Blind Bart and Your Inner Child

There's this story in chapter 10 of Mark's Gospel where Jesus, the disciples, and a large crowd of his groupies are making their way through the streets of Jericho.  People are trying to get a glimpse of Jesus, the crowd is growing - Mark paints a pretty hectic scene.

Suddenly a blind man named Bartimaeus cries out, "Jesus, have mercy on me!"

He wants help.

He wants healing.

He wants Jesus to make things right.

He wants to see.

BUT.

What does the crowd do?  What do the disciples do?  Do they bring him?  Do they carry him to Jesus?  Do they clear the way so this man can get the help he needs?  You'd think so, you'd hope so ... right?  

But instead Mark tells us that, "many sternly ordered him to be quiet."

Ouch.

I've come to realize lately that there is a Bartimaeus living inside of all of us in the form of our "inner child".  This inner child is a smaller version of ourselves who lived through some traumatic experiences when we were younger.

Perhaps the trauma was picked up ...

At home.

At church.

At school.

In the locker room.

From a friend.

From a parent.

From a teacher.

From a neighborhood bully.

From a pastor.

... And perhaps it was physical or emotional or sexual or spiritually traumatic, and perhaps it happened with you were 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 or 15.

Whenever and wherever that traumatic experience happened, though, and whoever dealt it to you and whatever form it took, your body and your nervous system remember the incident and so whenever a similar incident arises in your life today, you respond in a way that is similar to how you might have responded then - you're triggered.

Maybe you lash out.

Maybe you close up.

Maybe you feel anxious.

Maybe you feel sad.

Maybe you cry.

Maybe you run away.

Maybe you feel a rush of feelings that come in out of nowhere.

That response is coming from your inner child, a smaller version of yourself who still lives inside of you and inside of your memory.  And whenever you feel that strong response stemming from some sort of incident in your current life, your younger self is remembering the traumatic experience that happened all those years ago ... and, like Bartimaeus, is crying out for help - asking you, asking Jesus, asking God, asking the Divine, asking some sort of power greater than itself to please swoop in and make the pain stop.

Our inner child is our Bartimaeus and so the question becomes, how will we respond?

Right?

Like the crowd, will we sternly tell our inner child to shut up so we can move on with life?  After all, we have jobs to do!  Kids to raise!  Bills to pay!  We don't have time for their whining and crying, so we need to shut them up so we can move on with our lives.

“I have more important things to do. I’m grown up now, so sit down and shut up.”

OR.

Will we take that child onto our knee and tell him or her or them the truth that they long to hear?  

That they long to hear?

That they deserve to hear?

That they SHOULD HAVE heard way back when that trauma was initially thrown at them?

Will we take the time to take ourselves and our inner child to a therapist to work through whatever issues we're struggling with inside?  

Will we do the hard thing and remove ourselves and our inner child from the presence of the person or situation that is re-creating that trauma from our past?  

Will we give that inner child the focused attention it deserves, but never received?  

YES: how will you respond to your Bartimaeus? 

Big questions, and how we answer them very well might change everything.

• Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE