When the student is ready...

I read an interesting Hero Quest story today about a woman who faces great challenges and overcomes fears in order to soothe an angry husband recently home from battle, wounded and desiring nothing but isolation. The woman asks for guidance from a wise person in her village to help her cajole her husband back to the sanctuary of their marriage. She is sent off into the unknown for a hair. Stay with me... she climbs a mountain, gradually gains the trust of a bear by feeding him, asks for a hair from his neck, is granted the request, and half scared but mostly optimistic, runs back to the village. All I want at this point in the story is to read about the magic elixir that will make my angry husband change and love our family the way we deserve.

Will she never learn, you ask?

When the woman returns to the village, the wise person takes the hair, inspects it to make sure that yes, in fact, this woman did do as required. That she did conquer fear and insecurity for the love of the wounded husband. The hair is then thrown into a fire, seemingly oblivious to the harrowing quest taken up by the selfless (and at this point, I'm thinking, stupid) wife. She screams "WHY?" The wise person says to now in turn do the same for the husband.

Huh?

What the hell? I'm supposed to risk life and limb to get my husband to come inside? Just because he's an angry jacka$$? What the heck kind of codependent crap was this storyteller trying to peddle? Is it just ME? I began to wonder if this was how "wise people" kept women in subservient roles for so long. But then as I read the explanation, I realized that I was once again reading with the wrong pair of glasses. The husband wasn't a husband.

He IS my psyche.

The husband is representative of the wounded part of us, wanting to isolate and wallow in our pain. The wife is the kind nature inside each of us who wants so desperately to cover the scars with the salve of love. It is in the quest, the scary moments, the times we rise above our fears and accept all of life's challenges, that we become stronger and more resilient. And in that strength, we are able to bring our wounded self back into the shelter. But who is the wise person that sends us on this journey to face a fear, knowing that we will be okay? That we will become whole?

God.

My life verse is found in the Old Testament, in Isaiah. It's an amazing book of looking back on the wounds and looking forward on the healing. It's the eternal promise of God to bring us back into the sanctuary of His Love. The things in life that we wanted might have robbed us of our innocence and brought home to our loving nature a wounded warrior. With the help of God and his written promise, His Logos, we are able to be restored to the wonderful beings we were meant to be. With His grace and guidance, we WILL bloom again:

Isaiah 51:3

"The LORD will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
He will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing."

AMEN!

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