober, in rehab, and living responsibly. “The difference in my heart toward my son is nothing short of a miracle,” she told me.

What pain in your life came to mind today that you might be willing to make sacred? Pray: God, help me to participate with You as You allow my wounds to become sacred in Your sight.