A Road Toward Healing and Home
A Feature Review of
Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself–and to God–When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering
Chuck DeGroat
Paperback: Tyndale Refresh, 2024
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Reviewed by Ann Byle
The story of Adam and Eve is much more than a tale of sin, deception, and being kicked out of the garden of Eden. It’s not about God being furious at those sinful humans but, as Chuck DeGroat reframes it, God showing up “in compassion and with curiosity, reconnecting even amidst the radical rupture, his voice a homing beacon.”
DeGroat’s new book (his most recent previous book is When Narcissism Comes to Church) digs deep into the three questions God asks Adam and Eve as he seeks them out in the garden, turning those questions from what seems like angry demands to queries of love.
Where are you?
Who told you?
Have you eaten from the tree?
DeGroat points these questions to ourselves as well. Where are you? becomes questions about our disconnections to ourselves and others, loneliness, and how our bodies let us know when our inner self is out of sync. Who told you? becomes a deep look at our earliest stories and how they shape us, connecting to the parts of ourselves we’ve buried and ignored, as well as honoring our suffering. Have you eaten from the tree? becomes a look at the addictions that fill our hunger, healing our dark places, and, finally, finding our way Home to the God who loves us.
Readers will walk the path of healing that DeGroat provides via his own experiences, examples from his professional practice, and from current and past folks farther along on the journey, from psychologist Peter Levine to King David, from former Trappist monk James Finley to author and therapist Aundi Kolber. He also offers, in each chapter, a list of further resources, reflection questions, and a practice to deepen the impact of each chapter’s study.
“As you’re asked to attend to the healing within you, you’ll learn how to consider your own wounds, to acknowledge the possibility of a disconnection within that is keeping you stuck and blocking the path to joy and flourishing. You’ll then be invited to discover real rest and renewal as you reconnect with God, others, and yourself,” says DeGroat in his introduction.
He indeed offers a way into our own healing, a way to find the Home God offers his beloved children. He’s a gentle guide but also a steady one who encourages those who have taken the journey through Healing What’s Within to extend the same guidance to others.
“Because you’ve grown in courage, you now get to pursue,” he says. “With your kind queries, you now get to awaken the homing beacon within each wounded, weary, and wandering soul you meet.” The purpose for all of us is in DeGroat’s final words: “Remember this: God’s heart is always ready to help you find your way Home.”
Ann Byle
Ann Byle lives in West Michigan with her science teacher husband, Ray. Their young adult children are in and out regularly. Ann writes for Christianity Today and Publishers Weekly, among other publications, and is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens.
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