The Wound

Vulnerability has a deceptive power to it.  I choose to share what I share because I trust in the Lord to shape my relationships.  To put it another way, I trust that God will find a way for my efforts to help my brothers and sisters.

In a book I read recently, the author discussed how men often are hampered in their development when their male role model wounds their hearts.  Whether or not the wound is intentional, the boy's development is necessarily formed around the wound until he is brave enough to expose and heal it.

This afternoon, at work, I found one of my wounds.  I am a quiet, introverted soul.  I grew up in a rambunctious home where the kids outnumbered the parents 3:1.  I couldn't find a place where my quiet soul fit, and so I felt alone in a sea of noise and love and emotions.  Satan latched onto that aloneness and lied to me.  He convinced me that I was supposed to be alone, that I wasn't worth keeping company with.  In the years that followed, I latched onto books as relationships that would never abandon me, computer games as adventures without risk, and put on a face of cheerful competence to my friends, employers, and families.  As I have been trying to grow into a man, the devil has lied to me again, saying that I would have to figure out how to be a man all by myself.

Masculinity is imparted, not grown in a vacuum.  Male role models wound a boy, but healing from that wound is part of what makes him the man.  And that healing comes only from the Savior, the ultimate male role model.  To put it another way, the father's role is to wound his son, so the son will seek out the Savior in order to become who the Lord wants him to be.

At the same time that God showed me my wound, he reaffirmed to me that He would never leave me alone.  I am grateful for His spirit.