Heart Made Whole: Going Around in Circles

“Get over it.”

 

That’s one of the most painful phrases someone who has been through abuse or trauma can hear. “Move on.” Or “Why can’t you just forget about it?” also qualify.

Why?

Because it’s bad enough to have to go through hurt without being told that your hurt was insignificant.

So, why can’t you just move on?

Remember Humpty Dumpty? He was the egg in the nursery rhymes you heard when you were growing up…

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Do you notice that the king’s men didn’t just walk over to the pile of shattered egg and say, “Hey, dude, get it together!” And they didn’t just slap a Mother Goose band-aid on him and say, “There. You’re fixed. Now you can move on.” They actually tried to put him back together again.

But they couldn’t.

You know why?

Because only the KING can.

But they didn’t consider his breaking as an invalid or insignificant event.

Not all of us are as lucky as Humpty…

Personally, I found some healing in this week’s chapter of Christa Black Gifford’s book, Heart Made Whole. 

“If you’ve had traumatic experiences with rejection that have defined your life, then you need to have a greater experience with the God of acceptance to redefine your heart. If you’ve had experiences with trauma, then you need to have greater experiences with the Healer to bind up your wounds. If you’ve had experiences with lack, then you need to have greater encounters with God’s abundance to rewire your beliefs. It’s easier than you think — especially when the person you’re seeking to encounter is living inside of you,” (Gifford, 154). 

In case it doesn’t jump out at you the way it did at me, let me pick it out and hold it up and show y’all… Christa doesn’t say, “If you had a traumatic experience, forget about it.” She doesn’t say, “If you experienced trauma, just get over it.” She says to reach out — and inside — to God, experience Him, and let Him heal you. Or, back to our eggy analogy, let the King put your pieces back together again.

Where have I heard this before?

Personally, I’ve spent years feeling really badly about myself and my inability to just forget about difficult things I’ve been through. I’ve beaten myself up for being unable to “just get over it.” I’ve been around and around in circles, examining and running from the same weaknesses and mistakes over and over again. How much pain could I have avoided had I realized that it was okay — and in fact, productive — to feel the pain, think about it, process it, looked at the pieces, and then given them to God to put back together? Instead of pushing away or trying to anesthetize the pain, pretending it didn’t happen, trying not to think about it, and then sweeping it all into a dark corner (just move on!).

So here, the circle comes around again. And this time, I’m inviting Him to come put the pieces together again. It’s the only way I’ll ever make it off the merry-go-round.

This post is part of a weekly book discussion that I co-facilitate with my buddy, Jason. You can find him at Connecting to Impact. If you haven’t read the book, please stick around and chat anyway. If you have written a response to this week’s chapter, please link it up at the widget below.