The Only Thing That Can Heal Your Emotional Wounds?
Have you been hurt before?
Have you ever been rejected by others? Ridiculed? Maligned? Gossiped about?
Have you been cheated? Betrayed? Lied to? Stolen from?
If your answer is yes, then I’m writing to the right person.
That means you have emotional wounds, and my big message for you is that there’s only one thing that can heal your wounds.
Let me start by talking about something of great cosmological and eternal significance: My bloody ingrown toenail.
Sometimes called hangnail.
Let me translate that in Pilipino: hangnail is kukong nagbigti.
Anyway, would you believe my ingrown toenail lasted for two years? Because the nail kept re-growing, puncturing my wound again and again. The wound got infected and my entire toe was filled with foul-smelling yellow pus. (I apologize for grossing you out. I’m actually doing it on purpose and having fun.)
This is my claim to sainthood. If St. Francis of Assisi had his stigmata, I had my two-year old bloody ingrown toenail.
After two years, my mother scared me to death and said if the wound doesn’t get well, they might have to cut off my toe.
I loved my toe.
So I visited a doctor. And he said he had to pull out half of my toenail. I fainted.
I still remember that fateful day. The anesthesia didn’t work because of the pus. So I felt like San Lorenzo Ruiz who was tortured in the same way. (Please mention this tiny detail in my sainthood application.)
Here’s how the Doc did it.
Step 1: He pushed his scissors in between my nail and my toe, all the way to the very end. The pain was so horrific, I was ready to recant anything he told me to recant. Even my love for peanut butter.
Step 2: He cut my entire toenail into two. “Snap!”
Step 3: He got his metal pliers and yanked out half of my toenail. Blood and pus spurt like a little fountain.
But it worked.
My wound was now free to heal itself. What lasted for two years took only a few days to heal.
Why am I telling you this gory story?
To tell you that your emotional wounds are just like physical wounds. Bitterness is like the ingrown—it keeps the original wound alive by puncturing it again and again. So your emotional wound doesn’t heal.
And your soul gets infected.
If you’re not careful, the emotional wound can grow until it amputates parts of you, slowly killing you.
I’ve met people like these.
I pity them so much. They’re like the living dead. They are alive but they’re dead.
