A number of years ago, while working in the yard, I found myself trying to pull my short sleeves down to cover my upper arms. Until that moment, I’d avoided allowing the sun to touch this part of my body. That day it hit me, why do I protect my upper arms and not the rest of my arms from sunburn?

The four-inch scar on my mom’s upper arm came to mind. My mom has a huge chunk of flesh missing just below her shoulder because she had melanoma when I was a kid. I was so young that I don’t remember the life-saving surgery that left that ugly scar on my mom’s upper arm.

In the middle of pruning a rose bush, I realized I’d spent over thirty years protecting my upper arms because of something that happened to my mom. I didn’t have this scar on my body like her, but apparently, I had a scar deep in my subconscious that made me behave a certain way. For years, I had blindly protected my upper arms and didn’t know why.

Many of our behaviors are formed when we are very young. We don’t even remember what has shaped us. Fear is a terrible liar. It’s so easy to pass our own childhood fears along to our kids. We also pass on our excuses for staying unhealthy.

Like the man in the Gospel of John chapter 5 of the Bible who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years until Jesus spoke to him. “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another person steps down before me.”

Isn’t this so like us? We make excuses for our scars. Our unhealthy habits. We especially do this when we’ve lived with these disabilities nearly all our lives. This wound or scar or lie was planted in us as babes by our parents or some other caregiver or traumatic experience we ourselves had. Our mom and dad’s scars become our scars and these scars shape us into the parents we grow up to be.

Jesus’ response to the crippled man at the pool does not sound sympathetic or understanding. The Lord simply says, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”In that instant, the man is healed. After he is healed, he does what Jesus told him to do. He picks up his bed and walks.

Later on, when Jesus saw this man out strolling around, Jesus said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”Now that certainly isn’t a gentle thing to say to a person who has been lame his whole life. “Sin no more…” What does sin have to do with our scars and wounds and childhood trauma?

Actually, a lot. Because in our woundedness, we can lead our children into these same sins we struggle with. We fear. We worry. We doubt what the Bible says is true. And we teach our children these ungodly behaviors, creating a whole new generation of wounded, little folks who then raise another generation of wounded, little folks, and we don’t even know why we’re doing what we do.

It’s like the story of the Easter ham. A family was cooking a big, beautiful ham for the holiday. As the husband watched, the wife cut the end of the ham off and fed it to the dog. Then she tucked the rest of the ham into the pan before placing it in the oven.“Why did you do that? That was a perfectly good piece of ham you just gave the dog.”

“My mother always does this. I’ll call and ask her why this is done,” says the wife. On the phone, the mother tells the wife, “Well, your grandmother always does this. I’ll ask her about it.”

When eighty-year-old Grandma is asked to explain her ham preparation, she says, “I’ve used the same pan all my life and it only fits that size ham.”

Crazy, isn’t it? Everyone cutting off the end of the ham because grandma’s pan is too small.

Which takes us back to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to get well?” We need to be healed of the scars deep within us so we don’t pass them onto our children who might pass them on to their children. So how do we deal with our inner wounds so we don’t hurt our families?

I invite you to say this prayer with me if you want to get well: Dear Lord, please shine your light on my scars, my wounds, the lies I believe that are shaping the way I behave now. Please reveal and heal my brokenness so I don’t teach my children to be broken too. Show me how and why and where I need to heal. Bring strong friends into my life to walk beside me to the hospital of your love. Help me bathe in the Bible daily, like the invalid man who stepped down into the pool and was healed. Help me submerge myself in your Word and in your Holy Spirit. No more excuses. You don’t accept excuses, you accept repentance. Help me repent and get well. In Jesus name. Amen.