“I began to BELIEVE the truth, and it set me free.”
It’s only when it reaches down deep into the HEART that the truth begins to set us free, just as a key must penetrate a lock to turn it, or as rainfall must saturate the earth down to the roots in order for your garden to grow.
Most of us are embarrassed by our emptiness and woundedness. We feel ashamed that we are not stronger or more together. We know we are meant to embody strength, we know we are not what we are meant to be, and so we feel brokenness as a source of shame.
There is so much fear beneath the surface: fear that I will fail, fear that I will be found out, and finally, fear that I will ultimately be on my own.
It is so important for us to grieve our wound; it is the only honest thing to do. For in grieving we admit the truth—that we were hurt by someone we loved, that we lost something very dear, and it hurt us very much. Tears are healing.
In Good Will Hunting there is a great scene of what can happen when a person realizes they have “owned” their wound and discovers they don’t have to. Will Hunting is the brilliant young man who works as a janitor at MIT. No one knows about his gift because he hides it behind a false self of “tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks.” He’s a fighter (violent man). That false self was born out of a father-wound. He doesn’t know his birth father. The man who was his foster father would come home drunk and beat Will. Will is ordered by a judge to see a psychologist, Sean. They form a bond; for the first time in Will’s life, an older man cares about him deeply.
In this scene, where Sean says over and over again to Will that what he went through as a boy was not his fault. Put yourself in Will’s place for a moment, and let it be true for you. All that happened—your father’s wounding of you, the way the world weakened you—none of that was your fault. Don’t reason back and forth; you might not even think that it was your fault. Don’t try and “feel” anything. Just stay with the sentence for awhile, allow that to be true for you.
Let the tears come. Get alone and let the tears come. It is the only kind thing to do for your woundedness.
Allow your self to feel again. And feel you will—many things. Anger. That’s okay. Anger’s not a sin. Remorse. Of course you feel remorse and regret for lost years.
It’s not your fault.What should you have learned here?
What issues were raised in your heart through this?
What are you being asked to let go of?
How have you mishandled your wound to this point?
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