Naming the hurt
I can’t let go of what I refuse to name out loud
There’s a scar right below my left ring finger. Some 5th grade punk in my 4/5th split class dripped hot glue on my hand while we worked on a project. So annoying.
I’m also amazed that my skin still shows the evidence of that moment thirty years later. A faint witness to a simple mistake.
I bet you’ve got a few physical scars. Some might even have some pretty epic stories. We’ve got emotional scars too. Sometimes I imagine little bruises on our hearts that we carry around. Maybe some are pretty big. Maybe we’ve been carrying them for so long we just got used to it.
Today is the importance of naming our hurt. Last week we told the story of what actually happened. The facts, the truth, as much as we can remember. Sometimes we’ve told so many stories on top of the facts, that it’s hard to get back to the original truth. But we can try.
We’ll notice a time when Jesus shared his scars, talk about naming our hurt, why we do this, when to do this, what happens when we don’t, and what to do if the person doesn’t care that we are hurt.
Two interesting things about this story today.
First, Jesus can enter locked rooms. What locked rooms in your life are off limits to exploring? Maybe there are 10 locks on that door, yellow caution tape and some big signs you made as a little kid that say, “Keep out!”
What feelings rise up that you immediately push away? They’re too painful or difficult. The good news today for you may be that Jesus can enter locked rooms.
Second, Jesus had some scars. He’d been deeply hurt, experienced trauma, he cried, he was in pain. The scars tell that story. And Jesus didn’t keep those scars to himself. He showed his disciples and Thomas, even when he doubted. People may doubt your story, tell it anyways. Your pain is your pain. Don’t minimize it to make others comfortable, friends. Your scars tell stories. And if you want to experience the freedom of forgiveness, that scar needs to see the light of day.
Desmond Tutu’s book called “The Book of Forgiving” has guided much of our work on forgiveness. I share some of his thoughts today on naming our hurt.
Naming Our Hurt
Every one of us has a story to tell of when we were hurt. Once we are done telling our stories— the technical details of who, when, where, and what was done to us— we must name the hurt. Giving the emotion a name is the way we come to understand how what happened affected us. After we’ve told the facts of what happened, we must face our feelings. We are each hurt in our own unique ways, and when we give voice to this pain, we begin to heal it. As we begin to heal, our relationship to the story loosens and we can choose when and where to share it.
Until the healing begins, we may find ourselves stuck, rigidly repeating our story— or pieces of our story— to anyone and everyone, irrespective of the person or the situation. Many of us have seen people who mutter their story aloud to themselves over and over. They are stuck in their trauma, literally driven by their inability to transcend what has happened to them. Healing memory requires the careful assembly of the puzzle pieces of experience, but once we know what has happened, we must move beyond the bare facts to the raw feelings. While we may be reluctant to face the truth of our feelings or the depth of our pain, it is the only way to heal and move forward.1
Another way to say this: I can’t let go of what I refuse to name out loud.
We give voice to our hurts not to be victims or martyrs, but to find freedom from the resentment, anger, shame, or self-loathing that can fester and build inside us when we do not touch our pain and learn to forgive.
Why must we name the harm?
Often it may seem easier to dismiss the hurt, stuff it down, push it away or pretend it didn’t happen. But a hurt is a hurt. A loss is a loss. And a harm felt but denied will always find a way to express itself. When I bury my hurt in shame or silence, it begins to fester from the inside out. I feel the pain more acutely, and I suffer even more because of it (Tutu).
When is it necessary to name the hurt?
Do I need to name a hurt every single time? We actually end up engaging in the forgiveness process very quickly at times. Tutu writes, “When my two-year-old at play knocks over my favorite vase, I might swing around and smack her hand, a useless act of retaliation masquerading as discipline. Instead, I could say, “Oh, no! I loved that vase. It was a birthday gift from my best friend. I’m so sad. We should play that game outside. Oh, well, let’s sweep up the mess.” Though I wasn’t paying attention, all the steps were there.
There are no hard and fast rules. Sometimes you’ll sense it’s time to walk the path with a specific situation. Other times you may not. The single more important thing is to share our sorrows, pain, fears and grief.
Sometimes it feels easier to forgive physical wounds because they’re so obvious. A psychological wound is harder to name. Neuroscientists have shown that a psychological wound, such as being excluded, stimulates the same part of the brain that is stimulated when there is a physical wound. Our brains process and feel these injuries the same way. They don’t distinguish one type of hurt from another. Which means the children’s rhyme that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” is simply not true.
Never naming the hurt
Some of us have never named a hurt out loud from something in our past. Desmond Tutu tells the story of a woman named Clara who received word her older sister was killed in a car accident. Clara was 19 at the time and no one in her family would talk about what happened. They didn’t cry together, talk about her, nobody told her how to act when somebody she loved died. There was no model for grieving or healing. Many unfortunate situations resulted in Clara’s life because she didn’t know it was okay to talk about how she felt.
Tutu walks through the important role of grief in forgiveness. We don’t grieve only when someone dies. Grief happens whenever we lose something that is precious to us. It could be our trust in someone, our innocence, our faith, a change in our marriage, relationship with a child, a loss of a job, a change in our identity. Grief is how we both cope with and release the pain we feel.
For us to prepare to forgive someone, naming our hurts helps us move out of the stage of denial. We cannot honestly name our feelings and be in denial at the same time.
The only way out of what hurts us is through it.
When we deny our feelings, when we choose not to name our hurts and instead reject the pain of our losses, we always end up seeking destruction. It may be numbing our unacknowledged pain or entering the cycle of revenge with a hope that hurting others will fix our pain. It does not.
The only way to stop the pain is to accept it, name it, feel it fully. Then you discover that your pain is part of what it means to be human, along with the rest of humanity. You realize you’re not alone in your suffering, and that others have experienced and survived what you have experienced, and you can survive and know joy and happiness again. When you embrace your feelings, you embrace yourself and allow others to embrace you too.
One of the joys in ministry is I get to be a safe place for people to be themselves and share their story. It’s an honor. As a healthy body of Christ, we each are invited to become a brave place for people to be themselves. Here are some things we can each keep in mind as we continue to become these places.
How to Acknowledge the Harm - No Feeling is Wrong
Listen.
Do not try to fix the pain.
Do not minimize the loss.
Do not offer advice.
Do not respond with your own loss or grief.
Keep confidentiality.
Offer your love and your caring.
Empathize and offer comfort.
One of my friends is a safe space for me. When we spend time together, it feels like my soul can breathe again as I share parts of my story with her. She listens, doesn’t try to fix it, doesn’t tell me I am fine, simply holds the space for me to get some pain and feelings out of my body and into the world. What a gift that is!
In the step of naming our hurt, we move from denial of the pain to acceptance of the harm. We can’t bear the pain alone. When we share the burden of our brokenness, we find we are less broken. Our hearts get lighter and our wounds begin to heal. Find someone who will listen and acknowledge the harm you feel, and pour out your sorrow until you are utterly empty (Tutu).
What if that person doesn’t care that they have hurt us?
What if the one who hurts is a group, a government or an institution? The path of forgiveness is still possible to walk. Yes, there are still consequences. And we’re called to speak truth to power. But we can release the pain of the harm.
This all seems like a lot of work sometimes. But the beauty of the first two steps is that they make room for a new story to be written. But first, you must have the courage to speak.
Jesus walked through death. And came out the other side. But Jesus had some scars. Don’t hide your scars, friends. They were powerful teachers on this journey.
Meet me here
Speak my name
I am not your enemy
I am your teacher
I may even be your friend
Let us tell our truth together, you and I
My name is anger: I say you have been wronged
My name is shame: my story is your hidden pain
My name is fear: my story is vulnerability
My name is resentment: I say things should have been different
My name is grief
My name is depression
My name is heartache
My name is anxiety
I have many names
And many lessons
I am not your enemy
I am your teacher2
May it be so. Amen.
Still Here: A Poetry Memoir of Grief & Love
Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving.”
Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving.”
As usual, fine and well stated self and courageous communal revelations in your writing. I think you have a gift that has interesting implications. We we share deep vulnerabilities for many it creates safe space and for others it doesn't. Some are extremely private regarding their wounds for a number of reasons. The experience of rejection or the ignoring of a vouce in sharing vulnerabilities can be almost as painful as the wound. That can take a toll over time. But there's hope in finding safe space where divine love holds. Christ holds us as his mother held him in his most vulnerable state. I believe your personal stories are witness to that and give others hope even when others may not be able to share so openly.