Emotional Pain

thorn-heartOften people who are experiencing emotional pain have difficulty expressing their feelings in a healthy way. A common cause is buried feelings due to loss or past hurts.

Ignored or denied feelings won’t go away. They are buried alive, deep inside your soul, where they fester and create an infection that produces poison in your body.

As long as emotional pain continues to be suppressed and undealt with the symptoms will only get worse such as relationship conflict, unhealthy behaviors, depression, addictions, and all sorts of other coping mechanisms that wound the heart and separate us from self, others and God.

That’s why it’s so vitality important to face your feelings.
Bring your heartache and hurts, your anxiety, your fear, and frustration to Jesus. Pour out your heart to Him and receive His comfort. He alone understands the depth of your hurt and pain. His word assures us in Isaiah that He was a man of sorrows acquainted with our grief. Hold on to the assurance found in His Holy Word…


“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. “
Hebrews 4:15-16

Let Go of The Past

shoes2

We are told in scripture to let go of the past and reach forward to what͛’s ahead. But what if we can’t? Some of us have been so wounded that we are crippled emotionally, and the past continues to affect every area of our lives.

So, instead of running the Christian race with endurance, we limp and struggle along the way often overcome with self-loathing, guilt and shame for not ͚getting it͛ like other Christians. Some mask their wounds with out of control negative behaviors, others by staying busy “being good͛ so as not to deal with the pain. Neither has ever fully accepted the love and grace of God.

To live the abundant life in Christ we must let go of the past. Only when the wounds of our hearts are deal with that, we can truly put the past behind us and are able to run the race with endurance and assurance of God͛s calling and purpose for our life.

“Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run the race with endurance that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author, and finisher of our faith “

(Hebrews 12:1-2 )

 

Finding Comfort

coffeeheartHow true is the saying, “All sunshine makes a desert?” God knows that if you never experience the storm of life – if the rain clouds never release their water – you will never see flower gardens grow.

You need to blossom in the areas of sympathy, empathy, and compassion, understanding, perspective, and wisdom.

Our God is the God of second chances. Whatever is in the past can be used for God’s glory.

The storms of sorrow should never be wasted. By God’s design, grief will better your heart and life.

Grief will make your tree of life grow and blossom so that you will be able to offer the shade of comfort and hope to others who are going through the desert journey of grief.

“God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. “ 2 Corinthians 1:4

June Hunt

 

Emotions & Relationship Conflict

oftheheartThere is a direct correlation between relationship conflict and negative emotions. We were designed for love and intimacy.  Sadly, many of us were not given healthy forms of love. So we enter relationships with baggage full of skewed love systems and unmet needs expecting the other person to meet our emotional needs.

However, since unhealthy people tend to attract unhealthy individuals into their lives who enter the relationship with their own emotional baggage – unmet needs and skewed forms of love expecting us to love them as they think they should be loved – it’s  a great recipe for emotional pain and conflict.

People enter relationships with all kinds of learned negative patterns of behavior to deal with relationship conflict.

The truth is we will never be able to enjoy healthy mutually satisfying relationships until we deal with the issues of our own heart.  When we can identify the cause of our emotional pain, we can then process the effects they have on our life, and we can stop blaming others, take ownership of our negative feelings and behaviors and stop allowing others to control our emotions. People are not responsible for the way they make us feel.

Understanding and accepting this enables us to let others off the hook and give them permission to take ownership of their feelings and stop blaming us for how they feel.  Jesus heals and restores one heart at a time.

 

Repressed Grief

weepHave you seen someone smiling, yet within the smile you recognized sadness? Have you heard someone laughing, though you knew the heart was not healed?

“Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.” Proverbs 14:13

Repressed grief occurs when a person has reason to grieve and needs to grieve, but does not grieve.

The person with repressed grief exhibits negative lifestyle patterns but does not know why. Examples may be distancing from others, playing the clown, using mood altering substances like alcohol or drugs, engaging in mood altering behaviors like gambling or compulsive spending.

Only by facing the truth of your painful losses in life and by going through genuine grief will you have emotional healing.

In the bible, the Psalmists prayed this prayer.

“Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me.” Psalm 43:3

Grieving

needsEveryone has been created with three God-given inner needs – the needs for love, for significance, and security. When one or more of these needs is no longer being met, we naturally feel a sense of loss.

 
Unmet need = Sense of loss = Feeling of grief
 
Throughout our lives we will incur numerous losses. Although we need to feel the pain of our losses, we do not need to be controlled by our losses.
 
Instead, we must rely on God’s promise that He will meet our deepest inner needs.
 
“My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
 
June Hunt

Children Need Love Above All Else

bond-of-perfectionIt is absolutely true that hurting people hurt people. Don’t be quick to judge the behavior on the surface and not see the need below.

A child needing the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways. When children feel unwanted, unheard, not valuable, incapable, powerless, or hurt, they often lash out. Parents love your children well.

The lack of love will damage a child emotionally and will have consequences throughout their lives affecting their own children. Stop the generational sins.

You cannot do it alone. Put on God’s love. His love is perfect. It leads to wholeness.  In Him broken things are made new.

A Hardened Heart

softheartA deep wound, a broken heart, disappointments, bitterness, and unforgiveness can cause the heart to become hardened with time. It causes us to put up walls. Our defenses go up. We self-protect, and we don’t let anyone in including God.

Self-protection leaves us running on reserve and is the cause of intimacy issues and conflict in relationships. It seems that it’s easier to be hard than soft and vulnerable because we don’t want to get hurt. But you were not created to live that way. God made you to be tender and responsive.

It’s hard to shape stone. As long as your heart remains hard you will miss out on the abundant life Jesus came to give. So let the living God come into your heart, heal your wounds and tear down your self-protection and defenses.

The amplified version of Ezekiel 11:16 says “And I will give them one heart, a new heart, and I will put a new Spirit within them, and I will take the stony, unnatural hardened heart out and give them a heart of flesh, sensitive and responsive to the touch of their God.”

Give your hurts to the Lord. Let God shape you and heal your heart. He makes broken things new.

He Mends Broken Pieces

brokenheartedGod can heal your broken heart, you just have to be willing to surrender all the broken pieces. He makes broken things new,  gives us beauty for ashes and a life of abundance and purpose beyond the pain.

You may not have had a choice of becoming a victim, but you have a choice to stay one.

Give your hurts over to the One who can heal and mend your wounded heart. When you do that – He will leave His fingerprints all over your heart, and you will come to a realization in the depth of your soul as Job came to know that your – Redeemer Lives! And that you are a precious child of the living God, deeply loved, who holds every one of your tears in a bottle.

Let Him comfort you as He applies His soothing healing balm to your hurting heart. Jesus is the Balm of Gilead.

Choose Life

choose-life-heartThe family is of monumental importance to God and extremely influential in shaping the hearts and minds of children.

When a home has genuine Godly characteristics, and the foundation is built on Jesus Christ, the byproduct is going to be love, grace, identity, security, and significance. However, when a family is built on anything other, it’s going to be unstable and unsafe and will produce shame, fear, guilt, neglect, and abuse: unmet needs that cripple children emotionally, into adulthood.

What is poured into the soil of our hearts, then, determines the health of our roots; or, our beliefs; which affects how we view ourselves and the world around us.

The nourishment we receive is going to have a huge impact on our tree of life. If we are nourished in God’s light, we will receive the breath of life and believe that we are precious, valued children of the living God; but, if all we receive is darkness, we are going to believe what darkness breaths: lies about ourselves and others.

Despite your background or the family heritage you received, you can be the one who applies faith in the Cross of Jesus Christ, and bring healing to the hurts that have plagued your family. Choose life!