The Woe, The Wound, The Womb and the Umbilical Connection

How the devil turns our wounds into an identity—and how Mary leads us back to belonging

There is something sinister about the way the devil works.

He doesn't always need to make us openly reject God. Sometimes he does something far more subtle: he takes a wound we already carry and builds a lie around it.

Then he repeats the lie until we stop hearing it as a lie.

We begin hearing it as our own voice.

You are unworthy.

You are dirty.

You are a hypocrite.

You are an old creep pretending to be holy.

Look at what goes on inside your head. What kind of Christian are you?

You are a pervert.

This is who you really are.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, something terrible happens.

A lie becomes an identity.

We stop saying, "I struggle with this."

We begin saying, "This is me."

We stop saying, "I have a wound."

We begin saying, "Something is fundamentally wrong with me."

And once shame becomes identity, the devil doesn't even have to push very hard anymore. We begin doing his work for him.

The Devil Knows Where We Are Wounded

I have been thinking deeply about the role of the demonic in my own healing.

I have come to see something far more subtle: the devil knows how to exploit our wounds.

He knows the places where we feel abandoned.

The places where we feel unwanted.

The places where we feel small.

The places where we carry shame.

The places where we secretly believe we are defective.

And he knows how to whisper precisely there.

The whisper is rarely, "Go and destroy yourself."

It is more likely:

"You already are this person."

That is the trap.

Because once I believe that a sinful behavior reveals my identity, I stop fighting for freedom and begin surrendering to inevitability.

"That's just who I am."

And then the very thing I hate becomes the thing I expect from myself.

The wound becomes the doorway.

The lie becomes the interpretation.

The shame becomes the identity.

And the sinful coping becomes the place I return to whenever the wound is triggered.

A vicious circle is born.

I Told My Spiritual Director: "I Still Think I'm a Pervert."

Recently, while speaking with my spiritual director about my healing, I told him something I had always felt lurking deep down.

I told him that I still tend to think I am a pervert.

Even though I am trying to heal.

Even though I want holiness.

Even though I genuinely desire to love as Christ did.

There is still this voice hovering somewhere inside me:

"After this meeting, you'll probably go back to the internet and look at something obscene."

I asked him:

"Is this the work of the demonic?"

He didn't give me a theological lecture.

Instead, he asked me to try something.

He asked me to imagine myself curled up inside the womb of Mary.

My immediate reaction was resistance.

"I don't feel connected to Mary."

Then came another thought:

"And I don't deserve to be there."

There it was again.

The same voice.

The same accusation.

The same lie.

You don't belong there.

But my spiritual director persisted.

So I tried again.

And something changed.

I Entered the Womb

As I allowed myself to imagine being there, the heavy burden that had been sitting on my chest—almost like a great boulder—simply lifted.

I felt safe.

Secure.

Attached.

I felt held by my mother.

I felt wanted.

Needed.

Cherished.

Delighted in.

And then my spiritual director asked me a remarkable question:

"What about what you wanted to watch?"

I searched inside myself.

And the strangest thing had happened.

The thing that had seemed so compelling moments before suddenly felt...

alien.

Rubbish.

Irrelevant.

I couldn't even understand why I had wanted it.

I hadn't defeated the temptation through sheer willpower.

I hadn't argued with it.

I hadn't shouted at myself.

Something deeper had happened.

I had moved from isolation into attachment.

And the counterfeit suddenly lost its power.

Perhaps the Devil's Greatest Lie Is Separation

That experience made me see something I had not understood before.

Perhaps the devil doesn't merely tempt us toward particular sins.

Perhaps he wants us to believe the lie underneath them:

You are alone.

You are unwanted.

You don't belong.

There is something wrong with you.

You have to find your own way to feel okay.

And once we believe that, we become vulnerable to all kinds of counterfeit comforts.

The devil doesn't have to convince us that evil is beautiful.

Sometimes he only has to convince us that we are too broken to want what is beautiful.

That is why shame is so powerful.

Shame doesn't merely say:

"You did something wrong."

Shame says:

"You are wrong."

It doesn't say:

"You fell."

It says:

"You are the kind of person who falls."

It doesn't say:

"You are tempted."

It says:

"This temptation reveals the real you."

And when we believe that, the lie becomes our personality.

But Mary Is Precisely Where the Enemy Doesn't Want Us to Go

This is where Mary has become extraordinarily important to me.

The devil knows who Mary is.

She is not merely a comforting religious figure.

She is the woman whose fiat opened the door through which Christ entered the world.

She is the Mother of Jesus.

She is the Mother given to us by Christ.

She is the woman Scripture presents in the ancient promise of the woman and her offspring.

She is the woman who crushes the head of Satan.

And the Church has never been afraid to see in her the woman who stands in opposition to the serpent.

The devil wants us separated from the place of belonging.

Mary draws us toward her Son.

So perhaps it is precisely there that he wants to keep us away.

"Don't go there."

"You don't deserve her."

"You're not connected to Mary."

"You're pretending."

"You're too dirty."

"You're too old."

"You're too sinful."

"You don't belong inside that family."

But perhaps that is exactly the accusation I need to recognize for what it is.

Because the first thing I experienced when I finally entered that imagined womb was not condemnation.

It was belonging.

Her Womb Became a Place of Safety

So now I have an image I want to carry with me.

When I sense a gaze, a word, a situation or a temptation beginning to whisper:

"You're going to be made small."

I want to jump—not deeper into myself, not into shame, not into the internet, not into the old coping mechanism—but into the place where I know I belong.

Into my mother's womb.

I imagine myself curled up there.

Safe.

Attached.

Wanted.

Cherished.

And I imagine that umbilical cord connecting me directly to my mother.

I am not floating in some meaningless universe.

I am connected.

I am being nourished.

I am not abandoned.

I am not alone.

And I remind myself:

Her life is my life.

Her food is my food.

I am where Jesus was.

Her Son is my Saviour.

Her God is my Father.

His mother is my mother.

I am wanted.

I belong right here—in the womb of my Mother and in the Body of Christ.

The womb becomes, for me, an image of the Church—the place where I am incorporated into Christ, nourished by grace and held within a family larger than myself.

I don't have to manufacture my belonging.

I don't have to earn my right to be loved.

I don't have to prove that I am worthy before I come home.

I am already being invited home.

The Lie Says: "You Are a Pervert."

But what if I answer:

"That is not my name."

The lie says:

"You are a hypocrite."

I answer:

"I am a wounded man being healed."

The lie says:

"You don't belong."

I answer:

"I belong to Christ."

The lie says:

"You are alone."

I answer:

"I have a mother."

The lie says:

"This is who you are."

I answer:

"No. Christ tells me who I am."

And perhaps that is where the battle really is.

Not simply in whether I click a particular link.

Not simply in whether I resist a particular temptation.

But in who gets to name me.

The devil wants to name me according to my wounds.

Christ wants to name me according to His love.

And when that ancient whisper comes again—

"You are dirty."

"You are a fraud."

"You are a pervert."

"You don't belong."

"This is who you are."

—I want to remember that umbilical cord.

And say:

I know where I belong.

I am wanted here.

I am cherished here.

I am not abandoned.

I am not alone.

I belong to Christ.

And perhaps the most beautiful part is this:

The very place where I once believed I was most unworthy to enter became the place where I discovered that I was most deeply wanted.

The devil used my wound to tell me that I didn't belong.

Mary helped me discover that I do.

And once I know where I belong, the old counterfeit doesn't look nearly as attractive anymore.