I’d like to heal the wounded if it weren’t for my own slings

A workshop accident meant I had to wear a cast on my left forearm all the way down to my palm for six weeks or so. A head-over-heels incident off a bicycle meant I had to have a full right arm cast for a similar period. As you my deduce from those experiences, I know what it’s like to be temporarily inconvenienced. When I broke my right elbow and have to have my arm locked into position, there were a lot of things I could not do, things that I had never thought about before. Putting on a shirt was a challenge; putting on socks was next to impossible. Overall, it was a learning experience, but it was not as challenging has having my left forearm all the way down to my palm in a cast. As a lefty, having my left wrist immobilized was pretty limiting. I couldn’t hold a pencil, had difficulty driving and generally was unable to do a lot of things I took for granted. Both of those cast-derived experiences were truly eye-opening for me.

Physical limitations, whether through age, injury, disease or genetics are usually obvious. While I could hide both of my casts under long sleeves all you had to do was watch me move and you could tell that something was off. Yet while my motions were awkward, you could also see that I was able to get most things done. In other words, you knew soon enough that I was still functioning fully within my limits. I might have had slings to help carry the weight of the casts and to ensure that I didn’t do anything to interfere with the healing process, but I still did my best to carry on normally. It was, of course, a new normal once I had gotten used to my situation, but it was normal nevertheless.

Within that new normal, I did my best not to be a burden to others and to continue trying to do to my neighbours as I would have them do to me. It was, after all, only my body that was in slings; my mind and heart were still in fine working order, and I hope that it was obvious I still cared for folks even my various casts and slings if it looked like I needed a little bit of caring for myself.

Often our slings aren’t so obvious. We all have injuries and brokenness within us, wounds that limit us, perhaps even hold us back, but which are not seen or know of by others. Abuse, personal failures, addictions and mental illness wound and break us; they leave our minds and our souls battered and bruised but those injuries can be hidden, masked and disguised, sometimes even from ourselves.

This internal brokenness can affect us in a couple of ways. The first is that they can prevent us from reaching out to others; I’d like to heal the wounded if it weren’t for my own slings, for the pain that keeps me from touching you, from the fear that prevents me from exposing myself to danger, from the sorrow that renders me incapable of helping you feel joy. The second is when we choose to wallow in our pain and brokenness, when our suffering becomes in and of itself an excuse for us not even trying to get better, let alone reaching out to others.

When it comes to our pain being so great that it holds us back, it is understandable. Because my mother was an alcoholic there was a period when seeing other folks get drunk caused me revulsion and pain; I could understand where they were coming from, but it was hard to reach out to them in any way. When our wounds are fresh and raw, we are all the more sensitive to the similar wounds we see in others. In that phase of our brokenness, it is indeed difficult to help even if we are driven to do so.
Sometimes our woundedness is so deep that we aren’t even aware of it or of the way it impacts our interactions with others. Our slings have become so much a part of us that we don’t recognize how they limit our movements and keep us from learning how to move in new ways that let us work around their limits.

Either way, whether it’s because our pain is too raw or our wounds too deep, healing is necessary before we can help others. Yet even as we heal, even from within our brokenness, we can be healers and helpers. Despite our own slings, and sometimes even because of our own slings, we are able to lift others when they have fallen and to be a way that the wounded make their journey to healing. Because I am the son of an alcoholic I can now empathize with them and their children; I am mostly healed of my wounds; scars and traces of pain remain, but I let them serve as teachers and indicators rather than limits. Because I am wounded in that particular way, I can help those who have similar injuries.

This is best expressed in the work of Henri Nouwen, whose book “The Wounded Healer” help us understand how our brokenness need not be a limiting factor in our helping others. In fact Nouwen posits that it is only out of our own injury that we can truly be effective and loving guides along the journey towards health and wholeness.

It would be easy to slip into self-pity or even into self-worship; I’d like to heal the wounded if it weren’t for my own slings; I am too broken to help; I and too busy wallowing in my own pain to think about others; there is something wrong with me therefore I am of no use to you; you may be in pain, but I am in twice as much pain so you should be reaching out to me. This is a deeper brokenness than might first appear evident; there is an injury to the soul that prevents us from seeing beyond ourselves. It is perhaps the hardest one to ‘fix’ because it is so hard recognize in oneself. It can also be the most frustrating one for those around the person because it is easy to diagnose but next to impossible to get them to see it for themselves.

To a greater or lesser degree we are all wounded. That woundedness shapes our character but does not necessarily define who we are. While it may be limiting or perhaps even debilitating in some ways it need not keep us from living fully and helping others. In many ways our injuries, while not blessings in and of themselves, can help us to bless others; they give us empathy; they inform the healing process; the make us humble. I’d like to heal the wounded, and I can, precisely because of my own slings.