Healing through pain

Hosea 6:1 "He (God) has TORN US so that He may HEAL us."

Our lives are tantamount to one big movement away from pain. Don't believe me? Look at the endless offices dedicated to addiction, AA, NA, CA, drug programs, alcohol program, sexual addiction programs. We have a group here in Dallas called 4th Dimension. 4th Dimension allows anyone addicted to anything to show up and work the 12 steps. I have been told that people show up who are addicted to Carmex. I'm serious. Our movement away from pain however doesn't have to be so outlandish as drug use. Pornography, shopping, TV, working a lot of hours, sports, golf, or just lots of time spent away from people or community, all ways to reduce or numb out pain.

As children we all received wounds, this is true. We were defenseless children who were born into a world that was depraved and twisted. Wounds were inevitable, no matter how amazing our childhood looked. We chose very early on to not allow what wounded us to matter, and in some extreme cases not to exist at all. We have chosen to live out lives in reaction to our woundedness. A man who felt small and powerless all his life will likely become an angry and powerful person. A woman who had no voice might become an over-bearing, powerful woman who profusely spouts her opinions. A little child who was exposed to sexual trauma might make that trauma their treasure and live in promiscuity to prove the original trauma "never hurt". Our movement is seemingly always towards life in our minds, but often times it is actually towards death. A perfect example, a heroine addict will swear the drug feels like life to them, but is actually leading them to death. This happens on many levels in our own lives and hearts. We see things "upside-down". Our vision has been twisted by depravity.

So, what is a God to do with a people who have fully committed to not allowing wounds to affect them? Especially when those wounds have caused all of us to run in a direction in opposition to those wounds? This is not freedom and God is a God of freedom.

About two years ago I had gone into my back gate to get a water hose and unbeknownst to me, a whole gaggle of very large red wasps were waiting. A gaggle of red demon spawned insects who had apparently chosen my back yard as a quaint little gathering place. Soon after I shut the gate they made my lower, shirtless, stretched taut back a quaint little gathering place for their stingers. I immediately felt this burning, stinging, electrocuted type pain shooting through my back. I shot straight up and blindly began running across the yard, right into our swing set. I get back up from the ground, screaming like a little girl, holding my back and aggressively moving towards my poor 140 pound dog. She was frozen in fear, mulling over, I'm sure, her last few moments of actions to determine what she did wrong. I plow over her, hit the ground again, sprain my ankle.

By now the wasps are back on their little quaint nest, feeding their babies and high-fiving each other for the successful wounding of the intruder, emotionally and physically. My anger towards these demon spawned fiends was so intense that I resolved to kill them for what they had done. Wasp spray in hand I charge back into the yard, stand back the 12 feet the can says it will spray, and let loose with all my fury a petroleum based vengeance on these wasps. Who, unlike the directions stated, did not immediately fall to the ground. They swarmed up and around me and I was stung many times again. At this point I felt like a little kid, a stupid little kid, sitting in the yard tending to my wounds. I was so intent on getting vengeance for the pain I had received that I didn't realize something important. My action of killing these wasps would NOT take away the fact that I had been stung and hurt. In fact, my choice to live in opposition to the wasp sting made it all that much worse, many more stings worse. No one could have convinced me that once stung I should have sat in that place calmly. And certainly I couldn't be convinced not to streak across the yard in pain. And not even God could have convinced me that looking for vengeance and a cessation of pain was a bad idea.

At times in our lives God allows pain to become a part of our story. And if you stop there it seems cruel and pointless. It seems that God is a God who just randomly allows terrible things to happen for no reason. He seems so irrational. But that is not the true God that is in the Bible. All things that happen to us He uses for our good, all things. Wasp stings, bad grades, death of a loved one, losing a job, bad marriage, and so on, can all be used to help you find freedom from wounds you tucked away a long time ago. Wounds you have vowed in your heart to not have affected you, not have hurt you, that evil did not win, but in reality pain may have hurt you. Wounds like sexual abuse, physical abuse, family violence, loss of parents when we were children, cold family lives, and a whole host of other painful realities that might have been a part of our childhood. And this is what God is committed to doing for you, to tear you open so that these past wounds can be true. And why would He do that? So that HE may heal you as in Hosea 6:1. To live a life that constantly looks to deny the pain of our past will in turn make you a prisoner of that past the rest of your life. God is passionate about setting you free, even if He has to allow pain in your life to accomplish it.