Healing Place...

Even though it's not in my primary job description, I have found myself doing a lot of counseling lately. People might be amazed at the depths in which some people find themselves. Sometimes the situation is the consequence of their own poor choices; sometimes they are the result of someone else's poor choices; regardless, they are desperately hurting.

I started thinking about what we sometimes do in our church office to what goes on in an emergency room. Let's think about it. The patient has been stabbed — deeply. The knife is there, buried in the wound. He is in terrible pain, blood is everywhere, and a life is in danger. Sometimes he is screaming and writhing in agony; sometimes he is motionless, paralyzed with the injury. What do you do?

I am going to spend a few posts exploring this metaphor a little and comparing how much alike a knife into the body and a blow into the soul are alike.

In traumatic injury, the very first thing to do is to control the bleeding and shock. There will be a lot of things that have to be done in the future, but the absolute first thing is to stop the loss of blood, restore blood volume, and deal with shock.

What is the analog of physical blood loss and shock is the emotional trauma? Stay tuned — you didn't think I was going to waste a multi-entry idea on a single post, did you?