Food for thought: Through the pain

Perhaps this a truth that some would rather not know. Perhaps this is one of those truths that people would rather not talk about. Loving deeply means hurting deeply. You take a gigantic risk in loving humans, even God knows this (ever read Jeremiah??). Yes, even God has been hurt in loving the very humans He has created. Loving humans means opening up your heart to being hurt by that love.
I wonder if maybe that's soemthing that holds us back from full on loving with Agape love. We tried it once or twice and we got hurt. That kind of deep hurt is hard to forget. I wonder if in our zeal to push for loving others we forget to tell others how to heal after being hurt by those "others".
You see, you cannot hurt deeply and love deeply at the same time. They are both very strong emotions that ache to be felt. They will wrestle like 2 children fighting for turns on the merry-go-round of your heart to be expressed. Only one at a time, kids The problem is we don't like to feel that deep pain so we just leave it pushed down deep and hope we can deny its turn long enough that it will go away. It never does, though. Look at our world's addiction and mental health problems and you will see this is an epidemic. There's only one way out and that's through the pain. We have to allow God to dig out the very thing that hurts the worst so that He can heal us from the very thing that hurts the worst. In other words, He can't fill a space that's already full.
I'm just going to say it, that does not sound like a great option. I don't know very many people who will jump up and volunteer right away to go through hell on earth. We're weak. However, we're also in great need. When you are in severe pain and you find out that your appendix is about to burst you go straight away to have it removed before it kills you. I'm willing to bet that if you were on top of a mountain and this happened where you couldn't get the "good drugs" to get rid of the pain, but you still had the skilled doctor you would opt to have the same surgery. Save your life over the temporary pain of surgery? We would all take the option if faced with it, rather than chance not surviving the wait. So why the aversion to having God do this emotional surgery for us?
The last couple of months has hurt. Emotions up and down that have been like a WWE on my momma heart. Foster care is rough, but there are some times and some cases that change and it takes its emotional toll. On a nearly daily basis, something has changed and last night I just begged God to not let me feel anymore for a little while because it hurt too much. That's when I realized I was only holding back the pain from Him. I wasn't fully allowing him to clean it out. I was trying to be strong for everyone involved and by doing so, I was shoving the fear and hurt so far down that I was filling all my nooks and crannies with it. It was time to let it go. That's when I began to fully understand that I cannot be fulfilled with Him while spaces are being filled with pain and fear of more pain. It was time to open myself up to all of it and allow my Father to heal what was breaking down under the weight of mountain I had built inside. It's still going to hurt for now, but like David, I know that soon I will say without tears "it is well with my soul". "Perfect love casts out fear", it also heals those wounds if we let Him. Have a blessed weekend.