CYBERCOLUMN: Gentle breath of the wounded healer_duncan_111703

Posted 11/14/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
Gentle breath of the wounded healer

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, remembering my Uncle Faye.

I’m not sure why we called her “Uncle Faye.” She was more correctly titled an aunt, a relative once or twice removed on the family tree, as they often say in the mountains of North Carolina. We called her “uncle” for some reason unknown to me. Maybe she just spoke it once, and it kind of caught on.

John Duncan

Uncle Faye lived in Spruce Pine, N.C., on Pine Branch Road, just below the Baptist church. She had a black fluffy dog, always had a shawl draped over her chair, watched the television with the volume turned up loud, liked to sit on her porch swing and watch the cars pass by or eyeball the rain dripping from her roof, and never missed church.

She loved the Lord and the church and sat close to the pulpit, near what must have been at one time in that mountain church the amen corner. She often called on special occasions like my wedding day or at the birth of one of my children. Prayer and easing pain were her passions.

Uncle Faye lived near the Toe River. Every day at noon, like many of the local mountain folks, she listened to radio station WTOE to hear the news and to listen intently to the public reading of the obituaries.

Not many subjects stir interest like news of death, funerals and “visitation” at the local funeral home. Uncle Faye listened with ears anxious to drink down the sound of news so that it could be discussed later with friends. News discussed for Uncle Faye meant words of care, concern and prayer for the hurting as they battled the wounds of life.

I never really knew that much about Uncle Faye, except she had lived during the Depression, worked once at the local knitting mill, always visited us at my grandmother’s house when we vacationed in the mountains and possessed an unusual gift of blowing with lips puckered, a cool breeze of breath that eased the pain of the moment and put a person back into the path of the joyous present.

Henri Nouwen says, “For the minister is called to recognize the sufferings of his time in his own heart and make that recognition the starting point of his service.” He further states that Christ’s servants are wounded healers, “the one who must look after his own wounds but at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.”

I think of Uncle Faye as a sweet lady whose hard life softened her to make her a wounded healer. In life, you will need people to heal your wounds.

I could not have been more than the age of 10 or 11 the summer we traveled to Spruce Pine to visit my grandmother and two aunts. My grandfather built the two-story white house that had inside a great set of stairs and a stairwell for sliding down. Sliding down the rail served as an exciting event. Fireflies buzzed at night so that you capture them and put them in jars. You slept on a feather mattress with the window open so that you could hear the chirp of crickets, a car passing by or the rustling of leaves on the trees as the breeze sailed through he mountains.

My brother and I loved to toss a baseball in the front yard of the old white house. We often threw the baseball over the boxwoods, big bushes sprouting green leaves that rose waste high. If you were adventurous, you could attempt to jump over the boxwoods, which I did many times. Running around the boxwoods once, I slipped, fell hard on the sloped and rocky grass and skinned my knee. Injured, I tearfully and slowly eased up from my fall, hopped and limped along while noticing blood on my skinned leg.

I sat down in a chair on the front porch and moaned and grimaced, only to be greeted by a smiling Uncle Faye.

“Settle down. Calm down,” she whispered. “Let Uncle Faye blow on it,” she softly spoke in hushed tones while looking into my eyes. And blow she did—a cool, gentle breeze of breath that took the sting away just long enough to stop the tears and calm the racing heart and relax the tension of that painful moment.

And so here I am under the old oak tree, remembering Uncle Faye and missing the mountains and a cool breeze of breath in life’s painful moments and thinking for all that life delivers sometimes you need a wounded healer who can understand life’s pain and blow a breeze to take away the sting.

And I am reminded when I think of Uncle Faye that God is like that—the Wounded Healer, a sympathizing priest who blows a breeze fresh and cool on the aches and pains of heart, life and soul (Hebrews 4:12).

Everyone needs an Uncle Faye, a wounded healer who blows breath so cool it sends chills up the spine, and the Wounded Healer. I feel a breeze even now, and I feel great joy!

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines