Dealing with Past Hurts

Yesterday, a conversation made me reflect on past hurts – what had caused them, how I’d dealt with them, how they affect me now. It was uncomfortable and painful. Personal scars were re-opened, and I was reminded of others who had been hurt and damaged…

…This morning I’m reflecting on dealing with past hurts.

I’m reading ‘Peter Pan’- for the first time. Peter Pan flies with Wendy and her brothers to Never Land… encounter Lost Boys, pirates led by Captain Hook, a crocodile that ate Hook’s arm, the fairy Tinkerbell, mermaids, Tiger Lily and her ‘redskin braves’… It’s even more bonkers than I thought it was.

I can view past hurts in a Never Land world, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy are uncertain.

When Dad was facing a difficulty, problem or uncertainty, he’d often start singing the old hymn that starts: ‘When all my labours and trials are o’er, And I am safe on that beautiful shore…’ He rarely got any further. Looking beyond his problem to his faith and certainty of his heavenly home, was sufficient.

I can look beyond my past hurts to a future of healing and wholeness. My faith assures me that this isn’t a Peter Pan fantasy…

Last night’s ‘The Great British Sewing Bee’ theme was ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’. The wartime ‘Make do and mend’ ethos was mentioned… Growing up in post-war Britain my brother’s old shirts were handed down to me… mum mended the holes in our socks and jumpers…

I can ‘make do and mend’ with past hurts – making the best of the damaged, mending it where I can…

Last night’s challenge was to ‘raid family wardrobes and re-make old garments into new ones’; old clothes were transformed into wonderful new creations… My faith reassures me that, in the hands of the master sewing-creator the valueless can become valuable, the discarded can be re-imagined, and the damaged can be mended to become something beautiful.

Perhaps my past hurts should be accepted and embraced…