I grew up in a family of wound makers. We learned to freely hand out pain, and then remained truant when the subsequent wounds needed repair. Quite frankly, it was probably too hard for my parents to show up in the vulnerable way apologies require. In our household, it looked like this: Fight. Walk away. Return a while later. Interact as if nothing ever happened. This habitual ritual left me with tender clefts in my fragile heart.
In the past several years, much of my life’s work has been putting words to my story—words to vocalize my patchwork of scars. What I have found more challenging, is to find a safe place to bounce the words off people who can listen. I’ve been habitually silenced by many people in my life who think my story is too hard to hear; or, they are simply disinterested. To exchange stories is not on their agenda. It is a tragedy when we don’t feel safe to share our scars, because—
Our scars are what stitch our stories to life.
Jesus draws intimately close to our scars. Is it possible that level of intimacy scares us? If I’m being honest—kind of. Vulnerability is hard. To be fully known scares the crap out of me. It scared the crap out of Adam and Eve. When their eyes were opened, it caused a breach to their uninhibited innocence. It unlocked the door to shame. In response to unbearable shame, without delay, they ran and hid.
Scars are “reminders” of our vulnerability. When we are wounded, we are invited to confront our affliction in an authentic way. We can no longer stay “hidden”. The skin is gone. The covering is gone. We are exposed.
There is a narrative in the New Testament where the apostle Paul and some companions are in jail. All of a sudden, their release is orchestrated by an act of God in the form of an earthquake. Well, the jailer thinks it’s his fault they escaped, and immediately wants to kill himself. When your only job is to keep guard over prisoners, and you fail at the one thing you were supposed to do, then I guess you might want to end your life, too. Because of his mistake, the authorities would probably be quick to wipe him off of the face of the earth anyways.
What a pickle to be in.
What happens next in this story is nothing short of a miracle. The jailer wants to know by what power they were released. When they explain the story of their creator God, he promptly puts his faith in God—that very night. The narrative goes, “Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.”
- Acts 16:32-34
I immediately caught something interesting about the passage. It might be a detail that is often overlooked; however, in that moment it was right there, staring back at me. I uttered, “Really? That’s the first thing the jailer does? That’s crazy!”
The story narrates that immediately upon belief, the first move the jailer makes is tend to the prisoners’ wounds. Yes, his entire family goes on to get baptized, and then they all share a meal, which are necessary and holy things. However, the jailer—the man who inflicted wounds on these prisoners—immediately prioritizes the healing process for the wounded men, and seemingly so for himself as well.
For a man whose life purpose as a jailer is to inflict wounds, as a changed man, his first inclination is to give attention to the prisoners’ most vulnerable place—their fresh, raw, physical wounds. He hears about Jesus, is immediately filled with joy, and then can’t help but do the same things Jesus would do. He tends to the places people are hurting the most.
I can’t help but think about how I am called to be a wound healer, too—to make peace with my wounds and tend to others’ wounds.
Jesus was a wound healer. That’s just what he did for the remainder of his life’s work. Whether wounds were physical or emotional or mental, he healed them. Most of the time he mended with a quick physical touch. Other times he used things such as mud, spit, water, pigs…you name it.
When Jesus heals our wounds in a transformative way, we are changed, and we are liberated to go out and take part in healing the rifts in this fractured world. We do this by choosing to show up for others. We can’t obliterate wounds, but we can come alongside and simply be with others in their suffering.
When we cast our narratives on the stage and allow our wounds be the protagonist, we become more authentic, encouraging people to those who will lend us an ear. We no longer hide in our shrouds of shame, but we join the ensemble and sing a collective refrain, “Me too, I have gone through that too, and what a relief it is to know I am not the only one.”
And then our wounded healer joins the chorus, tenderly takes our hands into his scarred hands, and says, “Me too, my children, me too.”