When we hurt, from the hands of others who selfishly or thoughtlessly harm us, we can be doubled over in pain. Wounds so deep they have us bent and twisted, walking wayward toward unweeded paths that choke our very lives. We may seem erect, head held high, but our souls suffocate, unoxygenated, weak, running on emotional empty. We have been complicit with our culprits. They hurled the hurt and we caught and carried it, nursing our wounds with pride, pointing fingers at our offenders and saying how much better we are than they. We clean our cuts with cursing the air and them, choosing not to say anything but instead waiting for them to come talk to us.

We can bandage our bruises with bitterness and wrap our hearts with hopelessness, and our self-concocted antiseptics are really creating septic souls, too diseased for anything healthy to grow. But we have a choice to negatively nurse or nutritionally nurse our wounds. We can choose to start with prayer.

Nothing brings such leanness into a man’s soul as a lack of prayer.—Charles Spurgeon

Prayer is not designed to inform God, but to give man a sight of his misery; to humble his heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his, faith, to animate his hope, to raise his soul from earth to heaven.—Adam Clarke

Trouble and perplexity drive me to prayer and prayer drives away perplexity and trouble.—Philipp Melanchthon

And prayer begins with praise. Here, in the praise, is where God meets us (Isaiah 61:3). On Wednesday and Thursday, when I sought him to help my hurting and angry soul, the praise produced this: “You are in the presence of greatness,” as I saw my offenders’ faces in my head; and “You value people,” the word a daughter of mine told me when expressing her amazement at my ability to spend time with others and not neglect my family. I told her this was God’s grace and God reminded me that I can deal with my offenders by His grace.

His grace enables me to see greatness and not the grief they caused me. They are fearfully and wonderfully made, complex creatures made in His image but subject to human frailties. And when they fail me and I want to tell them how they failed me I must remember that I “value people,” and treat them with the respect worthy of a person of greatness. When I devalue them, I devalue God and have suffocated my soul. God’s grace nutritionally nurses our wounds and helps us speak the nourishing truth.

I praise God for a healed soul, for helping me think of my offenders with love, not anguish and languishing, and for helping creating in me warrior wounds, spiritually fought battle scars that remind me to seek God and apply only what He says. Jesus is the balm we need.

Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

My One Thousand Gifts List

#51-60
The Bloom Book Club
My many journals
Justus staying the night in the crib
A good night’s rest
Time wht Flynn away from the house and children
Bobbi for babysitting
Winston for shoveling the snow
Fellowshipping with Darryl and Marcy
Accepting I have to develop a new friendship
Family devotion