#242: Our Wounds and Our Everyday Life
Today is a fun episode for me because I explore what "wounding" looks like. I dive deep into sin, sacredness, and the blessing that comes from our wounds.
I would love to hear your thoughts!
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EP. 242
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation Podcast. We're our goals to help you reclaim good practices for following Jesus. If we haven't met yet, my name is Tony and I'm your host with over a decade in the local church. I care deeply and passionately about helping you connect with Jesus in practical ways. Today's episode gonna be a little different for my Tuesdays Today. I'm gonna do a monologue episode, but it's gonna be kind of an extended form of a theory that I've been working on all about our wounding. It's something that has been come up in multiple talks and conversations, coaching sessions, all the things that I've been doing with other leaders.
And I thought, man, this is a. Platform to share this thought process on, because I think it's gonna resonate with so many of us. If it does resonate, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button wherever, listen to podcasts, leave a rating or review on iTunes or Spotify, and the highest [00:01:00] compliment you can give us, share this episode with a friend.
Okay, so we're gonna jump into today's topic very carefully because I recognize that what I'm about to talk to you about is both personal and it's deeply moving. If you let it. And it's all about this idea of the wound. My dear friend David Watson, he talks about this by calling it the epistemic consequence of sin, right?
So that the moment that sin entered the world, all of us inherently became. Wounded. So in order to really jump into this, we're gonna start by looking at Genesis three, where we introduce sin into the world. Well, the enemy introduced sin into the world, and it reads like this. Now, the serpent was more crafty than other.
Any of the other wild animals the Lord God had made, he said to the woman, did God really say to you, you must not eat from any tree in the garden. The woman [00:02:00] said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die.
Verse four, you will not certainly die. The serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat it from it, you eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and. when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for the food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then both of them, both of their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked, so they sued fig trees. Fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees to the garden.
But the Lord God called the man. Where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was [00:03:00] naked, so I hid. Who told you that you were naked? God answered. Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat? . The man said, the woman you put me here with, she gave me some of the fruit from the tree and I ate it.
Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you've done? Of course you know the story. The woman goes on to talk about how the woman deceived her, and then God curses man and woman in their different ways, and it's that curse that is the epistemic consequence of sin that basically once sin entered the world, once the world became broken, all of us were inherently flawed.
Now, if you follow Jesus for any length of time, you can certainly agree. You're broken that you know that you're a sinner. I've gone to hundreds of churches and asked the question, are you a sinner? And everyone raises their hand, but what does that really mean practically? Well, it means obviously that we're imperfect.
It means that we're doing our best to turn [00:04:00] away from the things that separate us from God, right? We are separated from God. That's what sin does. That's what it did in the garden. The very nature of sin is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden, and the truth is there's always a consequence of sin now, one of the consequences of sin that exists in the world today.
Is this idea of the wound. Now the wound is kind of the way that we view the world from this broken lens, right? Not from the perfection of God's lens, but instead a, a brokenness that is inherent to humanity. Now I have probably done hundreds of counseling sessions, and what I can safely say is that most of our wounding happens between somewhere, somewhere between the ages of four and 10, right between the ages of four and 10.
We are wounded now. I will put a caveat. There are other different kinds of wounds. There [00:05:00] are traumatizing wounds that can happen at any point in our lives. But for the sake of this discussion, I'm talking about the wounding that is inherent to childhood, not anything other than that. So this wounding typically happens between four and 10.
and the wounding is typically perceived to be done by someone who loves us deeply, right? Usually it's our parents. If you live with your grandparents or you're raised by them, it could be them. It's, it's anyone in our life who's deeply in our circle, and as a child, we perceive their actions as wounding us.
Right? So said another way. Each and every one of. Has a natural brokenness about the way that we were raised. That is our wounding. It makes it hard for us to fully understand who we are. L let me give you an example from my life. [00:06:00] At four years old, my parents had twins and it was unplanned. And then at eight years old, my parents got divorced.
And so there's a reoccurring theme in my life where in my own perception, , my parents that, that I was kind of on my own right. That I, my parents loved me deeply. They cared for me deeply, but also they were managing a lot of things. So somewhere along the way I picked up the message that I'm not seen right.
I'm not seen by my parents. I'm not seen by the people that love me. Now, I know that my parents did in fact see me. I can look back on this now as an adult. And logically I can tell you that that was never their intent. My parents are great parents. They loved us as well as they possibly could, and yet we came out wounded.
Now my wounds are different than my siblings wounds, and all of us have our own experiences [00:07:00] growing up. The truth is, is that you're never gonna get out of raising children without wounding them. You're never gonna get out of raising children without wounding them. It's the cause of sin in the world.
It's the brokenness Now. . If we can all come to the conclusion and agree that we're broken, well then now we have a place to work from. Interesting. I now have a 17 year old and I can see his wounding in his life already. It's leaking out, right? He's the oldest. He strives, and every once in a while he'll say something like, I know I disappointed you again, or I know I'm just doing the best we can, or like, I'm, it's not good enough.
So he, his wounding is around the perceived pressure that he thinks his mom and I put on him to be a certain type of way. [00:08:00] Now, Karen, my wife and I, we would not say that we've done that. But that's the nature of the wound, right? The wound is, is just there. It's there because we live in a broken world with broken people who are all just trying to do the very best they can.
So we're all wounded. No one gets out of childhood wounded, and that wound is actually so important to our identity. Allow me to explain God in his graciousness, redeems all things, and he redeems the. So if you want to find your wound, one of the ways to do it is to look at the areas of your life that you're the absolute best at, where you're gifted, right?
And that giftedness is often the redemption of the wound. So let's go back to me as an example. I would say that somewhere between four and 10, I felt like I wasn't seen. I wasn't noticed, right? And so I wasn't. You know, very visible to the people who I [00:09:00] wanted love from. So in redemption of that, I became this dramatic storyteller.
This kind of larger than life personality, a K a, who I am today. Now, some of the best things that I give the world come out of that wound, right? That's how God redeems my wound. . It's interesting because all of us, if we can think about some of the things that we're best at, it's probably a direct response to the wounding in our life.
So if you grew up in chaos, you probably are really good at order. If you grew up not feeling safe, you're probably really good at safety, right? And you can begin to kind of think through this idea of the wounding and how we respond to the wounding, right? But not only does the wounding tell us, what we're good at, right?
Not only D does what we're good at, tell us about our wounding, but another area that tells us about our wounding is our [00:10:00] emotional response. Now, some of you have heard me talk about this before, but if you think about your emotional response, it's really quite easy to become aware of when somebody bumps up against your wound.
So if you think about your emotions on a scale from one to 10, anything above a six is somebody bumping up against your wound. So on an emotional intensity scale, anything above a six is always more about you than it is about them. It's someone bumping up against your emotional intensity scale. Now here's the crazy part that can be good or.
So, for example, let's say I'm driving on the highway and somebody cuts me off and I decide to litter them with explicitives or curse words and give them the number one salute, blah, blah, blah, all those things, right? Let's say I immediately spike to a seven or [00:11:00] eight. Well, that's more about me than it is about them.
What I'm saying is, somebody's bumped up against my wounding. I feel disrespected. I don't feel seen, I don't feel valued. I don't feel loved. So that's one way that we can kind of see and identify our wounds. Another way is looking at emotional intensity that is, , right. So I'm watching my son Connor play football.
Connor scores a touchdown and I freak out. I begin to celebrating just crazy ways, right? I'm, my emotional intensity goes to a a seven or eight. That's about me, right? I'm so excited that he's done so well because I look good. People can see me. You see how it works together. When we spike above a six on the emotional intensity scale, someone is bumping up against our wounds.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that emotional intensity is bad or good. I'm just saying that when [00:12:00] we become aware of them, we gain wisdom. We all have wounds. The wisest people just become familiar with. . We all have wounds, but the wisest people just become familiar with them. So the question is, how do we become familiar with our wounds?
The first thing I would do is, I would say is, is that we have to make space for the Lord to teach us. Right. The Holy Spirit is the great advocate. He's the spirit of truth, right? That third person of the Trinity, he's there to advise us about who we are. So creating space as a regular discipline space to feel our feelings.
I always think about the scripture where Jesus wept over Lazarus. He wept over Lazarus knowing that he was gonna raise Lazarus from the. It's a beautiful, [00:13:00] a beautiful picture of what it means to feel our feelings. Right? And, and I would say that most of us need to take this as a practice. We need to experience and feel our feelings and, and I would say, remind you of those familiar feelings from your c.
I meet with a counselor once a month, and one of the things that we notice is we notice anytime somebody bumps up against those old feelings, and we call them old friend, hello, old friend, I see you again, because it's not the first time I've experienced those feelings. It's my wound. I, I experience them all the time.
The thing is, is oftentimes in my quick reaction, I don't want to acknowledge that my response is greater than the circumstances deems or as warrant. And the truth is, sometimes when I respond outta my room, my wound, I'm responding as if someone who's four or eight and not someone who's 42. The 42 2 year old [00:14:00] version of me is much more equipped to handle the feelings that I'm feeling than the four or eight year old person is.
So sometimes the 42 year old version of myself needs to go back and minister to that younger version of me. What's that look like? It looks like me saying, Tony, you're. , they see you, you're fine. God sees you. God loves you. I have to go back to scripture and acknowledge the truth because what the enemy sometimes wants to do is he wants to take our wound and he wants us to, to feel like it's the only thing that's real in the world when the reality is it's not real at all.
It's just feelings. What was is not. What is what is, is not what will be. , so feel your feelings. That's one of the major ways that we begin to understand our wounds. The second thing is, is to notice when we get spiked emotionally on that intensity scale. [00:15:00] You know, when you get above a six, you need to know that somebody's bumped up against something.
When's the last time you were really mad about something, like lose it and kind of mad? And I bet if we spent some time, you could sort out. Somebody bumped up against a feeling that you felt before, that feeling that you had growing up, that feeling that is just deep inside of you. And the third thing, probably the most important thing is we never make decisions out of our feelings.
Right. Feelings aren't qualified to make decisions. They're just not. And sometimes we get in trouble because we make this kind of feeling reaction. Now, I'm not saying don't trust your gut, cuz I certainly do that. But what I'm saying is, is that if you're emotionally spiked above a six, you're not in a good place to make a decision.
And so we've gotta kind of calm ourselves down. We have to feel our feelings. We have to kind of open up the pressure valve of what's happening inside [00:16:00] of us so that we can let that out. And then we need to kind of note internally, or maybe even in a journal where someone bumped up against our wound. The key in all of this is to become so familiar with our wounds that they don't scare us anymore, that we're not just.
Like little kids. Instead, we see the little version of ourselves. We minister to that little version of ourselves and we walk with them to this place of health. Friends, we, we all have wounds. No one is getting out of this life without wounding themselves their children either. It's the epistemic consequence of sin.
The moment that brokenness entered into the world it happened, but just because it happened doesn't mean that it has to stay there. God redeems our wounds. [00:17:00] He redeems all things our redeemer lives. So take some time in this season of your life to explore your wounds and determine how God is using them to build the kingdom.
We all have wounds. The wisest people just become familiar with them. Friends, I really hope today's thought monologue episode was helpful for you. I'll be back at the end of this week to continue our Lenin series. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you in the opportunity that we have to share deep thoughts like this about how we grow closer to following Jesus.
When we become familiar with our wounds, we see how the Lord redeems so many things in our lives. Praying for you. I hope you have a wonderful week. And remember, if you want to follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.[00:18:00]