So, WHY Did That Hurt?

Finding the Root of Our Emotional Wounds 

Sharing an article by Farouk Radwan

I'm recalling from a few years ago, as a close friend was helping me with my Healing Journey. He was there for my first Spiritual Heart Surgery and cared enough that he continued to call me everyday afterward (literally) – for years. Today, we’re very close friends and continue to share our “Journeys of Learning” with each other. By Grace, we have a healthy and healing relationship. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some “rough moments” in our relationship. I've come to accept that God allows conflicts and (apparent) obstacles in our relationships to occur so that we have opportunities to learn how to love one another unconditionally and to
learn how to forgive one another from the heart, the way Jesus taught. 

I recall one instance, about two years into my Healing Journey, my friend said something that really irritated me – well, that’s not being completely honest. What he said to me actually “pissed me off” in the biggest way imaginable. So you might be wondering, what did he say that made me so upset? In all truth, it wasn’t what he said because he really didn't make any judgment against me, neither did he condemn me or reject me. All he did was ASK me a question. And, that’s all it took to trigger an old emotional wound – one that I had yet to deal with. 

For the first time in nearly two years, my close friend and I did not speak. He did me call daily, as usual. But, I was so mad that I wouldn’t even take his calls. On the third day I finally called him and we spoke. I was still pretty uptight and I told him how he had hurt me and that I was expecting an apology. After listening to my complaint against him, my friend lovingly asked me another question. He asked, “So, WHY did that hurt?” I got real quiet and then said, “Well, I guess there’s something else in there (in my heart) that I need to take a look at. Are you willing to go there with me?” He said, “Of course I am, I’m here for you – let’s do it.” And so, we took the time to examine my feelings and where the ORIGINAL WOUND came from. From my previous experience with Healing sessions, I knew that we had to get to the “root cause” of my pain. As usual, Forgiveness was going to play a huge part in the Healing of the unhealed hurt that was causing my pain. 

The funny thing is, my friend never did apologize to me for what he said (asked me). In all honestly, I came to accept and realize that he didn’t have to. What he did, which originally upset me so, was simply part of “sharing the truth (with me) in Love.” Perhaps like the song says, “Love hurts.” But then again, even Scripture says, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” (Prov. 27:6) 

In as much, it was Judas who betrayed Christ with a kiss. But it was Jesus who wounded (hurt) Peter when He told him, in advance, about his upcoming betrayal. Yet, Christ loved Peter just as He loves you and me – unconditionally and without expectations. For me, I’m still working on that in my relationships. Following is an article sharing some truth about the need for healing of our past, hidden emotional wounds.

Copan & David

Love hurts. . .
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive.
Love sings, when it transcends the bad things.
Have a heart and try me,
'cause without Love I won't survive.
(Incubus)

Healing Emotional Wounds

(By Farouk Radwan)

Are you wounded?

Have you ever tried to put some water on a fresh wound? If you have,
you must have felt some pain. Water, which can never harm you if you were not injured, has just made you feel some pain when it touched
your wound, simply because when we develop a wound we tend
to become over sensitive to factors that didn’t bother us before.

The same goes for emotional wounds: What if you have some emotional wounds that are making you over-sensitive to factors that other people don’t even notice? All of these small things that are bothering you may
be harmless on their own, but they hurt you because they touch your wounds just like the water did.

Emotional Wounds and Emotional Pain

Why do you think you felt that bad when they didn’t call you? Is it because they are bad people? And why wasn’t your friend, whom they also didn’t call, bothered the way you are? It’s because he is not wounded [in that area – rbd]. Your wound in this case may be social approval; you may have been wounded before by people who didn’t approve of you and so whenever someone ignores you again it hurts, not because it should hurt, but because it touched your wound and reminded you of the past rejection.

How many times do you find a girl asking her friends for reassurance of her good looks just after breaking up? Why did she feel pain? Did she love him that much? No, it’s just that she was wounded before. When she was young, people always used to make fun of her because she was too slim; now whenever someone rejects her, she feels bad, not because of the rejection, but because this rejection touched her old wound.

Why do you think a guy may feel broken and devastated when he gets
a rejection letter? Is it because he really wanted the job that much? Not really. If he wanted it that much, he would have felt bad about the rejection but not broken; it’s just that this rejection touched an old wound. As
a child he was seldom encouraged by his parents and so he grew up lacking self-confidence in his abilities. Whenever he gets a rejection letter, he feels much pain, not because of being worried about his future, but because of his old wound that hasn’t yet healed.

Those Wounds Are Making You Vulnerable

Those wounds are making you vulnerable! Things that others usually don’t pay attention to may prevent you from sleeping just because you have some wounds that haven’t healed. The more wounds you have, the more you’ll find that small things bother you and eventually become over-sensitive to every critical comment even if the other person didn’t really mean to offend you.

The more wounds you have the less time you will feel happy, because every now and then, something will touch your wound and make you feel bad, just like the water touches your wounded hand in the example above. Some people think that they can heal their wounds by forgetting about them or by keeping themselves busy, however, this strategy always works against them.

Happiness can’t be really achieved unless you get rid of your emotional wounds or at least start dealing with them. Heal your wounds, face your problems, stop turning your back to them and you will kill depression.

How to Heal These Wounds?

Before you can heal any of these wounds you should first identify their location, or in other words, know the reason behind that wound. Don’t
just be passive; seek your answers and trace your wounds to their origin. If critical comments bother you, then don’t just stay like that. Search the web, read more, think and analyze until you know the root cause and when you finally know the [root –rdb] cause, healing the wound itself becomes much simpler.

Reading in a website like this may let you discover the cause of many
of your wounds and so help you to recover. Remember, if you try to
just escape or forget about these wounds, they aren’t going to leave you alone, they will remind you of their existence with
each rejection, critical comment or whenever you get dumped or ignored. Don’t leave your wounds like that, [let Christ – rbd] heal them and eliminate some of your weak points. 

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

So WHO, Exactly, is My Neighbor?

Sharing an Article by Keith Giles

Did you ever move into a new neighborhood and wonder what your new neighbors would be like? Sometimes, before we choose our location for living, we try to find out as much as we can. Other times, it may be less significant to us because we really don’t have a choice based upon our employment needs, our income and affordability or other circumstances.

Suppose once we do move in, we discover that our new neighbors aren’t exactly what we’d prefer. Maybe they’re of a different color, or race, or religion. Or, they have a different political mindset than we do. Maybe they don’t drive as nice of a car as we do or keep their yard looking the way we’d like. Or, they’re just too noisy. Maybe, they have friends that are the kind of people we don’t like. Suppose they turn out to be someone who has a different sexual preference than we do.

Well, let me ask the question. . . If your house was burning down and you were in dire need of help, would you give a damn about who your neighbor was then? My guess is at that point, we really wouldn’t care WHO are neighbor is, especially if they were willing to help us. Yeah, I suppose that all of those other preferences which we might have for our neighbors would simply vanish – like the smoke from our burning house.

Following is an article written by author Keith Giles. It made me think about what kind of “neighbor” I would be to MY neighbors. . . And ideally, what if the “neighbor question” really isn’t about who lives next-door to us? But rather, is about EVERY person we come in contact with on any given day – whether we know and associate with them, or not.

Here’s to Loving our Neighbors (people) – regardless of WHO they are.

R Butch David

Who Exactly is My Neighbor

(By Keith Giles*)

In the Gospels, Jesus addresses the Great Command twice. The first time he refers to this, it’s to illustrate how all of the law can be summarized by loving God and loving your neighbor. (Matt 22:34-40) The second time, he expands on the same thought in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-37)

In each case, the person who initiated the conversation was a lawyer. In Matthew, the question is asked in order to test Jesus and, possibly, make him look foolish to the crowds who were following him. In the second case, the lawyer asks a different question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” but the question is also intended to test Jesus. His response to the lawyer in this second case is to ask the lawyer, “What is written in the Law?” and it is the lawyer who says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

To the lawyer Jesus says, "You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live." (v. 28)

But the lawyer isn’t satisfied with this answer. Instead, he wants to “justify himself” (v.29) and so he asks, “So WHO, Exactly, is My Neighbor?” (paraphrased – rbd).

To set this man straight, Jesus tells a parable that most of us know as the Good Samaritan. However, most of what is really going on in this exchange is lost to us today.

What we miss, first, is that Jesus flips the story around so that the person who is in need of mercy and love is the Jew. In effect, he’s saying, “You are walking along a dangerous road and a group of thieves jump out and beat the stuffing out of you. They rob you and leave you laying on the road to die.” Now the person who is in need of mercy isn't “your neighbor”. . . it’s YOU.

The lawyer asked “Who is my neighbor?” because he wanted to know where the line was drawn when it came to showing love to others. Obviously we’re not supposed to just love anyone and everyone, right? God just wants us to love the people who are like us, and who agree with us, right? WRONG.

This is why Jesus chooses the hero of the story to be a Samaritan. They were very much disliked in this day and time by the Jews. For you and I, Jesus might alter the parable to read something like this:

“But an illegal immigrant from Mexico, as he traveled, came where the man was…” Or maybe: "...and when the Muslim man saw him, he took pity on him." Or perhaps: “The homosexual, liberal, democrat went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.” Or even: “Then the Republican Senator put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.”

You see, it doesn’t matter really. You probably know already what person – or persons – Jesus would insert into your version of the parable if he were telling it to you. Maybe it’s a member of a political party, or an ethnic group, or someone who doesn’t share your family values. Who knows? God does. And He expects you to see that person as your neighbor, and therefore, someone worthy of love and compassion.

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” (v. 36) The lawyer cannot even bring himself to say the word ‘Samaritan’, he only says, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Here, the point is, that when we are the ones laying in the ditch, we really stop caring who comes to help us – we just want someone to show us a little human kindness. That’s why Jesus flips the story around. He wants us to understand that color, and politics, and differences of opinion mean nothing when it comes right down to it. Love is our calling, and we have no excuses in God’s eyes when it comes to who deserves to be loved.

One of my all-time favorite verses in the New Testament is 1Corinthians 6:9-11 which says: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

That sounds pretty harsh, doesn’t it? And it might be if Paul didn’t add the very next sentence. Just about the time everyone is making a fist and getting ready to slam it down to say, “That’s right!” he adds:

“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

See that? The church in Corinth was composed of former adulterers, sexual deviants, male prostitutes, idolaters, homosexual offenders, thieves, drunks, grifters, liars and sinners. Yet, somehow all of them managed to receive the love of Jesus without feeling condemned or ashamed. Instead, they were all loved and washed and set apart for the work of the Gospel and justified by the same, loving Jesus.

Apparently they had forgotten this fact. Paul had to remind them who they were when they were called. Maybe we need to stop and remember who we were when we first came to Jesus, too?  

“Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many
of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” 

(1Corinthians 1:26-31)

*www.subversive1.blogspot.com