Preach to Yourself by Hayley Morgan

Author:Hayley Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2018-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

THE HEALING JOURNEY

When I was less than a year old, I was playing underneath my mom’s ironing board. She was doing exactly what I now do—talking on the phone while doing the ironing. I did what babies do, and I yanked on the closest thing to me, which was the long cord of the hot iron. The heavy iron, full of water for steaming, fell faster than my mom could grab it, although she certainly tried.

The nose of the iron caught me right on my fat little baby forearm. My mom has always felt horrible about that unforeseeable, unstoppable parenting moment. She cried more than I did that day. Every parent has those moments when harm comes to our kids and we can’t stop it from happening.

Thirty years later, I carry a scar from that day. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s visible. It has stretched out as I’ve grown, and it has gotten a lot lighter. It has flattened out, but it’s still distinctively the shape of the tip of an iron.

I don’t have a single memory without this scar, and to me, it’s just what my arm looks like. I learned to tell the difference between my right hand and my left because of the two freckles below my left pointer finger and the scar on the forearm of my right arm. The scar became a painless part of me.

We can use our scars to remind us of what God has healed us from. Wounds can’t become scars until they’re healed. The good news is that once you’re only looking at a painless reminder, you’ve done the hard work of healing. God has seen you through!

Here’s what I see as important steps on the healing journey.

Let Your Wound See the Light

I can be a hider. And if I’m not careful, I don’t mind if people think better of me than they ought. I prefer to look put together. This reminds me of when we had our first son, Noah. It wasn’t long after his birth that my mom and my in-laws came into the room to meet him. As my in-laws walked through the door, I noticed a smear of blood on the handle of the bed—an obvious marker of the run-of-the-mill trauma I’d just endured. But I was mortified, as though that sign of trauma was unmasking the cool-as-a-cucumber vibe I was trying to emit.

Even though I was a first-time mom cuddling my swaddled newborn in one arm, I clamped my other hand over that trace of blood so that no one would see the evidence of the carnage that had occurred. I kept my hand there during the whole visit, even as I passed the baby from one loving family member to another. It seems awfully silly now because of all the life I’ve lived and all the humility that motherhood has brought me. But at the time, I really thought I could hide the pain by covering the blood.

I try to live honestly. I don’t hide my wounds in order to keep other people from being uncomfortable.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.