How to Tame the Heart and Mind

Have you ever been utterly side-swiped by a stunning injury that shattered your heart into pieces?  You were sailing along, fairly able to manage life, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere someone inflicts a wound.  Not just a minor my-feelings-are-hurt annoyance that can be overcome in a day or two, but something much larger.  A hole so large has been blown in your heart that it is hard to imagine ever not feeling a raw emptiness.  It is hard to know what hurts more: the thoughtless deed or the fact that someone who was once a safe place has inflicted the pain.


I have just been knocked off my feet by such a cyclone of grief.  Having experienced a close death in the past year, perhaps grief is too strong a word, but the ache feels pretty similar to that grief.  I am just beginning to face the day after a sleepless night nursing my wound, struggling to achieve a plateau of emotions.  I don't feel relief.  My thoughts and feelings keep swirling and feeding themselves, getting larger and larger.  The more I reflect on the wound and the wounder, the more pained I feel.  And yes, I can see a little bit of my old, ugly enemy, ANGER, rearing his head in the midst of my tumult of emotions.  What to do?  I hate feeling this pain, but I can't stop my mind from rehashing the shock of hearing the words that pierced my heart.  And I don't know how to stop my heart from bleeding.

I know that I should pray and "give this over to God."  (A worn, old-school phrase I heard repeated by preachers when I was young.   Yet as an adult facing very real problems, I don't exactly know what to practically do to "give something over to God.")  So I try.  I try to talk with God.  I attempt to ask Him why He has allowed such a pain.  But when ever I start the discussion, I think of something else that was said, or another jab and my mind veers off track.  How do I stop this cycle?  How do I let God capture my thoughts and let Truth reign?  How can I let Him cauterize my wound so that I don't start to fester and ooze the yellowish pus of bitterness?

I could use any and all help when it comes to moving past hurts, especially those recently occurred.  I don't have answers to this issue (but I would love some helpful, practical suggestions).  But I do know that if I don't even open my Bible and search for hope there will never be any soothing relief to my soul.  So I open the Psalms.  As I reading, focusing as best I can, which is hardly at all, it strikes me that Psalms is full of my emotions.  Despair, anxiety, fear, unanswered questions, frustrations, injustices done by David's enemies.  David is close enough to God to tell Him exactly what he is thinking and feeling, how much his heart is aching.  He wonders if God has even seen the darkness that surrounds him, and the injustice that his enemies heap upon him.  He shares it all with God, and peace and intimacy steal over him.  I can't read the Psalms without feeling an undercurrent that God is near.  He cares.  He will be the balm that my wound needs.  David is in deep pain and distress.  Both emotional and physical, but speaking all his pain to his father leads him to a coveted place: a strengthening of the knowledge that God is good, that He is near, that He sees, and that He will rescue.

I can't manufacture peace in my own heart.  I can't create a quiet spirit.  But I can emulate David in crying out to God, and I can be fully assured that His sweet spirit will minister to my needy soul.  There is no reason to churn my agony over and over in my own mind; I can and should run straight to the one place that can bring me healing and comfort: my heavenly Father.  Honest conversations with the Lord, coupled with an eagerness to receive His truth, will tame my anxious mind and soothe my aching heart.  I know nothing else can.