Have you ever had a realization that hit so close to home it literally affects your heart? Maybe it’s a good thing – you feel like you have hit through another brick that makes up a wall around your heart. Or, maybe it’s a sad realization. Maybe it’s both at the same time. Maybe it even makes you cry. Maybe it hurts so bad your heart squeezes just a little harder and causes you physical pain. It’s those light bulb moments that are in cartoons except this isn’t a cartoon – it’s real life. Your life. And, you realize life isn’t always so easily mopped up and tidied up in little boxes but rather a constant mess you find yourself tending. To keep the cobwebs out, to keep the sun shining through. To keep walking forward.
We all deal with our own demons. Some are darker than others but what remains the same is we are all faced with a box full of mess that life dumps all over the floor and we can either decide to clean it up – little by little, day by day – or leave it and let it grow and get bigger, dirtier, and finally getting to the point it overwhelms us.
We all have untapped hurts and emotions that can be exploded by actions or words of another person. In the same way, what we say or do to someone – no matter how insignificant or out of whatever emotion we may be feeling – can be detrimental.
Imagine standing face to face someone on the top steps of a basement staircase. You trust the other person 100% and all of a sudden they push you as hard as they can down the stairs and slam the door in your face. You’re in the dark, alone, scared, confused…
Maybe those moments when our inner demons are fighting so hard we are that little girl who never felt like she did anything right, who was told she wasn’t good enough, who always felt like she was doing something wrong. Or, the little boy who was always unpunished infairly and he didn’t know why. Maybe you revert to someone who was in an abusive relationship and you become withdrawn. Or, maybe you go home and cry alone because you don’t feel worthy.
We have no idea what eachother have gone through or what issues from our past we struggle with on a daily basis. And, what one moment of saying a hurtful word or shutting someone out or telling (or showing them) they’re not good enough can open wounds that must be healed all over again.
Sometimes we can protect ourselves from the moments – and sometimes we can’t. Hopefully we can always remember to choose our words carefully and to treat each other with love and respect. And, when we truly care… to not just give up. Not to shove someone down the stairs because they make you mad. Or, throw them up against a wall and break them.
The toughest people are truly often some of the most sensitive and those are the people who need the most love. We all need more love. To take the time to look at each other in the eyes and care. My pains are not your pains, but we are in this together and that bonds our hurts more than you can imagine.
“Gentleness is not apathy but is an aggressive expression of how we view people. We see people as so valuable that we deal with them in gentleness, fearing the slightest damage to one for whom Christ died. To be apathetic is to turn people over to mean and destructive elements, to truly love people cause for us to be aggressively gentle.” ― Gayle D. Erwin
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