This week I want to offer you something a bit different. And I’m including everyone for whom I have an email address. Here’s a five-day devotional (adapted from my book From Broken Boy to Mended Man and the corresponding ACTION PLAN). You can use it by yourself, in a small group, with a friend or family member, by forwarding it, or however you wish! It’s also available for you and them on the YouVersion Bible App and Bible.com.
A Five-Day Devotional for Men With Childhood Wounds
Introduction
Hiding inside every man is a little boy. For some, this kid is healthy and strong. For others, he’s insecure. Afraid. Angry. And broken. That was me. I ignored the pain of my childhood wounds for decades. Maybe like me, you’ve suffered silently. In these devotionals I’ll share part of my story and a biblical remedy to start healing your childhood wounds. You are not alone.
Day 1: The Fraternal Order of Broken Boys
There are millions of us. We carry around leftover pain from childhood wounds.
As a result of this unprocessed pain, we act out in ways that damage our relationships. We’re easily offended. Fragile. We lash out. We withdraw. We’re baffled by our behavior. Frankly, we’re not even sure what normal behavior looks like.
We all want to silence the voices of the past, but the way forward is shrouded in mystery. We look at our lives and can’t help wondering, Is this as good as it gets? We’re terrified we might repeat the cycle with our own spouses and children rather than break it.
What we really want—have always wanted—is for our parents to love us, believe in us, and be proud of us. We ache to be encouraged, respected, and valued. We yearn for their approval and affirmation—to be the gleam in their eyes. That’s what you and I need to thrive.
When a young man doesn’t get these things from his mom and dad, he ends up as a little boy with a hole. I know. That’s what happened to me.
It’s Personal
When my mother died from cancer, I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t sad. I didn’t cry. There was no emotional response. Nothing. At the time, I was fifty-three years old.
Knowing something was off, I made an appointment with a counselor to figure out why. Over eight sessions, my counselor helped me process the father and mother wounds I had never been able to put into words. That allowed me to grieve the childhood I missed. It empowered me to forgive, heal, and make beautiful, lasting changes.
Perhaps you also carry around the lingering, hard-to-put-into-words pain of childhood wounds. Maybe your father or mother was not in the picture. Or maybe one or both were neglectful and distant, angry and abusive, or self-absorbed. Maybe they just didn’t know any better. But the result is the same, and you’ve just never gotten over it.
If that’s you, I want you to know you are not alone. As many as eight out of every ten men you cross paths with today in your neighborhood, workplace, gym, or church also grew up in dysfunctional homes. Together, we are the fraternal order of broken boys.
What is your starting point today? Is it passivity, resignation, addiction, rage, a critical spirit, poor self-esteem, denial, or lack of confidence? Are you oversensitive to criticism, lashing out when it comes? Do you get moody and withdraw? Are you driven to win acceptance in the world because you didn’t get it at home? Are you an overachiever, a protector of the weak, or a champion of lost causes?
Whatever your starting point, the way forward is the same. The Bible prescribes a process for healing (and preventing) childhood wounds that has been in constant, successful use for thousands of years.
Scripture
Reflection & Discussion
Day 2: The Four Building Blocks of a Healthy Home
We all know folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Parents are responsible to correct that folly—but without crushing their child’s soul.
Unfortunately, many parents were never properly parented themselves. They have no model for how to create a safe, healthy home. They inherited intergenerational brokenness from their parents. Then they couldn’t break the cycle and passed on some (or all) of that brokenness to their children—you and me. And that puts us at risk of repeating the vicious cycle all over again.
Parenting is a sacred promise to prioritize a child’s physical, mental, emotional, social, financial, moral, and spiritual health. Your parents had a duty to provide for and protect you. They had a responsibility to help you grow strong and healthy in mind, body, and spirit. They also had the privilege to give you a sense of well-being and an opportunity to create a family environment where you could thrive.
To thrive (synonyms: flourish, prosper, succeed, bloom), children need love, structure, roots, and wings. Most of us have heard the question, “Is it nature or nurture?” Love, structure, roots, and wings are the building blocks of nurture.
A healthy home overflows with overt and unconditional love. Love is the umbrella over everything, and a healthy, loving relationship is the most powerful force in the world. If you grew up in a love-filled home, you felt precious, valuable, and believed in, like you were the gleam in your parent’s or caregiver’s eyes.
A healthy home is filled with clear-cut structure. If you grew up in a well-structured home, your parents were predictable. You always knew where you stood, what the rules were, what was out of bounds, and what to expect if you disobeyed.
A healthy home has roots. Roots build character, perseverance, determination, diligence, and resilience. If you grew up in a home with deep roots, no matter how much you got knocked down at school, you always felt like things would be okay once you got home. Your parents made you feel secure, safe, and stable. They protected you from worldly ways and people who might otherwise prey on you.
A healthy home gives children wings. Your parents helped you experiment until you found a few things you love and do well—whether in academics, sports, or the arts. They also helped you develop social skills, such as looking people in the eyes when you’re speaking or being spoken to. They nurtured your emotional intelligence and situational awareness.
We’ve just explored what should have happened. A man who rates himself highly in love, structure, roots, and wings would say, “My parents were affirming,” or “My parents were encouraging.” How would you rate your childhood home in these four areas? And if you have children, what are you passing on to them?
Scripture
Reflection & Discussion
Day 3: Starting to Understand Your Childhood Wounds
How do childhood wounds affect us as adults? Some of us are angry. Some are sad. Many of us are both—and confused. If your parents were self-absorbed, angry, or abusive, that might make your emotions easier to understand. Or maybe, like me, you’re confused and feel guilty for being so upset because your parents were “nice” people.
Whatever your specific situation, the result is that you have a hard time believing people really care about you.
The first stage of highly regarded psychologist Erik Erickson’s theory of human development is “trust versus mistrust.” Early in life, a child decides whether the world is a safe or a dangerous place. If people do not care about your needs when you are young and vulnerable, the stage is set for you to look at the world with suspicion, fear, and mistrust.
So if one or both of your parents didn’t care (or care enough), it’s no surprise you have doubts and suspicions that anyone else would care either. In fact, today you are wary of people who seem to care. You don’t trust their motives. You’re waiting for the thud of that next shoe to drop.
You find it difficult to trust people’s sincerity when they express genuine affection for you. It’s risky to accept someone’s delight in you. What if it’s fake? What if it’s real, but I don’t measure up or can’t perform to their satisfaction? What if they change their mind? Then what?
You lack self-confidence in relationships. You’re still unsure that you’re okay, a good person, worth helping, or worth caring about—even if you’re a proven leader with significant skills and accomplishments. You’re on high alert, and you struggle to tell real affection from fake intimacy.
Because you fear repeating the cycle of pain, like me, you tend to feel reserved or guarded when you walk into a room. Everyone has self-doubts, but yours are exaggerated. You often feel left out, excluded, out of the loop, overlooked, uninvited. You assume, They don’t want me.
You have difficulty developing close friendships (although once you do, you are the most fiercely loyal friend someone could ever have). When people don’t give you enough positive feedback, you assume they will let you down and abandon you, and you have experiences to back this up.
You’re insecure about where you stand with people—even those closest to you. Even your spouse. That’s how bad it can get.
To protect yourself from this pain, you’ve walled yourself in and others out. At times, you feel starved for love and friendship, but the risk of being hurt seems greater than the reward of letting someone in.
As you reflect on your own childhood wounds, to what extent do you have a hard time believing people really care about you?
Scripture
Reflection & Discussion
Day 4: Emotional Amnesia—Overcoming Denial and Facing the Truth
When I was in college, I raced motocross on weekends. My parents only came to see me race one time. That happened to be the day I had a nasty crash and was flown to the hospital in a helicopter. My parents never came to the emergency room to check on me.
You’d think that would be such a painful memory, it would drive me crazy. But until recently, I didn’t remember them not coming to the hospital. For self-protection, I had developed a sort of emotional amnesia. For decades, I was in denial. My brain couldn’t process the truth, so it chose to deactivate—to turn off—the memory.
Everyone compartmentalizes unpleasant memories to avoid painful thoughts. But denial goes further. Denial erases those memories from your consciousness. You can’t readily access them.
Accepting that your parents failed you and that you are still under the influence of childhood wounds can be a hard pill to swallow. Who wants to dredge up and relive bad memories and feelings? Denial is the path of least resistance—less painful and difficult than trying to process what left you so broken.
However, you can’t heal what you can’t describe—or acknowledge. Eventually, you must face the truth head-on.
Here’s the question: What truth must you face about what your parents should have given you, the ways they failed, the wounds you carry around, and the characteristics you exhibit as a result?
You can try to forget, put up a wall, tell yourself not to take what you missed personally, and mask your pain for years—even decades. But denial will not hide the dysfunction. And not facing the truth most definitely will not help you break the cycle. Until you face your demons, they will continue to haunt you.
The process of facing the truth is both simple and complex. It’s complex because we are woefully human, finite, and fragile, and while our spirits are willing, our flesh is weak. It’s simple because just as the body is designed to heal itself, so is the brain.
If you’re lost in a forest, it’s a good idea to shimmy up a tree to gain some perspective. The same idea applies when we are emotionally lost as well.
Like climbing a tree, prayer provides perspective. There’s no better starting point in this process than to ask God for healing. Ask God to reveal your hidden hurts, as well as the obvious ones.
Giving your mind permission to activate buried thoughts and experiences will activate a healthy process of recalling what happened to you.
Scripture
Reflection & Discussion
Day 5: Forgiving Your Parents Heals You
One Thanksgiving early in our marriage, my wife and I went to my parents’ home to celebrate my brother’s safe return from war. All three of my brothers, our mom and dad, my wife, and I gathered around the dinner table for the first time in many years.
Instead of zipping through the usual prayer, Dad bowed his head and said reverently, “Dear God, Mom and I just want to start by saying thank you…” That was as far as he got. He started heaving with tears, excused himself, and rushed into their bedroom.
I followed and asked, “Dad, what’s wrong? Are you okay? What just happened?”
After he regained his composure, he said, “I’m okay. It’s just that your mother and I never thought we would ever see our four boys together again in the same room.”
Something softened in me that day, and because I had been freely forgiven by God for my sins, I silently forgave my parents for theirs.
Maybe your parents are living, maybe not. Maybe you have a good relationship with your parents, maybe not. Maybe your relationship is civil, maybe not. Whatever your relationship with your parents is like, the elephant in the room is forgiveness.
Forgiving is not dismissing or pretending that your wounds never happened. After all, there would be no need for forgiveness unless somebody had done something wrong. You’re not sweeping a parent’s sins under the rug, nor are you saying that forgiveness alone will erase the years of hurt.
But without forgiveness, the future of your relationship with your parents will look no different from the past.
Jesus teaches unilateral forgiveness. We are to forgive people when they sin against us—whether they’re sorry or not, and whether they’ve asked to be forgiven or not.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to pray: “And forgive us our debts [sins], as we also have forgiven our debtors [those who have sinned against us]” (Matthew 6:12).
Of all the lofty thoughts compressed into what we call the Lord’s Prayer, note that the first idea Jesus chose to expand is forgiveness.
He continued: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
Jesus does not teach that an apology is necessary. We are to forgive regardless.
The uniqueness of biblical forgiveness is that even when your parents don’t deserve it, are no longer alive, or show no remorse, you can forgive them.
Why does it matter? When you don’t forgive, you are the one who suffers most. Accumulated unforgiveness is like a festering wound that gets infected when not treated.
Forgiveness is about releasing your mind, heart, soul, and spirit from bondage. Forgiving your parents will help heal you.
Scripture
Reflection & Discussion
I hope you found these devotionals helpful and hopeful. Please share with your friends, and let’s get the message out: Your wounds may describe you but they don’t have to define you.
You are not responsible for what happened to you as a child. But you’re the only one who can do something about it now.
Much love always,
Pat
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