Wounded

I love summer.

End of Story.

I just love it. The warmth, the sun, the activities, the friendliness of people. (People really are friendlier until they get too hot...then grumpiness comes back.) It is all beautiful to me!

My mom is on her way over to my apartment so that we can go for a hike this afternoon. The wind has picked up a bit, but once you get into the mountains you are usually protected to some extent. I look forward to the time with her; it has been a little while since the two of us have connected.

I always have so much to share, but I really want to stay focused on captivating right now. Once I have walked through the book I will begin posting other thoughts and ideas!

Chapter 4: Wounded

This is a bit of a heavy chapter. We are all wounded and most of our responses come from our wounds. Our wounds, oddly enough, have become our safe places. Our safety blankets. Our controllable lives. There are many stories in Chapter 4 about wounded hearts, and my heart resonated with some of those stores. No, the stories were not identical, but I can begin to see how the enemy was at work in my own story. On top of the wounds we receive from the people around us, the things we tell ourselves and believe about ourselves only makes the wounds worse. The power that our mind has is remarkable. We really do have a choice to allow thoughts to support and feed our wounds until they contaminate our bodies and our lives. Or we have the option of slowing down and taking the time to recognize our wounds. Once we have recognized the wound we need to put a name to it, and invite the father in for healing. Ask him to speak truth over your heart and your wounds. We ask, seek and knock, and he has promised to answer us.

Allow me to be vulnerable for a moment. A wound or agreement that has recently risen to the surface in my heart is that something is wrong with me. I don't know what is wrong specifically, just something. Or maybe everything for that matter (depends on the day and how far I allow my thoughts to go). Somehow I am simply not enough.

"we can't put it into words, but deep down we fear there is something terribly wrong with us."

As women a message we hear often is; "to be a woman is to be powerless; there is nothing good about vulnerability; it is just weakness."


OH, how this breaks my heart. I think of how hard it has been for me to develop and maintain relationships with girls, but "life" gets in the way. The less time we get together, the more distant the relationship feels and the harder it is to be vulnerable. It is like we have this fear that the person is going to start judging us because we have not spent much time with them. Yet a quote from John Eldridge that is helping me be okay with just being me and not worry about being judge by others is; "let people feel the weight of who you are." Wow, there is something very hard about that for me. All the thoughts flood my mind; what if they don't like me? What if they think I am foolish, weak, lazy, young, etc. And shortly on the heels of these thoughts comes shame. Shame of not measuring up to the worlds standards, to the church standards, or to my own standards. (Are you seeing how the enemy is easily encouraging my thoughts to spiral down.)

"Shame says we are unworthy, broken and beyond repair."

"Shames causes us to hide. We are afraid of being truly seen , and so we hid our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted..dominating women offer expertise...desolate women offer service."

"Shame makes us feel very uncomfortable with our beauty...few of us believe we are beautiful and fewer still are comfortable with it. ...So we hide our beauty behind extra weight, layers of makeup, or we neutralize our beauty by putting up protective, defensive walls that warn others to keep their distance."

We may hide behind something, or put up walls yet under all these wounds and layers of control, there is a deep longing. A longing for something more. It must be there... our heart aches for love, intimacy and life. FULL Life.
Psalm 25:3 No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame...

The chapter ends with this: " there is, in fact, a theme to them (wounds), a pattern. The wounds you have received have come to you for a purpose from one who knows all you are meant to be and fears you."

What are those wounds in your heart? Have you identified them? Are they abandonment, worthlessness, not being enough? I would challenge you to ask the the Father to name those, because you can't heal something that you don't know is broken!

I pray the Fathers does a might work! May your heart begin to believe in his heart from you!!

Be Blessed!