GOD'S PAIN PILL Series (Spiritual Interventions)

People whom have been hurt, especially deeply hurt, will do whatever they have to do to ignore or bury the pain, to minimize its hold on them.

A SPIRITUAL INTERVENTION

I don’t blame them.

We do what we have to do. I suppose this is because we don’t know what else to do. We don’t understand that that which happened to us in the past is now outworking in the very daily present. Those whom have been hurt will counter that pain in some way usually by putting something else in its place. That is where addictions and over-achieving and over-controlling and over-eating and other man-made idols and many self-coping pleasures come in.

There are endless ways we as a people pursue pleasures to remediate painful emotions: We substitute. We pursue the fun things that make life bearable, places or things we go to in an effort to find momentary happiness even though it is often elusive and temporary. The emptiness, the despair, the quiet desperation, the disappointment with life, and the sense that things aren’t quite right, is deep-sixed, ignored, bypassed, or remediated with an indulgence, activity or pursuit. We bury the pain to where it becomes hidden under lock and key, where no one is allowed to enter, not even ourselves.

We don’t go there.

We may lie to ourselves, excuse and justify—if it is something we have done wrong—or completely deny the whole thing. A person does whatever they have to do to deal with the hidden stuff. They often will find a substitute to self-medicate the injury especially if it is one of those over-the-top on the emotional Richter scale. We can’t always tell who are the ones who have those hidden hurts that trouble them. They may look good on the outside, busy leading Bible studies or involved in a ministry or two, but at some point the pain will surface. Then the effort to hide it will take tremendous mental energy. One may even consider doing something crazy or desperate.

Besides that, there can be another problem that stymies us. In this personal Christian journey of ours, there is something else that often sets us back and causes confusion. There are periods, even when we love and serve God, when it seems as if He is silent and deaf to our pleas, unwilling to help us. He fails to deliver that which we desire and wish for so desperately, He fails to act on that longing deep in our hearts. This is a residual element that betrays us as we live out our Christian walk motivated by doing and doing, doing all the right things. But the emptiness, the sense of being abandoned by God, may be present even as we do our many good and righteous deeds out of our faithful, obedient, Christ-loving hearts.

What can this mean? Why is this? This is one of the hardest of questions to answer. I will attempt to give some insight into the situation.

It is not just about us. It is also about God.

What God desires is to be close and complete in you. He may allow or at least use these difficult things to gain our attention. He desires for us to reach out to Him that He may help us and offer us comfort and a new and better way. God does not want us to live the way we have been living for it is bound in a spirit of fear with unhealed hurt trapped in the interior places and it needs a refreshing, the freedom found in a life hid in God.

He wants to set us free and to restore us to wholeness. God desires for you and me to come to Him with the painful stuff that He may minister to our need, that we may grieve the offense, that He may enter and heal the hurt and remove its sharp piercing, and that He may place peace as a salve that eventually will bring healing and joy in the quiet areas of your soul in those areas that have brought us much distress.

God will guide you on a soul journey, one that will, in time, bring you to wholeness through a renewal and restorative soul-changing process.

Church people often justify burying their emotions.

Click To Tweet

To enter into God’s presence for the beginning of your healing and awareness of your own inner self, it is necessary to take personal inventory. The next post will have an application piece that will help facilitate healing and help. After that step, we enter the solution phase of this writing. Hang with me.

_____________

LINKS:

>Next post: It helps to take personal inventory: A Spiritual Intervention (11)

<Previous post: The problem with painful emotions: A Spiritual Intervention (9)

|<<First post: A Spiritual Intervention

_____________

©N. L. Brumbaugh

I have come to realize that my inner sorrow originated from areas of hurt and loss that had never been properly grieved. Most every hurt has some sort of loss associated with it. These compile over time. We try to insulate ourselves from more loss and remembering past loss. But it doesn’t work so well because we are emotional beings, believe it or not, even for those whom seem not to care.

A SPIRITUAL INTERVENTION

The danger came when I failed to see the issue for what it was and failed to deal with its inner truth. I just kept on going, never missing a step. We all have different stories. Negative experiences vary in intensity from slight to moderate to severe. Some people get stuck for years by a word curse said to them by someone who was thoughtless. There are many of them: I don’t love you. No one could ever love you. I’m leaving and don’t try to stop me. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.

Then there’s the type that demeans a person’s core worth, sense of value, and self-perception. Why’d you do that? You’re so stupid! Can’t you ever do anything right? I knew you’d mess it up. These are words that translate into heart language, a message to your inner person that tells you that you are faulty, that you really don’t matter, in-fact, you never did matter all that much.

Then there are those comments slung so carelessly but hit the intended mark. You’re ugly. You’re fat. You’re a failed abortion (I overheard this one). At some point when repeated often or taken to heart, the messages are internalized and become part of a subconscious system that believes a painful untruth about self, that there really is something wrong with us, something that can’t be fixed.

I have heard the stories first-hand. I find them hard to listen to because they are demeaning, hurtful, sad.

There was the woman married to a religious man who was a tyrant at home; a man who demeaned their children and her in cruel ways; the teenage daughter who was slapped by her pastor-dad for dishonoring the church’s conservative standard of dress; the person who was cheated on and then abandoned by their mate (many of these); the woman who was forced to have an abortion out of fear in response to manipulative threats by her partner (many of these); the man whose girlfriend had an abortion anyways even after he had begged her to let him raise the child; the person who was molested, raped, beaten, neglected, or abused; the child who was abandoned, unwanted, and denied basic care; the child who became part of the foster care system; the person who was molested by a professing Christian, church member, youth leader, or minister (quite a few of these); the child, now an adult, who has memories like silent stabs etched in their mind.

The list is long in length. There are many, many forms of mistreatment and neglect that have contributed to these dark secrets and deep wounds that continue to fester even when they are buried or ignored; memories buried below acts of self-gratifying and self-medicating forms of denial, addictions and pleasures that hide or push away the pain in an effort to pretend that it doesn’t even exist.

On the other side of the equation, there is also the pain that we have inflicted on others. Those things we have done that we shouldn’t have done. Self-condemnation adds to the presence of pain—a result of areas of wrong one has done that have hurt others and self. These, as well, cause suffering in the person. The thing is, spiritually speaking, these internal messages don’t just miraculously dissipate at the point of belief in God and His salvation. Their messages, like an unwritten code, leave impressions on psyches and lasting imprints on hearts. One cannot just pretend they don’t exist or push them aside.

And that’s the real problem. We will do something with them. We will find a way to cope. It is in our coping mechanism that we have blinded our hearts and minds to our heart and soul’s true state. These have also contributed to our dark hidden places. Sins and self-gratifying behaviors are often forms of bondage that act like a Band-Aid to cover the wound. Hurting people do whatever they have to do to ignore or bury the pain, to minimize or neutralize its hold on them.

The Band-Aid never healed anything.

God’s remedy, His spiritual intervention, brings about the healing. If only people knew this to be true, what a difference it could make in their lives.

The problem with hidden pain is that it affects us.

Click To Tweet

Now we’re getting to the important stuff, God’s remedy, His answer to our pockets of emotional pain. Keep reading …

_____________

LINKS:

>Next post: Our buried emotions: A Spiritual Intervention (10)

<Previous post: Pain’s silent prison: A Spiritual Intervention (8)

|<<First post: A Spiritual Intervention

_____________