TOUCHING PAIN with TACT

You never really know how much someone is hurting. It’s impossible to see what is happening on the inside because it is human nature to create defensive dams on the outside to keep our intensive tears from breaking through like a faulty floodgate.Sometimes you can sense pent-up pain, but you can’t feel it compassionately unless you are allowed to touch it, and like a raw nerve that is exposed, it must be diagnosed and treated before one can get a sense of the suffering.And what is worse is that compounded pain stems back to an affliction that was never managed. Never dealt with. Never helped with. But we can miss this pain in others, not necessarily because it’s concealed, but rather because we’re scared to be the relief that they need to feel.I’ve been to pains threshold, and resisted, which only left me at the mercy of what happened. And by God’s grace alone, I survived!  And now I am willing to go back there to help others glean from this threshing floor of pain. I don’t mind feeling what they feel because it’s familiar and I know my Healer now. However, and especially in ministry, it's still sad to see so many individuals in a state of emotional fragility. On the verge of leaking.  Exploding. Melting. Eroding. How many are drowning in their hurts and have no idea how to discover healing?  “Oh Lord, so many!”Like a skilled dentist, sometimes just a tactful touch is enough to reveal the pain even though that touch may actually increase the ache temporarily. It’s important to remember that numbing only hides the pain, it doesn’t heal the pain. And some people are just waiting for someone to come along and touch their pain with the right tact.  And not even to remove it, but simply to relate to it. There is just something about relating that helps us manage, and eventually salvage.I know personally that pain needs to be recovered, not suppressed. But what am I willing to do with this “knowing?”  Well, that’s the beauty of being a patient before becoming a doctor. Your tact is not from something you’ve studied, but from experience that you’ve steadied. Plainly put, God allows us to go through it for us to eventually help others get through it (II Corinthians 1:3-5).We may not be able to heal the hurt, but in Christ we can feel others hurt which leads to helping them deal with their hurt.  A Christian is called to touch with tact and then let God do the rest.