The Wound

This is a good chapter in this book and many people can relate to this. Eldredge gives examples of families who's son's grow up wounded. By wounded he means wasn't given direction from one parent or the other. When we are young we need the love and nurturing from our mothers they are kind and gentle to us and make us feel special. He relates the love of a mother as the closest love we can experience to God's love for us. So as we are young growing up we need our mothers tender loving care, but there becomes a point in a man's life where he needs to stop being a boy and become a man and that is where the father takes over.

Our fathers need to take us under their wing when we start boyhood so that we can start our journey to become a man. The father needs to teach us to play catch and throw a curve ball and take us hunting and fishing and possibly teach us a trade like carpentry like Jesus' father did. This is an essential time in a boy's life because he needs to be around men, if he doesn't he will never know what it's like to be a man. The father position doe's not have to be specifically with the biological father says Eldredge, but a boy needs to have some sort of male influence in his life someone to show him the ropes of being a man and receive male "manly" support and gain manly confidence from. Therefore the mother must "let go". Hopefully this will help to better understand the needs of a maturing boy/man's heart.