Wounded Souls…
It seems to me that a wounded soul… if it could be taken out and
examined, must have scars and tender places on it that don’t like to be touched
or mishandled.
A soul that has been
broken or whipped, or perhaps kicked or dropped from a place of what should
have been security; doubtless has fears of the same thing happening again. It
seems natural that that wounded soul would throw up a guard against more
injury, and might probably limp through life in pain while trying to escape it.
Likewise, this wounded, injured soul might cause pain to those around it,
simply because that is what experience has taught it to do.
On the other hand, a wounded physical body or organ of
the same can sometimes be relieved of its pain through surgery or pills, but
pills don’t really work on wounded souls. They might give momentarily relief by
helping that soul to forget or ignore it’s pain, but
many times the pills increase the pain... or make the soul dependent on the
pills while still doing nothing to heal the hurts.
There are multitudes of
physicians around the country and around the entire world, who make a grand
living ‘treating’ physical wounds and sometimes never being able to cure them
from hurting.
I’ve known many a wounded soul in my lifetime. Been one
of them myself! I can say, “Been there, done that, got the scars!” But with
God’s grace, the scars are only memories now, grown fainter and fainter with
time… through my relationship with my God and Creator, the Jesus of the Bible.
There are individuals who practice healing of the soul,
or at least they attempt it. Healing of the soul is sometimes called
‘psychology’ … since the ‘psyche’ is said to be the soul, and ‘ology’ stands for a ‘study’ of something. There is Theology…which is basically a study of God, and there is
“Mythology” a study of myths. Biology, Physiology… those are subjects taught in
school. I will say that psychology today can take many forms. It will be practiced by many who call themselves
therapists or counselors. One needs to be careful and prayerful about whom to
trust with the care and healing of one’s soul. It’s said that the soul is the
center of the mind, the will, and the intellect.
In the middle years of my life; facing a second divorce
and not knowing how to conduct my life henceforth, I began to visit with a
counselor in a mental health facility. This can either be a good thing or a
dangerous thing, but in my case it was indeed an answer to prayer. It is
interesting to note that my counselor had, himself, been a minister; then
divorced, then educated to become a psychological counselor. More interesting
is that he challenged the Christian beliefs I professed to hold… and through my
replies to his challenges became more of a believer himself, as he later told
me.
It was not just the counselor, but the weekly counseling
sessions that went on for several months, that helped me to find healing in my
soul. This counselor had the wisdom to challenge my professions of belief; which
caused me to seriously study the Bible to give him proof or evidence of what I
believed. In one of these weekly
sessions this counselor asked what I felt was wrong with me. My answer was
decisive. “Bitterness!” Bitterness
against myself for being such a mindless ninny and allowing bad things to
happen to my life and my precious children.
“What color is your
bitterness?”, he asked, to which I replied, “The
darkest, ugliest shade of bile green you can imagine.”
“If this bitterness could
be contained in a vessel, how big would that vessel need to be?” “The whale pool at Marineland!” Now this minister-turned mental health
counselor who was admittedly not a deep
believer as I saw things, challenged me with this:
“You call yourself a Christian and still you’re so filled
with bitterness! You don’t believe what you say you believe!” and he asked me
what I thought about the casting out of evil spirits, to which I replied that
it had nothing to do with me and that he wouldn’t be one to do it, anyway. Then
he declared that in the Name of the Jesus I believed in, he was going to cast
that bitter spirit out of me. I scoffed loudly. He yelled back at me just as
loudly. “I can, and I will!” (We had become friends by this time, and yelling
was not offensive to either party). I’m sure our voices carried outside the
room to those in the front office! I closed my eyes, and it seemed that he
looked like the Pillsbury Dough boy pushing some kind of air out of me,
ridiculous as that surely sounds.
“He spoke firmly… in the
name of Jesus, I cast this bitter spirit out of you, Becky!”
I slumped to my chair like a lump of dough that had truly
had the air pushed out of it, and I began to cry with both puzzlement and
relief. The dark green, slimy, bitter bile was gone from my soul! I will
forever thank God for this man who dared to do what very, very few people of
his position are not afraid to do these days.
Rebecca Bryant Hervey
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