Chicken Wire, Blisters, and Wounded Hearts

I had yet another chicken coop emergency. This is an ongoing issue. Here is behind-the-scenes footage of the first incident in case you need a laugh.

Anyway, I woke up one Saturday morning to find one of my chickens had been SNATCHED (RIP Ethel). There were feathers everywhere. EVERYWHERE I TELL YOU. To make matters worse, there wasn’t just one hole. There were two. Whatever had kidnapped and murdered Ethel came in one way and went out another.

Daniel and I weren’t married at the time or even engaged, but that obviously didn’t stop me from calling him at 7:00am because I was supposed to be going to Dallas for the day with my parents to celebrate my baby nephew’s first birthday. This obviously threw a wrench in my plans.

I knew the abductor would be back.

The chickens weren’t going to survive through the next night unless drastic measures were taken. The problem was…I only had a few hours before I had to leave, so we were going to have to tag-team it.

While I waited for Daniel to get there (he lived 30 minutes away at the time), I ran to Lowe’s to get some hardware cloth (I highly recommend this if you’ve got a chicken coop). We were going to have to rewire the entire coop. Ironically, redoing the chicken wire had been on my to-do list since the two old men drove 40mph from 2 hours away to deliver my Facebook Marketplace coop. I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

I’ve learned this is how my life typically goes. I put something off thinking I’ll get to it later, and then the next thing I know…Helen is now in heat and there’s a male cat lurking outside of her door in the middle of the night, hahahaha. GET YOUR GIRL CATS AND DOGS SPAYED, PEOPLE! Otherwise, you end up with a 6-month-old puppy who just became a lady before you were ready and now you have to spend the next 2+ weeks taking a diaper on and off her every time she uses the bathroom.

ANYWAY…you’re welcome for that life lesson!

When Daniel arrived, we immediately got to work. My job was to rip off the old chicken wire while he got his circular saw and began doing whatever boys do with a circular saw. I was ripping off chicken wire like nobody’s business. If there was an award for who can rip off chicken wire the fastest, I would have been an Olympic Gold Medalist. The only problem was—I didn’t wear gloves. WHAT WAS I THINKING!?

As you can probably assume, after my record-winning de-wiring, I got the World’s Biggest Blisters on my hands. They were MASSIVE—the biggest blisters you’ve ever seen…and they hurt like hell. How would I ever survive? How would I live to see another day?

I grabbed Neosporin, put bandaids on 4/10 fingers, and realized…I have a love/hate relationship with bandaids. Specifically, bandaids ON MY FINGERS. I love them because they keep my blisters from getting contaminated by foreign objects. I hate them because they keep me from experiencing the fullness of life. They’re very restricting…an inconvenience, I tell ya!

Thus, they lasted about a day.

I’d rather wince in pain when the soap hits them than constantly get my fingers stuck in my hair.

While I was taking my bandaids off, I got to thinking about the similarity between how we treat our hearts and how we utilize bandaids. Stay with me.

Have you ever been deeply wounded by someone you loved and who loved you? It really messes you up internally and you don’t quite know what to do with yourself after that, am I right?

Building new relationships becomes a struggle because we are terrified of getting hurt again. We begin reacting and responding in certain ways because we fear rejection. We fear being known and loved again because of where being known and loved got us—left with a broken heart and serious self-esteem issues.

Walls go up and stay up because we want to do everything we can to protect ourself from additional pain. Like those bandaids, we want to protect our wounded hearts from getting contaminated by foreign objects or further damage. We self-protect and stiff-arm others by refusing to let them get too close.

Ultimately, we withhold from others the men and women God created us to be and NOBODY IS BENEFITING.

I know because I’ve been there! In fact, I am still there at times—living to protect my wounded heart because of the damage done by someone I loved—but I don’t live there anymore. They no longer have a suffocating hold on me, and I thank God for that.

Here’s the thing—bandaids are restricting and limiting. Yes, they come in handy and get the job done whenever we first put them on, but we’re not meant to wear bandaids forever. They protect our wounds for a short while (which I do think is certainly needed), but ultimately they keep us from our full potential. They keep us from doing and acting as we normally would. They make us second-guess.

Eventually, we have to take them off and expose our skin and wounds to the elements around us that pose as a potential threat. We HAVE to in order to experience true freedom.

This, of course, puts us at risk of reopening the wound.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather risk reopening the wound than live the rest of my life covered in bandaids.

In the same way, we can’t protect our hearts forever. Eventually, we will have to expose them to the elements (people) that pose as a potential threat in order to be the men and women God created us to be!

There’s simply no other way.

There’s a quote I read not too long ago that says, “We must face the damage done to us by other people. When we honestly acknowledge how others have failed us, we begin to see how hard we work to avoid further injury by withholding from others whatever makes us feel vulnerable. Such withholding generates a longing within us to exist more fully with all that we are, to give our tenderness to others who may trample it underfloor, to move more strongly even though we may fail.”

I believe our wounds stay with us until we get to heaven and that, in a sense, they become a part of who we are here on earth. However, I don’t think they have to hold us captive. We are continually shaped by them, and they show up when we least expect it. As humans, it only makes sense that we want to protect ourselves and our hearts from further harm…but like my bandaids, we cannot experience life fully when we put up walls. We cannot offer others the beauty of Christ that is within us when we withhold pieces of ourselves from others.

I am ABSOLUTELY GUILTY of doing everything I can to avoid further injury. There are still times when I choose to self-protect (which is sin), but I don’t want to live in that place because I wouldn’t be living out the woman God created me to be. I can’t be the woman God created me to be while simultaneously self-protecting. There is zero way those two can coexist! ZERO WAY!

I long to care more about moving towards others and being the hands and feet of Jesus than keeping my heart from experiencing additional harm. I long to step into moments with trembling legs, choosing to believe God is using the wounds of my past to continue shaping me into the woman He longs for me to be.

I can carry the wounds made by others with me without being controlled by them! THAT, to me, is freedom…choosing to keep showing up and being the men and women God created us to be rather than being controlled by the wounds made by others!

I’m wondering about the wounds you’re carrying with you today, and what you’re doing with those wounds. I wonder how much you hurt. My eyes fill with tears as I think about the pain you must be experiencing because I’ve been there. I know healing is an excruciating process. I’d love to sit with you and hear your story, and then for us to brainstorm together what it looks like for us to show up again—broken and beat up, but fully and wholly as the men and women God created us to be nonetheless.

Let’s gently take those bandaids off and let’s go do life with people. We’ll wince at times and the sting will make us cuss. There will be moments when the ache in our hearts feels too painful, and it will be all we feel at times, but we can’t let the damage done to us by others hinder us from loving as we’re called to love.

Instead, we can take these wounds and allow them to create empathy in our hearts and lives, so we can sit beside others who are hurting and show them there’s a better way.