My Wound is geography, it is also my anchorage and my port of call. Pat Conroy “The Prince of Tides”

June 14, 2023

It hurts that so many of us try to save ourselves from suffering when only Jesus can save. He saves so well that the wound no longer is the story of where we have been, because it is healed. Jesus comes in the midst of our suffering and reveals the strongholds of lies and rebuilds our foundation in Him. We recognize us as a new creation no longer anchored to our wound. Our woundedness is no longer  the place from which we express life or our port of call. Life becomes an expression of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Lord so completely saves, that when circumstances come that would challenge the wound to resurface, it does not, because truth, (God's) word, both - rhema(spoken)  logos(written) has trumped the  lies. The implantation of truth rewires our brains so that circumstances that come to challenge the wound to surface has no landing strip, essentially, we become Teflon repelling what use to land and control us.

Healing, wholeness which is holiness, becomes the walk of sonship. The walk of sonship is the heart of ministry as we have been given the engagement of a multitasker by the divine multitasker. We can minister to others  by listening on multiple levels. One of my favorite author’s Michal Ann Goll in her book Dream Language says, we can listen to the heart of a person; we can listen to the realm of the soul, and we can listen to the Holy Spirit. The grace that came and healed us, comes in the listening. The grace allows us to block out the distractions of self, thus hearing clearly the Lord’s voice for the one we are ministering to. The Lord heals  us making us whole not for ourselves, but for the world who has not yet found our Savior. 

The quote that started this blog, written by Pat Conroy, can be found on his tombstone. Pat Conroy, one of the most gifted literary geniuses of my generation, owes his life accomplishments to the expression of the inability of man to heal himself. We are eternal spirit beings made in the image of God. When we believe that the deepest part of man is the brain then the very core of our belief is rooted in our best thoughts. Pat's literary work is based on the childhood wounds that he received from his father and how they subsequently left him handicapped in every emotional way, as he negotiated the world. Pat's story is all of our stories: abused, berated, rejected, or even embarrassed by our parents, or those in authority in our lives, gives the enemy  ground as an entry point to sow lies into our thinking, upon which strongholds will be built. 

These strongholds become the lens through which our world is interpreted. The enemy comes as a global spirit to create mistrust in this father/son relationship, so that he can ambush many sons from coming to our Heavenly Father. If the enemy can come in on these entry points from imperfect parents to create a mistrust of authority figures, then there is a good chance we will never turn or seek our heavenly Father. But there is one perfectly obedient Son who would come and do the will of the Father.  This Son would invite us all to call His Father our Father, His Abba, our Abba (Matt 6:9). This perfectly obedient Son trumped the enemies plans and invites us into His love.  Those wounds are no longer our geography, nor the quote placed on our tombstone. In its stead are the words Abba, Father, my Father!