A book titled "The Jesus I Never Knew" ~Phillip Yancey, does a pretty good job of describing those wounded or broken parts of our psyches or souls, as where an arrow (or many arrows) found it's mark. I was given a bow and arrows for Christmas when I was 11 years old. I loved playing with it. Over the next several years I practiced shooting my growing collection of arrows. I loved watching them fly. I would shoot them into a hay bale. Or sometimes through stuff we hung in the trees. I've admired cross bows recently. As I said earlier, I am not a hunter. I've never had to kill an animal so I haven't. I know a kid who loves to bow hunt and I have looked at the pictures of his trophies (kills). The arrow slits the flesh as it enters, knifing its way in to disable and eventually cause or facilitate the death of the animal. I'm not a tree hugger...let people hunt if they want to...I'm not judging (or really even thinking about that). I'm mentioning the whole arrow thing in support of what I am thinking about today. Which is: all of us walk around with those wounds and/or scars where the arrows that life pierces us with came through the soft flesh. Wounds, cracks ... same idea.
A clean edged wound sutures better. A surface wound heals faster. Clean wounds, protected wounds .... Tended wounds. I try to not leave wounds where I messed up and said or did something hurtful. I also try to tend to my own wounds - so they don't become large, disabling sore spots. Sometimes that is not possible. I have an old wound. The arrows came in slowly, one followed by another, all finding the same mark and when I pulled one out I began to bleed out. The next arrow I left in place as a precaution... Sometimes the remedy is worse than the ruin. Somebody came by with medicine for my wound and my wound got better. I got stronger. That is somthing to be thankful for.

1 July - I saw several typos here and that happens when I post directly from my phone like I sometimes do. Anyway, as I read through this today I remembered my dad saying "You can lick your wounds, but don't pick them." My dad. Hahaha. My brother and I talked about that. He observed that our dog was a big advocate of wound licking. We decided that my dad meant that literally! My mom would have passed flat out if she had seen any of us licking an oowie! That's pretty good advice when understood! Daddy tried. : )