This is the story of two different wounds. The wounds start out similar, but the treatment and outcome for them are very different.

First—Meriwether Lewis of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Everyone has heard of Lewis and Clark and their heroic exploration of the West (Louisiana Territory). It’s a wonderful, inspiring, and true story. These guys were the real deal. What’s perhaps less well known is that Lewis suffered an accidental gunshot wound on the return trip to St. Louis. 

Lewis was mistaken for an elk by another member of the team and shot through the buttocks with a .54 cal. rifle ball. This was not so funny as one might assume—especially for Lewis. The ball entered his left buttock (narrowly missing the hip joint) and exited on the right side. The ball was recovered by Lewis as it had been stopped by his buckskin breaches. Even though it was what they call in the movies “just a flesh wound,” it was deadly serious and could easily have been fatal.

Lewis made it back to camp under his own power and treated the wound himself. Here’s the interesting part: he packed the wound to keep it open. That's right, he kept it open so it could heal from the inside out. Lewis was, after all, a Captain in the U.S. Army. He had received medical training and was familiar with gunshot wounds. This approach seems counterintuitive. One would think that it would be better to sew it shut and hope for the best. But by leaving it open and allowing it to drain and heal from the inside, the wound—although very painful—healed nicely. (It turned out that Clark helped him with the dressing, and Lewis spent several weeks face-down in the bottom of a canoe. I guess when you're shot in the butt, you find out who your real friends are in a hurry.)

The second story is about another Manly Man—although not many people have heard of him. He is one of my personal heroes: P.J.Pretorius.

P.J. was a very successful rancher and ivory hunter in Africa at the beginning of World War I. When war broke out, he was determined to reach a British controlled area, enlist, and do his duty fighting Germans and scouting for the British army and navy. The Germans, knowing how important he could be fighting against them, attempted to take him prisoner (or kill him) in an ambush. He was shot through both legs and spent the night in a river but was able to escape. (What a guy!) A single bullet had passed through the flesh of one leg and shattered the bone in the other.

The treatment for P.J.'s wounds was to close them up, bandage them, and hope for the best. This seemed to be the best thing to do but the results were disastrous. Both legs healed over on the outside, but one of them developed gangrene and became a black, swollen mess. P.J. knew it had to be opened and drained, but nobody in this little group would do it for him. So he did it himself, using the sharpest knife he could find. The pain was so bad he blacked out. When he woke up, he saw that he had only made a light scratch and would have to do it all over again! (Did I mention P.J. Pretorius is one of my heroes?) It saved his life. He went on to make many Germans suffer.

Here is the point.

When people hurt us or we experience misunderstandings, our first reaction is often to cover the wound and hope for the best. That is to say, “Let's not talk about it—just leave it alone. After a while, everyone will probably forget about it. Besides, it really hurts when I mess with it.” But when we do this, the problem is still there and may well be getting worse just under the surface. When it gets too painful and dangerous to ignore, we finally deal with it by opening it up to drain. It might have been better and less painful to use the Lewis approach: keep it in the open (talk about it) so it has a chance to heal from the inside out. This is going to hurt and it takes a special kind of courage but the outcome is better.

From time to time, we all get hurt and suffer wounds. We have to deal with people who hurt us, or are wrong, or are just plain evil. Just covering it up and hoping it goes away is a losing strategy. We need to bring things to the light. We have to do the right thing which means being assertive and sometimes confrontational. But it also means we have to be nurturing and loving. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

"Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed..." (James 5:16).