The Wound That Won't Close

Surgeons have long understood a principle that the rest of us resist: a wound must be debrided before it can heal. Debridement — the careful removal of dead, damaged, and infected tissue — is one of the oldest practices in medicine. The ancient Greek physician Galen described it in the second century, and modern wound care still depends on it today. The procedure is often painful. A clinician must cut away what looks like it belongs, tissue the patient might want to protect, because beneath that familiar surface, infection is spreading.

Unforgiveness works the same way. We hold onto the injury because it has become part of us. We have rehearsed the story so many times that the wound feels almost like an organ, something we cannot live without. But medical research confirms what the soul already knows. Dr. Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet at Hope College found that when subjects merely recalled grudges, their cortisol levels spiked, their heart rates climbed, and their blood pressure rose. The body was responding to a wound that refused to close because the dead tissue had never been removed.

Forgiveness is the debridement of the soul. It is not pretending the cut never happened. It is letting the Great Physician remove what has died so that living tissue can finally grow in its place.

You cannot heal what you will not release. But the God who made your body to mend itself made your spirit the same way — if you will let Him work.