As a young adult I attempted to minister to one of my pastors in a small church in Sandy, Oregon, during a time of deep pain in his life. The women of the church had gone on a weekend retreat, and came back in time for the Sunday morning service. As the pastor’s wife shared something that was on her heart that morning, I thought to myself that she looked very tired. I had already learned how tiring retreats can be, with the late night conversations, the annoying early morning risers, and the inevitable loud snorers sandwiched in between. Later that afternoon, his wife pulled out in front of a car, and was instantly killed in the collision.
Several days later, I went to visit my pastor in an attempt to offer some comfort. He had obviously been grieving. I do not remember any of what was said in our brief visit. I am sure I probably clumsily offered some biblical passages of comfort in an area that I had never experienced firsthand. But what I clearly remember leaving with the feeling of a complete inability to adequately comfort.
Later, I went to the memorial service at Central Bible Church. As I walked into the entry room, I immediately realized the small room was filled with his colleagues from Multnomah Bible School, all standing around the perimeter of the room. One of them, a large, warm-hearted man named Dr. Ed Goodrick, had recently lost his wife also.
At that moment, my pastor walked into the small room with his children. Without saying a word, Dr. Goodrick walked over to him and gave him a huge bear hug. Even though not a single word was spoken, his ministry of comfort was deafening. Because he had experienced the same suffering, he was able to comfort in a way that was not possible for me. He was a wounded healer. It was a powerful moment that I have never forgotten.
In his book, “Wounded Healers,” the twentieth century prophetic writer, Henri J. M. Nouwen wrote,
“For all ministers are called to recognize the sufferings of their time in their own hearts, and to make that recognition the starting point of their service. Whether we try to enter into a dislocated world, relate to a convulsive generation, or speak to a dying person, our service will not be perceived as authentic unless it comes from a heart wounded by the suffering about which we speak. Thus nothing can be written about ministry without a deeper understanding of the ways in which the minister can make his own wounds available as a source of healing (p. 4).”
The reason I had struggled in my attempt to minister to my pastor, despite my good intentions, was that I had never experienced the deep pain of losing a loved one. Yes, I had experienced pain in my life, but nothing at the level that he was experiencing. I simply was unable to fully understand what he was experiencing, and because of that was unable to adequately comfort him.
Shortly after my painful divorce I began ministering to the singles in Common Ground, a group of singles in their thirties and forties at my church. First I led a co-ed group through a book on being single, then I led a men’s group through John Eldredge’s book, “Wild at Heart.” While my wound was different than some of the others in the group, the fact that I had been deeply wounded through my difficult marriage and divorce gave me an empathy for those hurting singles that I would not have otherwise had.
Before starting the “Wild at Heart” group one of the singles in the group wanted to get together to discuss the direction of the group. As we sat at the corner of my kitchen table I quickly observed his eyes darting back and forth. He was not able to maintain eye contact with me, and I realized that he was fearful. I strongly sensed God’s Spirit telling me to be gentle with him.
One of the things he wanted to do was weave some self-help principles into the study. I shared with him how one of the principles could be supported biblically, then shared how another could not. I offered my availability to get together again to go through the rest of the list to evaluate it according to God’s Word. I then prayerfully shared with him what I wanted to focus on in the study, and that I did not want to work the principles into the study. He marveled at my passion, then agreed with me that it would not be best for what I wanted to do.
Before he left he asked me, “Can I ask you to do one thing?”
“What is that,” I replied.
“Can you start off each gathering with an activity, such as ultimate frisbee, kickball, or dodgeball?”
“No,” I quickly replied, but immediately sensed the Spirit prompting me to listen, and countered, “Let me think about it and get back to you.”
He gave me a big hug, then left. After thinking it through and running it by some other guys who were helping me plan the group we realized that his suggestion was good and decided to incorporate it into the group. It turned out to be a huge contributor to developing comradery and improving the sometimes difficult discussions that followed.
During the course of the group his deep wound at the tender age of 7 was shared with the group by his father. While it is too personal to share, it set his life on a tragic course of confusion and anger.
During one of the meetings he shared how he enjoyed his west coast dancing because of the intimacy it offered with the women. Another guy in the group challenged him, telling him he was using those women. The group erupted into an lively discussion on this. After they had discussed it for close to 30 minutes I looked at him and asked, “Why do you go to these girls for intimacy rather than to God Himself?”
He looked at me like I had just shot him through the heart. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it!”
Knowing that we were running over on time and that some of the guys had to get up early the next morning, I asked him if we could pray for him. He shot up out of his chair. “Do you think you can fix me that quickly?” he yelled. “I have had this confusion for 30 years! You gave me a little taste, then you took it away!”
I was stumped by his outburst. I remained seated, but leaned forward, studying him to try to determine what had triggered his anger and what a proper response would be. Upset with how he was treating me, his close friend got up and started noisily rifling through the packages of cookies, and was then accused by another guy in the group of being passive aggressive. The angry single looked at his friend, then threw his chair across the room.
I remained seated, quietly praying inside for wisdom. I then determined that he wanted to continue processing our previous discussion and I had cut it short. I decided to excuse any guys that needed to leave, then to recount our conversation and try to return to where we left off. It worked, and we discussed the subject of intimacy with God.
Along the lines of the discussion I asked him, “How do you get intimate with a person?”
“You get intimate with them by spending time with them,” he replied.
“Are you spending time with God through His Word?” I asked.
He got the point. Several weeks later he shared with the group that he had been spending time with God each day and that it was revolutionalising his life. His inner peace had improved, his relationships were getting better, and so was his business.
Around this time another guy in the group, Bill, called and left a message. He wanted to talk. I was really feeling the need for some much-needed time to myself, so I waited to return his call. I had already decided to go to the first service that morning rather than my usual evening service, then go to a beach along the Columbia River after church.
As I finished walking my dogs I greeted my next door neighbor and sensed a tone of despair in his voice. I put my dogs in their pen and came back to talk to him. He quickly opened up for the first time about the repeated childhood abuse that he had received from his father to the point of being hospitalized seven times. It all had been suppressed for years, but was now coming to the surface. As I listened, I realized that I would be going to the second church service instead.
Unknown to me, Bill was at that second service praying that God would bring me to him that day. I entered the large auditorium and walked up one of the center aisles, looking to my left for a familiar face to sit with. I quickly saw Bill, and turned around and left the auditorium. I needed to be sure about making contact, because I knew that it would change my plans for that day. I quickly decided that I needed to make contact, and went around and sat next to him.
We went out for lunch after church. We had only recently met. Because he was around my age one of the pastors had referred him to me. His wife, Dawn, had left him a month earlier and wanted a divorce. He still loved her deeply, and desperately wanted reconciliation. During our lunch he shared that he had gone out on a date with another woman.
“What were you doing, going on a date?” I abruptly asked him. A stocky policeman, he could have easily leveled me with one swing.
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested in a weak and broken voice.
I didn’t say any more about the matter. He had gotten my point. He had put the possibility of reconciliation at risk. But he needed my comfort and encouragement now.
I then comforted him with the comfort God had given me in my situation a year and a half earlier. He loudly wept in the restaurant as I shared that comfort, and told me that he knew the things I was sharing with him, but just needed someone in his life to share it with him. He was an extremely broken man, and desperately needed support.
The meeting at the restaurant was a pivotal point in Bill’s journey. He has repeatedly thanked me for being there for him that day. His previous church had refused to listen to his side of the story, and had turned away from him. One of the pastors, a married man, even tried to hit on his wife. Bill needed support quickly, and God provided it in a way that left him knowing without a doubt that his prayer had been answered.
Because of my own ongoing overload and exhaustion from the singles ministry, I knew that I needed help in giving Bill support. A few months earlier I had begun meeting with two other small group leaders outside of the singles ministry, John and Tyler, for mutual encouragement and support. I brought Bill into that group, and they began sharing in the work of supporting Bill.
Over the next four months, we continued meeting together regularly. Tyler was also a policeman, and happened to work at the same precinct as Bill. Though they had been only casual acquaintances and saw each other infrequently, they began bumping into each other often. John rode along with Bill several times while he was on duty. Bill and I had another chance encounter at another critical point in his ordeal. At that time I commented, “You know God brought us together, don’t you?” He replied, “Yeah, I know.”
God was at work in Bill’s heart during this time. Rather than resign himself to a probable divorce, he resolved to seek reconciliation with his wife. He asked those close to him to pray specifically to this end every day for an entire month, and we did so. During this time I saw his attitude gradually change from one of defensiveness and accusation to one of regrets for his harsh responses to her revelations about her previous lifestyle. During one of those times I asked him, “You want a second chance, don’t you?” He brokenly replied, “Yes.” Bill, Tyler, and I prayed intently at that time that God would give him another chance.
A short time after that prayer, Bill’s wife contacted him and harshly informed him that the marriage was definitely over and that she was pursuing a divorce. But his response was very different this time. He remembered our pastor recently saying, “Love them until they ask ‘Why?’” This time he responded humbly and gently, rather than harshly.
Unknown to Bill, his response shot straight to his wife’s heart. She contemplated it for two weeks, then contacted him and asked him to go to joint counseling together, not with the counselors who had listened only to her side of the story and told her what she had wanted to hear, but with the only counselor who had listened to Bill also, the counselor who in Bill’s own words “knew her better than I know her.” His wife meant business.
Bill knew she meant business, and he was terrified! At this point he had not seen her for five months. He wanted her back so badly, and he had no idea how the counseling was going to go. He had no idea how she would respond to him or how he would respond to her. He, John, Tyler and I got together twice and poured our hearts out to God to intervene.
One counseling session led to another, and before long they reconciled. The counselor wisely advised that they find an altogether new church that would be safe for both of them. They found a small, close-knit, healthy church that they absolutely loved. They commented how they both felt like they were back in bible school. I was thrilled to find out that one of the elders was a good friend whom I had a tremendous amount of respect for. In one conversation with Bill, he shared that sometimes after putting his youngest daughter to bed and praying with her, he stood at her door and watched as she slept, weeping with joy over what God had done. They even had another child, a son!
Because I had been wounded in the same way, I was able to understand Bill’s pain and give comfort in a way that I otherwise would have not been able to do. If it is true that experience is the best teacher, I had been taught by the best. I knew how his experience felt, and I knew what brought comfort in the pain. The apostle Paul also captured this idea when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 1 that God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” As Nouwen suggests, I had become a “wounded healer.”
After another meeting of the guys a third guy sent an email sharing some things on his heart. One of the more quiet members of the group, he shared that he was not comfortable interrupting in order to get a word in, and that by the time there was finally an opportunity, what he wanted to share was no longer relevant.
In his email he shared that his father committed suicide when he was just 1 ½ years old, and that he grew up with his mother telling him that he was worthless and was never going to amount to anything. He shared with me how those voices from his mother had stayed in his head his whole life. He had tried to commit suicide twice, had received more counseling than anyone he had ever heard of, had been through all the drugs imaginable to fight the depression, yet still that message persisted.
He then shared with me that he wrote because he wanted someone to understand his wounds and hoped to get a friend out of the group. He thanked me for my wisdom and leadership, and said that he really looked forward to Mondays because of the group.
Though I had never had the types of wounds he experienced I wept as I read his intense heart-felt email. Again, my own painful wounds had made me able to sympathize with the painful wounds of another.
On another week another guy in the group called me in a state of panic. He had struggled his whole life with a fear of tests and because of that he struggled miserably when taking them. He had an upcoming major test within his school program and wanted some assurances of God’s care.
I decided to use the shotgun approach and give him a bunch of passages from God’s Word, hoping that at least one pellet from that shotgun would find its mark. After about 8 verses he told me that that was enough. He reflected on the verses that week as he prepared for the test. The morning of the test he was listening to a Newsboys CD and was touched by the song, “Presence,” which echoed his own heart’s longing for God’s presence during the upcoming test.
He had to leave for the test before the song had finished, and as he started up his car and turned on the radio he threw out a quick prayer that the same song would be on the radio. He turned on the radio just as the same song was starting up! He drove to school with tears streaming down his cheeks, confident that God was assuring him of His presence. As it turned out he still did not pass the test, but he went away from the experience assured that God was with him despite his setback.
These were but a few examples of the wounds that God led me to sympathize with and seek to help bring God’s healing. On one of the weeks we went through the chapter in “Wild at Heart” that discussed the wounds that we received. That particular night the group got sidetracked, and it was a very personal sidetrack for the person responsible, so I did not feel comfortable cutting it short. But I went away feeling unsatisfied with how we failed to cover such an important topic.
I wrestled with it and decided to cover the same topic again the next week. When I told the group that we were going to revisit the same topic again one of the guys said with surprise and disappointment in his voice, “We are?”
I then went through each of the guys’ wounds, including my own, first writing on the whiteboard the wound, then the message that we heard from it and the vow we took to not let it happen again. The accumulation of all the wounds and messages we heard had the same effect as rolling a rock over while looking for worms to use as fishing bait, and watching all the hideous bugs scurry for a place to hide. We had exposed the devil’s concerted efforts to destroy us, and he was hurriedly scampering for a place to hide! After this I passed out bibles to each of the guys and we went through around a dozen verses that taught what God really thought of us, rather than the lies we had heard through our wounds.
God was powerfully at work during that time of the guys group. He was working in the lives of those wounded men through my own wounds and the comfort He had given me through the earlier dark time of my own life. I was a wounded healer, and God was healing those broken singles!