2 years ago, the front tire of my bike, met the space between a railroad track and the road. A half second later, my hands met the pavement. I broke both of them… in a few different places.
That moment of physical pain provided lessons (always cross the tracks at a 90 degree angle… and unclip from my pedals). And it left scars that will probably be with me for the rest of my life.
That physically painful experience was short lived and I was ultimately able to get over it.
Emotionally painful moments are rarely provided in such neat packages. While we may desire to be able to just learn our lesson and move on, many tend to find a new identity in the painful moments they’ve experienced. Quite often hurt feelings, guilt, esteem tend to weigh us down and lead to some unhealthy habits.
Mary Whelchel, author of the book “Get Over It: Letting Go and Moving on With God” says it’s important to work through out pain.
“We have to go through the process of putting everything behind us so we can move forward. But, I think many times we let our identity become our pains and our sorrow, instead of thinking of letting God, through the Holy Spirit, really help us get over it so we can move forward. If you’re stuck in a pain or a sorrow, you can’t move forward with God.”
Whelchel calls this “bondage”. She says that when we get stuck in hurt and exaggerated feelings, it may be time to pause and remember that life is too short to be in bondage to “pity parties”.
When she gets stuck in moments of Pity, Mary looks to verses like Phillipians 4:8 and tries to focus on what is “true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy”.
“You see, these problems are 99.9% in our thought process. It’s what we allow ourselves to think about. It’s what’s occupying our mind. The Bible says we’ve been given the mind of Christ, and we can learn to replace wrong thinking with right thinking. It’s because I’m allowing myself to think about things I should not be thinking about. I’m still learning this lesson about bringing every thought into captivity and making it obedient to Christ.”
Mary Whelchel talked more about this, recently, on Faith Radio Mornings.
