What If It’s Not About Them?
The hidden wounds of belonging that cause us to react.
Often, our strongest reactions to others—at work, at home, or in our faith communities—are not really about them.
They are mirrors, revealing places in us that still ache.
As Rumi wrote:
“The wound is where the light enters the body.”
I was reminded of this truth years ago through a coworker who triggered me deeply. He had obvious flaws—carelessness, a lack of emotional intelligence—which made it easy for me to point the finger outward. His comments made me feel small. Insignificant. Little.
But he wasn’t creating something new in me.
He was pressing on a tender place in my story—a belonging wound that had not healed.
I share this more fully in The Way of Befriending, but in my twenties I came close to pursuing a musical career. I came close—close enough to taste it. I was in conversation with Universal Records. Then, without warning, I was ghosted. The dream quietly collapsed.
What followed wasn’t just disappointment. It was disorientation.
Who am I?
Who can I trust?
What else am I actually good at?
That wound manifested in insecurity, a need to prove myself, and an unconscious search for approval. So when this coworker—through thoughtlessness—awakened those old questions, I reacted. Strongly. Defensively. What looked like anger toward him was actually grief in me.
All of it was compounded by stress, pressure, and working a job that paid the bills but starved the soul.
That unhealed belonging wound seeped into every part of my life. I became addicted to compulsively buying musical instruments—trying, in my own way, to keep the dream alive. I felt unseen and unappreciated at work. Inside, I was fractured.
Grace found me in an unexpected way.
One day, overwhelmed and distracted, I accidentally placed one of my favorite guitars next to a space heater. When I noticed it later, there was a crack in the back—right down the middle. A melody began looping in my head: right down the middle…
I wrote the song “Beautiful Scar” as I realized something profound: even a cracked guitar can still make beautiful music. I saw myself in it. Wounded, yes—but still valuable. Still capable of song. Inherently worthy.
But the guitar wasn’t the only thing that needed attention.
With a trusted friend, I entered an accountability journey—AA-style in spirit—where I began parting ways with the excess I never needed to soothe the ache. Since then, I’ve let go of twelve guitars.
Over time, I also made peace with that coworker—not by fixing him, but by owning my own story in our conflicts. I stopped asking him to carry wounds that were mine to heal. Eventually, I left that job—not in bitterness, but in alignment—to write a new story.
And that guitar?
By grace (and good insurance), it was given a new body while keeping the old neck.
Old and new, joined together.
It still sings.
And it still bears a scar.
A beautiful scar.
The birthplace of a new song.
🎶Live performance of “Beautiful Scar”
An invitation:
What if the people who trigger us are not obstacles to our healing—but unexpected guides?
What if befriending begins not with changing the Other, but with tending the wounded places within us?
In a world quick to react, judge, and divide, befriending invites us to slow down, tell the truth about our wounds, and allow light to enter—right down the middle.
That is where new songs are born.
Thank you for this. It’s a beautiful song