I Examined My Life. It Hurt. | The Warrior Medic

For eight episodes we named the wounds. Today we walk through the door into the healing phase.

When I finally looked — really looked — at what was actually inside me, I was crushed. Not by what had been done to me. By what I had become.

And that's when someone showed up. Not a religion. Not a church. A person. With a name. His name is Jesus.

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This content is for healing, education, and awareness. If you are struggling, please reach out to a mental health professional or call a crisis line. You are not alone.

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Transcript

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As I said in a previous episode, Socrates once said the unexamined life isn't worth living. I used to think that was just philosophy, and I really wasn't into philosophy. But I found out while I was living in Saudi Arabia that this was actually a warning. This episode is for the man whose name is Wounds, who's felt something shift over the last few weeks, the one who is ready, maybe for the first time in his life, to stop surviving and start healing. But it's also for the man who isn't really sure he's ready yet. Because honestly, I wasn't either. Hi, I'm Bill, and this is the Warrior Medic. For eight episodes, we've been naming wounds. We've been tracing where they came from, and we've been learning a language to name what we've had to carry all these years. That was necessary. You can't heal what you won't or can't name. But naming it was never the destination. It was just the door, and today we're going to walk through that door. Welcome to the healing phase. I want to be honest with you about what this phase is and what it's not. It is not a program or a checklist. It's also not a set of steps that fixes you if you follow them all correctly. And it's not forgetting what happened. It's not time. Time doesn't heal wounds. Time just ages them. And it's not even willpower. You cannot discipline your way out of a wound that lives below the level where willpower can reach. Healing is the hardest work you've ever done. And healing is brutally honest self-examination. It's a relationship with the only one who's ever actually healed this kind of damage in a man's very soul. And it starts with something most men have never done. It starts with looking, really looking at what's actually inside you. So we're back to this. Socrates. The unexamined life is not worth living. And for most of my life, I thought I'd examined my life. I had examined my wounds, what was done to me, the father who installed the rage, and the boy who survived what he shouldn't have had to survive. But what I had never examined, and what most men never examine, was what I had become because of those wounds, what I was capable of, what I actually was when nobody was watching. I saw a man who could look at a woman, a woman who was someone's daughter, someone's wife, or someone's mother, and mentally defile her without a second thought, and call myself a good man. I saw a man who demanded forgiveness for every failure and mistake of his own, yet absolutely refuse to forgive anyone who had wounded him. And he also called himself a good man. And I saw a man who carried hatreds he had never named, cruelties he was capable of that he had never admitted, a meanness that lived just beneath the surface of the performance. And I had spent decades believing I was a good man. The unexamined life had been lying to me the entire time. I was in Saudi Arabia working as a defense contractor. I was living in a Muslim nation where the gospel of Jesus Christ is forbidden, where talking about him openly could mean imprisonment or worse. And God chose that moment, that place, to introduce himself to me. I was reading the Bible in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter nine, and as if sunlight through clouds, something broke open. God revealed his eminence to me in that passage. He showed me how he is intimately involved in every detail of literally everything, every person, every decision, every life, death, victory, defeat, without losing track of a single detail. And the size, the vast size of God, the weight of that, it hit me like a physical thing. My life, with all its highs and lows, with the wounds, the rage, and the mask and the performance, all of it, had been equally seen, equally known. He had never looked away. In that moment, the self-examination happened. All of it, all at once. And I saw what I what I was, what I had been. I saw what I was capable of. And honestly, I was crushed, not by God's condemnation, but by the raw truth about myself that I had never been willing to face. And it brought me to my knees, not as a religious gesture, but as a broken man with nowhere else to go. And I said something I had never said before, out loud. God, I am not able. I am not capable of doing the reformation this requires. I can't clean this up, and I can't fix what I am. And most amazingly, God answered, not audibly, but as clear as anything I've ever heard. That's my job. You just turn. I did, and he did. Later, my Arab friends, Muslim men that I worked alongside, would often ask me if I was a Christian. And I would say no. And they'd be surprised because they knew I was a believer, because I was different. So they'd ask, then, what are you? And I'd tell them, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, the one you think is a prophet, but I know he's the Son of the Living God. No, not a Christian, not a church, not a ritual performer, a follower of a person with a name, and that name is Jesus. And I want to be clear about something because I know some of you have been burned by religion, by churches and by people who claim to follow him and didn't look anything like him. I am not asking you to become a Christian, and I am not asking you to join a church, and I am not asking you to perform a ritual. I'm telling you that in the desert in Saudi Arabia, a broken man, brought to his knees, admitted he couldn't fix himself, and when he did, someone showed up. Not a religion and not a person. The same person who said, Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. And I learned what that meant in Saudi Arabia, where talking about him could cost you everything. And he protected me anyway. He led me to conversations I never saw, and he stood by me in rooms where his name was dangerous. That's not religion, that's a friendship. And he's the only one, the only one who has ever actually healed this particular damage and a man's soul that you and I are suffering with. Not a program, not a counselor, and not a self-help framework. Jesus. Just him. I'm not going to tell you that accepting Jesus fixes everything overnight. It doesn't. Healing is a process, a long one, and a hard one. But here's what I know. The healing happens as you become more like him. Not before, not after, in the process of pursuing becoming like him. I could never forgive my father, not on my own. The hatred was too deep, the wounds were too real, and the damage was too great. But as I began truly desiring to be like Jesus, I found that forgiveness wasn't just possible, it was necessary and releasing, but hear me out. It was necessary not for my father's benefit, but for my own. The healing didn't come before the forgiving. The healing came in the forgiving. That's how it works, not steps on a whiteboard, but in a relationship with a person who walks the road with you. And that road leads somewhere real. So again, I'm going to ask one thing, not a list. This week I want you to ask one question out loud, alone, wherever you are. God, if you're real, show me what's actually inside me. That's it. That's the prayer. You don't have to plead He'll answer you. You don't even have to clean yourself up first. You don't have to do anything. Just ask. Because in my experience, He answers. And what He shows you will change everything. So be prepared. I wrote about all of this in Forged by Fire. The Saudi Arabia moment, the knees, the conversation with God that changed the direction of my entire life. It's all there. If your desire is to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, that hit subscribe. I can't promise you'll change overnight, but I can promise we'll walk this journey together. Remember, we're all becoming warrior medics. Reach back, help someone on their journey. My name is Bill. This is the Warrior Medic. No man left behind.