Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself–and to God–When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering

Chuck DeGroat has written a masterwork of Christian inner healing books. The author of When Narcissism Comes to Church gently and compassionately guides the reader in peeling back the layers of shame and hurt to reveal their heart’s true home within. “Disconnection,” he writes, “is the tale as old as time.” How we reconnect with our wounds (a necessary process) will lead us back to home, where our curious and loving God dwells, waiting to help us process the things that harm us in this broken world.

Adam and Eve are a through-line of the book, woven beautifully into the pages from start to finish. When they disconnected from God and each other in the Garden of Eden, they stood naked and ashamed, but God pursued them tenderly and asked them three questions.

“‘Where are you?’ God asks with heartache, longing to find us,” DeGroat writes. Though we might have always heard the question as punitive and accusatory, he contends that God’s questions to our original parents were infused with love.

“‘Who told you?’ God asks with compassion, curiously pursuing us. Where are we getting our messages from?

And finally, God asks, “‘Have you eaten from the tree?’” “God … is bringing our eyes to where we’ve chosen to cope—to numb, to soothe, to avoid—instead of abiding in his care and compassion.”

DeGroat invites his reader to soak in the presence of God, our compassionate witness, whose kindness never ends and who gently helps his children attune to their inner wounds, listening for the words of belonging and purpose being sung over us.

With vulnerability, superb word craft, and deep wisdom into the heart and soul, Healing From Within beckons readers to “return and retune, to awaken to the ancient whisper of love amidst the ache of alienation.” (Tyndale Refresh)