Processing the Hurts from the Past: Part 2

Pain that leaves one wounded as the result of a clear perpetrator results in the type of predicament we dealt with in the previous blog. Many people suffer from the outrageous words and acts that scar deeply and leave wounds that won't heal.

Frank Peretti knows what wounds are like. In his book, The Wounded Self, Peretti unpacks the burden he carried by being afflicted from birth with cystic hygroma. Cystic hygroma is a condition that causes the tongue to grow grotesquely and, at least in Peretti's case, interfere with physical development. Undergoing numerous surgeries, Peretti knew the range of demeaning social interactions: morbid curiosity to the egregious remarks of children to the cruel behavior at the hands of peers in a school locker room.

Whereas the pain exposed last time revealed clear instigators of inflicting cruel treatment. This is a bit dissimilar. Not all pain has a clear instigator. In Peretti's case, physical anomalies caused the impetus for the abuse. Many of the participants, although remembered, were not that creative. They exploited an obvious physical challenge and attacked without mercy so as to glean some sadistic level of satisfaction.

Although Peretti had to have numerous surgeries, his plight caused him to have deep insecurities about his physical being. Repeated surgeries were required to carve out portions of his misshapen and oozing tongue. Needless to say the feedback of disgust and utter repugnance was the standard fair for social contact at time when he needed it the most.

Sometimes when people have been picked on or been abused over an extended period of time, they react by doing horrendous things. The Columbine massacre, which occurred over 11 years ago, is an acute testimonial of what seemed to be gross mistreatment without appropriate intervention for the ones who would eventually be the perpetrators of cold, calculating murder. The tragic outcome reveals the dead-end result of one targeted by peers and authority figures as a loser and less of worth than his peers.

The truism is clear. One of the saddest commentaries is this: those who have been mistreated very often go on to mistreat others. This is particularly apparent in marriages when deeply wounded people marry having lives filled with deep, festering wounds that will erupt again given the right circumstances.

In some cases, counseling from a skilled counselor will be needed to identify and process the horrendous memories one has suffered. Allowing the travesty of yesterday to go unnoticed makes no sense, and is indeed a recipe for disaster. This is particularly true if the nightmare from the past is a living hell to this day. That in itself is a desperate cry for help.

The only way to get through pain suffered is to realize it must be processed. But how? To begin the long arduous prcoess, Peretti brings out the realization that , "God does not want to waste one ounce of our pain or a drop of our tears; suffering doesn't come our way for no reason, and He seems especially efficient at using what we endure to mold our character. If we are malleable, He takes our bumps and bruises and shapes them into something beautiful" (p. 183).