What Do You Do with the Hurt?

“What do you do with the hurt?” We’ve all been hurt, and I believe this devotional is relevant for every one of us. None of us escape some kind of emotional pain—some hurt, and whether it’s a slight offense or some deep, ingrained trauma that we’ve experienced, we have to decide what we’re going to do with that hurt.

That’s the most important issue because it determines whether you’re going to let it harm you endlessly or you’re going to put it behind you somehow and move on. I think the most common and the most harmful thing you can do is to harbor it, to blame others, to relive it time and again. It can become so all-consuming that your hurt begins to define who you are.

I remember a person I knew many years ago who chose to see herself as the person who had been wronged by everyone in her life. Her hurt became her identity, and in her mind she always saw herself as a victim. That was who she was—and you didn’t have to be around her long before she communicated that in some way or another. Interestingly, because her hurt was her identity, she made herself a victim of everyone in her life, even those of us who were genuinely trying to help her.

Now, who lost in that situation? She did, of course. She continued to heap all kinds of hurt on herself, to exaggerate the hurt she had experienced, and to live in sadness and pain because she chose to harbor the hurt. Could it be that you have done something similar?

Why do we hang on to hurt feelings so long, thereby heaping unhappiness on our own heads? We certainly don’t get any revenge on our offenders by hanging on to hurt feelings. If you think that a pity-party will relieve some of your hurt, think again! Pity parties are addictive, as well as pitiful! The more you feel sorry for yourself and harbor those hurt feelings, the more you will try to find comfort in your self-pity. It can be a vicious cycle, and, of course, it only makes matters worse.

Years ago God began to reveal to me how hooked I was on pity parties. And what came as a major revelation to me was that God sees it as a sin. Whether or not I have a legitimate complaint, wallowing in self-pity, nurturing my hurt feelings was not what a mature Christian should do. I wanted to grow up in Christ, to become more like Jesus, and I began to see how wrong and silly it was for me to insist on my pity parties.

I well remember the night I came home from work with my feelings hurt—again—by my insensitive boss. I was nurturing those hurt feelings by going over in my mind his hurtful words, what I wished I had said to him, what I would say to him someday, how unfair he was, ad infinitum. Instead of doing something productive, I plopped down to waste an evening by throwing another pity party, and pity parties are indeed pitiful since no one ever comes and there is nothing to celebrate.

As I began to indulge myself by feeling sorry for myself, I stopped and thought, I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. I don’t want to be miserable. I will not throw a pity party tonight. And with that I got busy, put those hurt feelings behind me, and got over it! It was a major turning point for me, as I began to learn that I didn’t have to hold onto those hurt feelings. I could, by a set of my will with the power of God’s Spirit, get over it.

Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” Hurt feelings turn into bitter roots, and those bitter roots grow up to cause trouble.

A friend of mine wrote this in an article on hurt feelings:

When you’re hurt, do you listen well to the Holy Spirit? Or, are you so busy talking about your hurt that He doesn’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise. Without a supernatural, God-response to hurt, we often wallow in self-pity and embroider around the injustice, especially to our friends or family who will listen. Repeatedly talking about hurt only confirms, convinces, consumes and sets the offense in concrete. In fact, injustice, like a fishing story, always becomes larger in the retelling.

So, what do we do with the hurt? It’s all about what you’re thinking about. The hurt continues to be painful because you continue to think about it. If you can learn to bring those hurtful thoughts into captivity and make them obedient to Christ, as we are admonished to do in 2 Corinthians 10:5, then you will begin to find freedom from the hurt.

Philippians 4:8 tells us to think of things that are a good report. Usually when our feelings have been hurt, we are thinking about some bad report. It has helped me greatly to tell myself over and over again, when I’m tempted to dwell on some hurt, “Mary, stop thinking about the bad reports. Think about some good reports.” Think of something good that happened recently. Think of someone who loves you. Think of the wonderful truth that as a Christ-follower, you are loved by Jesus Christ and nothing can separate you from his love.

So, if you want to get rid of the hurt, the first thing you have to do is to make the decision to let it go. And that means, you have to carefully guard your thought life and refuse to let your thoughts go to that hurtful place. When you begin to dwell on the hurt, talk out loud to yourself and say, “Stop it. I’m not going there today. I choose to dwell on some good reports.” Let me assure you that you can change your thought patterns, by God’s grace and with his help, if you truly determine to do it.

Then you need to confess whatever responsibility you may have in this hurt. While you may not have the same amount of responsibility as someone else, there may have been a part you played which contributed to the hurt. If so, get it out, confess it, and acknowledge it to yourself and to God. Covering it up or denying it will just allow it to stay alive within you and continue to cause you great harm.

It’s important to get beyond seeing yourself as a victim. You know, being a victim can actually feel good for a time. Have you become addicted to your pity parties? Believe me that can happen. It’s that feeling of “it’s me against the world,” and I have a right to be hurt! But you’re fighting ghosts when you do that, and those ghosts don’t really care and they certainly can’t help you get past your hurt feelings.

Of course, your hurt feelings matter, and I don’t mean to make light of the hurt you’ve experienced. But when you allow your feelings to override all else and control you, you put yourself in the victim seat and that is a terrible place to be.

You have to start taking responsibility for your feelings, recognizing that you have choices every day and every moment of every day to decide how you’re going to feel. Paul wrote to the Philippians that they should “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.” It’s a choice you can make and the good news is, as a believer in Jesus Christ, you have power far above your own to give you the victory in this battle. With prayer and trusting in the Lord, you can get out of the victim’s seat and be in charge of your own well-being.

I’ve discovered that a very important thing to do to put hurt behind me is simply to get busy doing something constructive. Don’t just sit there; do something! This is one time you need to get involved in constructive activity that will take your mind off of your hurt feelings and shut down that pity party. A friend of mine tells me that her great-grandmother would frequently say to her, “If you have time to feel sorry for yourself, then you don’t have enough chores to do.” As she puts it, “It is more difficult to ‘wear your feelings on your shirt sleeve’ when you’re ‘rolling up your shirt sleeves’ and serving others.”

I’ve learned that my most vulnerable times of harboring hurt feelings are at night, in the dark, when I can’t sleep. (And the reason I can’t sleep is probably because I’m harboring hurt feelings—it’s a catch 22!) My thoughts can go so wild and uncontrollable at those times because I relive the hurt, exaggerate it, imagine bad things happening, and keep myself in bondage to hurt. I’ve learned to simply get up and get busy, if I can’t go back to sleep, so that my mind isn’t allowed to stay in that bad place. Good honest work, doing something productive, is a great antidote for hurt feelings. Even cleaning the house or doing the laundry can help!

Then one last thing I would say about how you deal with the hurt you’ve experienced. It can sometimes be very important and very necessary for you to confront the person who caused the hurt. Here’s a good suggestion: Write down on a piece of paper or type into your computer exactly what is bothering you, how you have been hurt, and what you would like to say to that person. Then put that in a safe place for two days, and during those two days pray about what God would have you do.

After two days get the paper out or open it up, re-read it, and ask for God’s wisdom. If you still believe you should go to that person and settle this thing, then decide how to tell the truth in love, make sure you’re not acting in anger or just self-interest, and then go to them at an appropriate time.

If you’re not willing to do that, or it no longer seems that important, tear up that piece of paper or delete it from your computer and say to the Lord, “I’m putting this behind me; it is in the past and you will take care of it from this point on. I will, by your grace, get over it.” The worst thing you can do is to keep brooding about it. Either do something or get over it.

Let me hasten to say that I know this is hard, and sometimes you need help and counsel from others to be willing to let go of your pain. You know, when you’ve held onto your hurt for a long time, it’s almost like it becomes an old friend. It feels justified and we think it would be wrong to just let it go. But nobody’s life should be defined by pain. It can’t become your identity. As a Christ-follower, you need to replace that victim identity with the truth that you’re a child of God, loved by God, and nothing can separate you from his love.

I recognize that those may just sound like words to you, but I want to encourage you to believe you can have victory over the past hurts of your life, whether they are gigantic or incidental. It is a choice you make every day, whether you are going to hang on to the pain or let go of it and through the power of God’s Spirit, begin to find healing from the pain.

Let me close with one of my favorite passages from Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.