Healing a Lifetime of Pain

“The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. ‘I am a victim,’ he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.”

― ROBERT BLY, Iron John: A Book About Men

ALL OF US, without a single exception, have been dealt enough blows to constitute a lifetime of pain; even pain that resides beneath the conscious vestiges of our awareness. Proof of which is in our dreams, when the subconscious springs forth speaking powerfully into the waking hour. The dreams may indeed speak of those hidden anxieties that we cannot reconcile at a conscious level.

So there is a limit to healing in this life, but we may enter, if we are committed enough, into a place of strength and peace. Those blows of shame, invasion, disappointment, and paralysation are not the final straw, not by a long shot. But first we must make the choice of our lives; for a life that’s sure and certain.

The Choice to Rid One Identity and Take On Another

The simplest way of putting this is we need to recognise that victimhood is not the answer to abuse and neglect, though it seems perfectly reasonable to be resentful. Victimhood is a cul-de-sac; a dead-end street that seems to satisfy, but never does. It leaves us barren of energy having been fuelled with hate.

This is not God’s will for any person.

God’s will is a full life for all. All we need do is agree. All we need is the courage to understand that we can have a different destiny if we will choose, now, to serve the Lord by the living of our lives for his purposes; the first step of which is to choose for healing – to commence that long journey, that is replete with reward along the way.

As we agree to engage in a realm of healing – by challenging our bases of victimhood – giving them over to God – time and time and time again – we are giving passage, slowly but surely, into a new identity: one teeming with hope and the promises of God.

Hope is the reward for the faith to step. Hope is the result of faith, but also the energy behind it. With hope for a new identity beyond victimhood – that holds us interminably back – we travel forth into that very thing.

Jesus shows us how we are to deal with our suffering; our shaming, invadedness, disappointment, and paralysation. We pull the tool of victimhood out of the clutches of Satan by throwing those concerns away in faith that God has something better in mind.

***

Jesus Christ is the way through and past victimhood and out into the fabulous vista of a safe, godly identity. We must give one identity away in order to retrieve another. What will we be: victims or warriors for God?

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.