Have you ever been hurt? Yeah, me too. It sucks really. Your heart breaks. You cry. There are snot bubbles. Mixed emotions fill you up. Guess what? That’s supposed to happen.
What happens, though, when we refuse to let ourselves feel the pain? When we don’t allow the grieving process to really occur?
You can’t run from pain. It will catch up with you eventually.
There is an alternative, of course.
I’m marinating on this quote from Seth Barnes in the book, Kindgom Journeys:
“The alternative is to run. You can take a pill to make your pain go away. You can watch a movie. You can drink a beer or go to sleep. You can eat your banana muffin and your pint of ice cream. Those things will push away the pain… for a while.”
I think I’ve checked every one of those items off my list.
The unfortunate part? I woke up the next day and the pain was still there, as well as the muffin crumbs in the crease of my lips.
“But pain, like an infected wound, tends to grow worse with time. God designed it as a signal; a flashing light telling us something is wrong.”
What if we walked through the pain? What if we actually felt the emotions?
There was a time in my life when I fought letting pain in. I couldn’t show emotions because that would mean I was weak. I didn’t want people to know I was hurting, especially those who had hurt me.
But there’s only so much room to hold onto those things before you start to see the consequences rise up. For me, they were both physical and emotional. I broke down. I stopped sleeping. I lost my gallbladder. (Well, I didn’t technically lose it. It’s somewhere in the stockpile of gallbladders I guess, although I do have a picture.)
What if we allowed God to go through the pain with us? He wants to. He wants to talk about it with you. He wants you to explore where it came from. He wants you to see why He allowed it into your life.
Let’s stop fighting pain and actually start grieving it. Let’s replace bitterness with healing. Oh and by the way, we can still do it over banana muffins and ice cream—though I prefer frozen yogurt.
God is waiting for you. Are you ready?
What pain do you need to start going through today?
*Photo credit: thompsonwood
