When we’ve been hurt repeatedly, we need to seek out the damage-free zone for healing.
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We all get kicked in life, but when the kicking is constant, consistent, calculated, and calibrated to hit our unprotected places, we suffer cumulative damage.
Sure, we recover to some degree from each successive wound, but the lingering damage—festering under the surface—refuses to heal as hurt is re-inflicted.
I return to cumulative damage today in the context of why, even when someone who’s damaged us deeply, who’s twisted the knife of denigration, shot us through the heart with hatred, and dripped bitter acid on our sweet, caring soul, even when someone who’s done these dreadful things to us apologizes, improves his behavior a bit—perhaps even a lot—and wants to move on, we find ourselves unable to feel wholly restored, fully recovered, or ready to move on with our tormentor.
Instead, we want to use our barely functioning legs to run.
A person who inflicts cumulative damage makes a grievous miscalculation.
He trades a moment of victory for a lifetime of defeat.
She conquers a tiny territory of satisfaction but ends up ruling a world of hurt.
Worst of all, he slowly destroys the person he claims to love.
He says to himself, “She got over it this time, she’ll get over it again.”
But he is wrong, wrong, wrong.
As damage accumulates, we grow sicker and feel more unhealthy every day.
After a while, we stagger around, finding it nearly impossible to recover from the blows.
And when things are a little better, and the person hurting us hurts us again – even with something we might have brushed off earlier as minor, we feel something break inside, and we finally say – Enough!
Enough!
E-NUF!
We realize the magnitude of the horrendous hurt that’s accumulated.
It reminds us of what our damager is capable of.
And it frightens us.
This fear prevents the damage from healing fully, for we can never safely open the wounds, drain the infection, and allow proper healing.
To heal completely, we need to enter the damage-free zone. The zone where damage not only doesn’t occur, but also isn’t possible.
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To heal completely, we need to enter the damage-free zone.
The zone where damage not only doesn’t occur, but also isn’t possible.
We need to be with someone constitutionally incapable of hurting us, someone who makes our welfare, well-being, and best interests a priority.
Someone who treats us as first among equals.
Not a savior, but a conscientious caretaker, and a kind of redeemer.
The root of damage is damn, and cumulative damage causes us to feel blamed, judged, condemned.
How, we ask, can someone treat us this way, if we are worthy in the eyes of God?
We are all worthy.
But knowing it and feeling it are two different things.
Considerate caretaking restores our feelings of worthiness, reminds us we are valued, makes us feel as special as we are, and helps us heal fully.
After living a while in the damage-free zone, we realize that while the damage we suffered was cumulative, it is not irreparable.
And eventually, blessedly, we become whole again.
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Originally published on Tom Aplomb and is republished on Medium.
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