I felt let down…alone….misunderstood….and forgotten
I have the incredible honor to lead a GriefShare class each week to facilitate those who are grieving the death of a loved one through my church.
Information regarding this amazing, life changing program can be found at http://www.griefshare.org.
Anyhow, through the program there is a Prayer Manual that offers weekly prayers to send out to people that are topic specific for each week of the 13 week class. I have chosen to do this and found it to be very rewarding for those who choose to pray along with me. When I send the prayer requests, I often write a quick note to those who have agreed to pray along with me. These “notes” are thoughts that come quickly off the top of my head that I share in a simple email. I have gotten recent responses to these “notes” asking me “who wrote that?”; “did you really write that?”
Today, as I was writing my email, I realized that something special came out of me in those words. I want to share it with you today:
“Hurt people hurt people”…say that a few times and let its simple truth sink in. The worst in society most likely did not wake up one day and decide to hurt someone….chances are, that at some point in their life, they either had been hurt or had a perception of hurt. Both of those scenarios can be life impacting and life altering. Those who hurt others have most assuredly been hurt themselves.
This is not giving an excuse for despicable behavior, but it does give insight into why people walk around behaving the way they do. It also can provide a warning to be on guard of the status of our own heart.
In times of grief, we are hurt. This deep pain effects how we act, how we think, how we receive comfort, how we perceive comfort…and it can shape who we will become. The situation itself can bruise our heart but the peripheral circumstances can be equally as wounding.
Let’s face it, not all families are perfect and get along all the time. Not all friends know how to show up for you when you need them to or how you need them to. Your work cares for you but its main priority is getting the job done. Strangers (including insurance companies, car salesmen, or wait staff) have no idea what you are going through and act accordingly to their mood or problems of the day. The hospital and doctors do not follow though or follow up in a manner that we feel they should in the time of our loved one’s illness or after their death. We prayed for healing and we do not feel God answered our prayer because this IS NOT the outcome we desired.
It is easy to feel let down…alone…misunderstood…forgotten.
It is equally easy for those feelings to take root in our hearts and begin to harden us against certain people, places, or situations….or God.
Grief is funny thing. It is maybe one of the only times in life where what is under the surface in your heart get revealed. Perhaps it is because we do not have the energy to cover up our true feelings or to rationalize them anymore but regardless the truth of what we think about people, life, God seems to be exposed through grief. This is not always a pretty reality.
For me, I found that I believed “life always worked itself out” -for the better of course. Why? Simply because it always had…for me. When this illusion was ripped away from me everything else I lived for shifted into sinking sand. I could trust no one. Nowhere was safe. Evil was always lurking and death always won.
I felt let down…alone….misunderstood….and forgotten.
Through GriefShare, I learned to address that kind of thinking and began to reassess what it was I believed in, what I wanted to live for. In that process, my heart was softened when the eternal unconditional love of the Lord entered in.
We all need to be on guard for whatever it is we are allowing to harden our hearts: bitterness over a misunderstanding, someone not treating you right without regard to what is happening in their life, a rejection, or sometimes a true legit act of cruelty against you.
Mark 11:25 “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you.”
What Kind of Peace Is This? 