wounds (3)

Pens, Pencils & Negative Words

All the way through elementary school, I did my writing with pencils. Each year, “#2 Pencils” were on the top of the school supply list.

But when I arrived in middle school, we were expected to use ink pens instead. The writing experience was certainly better with the pens, but there was one major problem: Ink is difficult to erase.

Eventually, some clever marketers came up with “erasable” pens. But that was false advertising, because they were still hard to erase. More than once, I ripped a hole in the paper while trying to erase the ink from my pens.

Recently I’ve found myself lamenting the demise of pencils. The pens are now better than ever – and I absolutely love writing with the new gel pens. But the pens still can’t be erased very well. And White Out usually isn’t a good option either for covering mistakes.

Here’s what I’m going through on this: I miss the days when every mistake seemed easily erasable. Oh for the carefree days of elementary school…

Of course, most people now use emails and social media to do their writing, not pens. But that has made the problem even worse! Have you ever tried to retract an inappropriate email you sent (such as sending a “Reply All” when you didn’t mean to)? Or perhaps you’ve posted something stupid on social media and then tried to cover your tracks. Good luck on that.

It turns out that once things are in cyberspace, they are even more difficult to erase than ink pens.

Let me share story about this from my good friend Ron…

A few months ago, Ron met a nice Christian woman on an online dating site. They seemed to really hit things off when they chatted on the phone one night. He could tell they both loved the Lord and had much in common.

Ready to take the next step, a few days later Ron asked her out for dinner that weekend. To his surprise, she sent a text message declining the invitation. The reason? She said he was too old for her!   

Ouch. Yes, Ron is in his 60s and this nice Christian woman was in her 50s. But should that age gap really matter?

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with pencils and pens…

Once again, Ron was greatly surprised when this same woman contacted him a few weeks later, asking if they could keep in touch as “friends.” Although he was open to the idea, there was a problem: Ron couldn’t ERASE the memory of her previous comment that he was too old. Like permanent ink, her evaluation seemed to be forever etched onto his brain.

What a reminder that words are powerful things, capable of imparting “death and life” (Proverbs 18:21). No matter how they are communicated, our words don’t erase easily. And sometimes negative words cause lifelong scarring of the psyche.  

However, God can help us heal from people’s words – especially when we spend time listening to HIS words to us instead.

Nevertheless, painful words from people are likely to keep coming from time to time. Right when Ron was beginning to heal from the “You’re too old!” feedback, he met a woman who said he was too fat for her…

Fortunately, your Heavenly Father has a very BIG eraser, capable of removing countless mistakes, flaws, and emotional wounds. Take time to look into the mirror of His Word today, and you’ll probably find that you look a lot better than what people are saying about you.

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Disinfecting Your Emotional Wounds

When I was a student at Dominion Junior High in Columbus, Ohio, I had a rather idyllic life and absolutely no concept of emotional wounds. But in the past few years I’ve found myself reflecting on the lessons I learned from a physical wound I experienced in gym class one morning.

We were running track events that day, something I never was very good at. While trying to jump over a hurdle on the school’s crude cinder track, I caught my foot and plummeted to the ground. Although the main thing hurt was my pride, I also incurred a bad scrape to my knee during this mishap.

This didn’t really seem like a big deal at the time. I just vowed to be more careful and jump a little higher the next time I ran over hurdles.

After gym class I took a shower and tried to wash my knee the best I could. I figured it would be red for a while, but certainly nothing serious.

However, a few days later, I noticed there was some white pus on the area of the grapefruit-sized wound. And by the following day, the original red wound couldn’t be seen at all—just a disgusting thick layer of yellowish white pus.  

Things got so bad that my mom had to take me to the doctor to address this repulsive condition. He warned that the infection might have spread throughout my body if I had waited any longer.

With the help of some antibiotics, the infection finally cleared up after about a week. But this experience provided a lesson I would never forget: Often our original wounds are relatively minor, but the secondary infections can cause us serious problems.

Emotional wounds work the same way. We’ve all been wounded emotionally at one time or another, to one degree or another. Just like my scraped knee in gym class that day, our emotional wounds are seldom debilitating or life-threatening in themselves.

However, I’ve met many people over the years who’ve allowed their emotional wounds to become infected. Because they weren’t diligent to keep the initial wound clean, toxic conditions such as unforgiveness, resentment, and bitterness set in. What started as a temporary, treatable condition grew into something much more severe and chronic, robbing them of their joy and peace of mind.

If you’ve been emotionally wounded by traumatic events in your life, there’s no need to panic. Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6), ready and able to heal your wounds. But you have a vital role to play in keeping the wound clean so a secondary infection doesn’t set in.

This means forgiving anyone who has hurt you, allowing the crystal clear waters of God’s love and mercy to regularly cleanse you of any resentment or bitterness. And if you see that some yucky white pus is developing at the site of the wound, you may need to ask God for spiritual antibiotics to keep the infection from taking over your life.

Is this an easy process? No, not at all. But the longer you wait, the harder the healing process will become.

And don’t be deluded by the old line that says, “Time heals all wounds.” That is only true if the site of the wound is kept free of secondary infections.

Remember that you aren’t the only one who has ever had to deal with infected emotional wounds. The Scriptures are full of instructions like this:

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma (Ephesians 4:31-5:2).

My knee is perfectly fine today. There’s no on-going infection or scar. And I’m convinced our emotional scars can disappear as well.

But unforgiveness will delay your emotional healing or even lead to dangerous, widespread infection. You must allow the Holy Spirit to search your heart and cleanse away any remaining bitterness or toxicity from life’s traumas (Psalm 139:23-24).

Once your emotional wounds have been disinfected, you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel. You may even be able to hurdle some obstacles you’ve been avoiding for years.

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Avoiding Emotional Scars

When I was a student at Dominion Junior High, I had a rather idyllic life and no concept of emotional wounds. But lately I’ve found myself reflecting on the lessons I learned from a physical wound I experienced in gym class one morning.

We were running track events that day, something I never was very good at. While trying to jump over a hurdle on the school’s crude cinder track, I caught my foot and plummeted to the ground. Although the main thing hurt was my pride, I also incurred a bad scrape to my knee during this mishap.

This really didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I just vowed to be more careful and jump a little higher the next time I ran over hurdles.

After gym class I took a shower and tried to wash my knee the best I could. I figured it would be red for a while, but certainly nothing serious.

However, a few days later, I noticed there was some white pus on the area of the grapefruit-sized wound. And by the following day, the original red wound couldn’t be seen at all—just a disgusting thick layer of yellowish white pus.  

Things got so bad that my mom had to take me to the doctor to address this repulsive condition. He warned that the infection might have spread throughout my body if I had waited any longer.

With the help of some antibiotics, the infection finally cleared up after about a week. But this experience provided a lesson I would never forget: Often our original wounds are relatively minor, but the secondary infections can cause us real problems.

Emotional wounds work the same way. We’ve all been wounded emotionally at one time or another, to one degree or another. Just like my scraped knee in gym class that day, our emotional wounds are seldom debilitating or life-threatening in themselves.

However, I’ve met many people over the years who’ve allowed their emotional wounds to become infected. Because they weren’t diligent to keep the initial wound clean, toxic conditions such as unforgiveness, resentment, and bitterness set in. What started as a temporary, treatable condition grew into something much more severe and chronic, robbing them of their joy and peace of mind.

If you’ve been emotionally wounded by traumatic events in your life, there’s no need to panic. Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6), ready and able to heal your wounds. But you have a vital role to play in keeping the wound clean so a secondary infection doesn’t set in.

This means forgiving anyone who has hurt you, allowing the crystal clear waters of God’s love and mercy to regularly cleanse you of any resentment or bitterness. And if you see that some yucky white pus is developing at the site of the wound, you may need to ask God for spiritual antibiotics to keep the infection from taking over your life.

Is this an easy process? No, not at all. But the longer you wait, the harder the healing process will become.

And don’t be deluded by the old line that says, “Time heals all wounds.” That is only true if the site of the wound is kept free of secondary infections.

Remember that you aren’t the only one who has ever had to deal with infected emotional wounds. The Scriptures are full of instructions like this:

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma (Ephesians 4:31-5:2).

My knee is perfectly fine today. There’s no on-going infection or scar. And I’m convinced our emotional scars can disappear as well.

Read more…