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Handling hurt calls for being willing to accept the truth no matter what it is. To do this, you have to find truth in yourself and sometimes it is not obvious. Truth can be buried inside where you can't reach it. A lot of unresolved things from the past can cover over the truth. These issues from the past are resolved by facing them head on when you are confronted with their symptoms. Just as it is easier to take a pill to get rid of a symptom rather than have surgery to remove the cause of the symptom, we would like to deal with our symptoms and leave the deeper root causes alone. These root causes can be very painful when touched.
Most of the time symptoms are brought to our attention by someone else, usually someone very close to us and it is easy to shift all the blame for the hurt onto them. It seems like it's all their fault and you are just protecting or defending yourself when you blame them. Your feeling of innocence or victimization can feel very real. However, whenever someone hurts us, there are always two people responsible. The hurt we feel is a negative reaction because that pain reveals to us a coresponding problem in ourselves. It is a symptom of something that needs resolved in us. We need to release the other person from our judgement on them and quit blaming them, understanding that it is their problem that they need to face and resolve and they are not doing it against us, they are not rejecting us, but are caught in a destructive pattern they don't know how to escape from. Maybe they are aware of the problem and are trying to resolve their past issues but this may not be the case. They may just know that they have a problem that overtakes them and they lose control and feel really bad but have no idea how to stop it. Life is not good for them having to live with the guilt and confusion of not being in control of how they are hurting the ones closest to them. There always seems to be one person that initially causes hurt to the other. Then the other responds and hurts back. This is because each has a corresponding problem they are refusing to look at and resolve. It doesn't really matter which one starts it because they need each other to keep the patterns going. Sometimes two people feel a lot of energy between them. This is because unconsciously they need each other to grow past very strong negative patterns that they can't bring up and handle alone. The strong feelings have to be there or they wouldn't stay together to deal with the problems. Sometimes the hurt can be so bad that only a powerful commitment can keep them together. I think this commitment would have to be to God, and for things to get resolved, both would have to surrender their individual wills to Him. Sending love instead of anger back to someone who has hurt us, no matter how hard it is to do so, helps us to see where we are also to blame, and both people can begin to heal because it breaks the patterns up. Neither is holding on to the blame or victim stance, instead each can feel empathy because the defensive feelings are no longer controlling their emotions. When we quit blaming the other person and face our own areas of error instead, our negative patterns will break up like a spring thaw. Words and sentences frozen into painful patterns of negative thought, start to melt, and water begins to flow, cleansing us inside from all the accumulation. When this happens, we see glimpses of truth underneath. This is the truth that reveals to us what we need to know about ourselves. We'll see with eyes that behold truth and reality instead of false images created by false emotions and needs. Then we'll know God's plan for our lives and accept it with joy. All the pain really comes from trying to run our own lives and do everything without God's help. If we would trust God, we would know how much he loves us and we would be happy with the love he gives us through others and we wouldn't try to control that love or redirect it somehow to make it what we think it should be. Another reason we have so much sorrow, is that we continually think we know more than God. God puts us together with someone and we immediately begin to organize the relationship according to how it best suits us and meets our needs. We scrutinize every detail of it for flaws, we compare it with other relationships to see if it measures up, we evaluate the other person to make sure he/she is giving enough and making us feel good. All of this sets the stage for some very negative scenes in the near future. We are just begging for those root causes to send up symptoms! Wouldn't it be wonderful to just accept what God gives us at every moment, pure and simple, just as it is. Accept the people in our lives as God's gift to us and accept the love he gives us through them unconditionally. If they don't meet our standards or expectations, love them anyway. God will remove them if he wants to. If he doesn't want to, then he has a plan for helping each of us through each other. Let God deal with the problems. Who ever is in our lives, God wants to love them through us and us through them. That's it, simple and straightforward. There are no problems too difficult for God to handle. It is not our place to judge anyone or to manipulate circumstances. We are to trust God and quickly obey when he tells us what to do. He will not only prepare the way for us to do that, but he will also be there with his love, strength and comfort through it all. |
