Learning Another Way

Animals that have been wounded or mistreated often develop aggressive behavior, injuring when they feel threatened.  Or they may withdraw from other animals or people. One way or another, whether aggression or withdrawl, both responses leave them closed off to accepting or sharing love.  Something new needs to supercede the bad experiences that have created these intuitive ways of coping.

It seems that people are much the same.  Whether we are the wounded or the wounder (and sometimes we’re a bit of both) we desperately need to be re-taught and rehabilitated.  We need to know what is most True, about ourselves and others.  The Spirit of Christ within us must teach us a new way.  Only then can we find a healthy and hopeful way forward.

This rehabilitation doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process of loving renewal. It is a surrendering of old ways of thinking and responding. It is a process of clearing out the junk, of making space so that the clear refreshing winds of Love, Life and Hope can blow through our heart and mind.  Then, Instead of inflicting on others what has injured us, we can start experiencing the empowerment that comes from receiving love,  and extend that love outward to others in healthy life-giving and life-affirming ways.  

This takes time. Be patient with yourself and others. Anger and hurt are real. Dishonesty with yourself about these things only slows the process of renewal.  And on the days when change, in yourself or others, seems far off or even hopeless, remember this:

Our Father is committed -far more than we are- to the rehabilitation and restoration of both the injured and the injurer. He will accomplish this restoration.

May your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.