Wounds

I wrote this poem some years ago because of a situation I was in where I was regarded as a very poor sort of Christian because I was open about the fact that I had been hurt and abused, and that, consequently, I have vulnerabilities because some of the things i have been through are not totally healed yet. I have never understood the mentality that makes a suffering person spiritually inferior to one who's had an easy ride (and, equally, I've never regarded a hardship as an automatic badge of honour.) We are all on the same journey, only God knows how we've handled what we've had to cope with.

Look on my wounds –they are the empty tomb
From which a blessed resurrection came
You will not see the miracle I am
Unless you dare to look upon my shame.

These broken places, putrid with disease
Were habitations of such evil lies
Feeding upon the nightmares of my past
Swarmed on my soul like overblown flies.

Sharp words of cruelty, dull words of defeat.
Slippery words that twisted black and white
Pursued me through the tangle of my days
With bitter fascination, lurid, bright.

Yet I have found the clean, bare word of truth
Fierce as the wind and salt-sharp as the sea,
Cutting remorseless to the bones of self
And severing the bondage which was me.

Now, like the sore-delivered, I may stand
Shaky but whole, and marvel to be free
These hurts are not the badges of decay,
But the dear wounds that got my liberty.