Wounds in the Way by Jacqueline Moore

Wounds in the Way
By Jacqueline Moore

Last summer, I received a copy of the soundtrack from the motion picture, "Madea’s Family Reunion." On the soundtrack is a soul stirring song called "Wounds in the Way," by Rachelle Ferrell.

Rachelle sings about a woman who has a chance at love and happiness but because of past hurts perpetrated against her, she is unwilling to accept her chance at happiness. The song is very powerful; it evokes deep hidden emotions, and causes one to contemplate their own battle scars.

In one stanza of the song, the words become both disturbing and enlightening, they say:
"If they would have treated a little girl, a little boy when they were still just a baby, with some respect and human dignity, maybe there wouldn’t be so many failed relationships, they might even had a ghost of a chance of just loving each other, body, mind and soul."It causes me to ponder the question, as parents, what are we doing that will wound our own children?You see I ask this question because we are constantly seeing the breakdown of the family unit. Even my children and I are one of those statistics being that I am a single parent raising my sons alone. As a matter of fact, the epidemic of the single-parent household in America is staggering. The reasons for this phenomenon are numerous and well as diverse, but ultimately, how each parent deals with the situation, does eventually have an impact on the future of their own children. Our relationships both with the one another as parents and how we deal with others in dating or even re-marriage situations will leave a lasting impression with our children.
So often, we don’t even realize that we are wounded and that we are wounding others. We do and say things out of our pain that we can never take back. We take our anger out on the wrong people and then wonder why people begin to treat us differently. We begin to mistrust everybody around us and in turn isolate ourselves from those who love us most.
I wonder how many of us are missing opportunities or blessings because we let our own wounds get in the way. We are afraid to love, to trust, to allow ourselves to become vulnerable to someone else because we are too afraid to be hurt again. When we allow the pain of our past to prevent us from being all God wants us to be, we are cheating God and we are cheating ourselves.
We wear our wounds on our sleeves like a badge of shame. Because of one bad relationship, we are too afraid to try again. What we may not realize is that our wounds are not only in our way, but they may also be in the way of others around us.
I have seen mothers demean their child’s father because of past wounds. I have seen grandparents lose the right to see their grandchildren, and parents abuse their own babies, all because of wounds in their way. I have seen first-hand how past wounds are crippling our futures.
Love isn’t the only thing that can wound us. Fear, rejection, disappointment, and sometimes, just life in general can inflict painful wounds. Life’s reality is this, as we journey through this life, we will get hurt. It’s inevitable. The key is learning to overcome those things rather than allowing them to hold us back or change who we are.
So often because of our wounds, we begin to accept others treating us in a manner that is totally unacceptable. Our wounds will often prevent us from loving ourselves leading to the disintegration of our self-esteem.
Do you know that the majority of us suffer from self-esteem issues? I say us, because I am included in that number too. None of us is quite satisfied with who we are. There are things about us that we don’t like and possibly even hate. Why is that? If we don’t like us, how can we expect others to like us? Or do we try too hard to get others to like us?

When we are born into this world, as little children we have no preconceived notions about how a person should look. We don’t judge others based on their skin color, their hair length, how tall or how short they are. We don’t look at another child and say, she looks different from me. We teach our children these things. A child looks at another child and says; hey, there’s someone my size I can play with. Good deal.

Sometime during our childhood we start judging others by standards that we have been taught. We start tearing down one another’s self-esteem. We create doubt in the minds of others on their worthiness. We start going along with the crowd. We start thinking like the crowd instead of thinking for ourselves.

It’s important that we feel good about ourselves. A few years ago when I turned forty, I mean in a few years when I turn forty, my theme for that year was “I am forty and fabulous. When people asked me how I was doing, my response was, I am forty and fabulous, don’t I look good? I said it and I meant it. How can we expect other people to love us when we don’t even love ourselves? How can we expect other people to accept us when we don’t even accept who we are?

When we don’t like ourselves, we are more likely to make bad choices. We are more accepting of self-destructive behaviors and self-destructive relationships. We will allow things to happen to us and say stupid things like “Well, I guess I deserved that or I couldn’t do any better”. We will allow others to treat us in a manner that is not becoming who we truly are, strong, beautiful, self assured women.
Life is destined to hurt us in one way or another. This world is not designed for our own personal comforts. We will run into brick walls, be forced to take a path that may be full of potholes or forced to journey into places that are beyond our comfort zones.
Individuals who through no fault of our own will want to cause us harm, make our lives uncomfortable, or at the very least; cannot love us the way we love them or that we deserve to be loved. Things that we may strive for may not ever be within our reach. Disappointments will always be waiting for us just around the corner.
However, until we learn to allow our wounds to heal, we will forever be held hostage by our pasts. I pray that you will let go of the past, focus on the future, and start your healing; Today!

Learn more about Jacqueline Moore at http://www.peaceinthestormpublishing.com/