Over the next few posts, I’m going to walk you through how I’ve come from a place of hurt to a place of restoration. Care to join me? Read on.

In 2nd grade, a little boy showed me that he liked me by doing the most unusual thing: he stabbed me in the knee with a pencil. He jammed that No. 2 so deeply into my skin that the lead stayed in and the pencil came out.

You can still see the lead in my leg today. But unlike that 2nd grade experience, I have hurts that cannot be seen.

So what do I mean by hurt? Hurt is any part of your heart or topic in your head that you’d prefer not to talk about. Hurt can come from sin that’s done by us or to us, or just from being human. Hurts come when things don’t work out as we think they should, when our expectations aren’t met, or when we feel insufficient for the task at hand.

Our hurts can easily be hidden with a busy schedule, a kind smile, and the fine art of deflection.

But Jesus doesn’t stand for hiding. He wants to heal the hurt.

Jesus will often point us to our pain, and that’s where we find Him in John 4 talking with the Samaritan woman at the well. They’ve been talking about being thirsty, and then He presses into the wounded spot of her heart… her five marriages and present living situation. Jesus started her restoration by exposing her hurt.

God created us: body, mind, and soul. This means that it’s possible to be hurt in all of those places, and that being hurt in one of them impacts all of them. Hurt cannot be quarantined. Unresolved hurt leaks out into relationships.

According to Brene Brown in Rising Strong, when we don’t know what to do with the hurt, we:
* Hold it in until we explode.
* Hide behind our stoicism… that’s me!
* Numb it with food, planning, or perfectionism… me again!
* Stockpile it until our body screams, “Enough!”
* Deny our feelings because we’re afraid we’ll totally lose control.

According to Curt Thompson in Anatomy of the Soul, when I choose to ignore my hurts, I “may be ignoring what God is trying to tell me, running from parts of [myself] that He wants to heal and parts of Him that He longs to have known by [me].” Ignoring your hurts may be the equivalent of ignoring God.

God, our Heavenly Father, would rather see us delighting in Him and basking in His love than nursing a wound alone.

Jesus is clear that He didn’t come to condemn the world, but to save us from sin and a life without him (John 3:17; Romans 8:1). And because He created multi-dimensional people, He saves and restores every single part of us. Jesus doesn’t just care about the spiritual part of you. He cares about 100% of you. And let’s be raw and real: every part of us can be, will be, or has been in some kind of pain.

Restoration starts by naming the hurt.

It’s almost impossible to hand over to God what we cannot grasp or quantify ourselves. Our hurt needs to be named, not because God can’t figure it out, but because we need to figure it out for ourselves to articulate and clarify what is really going on with us.

That’s why Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman about her love life: for her soul’s sake, she needed to say it out loud. To Him.

So here’s one of my hurt spots: parenting.

Why? Because I feel so inadequate at raising our two kids that I can barely see straight. I’ve been successful in every other job I’ve had, but with parenting, I feel like I’m barely treading water. How can I feel so competent in meetings with CEOs in a corner office and so unqualified with small children in high chairs?

I carry the guilt of my parenting sins. My anger that manifests into yelling, my selfishness when things aren’t done exactly how I want, my use of parenting as my gauge for how I’m doing in life, and my caring more about their outward behaviors than their inward hearts. And I don’t just sin as a parent, I also feel shame and disappointment. “If I could just get it together,” I tell myself.

Yes, parenting is a tender spot, a place where all of my insufficiencies are on full display in front of two small people.

So Achiever-friend, what is your hurt spot? What is the sin you hold? What shame has shackled itself to you? What unmet need has you feeling less-than? Where in your world do you feel completely insufficient?

Name it first to yourself and then to God.

By naming the hurt, it can come to the surface and into the restoring hands of the Great Physician.

Do you know why that No. 2 pencil lead is still in my skin? Because it was never brought to the surface. Friend, I don’t want your hurts to stay buried. By naming my own hurts, I’ve gotten through to the other side… and the freedom is incredible. And I want this for you too.

 

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