When the Truth is Painful

Pain is a terrible thing. We fear it and avoid it at all costs. And yet, it is also a signal that can save our lives. Pain causes you to lift your hand from the stove before you seriously burn yourself. Emotional pain draws your attention to a relationship that needs work before the relationship is destroyed. It is a terrible thing to be a bringer of pain. No one wants to hurt others. Occasionally parents have to pull splinters out with tweezers or pull off a Bandaid. Sometimes we have to cause pain to bring healing to our children. When that happens, we do so in the context of love. Blake Coffee has an interesting piece online where he discusses what happens when telling someone the truth causes them pain. Such truth telling is necessary, but it needs to be done in the context of relationship and love.

Pain does funny things to us. It makes us see things unclearly, it makes us recall things incorrectly, but one of the most troublesome results of pain is our unwillingness to trust anyone. When I am in pain, I just do not want to let you close, because I don’t know that I can trust you. That is a problem, because often the healing process requires that I trust someone; it requires that I let down my guard and permit someone to administer the healing mechanism. For physical injuries, that may be stitches, or medicine, or setting a broken bone. But for emotional or Spiritual injuries, it usually means a healthy dose of truth. And truth, it seems, can be the most painful of medicines. When you are called upon to administer truth into my life, when you must speak the truth in love to me, you must first remove all doubts in my mind about your motives. You must convince me that you have my best interests at heart. You must create an environment where I feel safe and where I am willing to allow you to administer painful medicine. If you do not accomplish this first and foremost, you simply cannot speak truth in love to me, because I cannot hear it....READ MORE