Put Your Past to Bed

I saw an episode of a TV show this week that centered around a woman's brutal rape.  I watched in horror as she stuffed her emotional pain deep down inside of her, so that she could go on with life as usual and comfort those around her who were also hurt by what had happened to her.  It was at that moment that I realized that I had done the exact same thing with a similar situation that happened to me years earlier.  I have never even really talked about it, so how could I have come to terms with it and moved on in a healthy way?

I am not one of those “inner healing” folks who runs around thinking that everyone needs to get in touch with something that happened to them as a child to see why they are the way they are as adults. I think that too much dwelling on the past without resolving it can cause more pain than freedom. Having said that, I feel that being honest with ourselves about past hurts and abuses, can only serve to make us healthy in our present day existence. Karol Truman has written a book called “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die”.

Feelings buried alive never die. Feelings buried alive never die. Think about that statement. It is so powerful. Feelings buried alive never die. The book is a little “out there” for me but Truman shows the correlation of our physical and mental health with our unresolved feelings. If feelings about painful hurts are stuffed deep down in our hearts, just think of the toll that places on our bodies and souls!! Every fiber of our being becomes infused with hurt, fear, anger and other negative emotions. I think that this can actually manifest itself in disease and certainly hinder our current relationships.

“Whatever we choose to focus our attention on will automatically multiply in our lives. A focus on injustices of the past will become our trials of the present.” ¹ Does this mean we ignore the past…I don’t think so. It means that we figure out how those injustices have hurt us and deal with them. Put a face on them; call them for what they are and then choose to confront or forgive or whatever the situation calls for. Then, we choose to focus our attention on how God has redeemed us from our past and how He uses the past, not to hurt us further, but to make us stronger, better people. Then, feelings are no longer buried alive to resurface over and over, destroying the life that we are trying to build for ourselves. Believers are not meant to be trapped in their own emotional bondage.

The Word says that we are able to forgive, renew our minds and have great peace that passes ALL understanding. We should not wallow in “woundedness” but gather strength from our experiences. Just as God redeems us from sin, He redeems us from wounds. Those holes in our hearts…those places where we feel rejected and damaged…only God can fill those holes with His love, peace and Fatherhood! When we can find that inner peace, we will exhibit outer peace. That’s how we will know that we are healed.

1.  "Feelings Buried Alive Never Die" by Karol Truman