About
The wound is the place where hope was crushed. The scar is what may form, slowly and imperfectly, when you keep going anyway.
What is Wounded Hope?
Hope is not always the problem.
Sometimes the problem is what happens to hope when it meets reality — when a prayer goes unanswered for longer than you expected, when a relationship that was supposed to hold quietly comes apart, when a faith that once felt solid begins to feel like something you are performing rather than something you actually have.
Something in you still believes, or wants to. But the hope you carried before — the neat, confident, everything-will-work-out hope — may not fit anymore.
Wounded Hope is a name for that experience. The wound is the place where hope was crushed, or turned out to be something other than what it seemed. The scar is what may form, slowly and imperfectly, when you keep going anyway.
Scar tissue is different from the original skin. It may, in time, be tougher — though that is not always how it feels in the early days. What it is, without question, is evidence. Evidence that something happened here. Evidence that it was survived.
This ministry is not a recovery programme. It does not promise to return you to the faith you had before. That faith, in its old form, may not be coming back — and pretending otherwise has not, in our experience, helped anyone.
What it does offer is companionship for the road as it actually is. Writing for the person who is still in the middle of it. Honest about the wound, and quietly hopeful — perhaps — about what may yet form where the wound was.
The road is long. You are not walking it alone.
Sometimes the problem is what happens to hope when it meets reality — when a prayer goes unanswered for longer than you expected, when a relationship that was supposed to hold quietly comes apart, when a faith that once felt solid begins to feel like something you are performing rather than something you actually have.
Something in you still believes, or wants to. But the hope you carried before — the neat, confident, everything-will-work-out hope — may not fit anymore.
Wounded Hope is a name for that experience. The wound is the place where hope was crushed, or turned out to be something other than what it seemed. The scar is what may form, slowly and imperfectly, when you keep going anyway.
Scar tissue is different from the original skin. It may, in time, be tougher — though that is not always how it feels in the early days. What it is, without question, is evidence. Evidence that something happened here. Evidence that it was survived.
This ministry is not a recovery programme. It does not promise to return you to the faith you had before. That faith, in its old form, may not be coming back — and pretending otherwise has not, in our experience, helped anyone.
What it does offer is companionship for the road as it actually is. Writing for the person who is still in the middle of it. Honest about the wound, and quietly hopeful — perhaps — about what may yet form where the wound was.
The road is long. You are not walking it alone.
About
David Mercer
