Bitter or Better

Hurt is a funny thing. 

It makes you do and say stupid things. Things you wish you could take back. Things you regret. It takes you down paths you never would have imagined. 

Hurt is particularly painful when you have “hurt hoarding” disorder like myself and you stuff and you stuff hurt until--darn it, there is just no more room in there and you awake one day to find yourself living in filth. 

I used to believe when I was older I would have all the answers to dealing with pain.  That magically, age plus experience was going to make me somehow immune to struggle and strife. Honestly, I thought I would have it all together. 

Instead, I find myself realizing I have more questions than answers.  Some days this realization gets the best of me. Truly when you are an internal processing nut like myself this is a recipe for disaster.

I’ve come to believe there are only two pathways for hurt to take in a heart: Bitter or Better. 

Bitter is always the starting place and the natural path, like water cutting through a rock, inevitably leaving ruts on our outlook toward people and God. Bitter isolates. It corrodes. It convinces us to give up on people. On faith. On ourselves. 

But Better? Better cheers to us from the bleachers to stay in the game. That we can do it. That there is a diamond in this lump of coal if we can only endure. Better takes intention, resolve and supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. 

To taste the bitter in our mouth and say in our heart I want to be better as a result of this takes a purposeful resolve. A turning away from the hurt and a turning to the Healer. 

And so I drag myself, chalk full of despair, sadness and questions, into His presence, and I muster out a “Why? I don’t know what is happening! What are you doing? Why am I going through this?” 

I sense His response in that lovingly whisper, “When all you can see is what you DON’T KNOW, you need to go back to the things you DO KNOW.” 

Things like His sovereignty over my circumstances, His promise to cause all things to work for my good, that His love will never fail. That He has purpose in my trials, His promise to complete the work He started in me, that He has promised to comfort and heal this broken heart. Things like He will never leave me and that He will give me wisdom if I ask. His promise to make me better sometimes through bitter things.

A million promises that I have believed and built my life on begin to flood my mind and heart, but the real question is do I really believe them? Do I really believe HIM? 

I know the answer to this question. In this place of hurt and questions, as well as in the place of peace and understanding, I do trust Him. 

But it doesn’t change the fact that I want understanding now.  

John Eldridge spells out my dilemma so clearly in his book Walking With God: 

“When it comes to crises or events that really upset us, this is what I have learned: you can have God or you can have understanding. Sometimes you can have both. But if you insist on understanding, it often doesn’t come. And that can create distance between you and God, because you are upset and demanding an explanation in order to move on, but the explanation isn’t coming, and so you withdraw a bit from God and lose the grace that God is giving. He doesn’t explain everything. But He always offers us Himself.”  

Oh, this is where I frequently find myself these days--choosing to move forward with Him in spite of myself, my circumstances, my doubts, my hurt.  Attempting to choose Better over Bitter. 

In making this choice, I may not always get what I think I want, but I always receive what I need and truly what my heart is desiring—more of God and for Him to have more of me.