Hurt

The temptation is to get rid of the object of hurt. The temptation is to remove yourself from a place where you can be hurt again. The temptation is to refuse to care because if you don't care you can't be hurt. It would be nice. It would be great to be insulated from pain. To know that the only person who can let you down is you.

But that is not the way God wants us to be. We recently had someone leave Refuge and say some hurtful things on the way out. He believed he had a legit reason to be hurt, but we cannot think of anything that we could have done. And we may very well have done something... but we might not have. To me, it all comes back to what we do after someone is hurt.

The easy way is to simply be angry, or write that person off. The easy thing is to try to find ways that people in the future can't hurt us again. The easy way is to insulate and isolate. Unfortunately, our friend took the easy way, and that leaves everyone else in the lurch. It leaves us wounded and looking to blame.

And the cycle continues.

We worked through a couple books during our home church phase, "Exclusion and Embrace" and "The Emotionally Healthy Church" and both books talk ad nauseum about taking our issues directly to one another. God created us for community, and community always has the potential to be painful, thorny and uncomfortable. But this is a step God commands us to take as we seek to become better citizens of his kingdom. We are called to confront one another in love. We are called to love in honesty and embrace even when it hurts.