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What to do when someone hurts you?

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By design#860
The agave plant is beautiful. It grows in hot, dry climates mostly in the southwest.  Close to home, we might be acquainted with it as a sweetener.  The agave has many other beneficial uses, but it is also poisonous and can lead to problems if it punctures the skin. 

 Aren't we the same?  We possess both the bitter and the sweet. The poison that can pierce a heart and the ability to speak sweetly and convey love. Beautiful and ugly, good and bad. Each quality resides in all of of us.   

 What do we do when we've been hurt by someone we love?  Strike back with our own woundedness? Run? Retreat? Shut down? That's what I tend to do. I nurse my wound and feel sorry and angry at the same time. It's not a healthy place to be. In my head, I believe I have to figure it out on my own. And in that place, I usually remain stuck. Only until my heart starts to listen to the nudges of the Holy Spirit, do I stand a chance to make progress. 

 And so I have to run.  Not away from my hurt, but into the arms of my Creator. The arms of the one who understands pain and hurt. The one who can help me understand the wounded places that cause me to react the way I do.  It is in this space that I can find healing. If I choose to rest, listen, and receive then healing can begin. This is where I get encouragement.  In the arms of God. 


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement,  who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.  For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.
2 Corinthians 1:3‭-‬5 


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