“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” – Ernest Hemingway
This quote has meant a lot to me recently. I have been strangely quiet in my writing, as I deal with what we are all dealing with in various ways. This time has been challenging, perhaps the most challenging year within our time, yet it has also produced much good. I have found a deeper form of thought, cutting through the modern day noise and distractions that our American way of life produces. While there is nothing inherently bad about such things, I feel they have overcame our spiritual and mental livelihood. Much of this has afforded us some silence of the unnecessary, drawing us to introspection, even repentance.
Personally, this blessed silence has brought up many hurts of my past. While these flavors of hurt stay with us, often dictating behavior and thought, the aforementioned distractions, can mute them. As I ponder such things, I reflect on God’s goodness. It is easy during trouble to feel God muted, or worse, callous and distant. Yet, if we are to believe in God during those moments of favor and distraction, then we must be willing to come desperately to where He may be hiding in the tragic. Sometimes the silence of God is more profitable. As Charles Spurgeon said It draws us deeper. Fervently/desperately we cling to the things we thought we know for sure. Our practical theology gets put under the microscope of hurt, as an attempt to once again answer the looming “do I even believe?” In moments as these, we can go deeper or lose it all. The end result within us will be a reflection of the God we find. Either He is silent, distant, angry, which produces in us the same posture towards others, or we find a deeper, calculated, introspective God. I suspect it is this latter verdict that many of those who we respect for their faith have come to time and time again.
Hurt is a necessary thing. We cannot simply push it aside – burying under distraction and busy. Nor can we simply claim to give it to a higher power without our own deep reckoning of all within us. We do the work, accompanied by our faith, to bring healing in our deepest of wounds. This never looks quite the same from hurt to hurt. Everyone has their own journey they must fearlessly and vulnerably travel, to find some sort of peace. Perhaps this is the “clear and hard” part of the words of Hemingway. Hurt is rarely clear, yet our response needs to be. Hard is our work and final response. Your healing is not meant for others, but for you. If those responsible for such hurt feel offense, perhaps it is from their own guilt or regret. When we bring clarity to our pain, we find the healing light of a deeper understanding. Wrapped in grace, the deeper truth will prevail.
Hurt has no timeline. There is no “getting over”. There is, however, peace. We find this by being honest, earnest, and vulnerable.
Never minimize your hurt
Never let others set their limitations to it
When we author our uncomfortable response to hurt, we let a greater artist work within us.
Be firm. Be clear.
No apologies needed.
Matt simon blog 