Why Expecting To Be Hurt Helps

Expect to be hurt.

Yes, that’s the unfortunate reality of life – we’ll get hurt; physically, for sure, but also emotionally. Some of us are susceptible to being rejected; some of us to a lack of recognition; others, again, to a negligence of consideration that subjugates our existence.

We will get hurt.

So why do we act so surprised? Well, it still hurts, that’s why.

Although we understand the logic that we are feeling creatures, it doesn’t help much when we’re faced with the crushing heartache that comes from one (or a combination) of a million splinters of loss.

Coming to be Grounded in Our Hurt

It’s ours, our hurt.

Nobody else’s is it. It’s ours. Thinking, feeling persons, we’re born with the innate capacity to experience life along a seemingly infinite spectrum of emotion. Perception is ours, yet we embellish our perceptions with various nuances from our wounded child within.

Realising that to be hurt is a common human designation is a blessing, in that we can afford ourselves the grace we need in simply understanding that feeling hurt isn’t the other person’s fault. Neither is it our fault. Feeling hurt simply is. That’s all.

Whenever we come to a recognition of the things in life we cannot change, we are invited into the opportunity of acceptance – as raw and as hard as that might be.

Being grounded in our hurt is being consoled by God, by the matter of a prayerful solitude, whereby we allow ourselves to shrink within, to abide in our hurt, but in a way to allow God’s healing.

Therefore, we are not so much to chastise ourselves for the fact we feel hurt, but we are to unveil to ourselves the copious portions of God’s grace – because God understands we are hurt. We receive the compassion of God this way, and our hurts are healed by the practical reality of acceptance – which is most often a process.

Certainly a key to being healthily grounded in our hurt is to expect that, because we are a composite of healthy and wounded parts, we will feel hurt by our treatment and circumstances at least some time.

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Life hurts. Not only that, but we’re easily hurt by our circumstances and by our treatment – even when we know, logically, it’s silly to be hurt. We’re better off to expect we’ll get hurt, and therefore prepare ourselves. Journeying with God into the healing of acceptance augments emotional health.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.