Moving Toward Pain

We spend most of our lives trying desperately to cut ourselves off from the pain we’ve incurred through different relationships, events, and past memories. In the midst of a break-up, divorce, disagreement, or hurt inflicted on us, we try desperately to put a tourniquet on the wound to stop the bleeding and try to move on and forget about it as quickly as possible.

And as time passes, we avoid the song that made us think of them, refuse to ever go back to that spot where the fight happened, and we separate ourselves from anything that reminds us of past hurt by all means necessary.

But what if, instead of running from those open wounds, as time passes, God actually desires for us to move toward the pain and the brokenness caused by these memories?

I confess that I have a dreadfully narrow view of redemption. So does the dictionary. One of the top definitions of redemption is “deliverance or rescue.” And this was all I thought it entailed for a long time.

That God would wash away my sins and take the good in me, or even the broken potential that He’s clearly put there but hasn’t quite lived up to the glory that He’s created it for, and He would use THAT to make me into who He intended and to glorify Himself.

But as usual, I have way too high a view of myself.

The beauty in redemption lies not in how God takes what’s seemingly “good” in us and makes it perfect, but that God would dare to get involved in our mess, and brokenness, and greatest weaknesses and pain, and that He would turn those things into something beautiful.

More than that, that He would choose to take some of the deepest areas of hurt in our lives, and some of our greatest shortcomings and turn them into our greatest sources of character and most significant strengths.

I’ve got a lot of junk in my life and plenty of moments in relationships that I’d rather forget. Things from college, things from high school, things from even as far back as grade school. But instead of hiding those things away somewhere beneath the surface, I choose to dig deeper, trying to figure out why it hurt and how it’s affected me, letting God into those wounds. Each and every person has probably gone through a multitude of things that have affected how we view God and how we view ourselves, and He longs to correct those things and move us closer toward who we were created to be.

We worship a God that wants to show off His power in our lives by entering into the darkest areas of our souls and creating strength and beauty out of something that was once weak and hideous. We just have to let Him go to work. -CK