Everybody Hurts

This life is full of hurt. And yet, while it is true that everybody hurts, it is also true to say that some have experienced more hurt and much more severe hurt than others.

... the pain remains long after the funeral.A family lose their son in a tragic suicide; a wife loses her husband after 40 years of marriage; a young husband loses his wife and child in an accident; a son loses the father whom he always worked alongside, and for a few days we offer our sympathy, and then a few months later we expect them to be over it. But grief doesn’t work like that. And the pain remains long after the funeral.

Bereavement is not the only hurt. Abuse, stress, depression, loneliness, sickness, accident all plough deep furrows across our hearts. Sometimes that hurt lies buried in our past, and we think it long gone. Yet all it takes is a word, a memory, a song, for it to surge back into our minds. And it’s just as fresh as it was when it happened. And just as raw.

Perhaps this is you, and you’ve tried to hide from the past, but you know that it doesn’t work.

It’s possible to live with the past, and yet not cope with the past. It gnaws away at us. We become trapped, thinking that we have to remain victims.

Or perhaps it is someone you know, and they talk to you about their past, and you are left feeling utterly helpless; what do you say? Everybody hurts sometimes.

We in Northern Ireland are very good at putting up masks, and hiding behind them, pretending everything is fine. But underneath lies a soul that is still raw. The past is real, it cannot be changed, yet it can be conquered. But how? Is it just the power of positive thinking? No – a drowning man can’t pull himself out of the water. He needs someone else’s help.

It’s possible to live with the past, and yet not cope with the past.One of the best loved verses in the Bible is from a man who had been beaten, starved, imprisoned, pelted with rocks and left for dead, and who had probably been disowned by his family. It is a verse that can provide hope for all who have come through the dark storms of hurt, or who are still in the eye of the storm. The apostle Paul says, In all these things we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us (Romans 8:37).

It is possible to be a conqueror of our hurt and our grief. In fact what Paul says is that it is possible to be more than a conqueror. A conqueror defeats his or her foe. Someone who ‘more than conquers’ takes their foe – be it their past or their grief – and turns it to work in their favour.

But how? Why don’t you contact us at Cloughmills Reformed Presbyterian Church and find out for yourself, or find out how to help loved ones to more than conquer. There is more hope than REM’s advice to just hold on.