This hurts me more than it hurts you!

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Ever heard that?

Or . . .

“This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

Really, how can you be so sure?

Most likely those phrases are some you’ve heard throughout life. If you lived in the days of “spanking” by one’s parents, the whole, “This hurts me more than it hurts you” is something you’ve heard.

As a parent, I can see how maybe that would be a thing, BUT . . . I’m pretty sure those situations hurt me as a child, too!

Pain stinks, and no one really likes to experience it. But part of experiencing it is actually admitting that it exists. And admitting it causes us to “feel” it. So it’s a cause/effect that many times because we don’t want to feel it, we push our pain away. We bury it.

Richard Rohr shares, “Pain that is not processed is passed on.  Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted.”

Last year when I began EMDR therapy, I had to walk her through my life. It started with my mom dying, my dad remarrying in less than 9 months, and a bunch of other stuff you’d be bored to tears with. 🙂

After I talked about the events, the therapist said, “Do you realize that you talk about your life as if it weren’t your own?”

“What?”

“You talk about your life as if you are not the one who lived it.”

What we discovered together is that instead of processing my pain throughout my life, I buried it. Literally. The pain of losing my mom suddenly. My dad remarried and we moved immediately and leaving my other family/friends. My step-mom not really wanting a 9-year-old. My dealing with my grief with food . . . all those things. They were buried so deep and as we started talking about them, it was apparent that my” dealing’ with it was non-existent. So, deep into therapy, we went.

Parts were SO painful . . . but what I found was that in dealing with the pain, that is when I found healing.

It is ok to acknowledge that we’ve been hurt.

It is when we own that we are hurt that we begin to heal.

It is when the pain turns to peace and we find hope again.

I invite you to be honest with yourself about the pain in your lives.

Then, use the word, “Help!” Because we each have a God that lives within us that transforms that pain.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Cor. 11:30; 12:9-10