What are you doing anyway?

Over 100 jars later, I'm almost done! I have a sack of crooked cucumbers that I think I'm going to make into chips, or I might not, I haven't decided yet. Preacher man has left for church and I am watering, picking cucumbers and worms, feeding birds and squirrels and slowly getting ready for church. It's been rather nice to do this slowly and to enjoy the morning. I don't get to do that very often, as we are usually at the church by 7:15, but 16 hours on my feet doing pickles is cause for a slow Sunday. 


Preacher man will be leaving today to go to Subiaco for part of his residency program. He will be staying on a couple of days after it's over to work on answering 'The Questions". He's done them once, as it's part of the requirements for ordination. They have to be answered a second time after you have been in the residency program to make sure your not loosing your mind or changing the way you think too much, I guess. It will also do Preacher man some good to just spend sometime alone. Being an introvert, he get's his energy from being alone. Me, bending a tad to the extrovert side, it's hard for me to be alone without an outline of what I need to do. That's why when I go to St. Scholastica, it blows my mind that I get so much out of my time alone.  


I came across one of the things that rings true down to my toes the other day, and am just now thinking about it at length, now that I have sometime. The Wounded Healer. Nouwen speaks on this topic a lot and it is something that I don't think we can talk enough about. In a world that wants to look perfect, smell good, drive the best car, have the most toys, say all the right words and be as close to a size 0 as possible, the wounded healer is something they find very hard to get their heads around. Mainly because they try and hide their wounds and in fact if asked will say they don't have any. When the truth is more like you don't have any of the surface cuz you've jammed them all down into the dark recesses of your being. The problem with that, is they are cooking down there. Just waiting for the moment when a crack in the closure happens and it comes rushing out in all of it's stinking glory! We spend so much time and energy trying to hide the wounds and be ok, that we are crazy to think it won't take a toll on us. 


The wounded healer approach is much different than the I'm ok, you're ok thought. The wounded healer says "How can I put my woundedness into the service of others?" The first step is to get healing. Now I believe in the secular way of doing this which is through counseling/therapy, but I don't believe that is the end all of healing. I think there is a huge spiritual part to this that most folks don't think about. That's where retreats and spiritual direction and the whole mentor process that we have all but forgotten about, come into play. Healing isn't something that you sit down to and don't get up until it's done. You walk in it daily and you let Jesus be the one to do the healing. Then when the wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.
Nouwen said it like this:


Jesus is God's wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed.  Jesus' suffering and death brought joy and life.  His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love.  As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.


To me, this is being like Jesus. Is it easy? Naw, but most stuff worth doing isn't. Does it take a long time? Yes it does, in fact it can take your whole life, but what else are you doing? Is it worth doing, going back over the stuff that we jammed down for so long? It has to be brought out into the light so that it can be seem and dealt with. So that the air of forgiveness can dry it out and make it smell better. When you let the light of the Son hit your pain, it will heal! When it does, you will want to tell everyone and show them this wounded healer path. It really is that easy, and it really is that hard.