When people you love break your heart, what do you do? The first question in your mind is ‘why?’ and the initial reaction is pain. Very often there is this disbelief as you struggle to accept the fact that someone so close to you, someone you love, could do this to you. Your world comes crashing down right before your eyes and you have to pinch yourself to see that this is not a bad dream.
How do you respond when your heart has been stabbed with a sharp knife? Like any deep wound, pain is the first thing we experience. This pain grips your heart and takes over your whole being; you cannot wish it away. I have seen many people get physically ill from hearing news that shocked the daylights out of them.
We cannot turn back the clock and change what happened in the past but we can do much about how we respond to it. We know that hurt(adjective) people hurt (verb) people. It is a vicious cycle and we end up with generations of unforgiving people who carry deep, emotional scars. Proverbs 4:23-26 tells us to guard our heart because everything you do flows from it.
Generally, people react to situations rather than respond to them. Reaction stems from the heart and is an emotional element. Response on the other hand, comes from the head and is the reasoned part of our behaviour. Reaction is spontaneous while response is well thought out in our brain. In a game of chess, the one who wins is the one who can reason out his moves strategically. So, when you have been hurt by someone you love deeply, what is the best move? Do you react like a bull in a china shop or do you sit down and work out how you should respond? Your health and happiness depends on what you choose to do.
Talking about a problem to everyone will not make it go away. You need to go to the right source to get the right help. Sometimes the source could be emotional help like trained counsellors or physiological help like medical practitioners or spiritual help like pastors. This seems common sense but many people miss the point. Like a dog that has eaten the wrong food, all it needs is some grass to flush out its gut and then it is as good as gold. I witnessed this when I was dog sitting and was amazed to see how this animal knew exactly which grass to eat to flush out its system.
The sad reality of life is that our hearts will be broken from time to time, often by the ones we love the most. It ought not to be so but unfortunately it is so. There is not one living person who can say he or she was not hurt in life. When your heart is broken and the wound is deep, do not leave that sharp knife in there? If you don’t pull it out, drops of blood will always leak out. Pull out that knife, no matter how painful it is and get the right treatment to mend the wound in your heart. In that way, you will not have a wounded heart but a heart with a wound that is healing – big difference! ◊
Linda Pearl
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