Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - You Hurt My Feelings
Have your feelings been hurt lately? How easily and often unnecessarily we allow our feelings to be hurt. Think about what happens when our feelings are hurt.
Typically we retreat, we become very self-focused, we become angry or bitter, and we suffer! Hurt feelings cause many to drop out, to sit on the sidelines, to refuse to take part in activities. I wonder how many good ministries and projects have been harmed or torpedoed because of hurt feelings. No doubt the enemy of our souls uses our too-sensitive feelings as a way to keep us from doing what God wants us to do.
We women tend to filter most every experience first through our emotions. That can cause us to assume that everything is all about us.
For example, if a co-worker is not very communicative on a given day, we can allow ourselves to think "it’s all about us." We assume that person is not speaking to us because she doesn’t like us, or we’ve done something to upset her–we can imagine many negative scenarios as we wallow in our self-absorption. If we don’t move from that emotional "why-isn’t-she-talking-to-me" mindset to think that she may have something very heavy weighing on her mind, or maybe a headache, or who knows what, then we fall into that "it’s all about me" syndrome and the hurt feelings happen.
I have often reminded women that people are not thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are thinking about you! We assume it’s all about us, when most of the time it isn’t. We think we are far more important in the lives of others than we really are! Most people’s worlds revolve around themselves, not us!
I’ve discovered that anytime I am self-focused, whether negative or positive, thinking things are all about me, I am in for pain and misery. Jesus said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it" (Matthew 16:25). He is teaching us that being self-absorbed is the pathway to loss. Overly sensitive feelings, which frequently throw us into the "it’s all about me" syndrome, can cause us to lose our life. We can lose the purpose for which God created us; we can lose the peace and joy Jesus came to give us; we can lose the opportunity to reach out to others with God’s comfort and love.
Think of all the opportunities for ministry that we miss because we’re licking our wounds over some supposed offense or hurt. That person who didn’t speak to us in an acceptable way, or who seemed to ignore us, may desperately need a compassionate word, a smile, a helping hand. But if we think "it’s all about us," we don’t even realize that we need to reach out with a loving word to help that person.
I hope you’ll think about what triggers your hurt feelings and ask God to show you if you’re falling into that trap of thinking it’s all about you.
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