Have you been hurt before?
Have you ever been rejected by others? Ridiculed? Maligned? Gossiped about? 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. Also called a hangnail.
Let me translate that in Filipino: hangnail is kukong nagbigti.
Anyway, would you believe my ingrown toenail lasted for two years? Because the nail kept re-growing, it would puncture my wound again and again, until it 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.)
After two years, my mother scared me to death and said that 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.
Here’s how the doctor did it.
He pushed his scissors in between my nail and my toe, all the way to the very end. Then he cut my entire toenail into two. “Snap!” Finally, 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 an ingrown toenail—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 inside.
Like Minette, for instance.
Her husband left her three years ago. But when you talk to her, it was like it happened yesterday.
Adultery is one of the deepest wounds a human heart can have. After entrusting your entire life to one person, that one person betrays that trust.
But I believe even the emotional wound of adultery can be healed. I’ve met many wives whose husbands became unfaithful—and they were able to move on by the power of forgiveness.
But Minette couldn’t forgive.
Because every day she pressed the rewind button of the most hurtful scenes.
Today, Minette has cancer. It doesn’t take a psychologist to connect the dots. Her bitterness ate up her body as well.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Forgiveness heals.
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