You cannot be healed of a wound you ignore.
There is a Jason Gray song called The Golden Boy and The Prodigal. In it Jason Gray paints a vivid and striking picture which has remained with me since the first time I heard the song several years ago. The image has rested behind my mind’s eye like a flame after you’ve stared. The image is this; you (or me) as two separate people. The first, the “Golden Boy,” is an illusion of one’s own creation. A carefully constructed clone if you will, manufactured for the purpose of perfection. The second, “The Prodigal” is broken and seemingly weak. Weathered by life, sin, shame, and heartbreak this version is the picture of need but is painfully and acutely aware of his/her need.
Gray describes it like this…
“One of them’s the Golden Boy, the man I’d like to be
I show him off in the parades for all the world to see
The other is other is much weaker and he stumbles all the time
The source of my embarrassment he’s the one I try to hide.”
I think I met my Prodigal a few weeks ago. Unable to stand being locked away and kept quiet for another moment I met her briefly in a haze of screams and thrashing, a temper tantrum. I think that’s how I recognized her, you see everything about my Golden Gal is contrived and calculated. Her approach to anger uses words and strategy (and not always for good), but this was different. Even in my wildness, there was simplicity. What I think my Prodigal wanted was to be heard, to be remembered.
“I’m not easy with confessions
It’s hard to tell the truth
But I have favored the golden boy
While the other I’ve abused
And he takes it like a man
Though he’s longing like a child
To be loved and forgiven
And share the burden for a while”
This part of me that I had locked away is where all the hurt lives. She is where all the pain and frustration and most of the loneliness lives. So if I truly want to be healed, or delivered or sanctified bringing the Golden Gal does me no good, she’s only an illusion, an essence of the things I wish I was.
Perhaps you’re having trouble with that too, “God I thought I was healed or delivered from that hurt or pain, why is it still plaguing me?” Now, some wounds go deep so it is possible that like other treatments you may need another round. However, it may be possible that when you came to be delivered the first time you didn’t send the version of yourself that really needed the deliverance. Perhaps you sent a proxy instead. When you go to church on Sunday or on your knees to pray each day is it the Golden Boy or The Prodigal you send? Here is a hint: were your prayers flowery and minty fresh? Were you more concerned with hiding your tears than crying them? Were you more concerned with your, or other people’s, pitch than God’s presence during worship? If so you may be sending the wrong version of you to serve. The Golden Boy believes he is already righteous because of all he does, but The Prodigal knows he is not for the same reason.
Jesus Girl 