“For all ministers are called to recognize the sufferings of their time in
their own hearts, and make to that recognition the starting point of their
service.”
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
(1932–1996)
In today’s world, where the successful are marked as materially
prosperous and confident souls, the wounded healer stands eternally apart. They
abide by an inherently successful but bizarrely paradoxical formula: their
strength is in their weakness, for their own weaknesses have become very
qualification of their ministry. Their very failures – those that have been
overcome and healed – have become their sole strength of credibility. Yes, the
exact thing that was destined to crush the wounded healer has become the very
reason they exist in their ministry. In such a way God has converted
comprehensive defeat into everlasting victory.
The world needs the wounded healer type as ministers to a
suffering world, to a suffering generation, to suffering individuals, as the
minister him or herself suffers.
As the biblical corpus is built upon and based in many paradoxes
upon enigmas within mysteries, so also is the life of the effective minister of
God. They have a story of brokenness that qualifies the way to wholeness. Their
mode of ministry is humility through working in their weakness, in order to
redeem the Spirit’s strength for others’ access. Their way forward is via the
truth – to establish authentic relationships and communication – in order to
dispel many lies that might otherwise shrink their effectiveness. They identify
with others’ suffering because they are quick to identify with their own
suffering. The wounded healer doesn’t wallow in suffering, but they do accept
it as an obvious stimulus and condition of living in this world. They have
learned to work within the parameters of suffering, and they consistently find
their way through it and into a manifestation of God’s glory.
Ministry for the oppressed must reach them where they truly are
at. Superficial means derive superficial ends, and we cannot be satisfied to
work within what is superficial for too long. No, God has lives he wants
touched, and, though there is room for many different ministry types, the
wounded healer has a common place in the work of God.
The wounded healer is able to help people for the precise reason
they themselves have been helped. They opened up a way forward to their own
healing, by the Spirit’s help, and likewise they are able to show that way to
those who require healing.
Their weakness is their strength and what used to defeat them
was cause for their victory. The wounded healer has accessed their own healing in
order to show others that way.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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