Pretending There Is No Pain

The act of pain-suppression is never a good remedy for healing... it only makes our pain more concentrated; more acute.

When you are wounded, hurt, or in pain, the way to really deal with it is to name it.

Naming our pain is like turning on the light when we hear noises in the house.  It becomes striped of its capacity to hold us in fear.  When we name our pain we define it; creating boundaries in which it can no longer roam anywhere it pleases.

Our naming constructs a container that can hold corrosive contents.

While pain-suppression tries to convince that there is no pain (so keep going on your merry way), naming our pain gives us the space to breathe again, to catch our breath, pause, turn, stare it in the eyes and tell it that we will not be held hostage any longer.

Call pain out of the shadows, bring it front-and-center and no longer let it hold you in fear.

It Will Not Dismay

Love; it will not betray you

Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free

Be more like the man you were made to be

- Mumford and Sons, Sigh No More

Others can only give you glimpses to the depth and fullness of Love; for others also know how to take things away: innocence, hope and ironically, even love.  Filtered and dispensed through imperfect people, Love can woo us closer and then abruptly leave us abandoned.  We've smelled it's sweet aroma and have been repulsed by its foul stench.  When left to manage on our own, Love plays games.

We feel foolish, silly, skeptical, angry, jaded, wounded, pissed, embittered, cynical, hurt.

We swear to the stars and vow to the heavens that we will not let "love" do this to us again.  And so having tasted its fickle flavor we pass on its future offerings. 

Yet this is not the true nature of Love.

Love given from the Source is free from all impurities.  It has never been touched or tainted by another and it is given without a catch, a hitch, or strings attached.  If you drink this Love from the Deep Well you will be forever refreshed.

More like you were made to be.

May you, in spite of past experience be open to receive from Love.  May it quench your longing, free your pain, and imbold you to forgive.

When We Are Wronged (Philemon: A Response Of Hope pt.3)

What do we do when we've been wronged? How should we respond when others have hurt us? Paul's letter to Philemon speaks to these questions (listen to "when you've been wronged" podcast).

We all have people in our life that we have trusted and invested in. Part of our human experience are those moments when our trust in people was taken advantage of...our good nature used and abused.

Sadly, when we are wronged it is not only the immediate pain that we experience, but its lasting consequences that have such a devastating effect. When others inflict hurt on us it changes our perception of people and this world. We become less trusting, slower to invest in others, and increasingly cynical.

In these moments we have a number of various responses. Some of us try to forget, others hold a grudge, and still some decide to fight back. Although these responses may be a natural reaction, for many of us they fail to bring true lasting peace. Over and again Jesus speaks of our response to be one of forgiveness (Matthew 6:14-15).

Forgiveness does not equate to "forgetting" (much of the pain others inflict on us changes the composition of relationships making forgetting virtually impossible)...there are consequences to the hurt others cause. When one forgives, the pain and consequence of the hurt is still acknowledged yet something else takes place.

When we forgive we are communicating to the other that they no longer "owe us" anything, setting them free from any debt they may have outstanding. Further, forgiving another human being sets us free from the need to collect on the debt owed. When we forgive we no longer have to exert energy, time, and emotion on collecting what another cannot give us (how can an individual give us back our innocence?).

The hope of the Gospel is that forgiveness sets us all free from the hurt we cause one another in the hopes that a true reconciliation of all things might occur.

Grace and peace.