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I am examining what you can do when you’ve been hurt—how to deal with the pain that remains. Yesterday I pointed out the hurt we feel resides in our minds, in our thought patterns. Therefore, to be free from hurt, you must change your thoughts. The Bible says we must bring our thoughts into captivity and make them obedient to Christ, and that’s exactly what you have to do with the hurt—you drive it from your thoughts by replacing it with good thoughts, positive thoughts, thoughts filled with the love God has for you.
Then you need to confess whatever responsibility you may have in the hurt. While you may not have had the same amount of responsibility, 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. 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! 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 choices every day to choose how you’re going to feel. Paul wrote to the Philippians 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 that miserable victim’s seat.
I’ve discovered another very important thing to do to put hurt behind me is simply to get busy doing something constructive. This is one time you need to get involved in constructive activity that will take your mind off your hurt feelings and shut down that pity party. A friend of mine tells me 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.”