Maturity

The Illusion Hurt Gives

It's funny how hurt can change us. It's strange how getting our feelings hurt can make us into someone that we don't recognize. How hurt can cause us to fold in on ourselves like a dying plant until the walls of self grow too high to see over anymore. The more we shrink inside ourselves, the harder it is to see beyond our own pain. And we keep shrinking and shrinking until there's nothing left but ourselves and we don't care about anyone else anymore. And by that time it's too difficult to let go of that hurt because we think we can't survive without it.

The anger and fury we feel in response to the hurt makes us feel like we're in control somehow. That we have some say in our life. It blinds us and convinces us that holding on to the hurt makes us strong.

Can't we see how weak we really are?

Childish Reactions

Someone hurt your feelings. And it hurt. It really did. It tore you up inside. Ripped your heart out. Betrayed you to the point where it felt like your very soul was breaking.

And now you feel like you'll never be whole again. You feel like you can't trust anyone again. You feel like your entire life has ended and it's not worth living anymore.

So then you take it out on the people who hurt you. They hurt you so you're going to hurt them back until they hurt as much as you do.

What are we thinking? Are we so childish? Are we so petty?

Can't we all see how childish that is? Clinging to hurt and refusing to forgive makes us just like petulant little kids who won't play with their friends anymore--or who throw others out of their friendship club. It makes us immature.

But It's Wrong

I've been there. I've clung to it. Hurt so bad you can't stop crying and you're terrified to even breathe wrong for fear of making it worse. And I've even been in the situation where I tried to make the person who hurt me hurt as badly as I did. It's human nature.

But it's wrong.

Jesus was hurt. And not just emotionally. Physically. He had his hair ripped out, his body beaten, nails driven into his hands and feet. Thick, long thorns pounded into his skull. Jesus was hurt. And He still forgave the people who did it to Him.

He still forgave me.

Me.

I've done so much wrong. I've lied to people. I've hurt people. I've taken things that didn't belong to me and thought things I had no business thinking. And with every little thing I've done wrong, I push those nails deeper and deeper into His hands -- hands that never did anything wrong.

You Have a Choice

So I figured this out one day. I just decided. I made a choice.

I had two choices available. I could hold on to unforgiveness and keep holding people at arm's length--putting them on guilt trips and thinking poorly of them--or I could forgive. Honestly, actually, truthfully forgive. Meaning that I would stop thinking about the hurt. That I would give it to God and let Him have it and not worry about it anymore and trust that He would be glorified in the end, no matter how much I had been hurt. No matter how deep the wound went. Holding on to it wasn't helping me. And refusing to let it go was making it hard for me to do the things God wanted me to do.

And that's when I realized how immature I had been. That's when I understood what real maturity is.

Maturity Isn't Hiding

Maturity is rolling with the punches. It's taking whatever comes at you, understanding that God has a purpose for it - no matter how much it might hurt you.

What I had been doing for so much of my life was taking my circumstances and simply not thinking about them. I just didn't think about them so it didn't matter what happened. I just ignored it. But things piled up. And I could only ignore them for so long before I exploded, and then I was so hurt by the actions of the people I cared about that I didn't know what to do or how to live. That wasn't maturity. People always told me I was so mature for my age, but I wasn't. I was just hiding.

And that's not right.

Refusing to forgive ironically only hurts the one who refuses to forgive. We have this idea that holding on to what hurt us is going to make someone else feel bad. It doesn't. It only makes us bitter, and it controls our lives. It consumes us so that nothing else (like God) can fill us up.

That's not the way a Christian's life is supposed to be.