What A Trip to the E.R. Taught Me about Emotional Wounds

It had been a lazy morning; coffee, playtime, to-do lists. I was finally getting dressed, when my phone rang.

"I need towels and a belt. Call your mom to watch the kids. You need to take me to the ER."

Outside Jon grinned sheepishly. Covered in dirt and sweat from demo-ing an old ramp, he held one bloody hand over his calf. More blood was running down his leg and splattered all over the grass.

This wasn't the plan for our Memorial Day weekend, but after applying the make-shift tourniquet and abandoning a blood-soaked shoe on the sidewalk, we hobbled to the car.

The worst part was cleaning the wound. Dipping a sponge in solution, the nurses carefully disinfected around the wound before cleaning the wound itself. His face was all knots and sharp breaths, silence where I would have bellowed in pain. My mama bear instincts kicked in, and I found myself kneading his shoulder furiously, which was no help at all, except to make me feel better!

Stitched and bandaged, we headed home. I thought about the nature of a wound as we drove in silence; on our bodies, and in our hearts.

If we hadn't cleaned out the gash in his leg, it probably would have become infected, or worse. Cleaning out that wound was torture, but choosing not to clean out that wound would have been a terrible decision. Stupid, even.

Unless you're a farmer, when our bodies are injured, we don't (usually!) sit around pretending we're fine. We don't ignore the pain, or take a chance on blood loss, infection, or broken bones. We act fast, grit our teeth and tell ourselves the pain is necessary and non-negotiable. We reset the bone, clean out the debris, stitch together muscle or skin, apply ointment, or whatever is needed to reverse the damage.

If we don't, we'll have a bigger problem on our hands.

Just like our bodies, our hearts are tender, breakable, and it hurts so deeply when we are wounded. Unlike our physical wounds though, we rarely respond with the same sense of urgency.

Most of the time, we do the opposite. Instead of attending to the pain - pain that sticks with us, consuming our thoughts, clouding our judgement - we sit with our pain and brood over how hurt we are. Or we tell ourselves we're not that hurt, and shove our feelings away.

Can we shine a light on our hearts for just a minute?

Sitting in our pain, brooding over our hurt does us no good at the end of the day. It is actually harmful. Like my daughters who beg me not to clean their scraped knees, we spend wasted energy in fear of our own pain, and would rather leave our wounded heart gaping open than go through the painful process of cleaning out the yuck (yes, that is a technical term) inside us.

But it is just as dangerous to tell ourselves that we shouldn't be hurt by something, and try to ignore the hurt without processing through our grief or pain, as it is to acknowledge our pain without dealing with it.

It is important to know when to let something go, and when to recognize that we've been hurt.

If we don't, at some point, everything will boil over, causing more pain and grief.

Whether our pain comes from life's unexpected twists and turns, from the hand of another, or from our own inner voice, dealing with it always brings healing.

Healing allows us to walk in freedom - strong, capable, and at ease.

Thankfully, we don't have to clean out our wounded hearts by ourselves. We have a Comforter, the precious and gentle Holy Spirit, who reveals just how badly we are scraped up on the inside, and then gently helps us to clean out all the debris that has caused our pain, binding us up again so that we can walk upright in healing and wholeness.

So what do you say, dear child of God? Will you join me in the brave and bold steps toward a cleaned-out, mended heart? The first step is to say, "Lord, show me my heart. Help me to see what needs to be healed." And I let him lead from there.