Handling the Hurt

That text message stung. The long silences are filled with awkwardness. A distraction removes them from a conversation they never return to finish or revisit. The look in their eye tells you they’re not listening. He distances and hides. She overshares, becomes needy or completely insecure. Some scream and defend hotly. Heated conversation is typical. Others become cynical and dark. Some are so defensive about everything you feel it’s impossible to have a civil conversation.

Hurt people hurt people.

The hurt comes in all shapes and sizes. The passive aggressive are good at passing barbs or veiled stinging messages. The overtly aggressive scream and spew anger over the smallest incidents. The avoiders, avoid, sometimes even lie, or tell you what they think you want to hear, but they aren’t honest.

Yellers yell because they don’t feel heard.

Avoiders avoid because deep feelings scare them.

The overly distracted don’t have the capacity in the moment to even have the conversation.

Chances are if you’ve been hurt by someone, they are hurting also. In deep ways. They have open wounds now oozing into your life. Sometimes these people are aware of this, but I have found most people have zero clue they’ve hurt someone. Most people are so busy trying to hide and or treat their wounds, they don’t realize the effect it’s having on those around them.

Jesus was hurt by hurting people. He was rejected by his own hometown. Kicked out. Turned away. He was denied by Peter, one of His closest friends. Only one of ten lepers returned to say thank you the day He healed them all. We like to think of Him as perfect because He was, but the Bible says He also faced every human experience. He felt disappointment. He knew the burning irrationality of being offended. He was tempted to turn His back on those He knew would be ungrateful or had been ungrateful before. He had feelings, and I must believe for Him to understand my struggles in life, those feelings got hurt. (Luke 4:14-30, Matthew 26:69-75, Luke 17:11-19, Hebrews 4:15)

But He handled it all with grace and gentility, truth and love. Every wounded, hurting person was handled with care. He never excused the adulterous woman’s sin, but He also did not condemn her. He dispersed her accusers, then once they were alone, He told her to sin no more. He got His hands dirty with spit and mud healing some. He was begged to leave towns for healing others. The record of His conversation with the woman at the well is genius. Somehow, the way He spoke to her, made her love Him more even though He pointed out her every wrong! I like to think it’s because she felt fully known by Him, even her ugliness, yet fully loved by Him also. (John 8:1-11, John 9:6, Matthew 8:28-34, John 4:4-42)

The hurting that encountered Jesus were not always told truth, but they were always shown love.

Look around you. Today, in this divided, defensive world, every person you encounter is most likely hurting in ways you don’t see and have no way of understanding. Words AND actions are powerful tools. They must be carried and used in truth AND love. Sometimes both are needed in the moment. Other times, only actions of love are needed (1 John 3:18).

Jesus had the perfect wisdom of God to know when and how and what to say and do. I’m sure He felt the rub of wanting to speak truth, to correct, to guide, to offer advice, but in His wisdom, He chose to simply show up and be present instead. I also believe He felt that sensation in the pit of your stomach where you don’t want to say something, but you know you have to or need to say something, so in His wisdom He spoke truth with grace out of love and concern and in the need of the moment with compassion (Ephesians 4:29).

As Christians, followers of Jesus, we do not have to remain silent. We shouldn’t remain silent. We are called to hold one another accountable. In fact, the only people we are given permission to judge this side of heaven is our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. But we are out of practice in our delivery and soft skills to successfully enter those moments with others.

Our conviction and passion are too often received as condemnation when they are not delivered in a package wrapped by love and grace and given amid relationship.

So yes, speak the truth God has revealed to you. BUT speak it with the intention to show love. Speak it with the intention to offer grace where someone is drowning in shame. Speak it to offer a hand of camaraderie or commissary, letting the other person know, no matter what, you are in this with them, alongside them. Take the time to build or repair the foundation of the relationship, gaining trust, before speaking hard truths.

Because truth is an anchor. It is sturdy and solid. It will ground your faith, be a firm foundation. It will not move when the storms of life come. But it is heavy. To a drowning person, it is heavy. To a person soaring high in the clouds of life, it can be heavy. To the person on a long journey, it is heavy.

Know your audience before you hand them truth. It may be exactly what they need to hear, but you may need to get in the water and help them tread with the weight of it. You may need to be the counterbalance to the weight of the truth keeping them from crashing. You may need to plan to join them on their journey before you hand them the truth to take with them.

Yes, as Christians we are called to speak the truth to one another in love. We are called to hold each other to God’s standards of righteousness. But our culture has taught us we can spout these things over social media or in a text message or drop it like bombs in a one-off conversation, and somehow people are supposed to change their minds because we spoke truth in this manner? God can still use these methods because He can work all things for good, but this is not the example Jesus lived for us (Ephesians 4:15, Romans 8:28).

Jesus got His hands dirty. He spent hours eating and conversing inside the homes of the hurting. He made Himself available for one-on-one conversations. And in those moments, in those ways, when He was doing life with people, He spoke hard truths, and then He offered Himself as the means to help them carry and live with that truth.

I’m not Jesus, but I can try to be like Him. His Holy Spirit abides with me, so if I abide with Him, I can do all the things He calls me to do. If He strengthens me to hand over a heavy truth, then He also makes me strong enough to help carry the truth with the receiver, OR He’s already strengthened them to be able to carry it alone. When you have a relationship with the person, you will know which is true.

In the meantime, every Christian must practice balancing loving well with grace AND truth. We miss the mark when we err on either side. If you are a grace-giver by nature, it is wise to develop relationships with truth-tellers and vice versa. The perfect balance of the two leads us all straight to Jesus, and that is how the body of Christ accomplishes its purpose here on earth.

We are all hurting people, hurting people. The sooner we all accept this shortcoming about ourselves and each other, the sooner we can get around to figuring out how to be healing people that help each other heal.

No Record To Keep: Learning to Love Well

There’s a strong sense of justice to my character that God and I wrestle over sometimes. For things to be fair and right and the same and equal are deep seated beliefs that are just part of who I am. 

It’s funny though. I can freely accept on a large, global scale that sin is a part of our world and inevitably has its effect on martyred Christians, corrupt governments, and aborted babies. I can accept that “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord (Romans 12:17-19)” on a global scale, that one day in His perfect righteousness and justice, God is going to make these things right. 

But on a personal level? When I struggle with a low emotional and relational return in my relationships, I start to pout and wonder why I can’t get back out of relationships what I choose to invest. Where’s my justice? Why don’t others treat me the way I treat them? Invest in me the way I invest in them? Text, call, share, invite, include?

Am I not entitled to certain privileges and trust in different relationships based on my past faithfulness and trustworthiness?

You see, I care deeply about all the relationships God puts in my life, so when I start to come unglued and off-centered from Christ’s perspective on people, on His definition of loving others, I become the very, ugly self-centered, unreasonable person I judge others to be. In my heart, I become the horrible friend I think they’re being. 

Thoughts run rampant….

I did this for them, why can’t they just do…..

I was there for them when (blank) happened, is it too much to expect the same in return?

I spent money and time to do (blank), and they won’t do….

She doesn’t talk to me the way she does so and so. 

He doesn’t include me in his life, the way he does that person. 

I know they’re on their phone all the time, I guess it’s just my texts they’re ignoring. 

Lord, help me! Even I’m disgusted at the selfishness dripping off the page above, but in my mind these ugly thoughts spin justified and dark and depressing, eating me and my joy alive. And Satan smirks in a corner delightfully tapping his fingertips together thinking, “Yes! Here she goes again! (Evil laugh)”

So how do you stop the cycle? Should some relationships in my life “owe” me? Am I justified to feel used or betrayed or frustrated that I care about someone more than they care about me? What is truth?

Truth is 1 Corinthians 13. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. If there is a relationship in my life where I have been called to love, and yet feel unloved, unseen, or forgotten, I have to take that to Jesus because I can’t make another person see this. 

Some people would say confront the other person. Real friends can speak truth in love and make it through to the other side. I’m not convinced this is true because at our core, we’re all sinful humans, prone to getting hurt easily and hurting others easily. I’m not saying be politically correct and walk on eggshells with those you love all the time, but I am saying go to Jesus first. 

I’m saying take that relationship to Him in prayer over and over and over again until He gives you both the opportunity and the words to speak. And not your words, but His. For me, I often end up having to ask for forgiveness for my own self-centeredness before He helps me let go of the hurt and the right to expect anything from anyone. 

Is that why I love them?  Because of how they should love me in return? Father, forgive me!!! If God loves all of us this way, we’d be eternally screwed. I fail to return His extravagant love for me every. day. He hasn’t stopped being my Friend, yet. 

So when I get in a funk, in the bad spiral, I go back to truth. The truth is I love others because Christ first loved me (1 John 4:19). It is my privilege to be a conduit of His love to the world around me. It is love that is freely given and covered by grace. Why should I not do the same for others? In a perfect world, my love would be perfectly returned, but I’m sinful and the people I love are sinful, and if there’s something we could all use more of, it’s grace.

Because at any given moment in time, I don’t know what kind of story the other person is living. 

I might be feeling forgotten, but they are feeling overwhelmed. 

I’m feeling unseen and unappreciated while they’re feeling like they’re drowning. 

I’m having a bad day while their life is falling apart. 

What we perceive to be true rarely is. Only God knows the truth and offers truth. Only through His eyes can we see what others can’t or won’t or don’t. So if I don’t submit every relationship to Him in prayer, every hard feeling, every unmet expectation, I’m probably missing something big. Something big in the other person’s life that I need Jesus to help me see. Maybe something hard I could step into with them instead of being something else hard for them to manage. 

And at the end of this life, it really won’t matter if other people treated me with this same grace because the truth is, I’m not living this life for them—at least not if I’m in the right frame of mind. The truth is I love Jesus, and Jesus loves me extravagantly above and beyond what I could ask for or think to deserve or even desire; therefore, in its purest form, loving others is quite literally just the overflow of God’s love flowing into me. 

So I have no record to keep because it wasn’t my love flowing out from me into others to begin with. 

And the truth of that statement sits with me now like an explosion just went off in my brain because I don’t think I ever realized or believed the depth of that truth until it got typed on a page. 

When it comes to loving others, God gets all the credit because He actually IS Love(1 John 4:7-8). I have no record to keep of the love I’ve given because I’ve only ever been a conduit for what was given to me first. Just a conduit, an aqueduct, an earthly vessel to carry God’s love from point A to point B. 

There is freedom in this, friends! Freedom to release others of all expectations. Freedom to let go of the need for reciprocation in any relationship. Freedom to release myself of keeping score, of wondering if I’m investing too much or too little in this relationship. So much freedom!

All I have to do is keep loving Jesus most and seeking Him first at all times in all ways. This alone is hard enough without trying to take the temperature of every other relationship in my life. It’s no wonder this earthen vessel of clay breaks so often. I get to be the carrier of the love, not the creator of it. 

No one owes me anything, but everyone owes Jesus everything. My prayer in this truth now becomes ever so passionately, “When others see me, Lord, may they only see You. Let me be okay being invisible if You are visible. Let the love I carry be untainted by my own fleshly desires. Create in me a clean heart, O God (Psalm 51:10). Clean my insides completely, so the love I carry is pure enough to reflect only back to You. I have nothing to offer but You, Jesus. Use me as You see fit.”

Celebrating God's Way as the Best Way

Fifteen years today I've been married to the man of my dreams!

I could write a book about why Joey Durham is perfect for me, but rather, I'd like these fifteen years to stand in testimony to the power of God and His design for marriage.

Many moons ago, God created a longing and a desire in a little girl to see the world, to expand her horizons, to know God in all His glory.  In college, she thought she'd follow God to the mission field, but instead, she fell in love with a godly man.

At 21 and 23, they married young, and screwed up so many, many things. They were selfish and guarded and knew nothing about real intimacy. The safety of their covenant marriage before the Lord allowed them a secure, stable place to start to come out from hiding, to actually try to attempt to show another human being who they truly were. To trust that even if the other person inevitably screwed up, massively even, they both knew each others' heart was committed to the Lord first, and if Jesus could forgive them over and over again, they could learn how to forgive each other over and over again. Because no one was leaving. There's no flight option in a covenant with the Lord, only fight.

And the more they focused on Jesus, the closer Jesus drew them to each other. It didn't matter how ugly it got inside the space of their marriage, their commitment to Christ was as secure as their salvation. Jesus reminded them they made a covenant to Him, not themselves, to stay married, and there were some seasons that is all they really trusted or half-way believed. 

Jesus was/is always enough. He healed their hurts, their hearts, their home, time and time again, year after year. Each time knitting them closer and stronger together than before the rip had occurred.

After fifteen years of watching God alone hold our marriage together, I am convinced that a cord of three strands is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). I am convinced that marriage can't be truly fulfilling, successful, or meaningful without God at the center and in control of both spouse's lives. I am convinced it is harder to build and maintain a strong marriage than to parent your children, and it should be treated as such, given the time and attention it needs and deserves. Because I made a covenant before God to love, honor, respect, and cherish this one man for the rest of my life. I made no such covenant with God concerning my children. I am convinced that within the secure ramparts of a God-centered marriage, you eventually learn how to fight the devil rather than fight each other. I am convinced that prayer is a powerful weapon we wield in defense of others.

After fifteen years, we are just now, finally beginning to explore the tip of the iceberg of what is true intimacy, transparency, and vulnerability. So many walls in our lives and hearts have come down, so many more still in process of being demolished. Did I already say marriage is work? Never-ending, back-breaking, soul-submitting work, and I voluntarily signed on!

But when you stick with something for fifteen years, you get to honestly say, "I wouldn't change a thing, trade one moment for another, or do anything different. It has been and will continue to be worth every tear, every heartache, every struggle because the highs are so much sweeter and higher than the lows. It really is true that the harder you work for something, the more you appreciate it."

Only people who've worked--not just hung in there, kept the status quo, or settled for pretty good--but those who have blood, sweat, and tears WORKED for something for longer than ten years understand those truths.

And that little girl who God created with a longing and a desire to see the world, to expand her horizons, to know God in all His glory? God has used marriage as the conduit through which to fulfill all those deepest longings and desires. After watching God work for fifteen years, I can't wait to watch how He works for another fifty! And by choosing to stay married and to keep working toward maintaining the best marriage God has designed, I am guaranteed a front row seat to watching God work!

Joey Durham, you love me like Jesus, most days, to the best of your ability. You sacrifice yourself for me and our family. You submit your will to the Lord's for our betterment. You love me just the way I am, no strings attached. You see me for who I am, and you accept that only God can change me, so you just figure out how to love me exactly where I am. You lead our family toward Christ. You lead by word and example. Don't ever urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. (Ruth 1:16) I made that promise fifteen years ago and engraved it on your wedding band because you're never getting rid of me. I love my Jesus, therefore, I love you. Happy anniversary my love.

And may God get all the glory!