I trust you enough to let you hurt me…

Hebrews 12:11 (NIV) No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Last week I took a really hard fall on some ice. I went to the urgent care and nothing was broken, but I was battered and bruised. I took ibuprofen, alternated between ice and heat, and tried to rest. After a few days things started to feel better, except for my shoulder area. That started to hurt more. So I concentrated the ice/heat regimen to my shoulder. It started to hurt so much that it would wake me up at night and I could not sleep. So I made an appointment with my massage therapist.

While she was working on me, it hurt, a lot. She was apologizing for hurting me and I told her that I fully expected it to hurt when I made the appointment. I’ve been going to her for a few years now and I understand how the process works. Sometimes she has to hurt me in order to heal me. I told her that I was actually proud of myself for going to see her for a couple of reasons. It took a lot for me to ever walk in her door. Because of the abuse, I have trust issues with people and massage is a very vulnerable experience. It has taken time to build that trust with her so I can relax during the process and let her hands heal the stress that I hold in my body. Part of what built up the trust is that she realizes when I’m getting stressed about a procedure or technique. I start to hold my breath, or I try to breathe really deeply and concentrate on the breathing aspect to get me through the pain. She always checks in with me to see if I’m okay or if I want her to stop. Because of this, I have been able to stay present during the massage and not check out. That may not seem like a big deal, but in my world, it is huge. The second area of progress for me is that I made an appointment within a week, rather than just sucking up the pain for months. I have learned to not ignore my pain, not to stuff it, not to suck it up, but rather to acknowledge it as pain and do what I can to take care of it in a healthy way.

All of this got me to thinking about my walk with God. It was huge for me to tell my massage therapist that I trusted her enough to let her hurt me. I had to get to that same place in my walk with God. Because my father abused me, I had issues with God as a father figure. I kept putting my father’s image onto God. It took a long time to build trust with my heavenly father. I had to take baby steps first. Thankfully, people were willing to walk beside me as I made the journey. It is because people pushed me toward relationship with them that I started learning how to trust. When I was challenged to approach God a different way, it was hard, but because someone was walking with me, I knew I wouldn’t be alone.

An example of trusting God when I knew it would hurt is going back to face the pain of my past. I used to have these nightmares that were terrifying. I was so scared after each one that I wouldn’t sleep well for days. I was afraid to go to sleep because I could not control whether or not a nightmare would come. I would wake up covered in sweat and screaming. Whenever this happened I would pray, asking God to please take the nightmares away. I never remembered the nightmares, only the terror I felt. I was sure that whatever they were about was so bad that I would not be able to handle it if I remembered. A friend challenged me to not pray for them to go away, but to ask God what it was he wanted to reveal to me through the nightmares. The first time I prayed that prayer, I was scared to death of the answers I would get. I wasn’t hit with everything at once when I started asking God to reveal the nightmares to me. I would pray, acknowledge how scared I was to pray that prayer, and try to go back to sleep. The memories came back different ways. After a nightmare and praying, I would be concentrating on scripture and I would remember something. Or, I would be doing something the next day and I would remember something. Actions of people or places would trigger a memory. The memories came back slowly enough to allow me time to process them. They were horrible. I was right to be afraid of remembering. But because I had asked God to lead me and told him I was trying to trust that he wouldn’t give me more than I could handle, I was able to place the memories in his capable hands. When a particularly bad memory would surface, I had people I could process with right away. The pain and memories I was so afraid of did not overwhelm me to the point of helplessness. I felt supported by my relationships with those that chose to walk the hard road with me. I felt supported by God who wasn’t giving me too much at one time. I was afraid when I prayed that prayer that God would answer it, but I was more afraid of being plagued by terrifying nightmares the rest of my life. I trusted God enough to let him lead me through the pain.

I haven’t had a nightmare for a very long time now. I think I have remembered what I needed to remember. But if they return, I will know that God isn’t trying to hurt me, he is trying to heal me. I trust him enough to walk through the pain. It is only in walking through the pain of my past that I was able to heal.

In the midst of the healing process, my daughter sent me this quote. It sums up the process beautifully.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”. ~ Anais Nin