Our English word “trauma” comes from Greek around the late 17th century. In Greek, the word “trauma” means “wound.”
My favorite verses around the binding of wounds are from Ezekiel 34 and Psalm 147. Through Ezekiel, God promises, “I will seek out the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the wounded, and strengthen the weak.” Similarly, the psalmist says, “God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
To me, this isn’t the EMTs’ work of applying a tourniquet or other immediate measures in the field. EMTs work quickly to stabilize the patient to transfer them to a clinical setting. Binding the wounds is the work in the Emergency Department of unwrapping the bandages in order to access the wound to clean it, to assess its severity, and to determine treatment. Once the wound has been cleaned and assessed, then it is bound a second time in the Emergency Department. This second bandage may be short-lived if the wound requires immediate surgery, or it may be in place for longer. Regardless, in the end, none of these bandages are permanent. If you do a Google image search for “bind wound,” Google will show you a row of Band-Aid boxes. `
However, while we are good at promptly taking bandages off physical wounds after they are no longer needed, we do not always do the same for mental and emotional wounds. We sometimes leave bandages on those types of wounds for so long that we forget about them. I am currently working as an outpatient mental health chaplain, which means I visit with patients one-on-one over the course of a few months. At some point during these months they often tell me that they are talking about things that they’ve never thought about before or that they rarely have told anyone before. I hear such comments to mean that we are airing out old wounds that had been bandaged for a while. The fact that they are willing to engage in that work with me session after session tells me that they respond well to my gentleness and care.
Binding wounds with gentleness and compassion is perhaps the most important part of all. Treating wounds with tenderness isn’t because we are fragile. Binding wounds with care shows that we are precious and worthy of such care. It restores dignity in what are often undignified situations. It affirms our common humanity as beloved children of God.