The nature of hurt and healing

Hurt has a way of hiding itself, of telling you it doesn't exist, of lying to you by saying you're not justified to feel it. Hurt is often like a cut that only begins to sting when you look at it, when you've only noticed it for the first time after someone has pointed it out. Even when your conscience feels numb, you cannot deny the reality of injury incurred upon you. When you understand the nature of an injury, you realize that it hardly matters if the act is committed bitterly, regretfully, carelessly, accidentally, or unconsciously. Understanding motive does not cancel the need for healing.

The need for healing also has a way of concealing itself. Rationale may have a way of subduing the cries of emotion by enlightening it on the circumstances of pain, but it cannot dictate what emotion should feel by silencing it. Although emotion has a way of thanking reason for removing the blindfolds, it is still a thing that breathes and bleeds through bandages, no matter what reason tells it.

Hurt and the need for healing both have ways of denying themselves. Even when action is innocent, hurt still searches to inhabit a host secretly like a parasite, and healing is thought too ridiculous to call. Pride has a way of encouraging more hurt than action initially intended, and it also has a way of excluding the need for healing. Perhaps it is embarrassed to call, so it stands by and allows things to fester, and it watches emotion roam ashamed and like a leper.

Heart has a way of needing forgiveness, despite the action that elicits hurt and despite what pride dictates to rationale about the need for healing. Pride may have no opposition towards the source of hurt, but when it hardens itself, hurt has a way of sneaking past.

No matter what we think about the people who hurt (especially the ones who are dear to us), we do not benefit ourselves by pretending we go unhurt. We may not know we are hurt or want to believe that we are hurt until we ask ourselves if we need to forgive. When we do not know how to forgive, we seek God who has a way of healing us in a way we can't heal ourselves. It is through sacrifice of God's only Son that we learn about an amazing gift of healing called grace. He decided to make possible healing before we elected hurting, and through forgiveness we can be freed from our addiction to pain. Grace freely given should give us the inspiration and ability to forgive generously, and it is through this free acceptance and exchange of grace that we learn to live unfettered.

Pride has a way of denying

the need for grace which, itself is always vying

for a place in the soul, heart, and mind, trying

to show that life is a constant practice of dying

to ourselves, yet it is more than just crying

about heart, hurt, and healing

but receiving what's freely given and freely giving.  

By and through forgiveness I should, in the midst of struggle and hurting,

have hope for and while living.