Every person’s pain is a new frontier.
Diagnostic categories forecast problems and treatment opportunities. But the history, temperament, predispositions, circumstances, choices, and commitments of each person point to an utterly unique, irreducible soul.
In the face of a soul, you must be reverent and humble. Every soul you welcome with open hospitality presents unexpected conundrums and needs. If you rely solely on your own resources to minister to a soul, you will feel like an impostor.
You feel that way because the richness of the individual soul overwhelms categories and well-intended strategies. But more to the point, you feel like an impostor because you forget that you are not alone.
The one to whom you listen, however broken, is fearfully and wonderfully made. Souls fly from God, seeking spaces and frontiers out of God’s reach to call their own. And God pursues them because God knows that when souls feel the weight of utter isolation, they struggle to return. So God waits in the wings or, more likely, in the intimacy of the heart with open arms.
Your soul and the one to whom you minister flee from God then turn back over and over every day. When you flee, you feel powerful for a while, then feel like an impostor. Only when you welcome God’s welcome do you find your true self.
Then you feel ready to encounter a soul, not as an expert or master physician, but as another soul fleeing and seeking God. Whenever you love, you know God has found you. With every breath, you sense your love coming from God, filling you and moving through you to the other.
So you trust yourself to help as the way emerges.
Grace & Peace,

Your Inner Voice of Love

Posts in the Wounded Healers Blog are messages of gentle encouragement I give to myself and offer to you as messages you may adopt for yourself. For further context, visit the home page.