5 Healing Perspectives to Process Hurt

 Do you ever find yourself replaying and

reliving the details of the deep hurt in your life?

 The horrific season.

The conversation that stunned you.

The shocking day of discovery.

The divorce.

The wrongful death so unfathomable you still can’t believe they are gone.

The malpractice.

The breakup.

The day your friend walked away.

The hateful conversation.

The remark that seems to now be branded on your soul.

The taking of something that should have been yours.

The day everything changed.

I understand this kind of defining devastation in such a personal way.

And whether you’ve experienced pain through an event or a collection of hurt that built over time because someone wasn’t who they were supposed to be, didn’t do what they were supposed to do, or didn’t protect you like they should have protected you, your heartbreak deserves a safe place to be processed. Whoever “they” are in your story, their actions hurt you, took from you, and set off a chain of events still greatly affecting you. And that was wrong. But, friend, can I whisper something I’m learning?

 Staying here, blaming them and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. And sadly, it’s those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.

That person or people — they’ve caused enough pain for you, for me and for those around us. There’s been enough damage done. They’ve taken enough. You don’t have to hand over what was precious and priceless to you and deem all the memories as hurtful. And you don’t have to be held hostage by the pain. You get to decide how you’ll move forward.

That’s why I want to give you five healing perspectives and scriptures I’ve been hanging on to when I’m struggling with the realities of my own heartbreak:

 1. FORGIVENESS IS MORE SATISFYING THAN REVENGE.

I agree that the person who hurt you should have to pay for their offenses and crimes against you. But you shouldn’t have to pay for them. Revenge is you paying twice for a hurt that someone else did to you. You pay a price when they hurt you. You pay double when you carry that pain inside your heart and it causes you to say and do things you wouldn’t otherwise say and do. You may think getting them back will make you feel better in the short term, but in the long term, it will always cost you more emotionally and spiritually than you’d ever want to pay.

 You don’t want to trade in your peace, your maturity, your spiritual progress, your integrity and all the other beauty you add to the world just to add a little suffering to your offender’s life or to try and teach them a lesson. The only thing your revenge will do is add your wrongdoing on top of theirs. Forgiveness releases to the Lord your need for them to be punished or corrected, giving it to the only One who can do this with right measures of justice and mercy.

Forgiveness doesn’t let the other person off the hook. It actually places them in God’s hands. And then, as you walk through the forgiveness process, it softens your heart. Over time, I’ve discovered a softening inside of me that truly desires for no more hurt to occur at all . . . not for them, not for me, not for any of the others involved. I just want peace. The peace from forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ’Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:19–21 ESV)

How does this perspective help you look at forgiveness in a different light for your situation?

 2. OUR GOD IS NOT A DO - NOTHING GOD.

I was recently participating in a Q&A where someone in the audience asked, “How can God just do nothing?” The pain in her question was deep. The ache in her faith was real. And, gracious, do I ever understand what that feels like. I remember feeling so disillusioned during my journey with my husband Art when he was unfaithful and our marriage was imploding. For years, all I could see from my vantage point was Art doing whatever he wanted with no apparent intervention by God at all. And when you are suffering so much that each next breath seems excruciating and the one causing the pain is seemingly thriving and prospering, it’s easy to start assuming God is doing nothing.

But we don’t serve a do-nothing God. He is always working. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Joseph. He walked through years of rejection, false accusation, wrongful imprisonment, and seemingly was forgotten . . . but with God, there is always a meanwhile. God was bringing about something only He could do with the circumstances before Joseph. He was positioning Joseph and preparing him to be used to help save the lives of millions of people during a famine that would have otherwise destroyed multiple nations. God is always doing something.

 Sometimes, unlike in the Joseph story, we don’t get to see on this side of eternity how God was working in our most painful experiences. But I can let the way God worked in Joseph’s story be a reminder of His faithfulness in my story. I’ve been able to have conversations with Art in our reconciliation now that allow me to go back and correct some of my assumptions that life was fun and incredible for him during the years he was living a lie. God was still at work in my husband even when I couldn’t see evidence of that. But even more than that, sin itself contains punishment built in. Art would tell you today he was miserable back then. He felt trapped inside of a lie that required him to put on a show, looking like he was having the time of his life. But that show required numbing substances that were killing him. It was a trap with vicious teeth dug so deeply down into his soul, he can’t talk about those years without begging others not to get caught in this same kind of nightmare.

Sin always masquerades as fun and games. But pull back the curtain of the deceived human heart, and what you’ll f ind hiding there will drive you to your knees to pray for that person. And maybe that’s the very reason God instructs us to pray for our enemies. Job 15:20 reminds us, “The wicked man writhes in pain all his days” (ESV). And Psalm 44:15 says, “All day long my dishonor is before me And my humiliation has overwhelmed me” (NASB).

Sin, as Augustine says, “becomes the punishment of sin.”[1] But never forget God is there in the midst of it all. No matter how good someone makes sinful choices seem, that isn’t the complete story. God knows the full truth. With Art, God wasn’t just trying to change his behavior. He was rescuing his soul. There was never one moment when God was doing nothing.

“Casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully]” (1 Peter 5:7 amp).

How does this perspective help you trust God and His plans more fully with this hurt?

3. YOUR OFFENDER IS ALSO SUFFERING FROM PAIN.

It’s very hard to truly forgive someone without compassion. And it’s very hard to have compassion on someone who’s shown you no compassion at all. So, instead of starting at the place of trying to have compassion on someone who has hurt you, start with having compassion on the pain they had to experience in order to make the choices they made.

The one who causes pain is in pain. I don’t have to know anything about their wounding to know that hurt exists. At some point, someone brutalized their innocence. Or made them feel terrified, tossed aside, beaten down, invisible, unseen, unwanted or shamed. Chances are, it was a combination of several of those feelings. I will often picture the one who hurt me as a small child, desperate for someone to have compassion on them. If I can have compassion for their pain, I can have compassion enough to help my forgiveness be genuine.

While this is such a helpful thing to keep my heart tender for forgiveness, I’m not talking about feeling pangs of guilt that excuse behavior I shouldn’t in the name of compassion. But I can let compassion help me never to shame them or refuse to forgive them.

  One of the people who hurt me most appeared to have had a perfect life. There was no apparent abuse, neglect or hardship of any kind. But what appeared to be perfect was filled with secret pain. And when I found out about it, I cried. For their pain. For my pain. For the fact that no human gets through life without being deeply, deeply hurt at some point.

  Grief finds all of us.

  “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32, NIV).

  How does this perspective help you see your offender in a more compassionate way? List out some things you know about the person who hurt you or that could soften your heart toward them.

4. THE PURPOSE OF FORGIVENESS IS NOT ALWAYS RECONCILIATION.

In some cases, keeping the relationship going is simply not an option. But that doesn’t mean forgiveness is not an option. And even when reconciliation is possible, there is a lot of relationship work that must be done in the process of coming back together.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that trust is immediately restored or that hard relational dynamics are instantly fixed. The point of forgiveness is to keep your heart swept clean, cooperating with God’s command to forgive and keeping yourself in a position to be able to receive God’s forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t always fix relationships, but it does help mend the hurting heart.

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18, ESV).

“Now the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5, CSB) How does this perspective help you have a new understanding about forgiveness and reconciliation in your situation?

5. THE ENEMY IS THE REAL VILLIAN.

Yes, people do have a choice to sin against us or not. And certainly, when we are hurt, the person hurting us willingly played into Satan’s plan. But it helps me to remember that this person isn’t my real enemy. The devil is real and on an all-out assault against all things good. He hates the word together. And he especially works with great intentionality against anything that brings honor and glory to God. But we are told in Scripture that we can take a stand against the schemes of the enemy.

In Ephesians 6:11 that word can in the original Greek form is dynasthai, meaning “I am powerful—I have the power.”[2] We aren’t powerless when the enemy stirs up trouble among us. The secret is to be aware of this. The power is not in question. But our awareness of it often rises and falls on our willingness to do what God’s Word says to do in times of conflict.

Excuse me while I seriously flinch. This steps on my toes so much. It’s often when I don’t want to live out God’s Word with another person that doing what God says is an epic defeat of the enemy. There is nothing more powerful than a person living what God’s Word teaches.

Ephesians 6:11–12 encourages us to “put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (NIV).

How does this perspective help you identify the schemes of the enemy in your relational tensions and heartbreaks?

 Dear friend, the heartbreaks you carry are enormous. I know that. Mine are too. And if no one else in this world has been kind enough to say this, I will. I’m so, so sorry for all that’s happened to you. But I also want to encourage you — healing is possible. Progress is possible. But we must believe it, embrace it and live it. And I’ll be right here beside you for the journey

Lysa Terkeurst shares five principles that help you to process pain. Forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge. Our God is not a do-nothing God. Your offender is also suffering. The purpose of forgiveness is not always reconciliation. The enemy is the real villain. www.lysaterkeurst.com.