Will You Be Made Whole?: Power Over Your Pain--Past, Present or Future

By Linda Petty

Does there always seem to be an issue with your relationships—where forgiveness becomes a struggle? What is it that makes you pull back or through up your “defenses” against the pain of hurtful, unforgiveable acts against your soul? What is your issue? What has caused you to harden your heart against those in your life who want to help you, and to love you?

Without realizing it, these unresolved feelings of pain and hurt have you “stooped” over mentally and spiritually.

The woman with the issue of blood struggled for twelve long years, stooped over with her issue. You can imagine that not only was she physically struggling, she also experienced a mental and spiritual struggle because of the issue.

After spending all she had on physicians and useless remedies, she went to the one source that could help her—Jesus. She knew that if you could just touch the hem of his garment, she would be made whole!

What issue has caused you to be stooped over in pain over the years? What painful or hurtful situation are you still dealing with from your childhood? Or is the pain more recent? Most often you may not even realize that it is in fact an issue, until you confront it.

This book addresses some of the issues that has caused us pain or hurt over the years, where we felt that it was a way of life. It will give you some insight and should provoke you to plan your victory for deliverance from the effects of the pain or hurt that has impacted your life in a negative way.

This book guides you in the process of identifying your source of pain—whether from childhood or adult relationships, or from self-inflicted wounds of drug and alcohol abuse.

Some of the key issues addressed are:

• Physical and verbal abuse
• Abandonment
• Manipulation
• Death of a Loved One

These are all issues that eat away at your soul and diminishes your capacity to be the person you are meant to be.

You will be asked the hard questions from your childhood experiences and adult situations that have crafted your character—good or bad. However, there may be a deep, unresolved issue of hurt and pain—mental and spiritual—that affects your old and new relationships.

Read this book with the intent to gain knowledge and insight, and well as, developing a strategy to overcome.

It won’t be easy—especially if the issue is a recent experience. But this book will give you some tools to help you get to a place of relief and victory, if you allow it.

It’s time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Sep 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781400326198

Linda Petty

A native of Arkansas, Linda has been married for 36 years.  Her email commentary, “Everyday Wisdom”, has been published via internet since 1999.  She uses her everyday experiences and relationships to demonstrate that God works for us on a more personal level than most believe and is concerned about the total man.  Her love for God is what motivates her in her endeavors to be a better person, as well as share His love with those who she encounters. She has served in prison ministry for over 10 years, bringing messages of hope and deliverance, as well as strategies for a successful re-entry into society.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Planning Your Course of Action

Are You Ready? Before moving on, you must answer this one vital question. Are you in a position or state of mind in which you can address the origin of your pain or hurt? Dealing with the origin of your pain or hurt could be a life-changing experience and, unless you are willing to see it through, you may experience more pain or hurt and it may take you to a place of deep sorrow and regret that you decided to take this course of action.

Please know that you will not be considered weak or in denial for not addressing it right now. Sometimes it takes a longer, slower process, and may take you some time to face each part of the process. But if you have gotten this far, you are making progress and you are to be commended.

Negative Results

STOP! If dealing with the issues of your pain or hurt brings forth intense anger and rage that will produce actions to harm others or yourself, which could possibly result into death or suicide, then it is recommended that you contact a person equipped to help you deal with facing your pain or hurt; someone like a licensed professional counselor, therapist, or Christian leader to help you deal with this issue. You do not have the power to overcome this alone, and you cannot achieve success without help.

If you have learned to live with it and you have methods of coping and dealing with your pain or hurt, then use this for someone else. The real focus of this material is to help those who want to open up your heart for answers and healing, or solace that you have done all you can to deal with your hurt or pain. This is for that person who is living a life unfulfilled and living an empty existence. You know that you are not healed, that you are not whole. But understand this: everybody is different, and you should not be judged because you want to continue on as you are. That is your right.

Planning Your Victory

You realize that the methods you are using to deal with your pain are not working. You have tried medication, isolation, drugs, sex, and alcohol, which only has a temporary numbing effect. It is time to plan your victory in overcoming the effects of your pain or hurt.

If you want to move forward, take one day at a time and do not try to resolve the issues related to your pain or hurt before you are ready. You may just need to acknowledge your pain or hurt. You may just need to cry your last tears and move on. You just may need to write down the cause of your pain or hurt. Plan your course of action, write down your plan, and keep a journal of your progress and your process. This way, you can go back over your actions and, if you are failing in some area of your recovery or progress, you can examine it, discover where you went wrong in your plan, and revise it to move forward. What course of action you choose has the potential to produce a renewed sense of pain or hurt, but it will be worth it if you obtain your end result and will be worth the journey.

The key is not to allow yourself to get discouraged if the results don’t come whenever you want. Your pain or hurt has been allowed to linger and take root as a vital, living part of your existence for quite some time, so it may take some time to remove the effects of it. If it takes a long time, it takes a long time! Just don’t give up. You can get through it. You can be whole.

Hard Decisions

Overcoming your pain or hurt is something you can achieve. You are not a failure in life. You may have made a series of bad decisions or mistakes, but you have been given a wonderful opportunity to overcome your pain or hurt in a way that is best for you and no one else.

In doing this, you may have to make some decisions that you have put off or were hard to make at a particular point in your life. That’s okay.

Your approach should be individual and not based upon anyone else. What worked on some other person may not work for you. Whatever is necessary, do it—this is about YOU BECOMING WHOLE. Are you ready to move forward? If you are, then you are brave and courageous. You can and will be made whole.

As stated before, don’t allow others to make you feel that you need to just grow up and let it go—unless they can tell you or show you how to do so.

A Real Benefit

Getting free from your own pain or hurt will open up opportunities to help others overcome their difficulties in the same or similar area. No one can tell the story like you can! Your story may be all it takes to set someone else on the same path. You are a living example of triumph in overcoming certain obstacles in your life. There may be someone in your life right now who has been through the same situations that have caused you pain or hurt. That person may be experiencing it now. Your triumph will give them hope for their own individual situation. You can’t guarantee that the person’s situation will turn out like yours. But the possibility is there that the person will have a complete transformation in his or her life. Imagine the lives you will touch when they see that you have overcome the pain or hurt of your past and living in the newness that comes with being free from it all.

CHAPTER TWO

What Is Pain?

Pain is an unpleasant feeling that is conveyed to the brain by sensory neurons (a cell that transmits nerve impulses and is the basic functional unit of the nervous system) . The discomfort signals actual or potential injury to the body. It also includes acute emotional and mental distress or suffering characterized by grief, depression, or anger. Individuals experience pain by various daily hurts and aches and, occasionally, through more serious injuries or illnesses. For scientific and clinical purposes, pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage (International Association for the Study of Pain, 1979).

The word pain usually refers to physical pain but it may also refer to pain in the broad sense, i.e. suffering. This includes physical pain and mental pain, or any unpleasant feeling, sensation, and emotion. It may be described as a private feeling of unpleasantness and loathing associated with harm or threat of harm in an individual.

What Level Is Your Pain?

Your pain or hurt may be from a new experience that is so fresh that you can’t even speak on it. It just hurts too much! Or, it could be from a past experience that happened so long ago that you have become numbed to it. It is there but you just don’t acknowledge it anymore. You have decided that it is okay to live with it as part of your emotional makeup, or as a guide for how you will handle your future relationships.

Whatever your level, pain is highly subjective to the individual experiencing it. A definition that is widely used in nursing was first given as early as 1968 by Margo McCaffery: Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does (McCaffery and Beebe, 1999). Only YOU can determine the level of pain that you are experiencing—it is just that simple.

Pain may range in intensity from slight through severe to agonizing and can appear as constant or irregular. The threshold of pain varies widely between individuals. Many attempts have been made to create a pain scale that can be used to quantify pain, for instance, on a numeric scale that ranges from 1 to 10 points. The purpose of these scales is to monitor your pain over time, allowing caregivers to see how a patient responds to therapy. Accurate quantification can also allow researchers to compare results between groups of patients, keeping in mind that each patient may describe the pain inflicted by the same type of wound at a different level from the other members in the group based on their individual experience. Simply, the pain you are in can only be defined by YOU and your understanding of your individual situation that caused the hurt or pain. No one has the right to dismiss your pain or hurt or the intensity level. The experience and the effects of it are real to you, regardless of how trivial it may seem to someone