Deny yourself or forgive yourself?

As I read a verse from the amplified Bible, without my reading glasses, I mistook “forget” for “forgive,” but my mistake reminded me of a truth about bringing our pain to God.  How can we heal and forgive ourselves of what we forget or deny we suffered?

Here is the amplified verse: “Jesus…said to them, if anyone intends to come after me, let him deny himself, [forget, ignore, disown, and lose sight of himself and his own interests] and take up his cross, and …follow with me [continually cleaving steadfastly to me]. Mark 8:34 APMC

I went on to read a devotional based upon that verse.  The author spoke of our ego and said we need to empty ourselves of our concerns (forget ourselves).  W must give our concerns to God so he has room to do what he wants.

“Forget?”  Not so fast, I realized.   If we do not grieve our earlier hurts and tragedies, and forgive ourselves for any part we had in them, we cannot empty ourselves the way this verse admonishes.  Instead we may “deny” these tragedies hurt us, even deny their impact.  To deny the truth does not allow us to deny our selfish nature.  This denial feeds our sin nature, because any anger festers there.  The wrong use of the word “deny” will inhibit us from using the right form of “deny.”

We need to tell God how very much the pain hurt us, often pain other people caused us.  We cannot even forgive our attackers let alone ourselves, until we tell God how much their mistreatment (sometimes abuse) hurt us.  I know, because I tried to do it the other way.

We cannot come to God using our logical minds alone to coolly say, “It hurt.”  We have to cry the tears we denied when the pain happened.  Highly logical women may balk at this exercise.  Thus I invite you to look at Hannah’s lament in 1 Samuel 1:10-11, and then see her later rejoicing in 1 Sam. 2: 1-10.  Also be sure to read Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations, and look at the various authors of the Psalms, especially King David’s Psalms.  These godly people cried out to God in their pain.  Remember that infertile Hannah was tormented by Peninnah, the fertile, second wife of their husband Elkanah.  These godly people cried out to God in their pain, and he did hear them. 

Admitting others hurt us is especially hard when the people denied doing wrong, or denied their behavior (neglect, attacks) hurt us.  We may have absorbed their lies “You aren’t hurt,” they say, so our rational mind denies the truth.  At such times, we have to invite God into our memory and allow him to let our hearts, our emotional side, cry as much as we need.  With each tear we can tell God each aspect of the mistreatment and explain how it hurt us. 

This might sound ethereal, so let’s imagine a fictional woman, named Marta, who denied childhood abuse.  Marta never admitted how awful she felt, frequently beaten up by a big brother (we’ll call him Frank) who wanted to punish someone on his bad days.   If Marta has reoccurring anger, bitterness, addictions or compulsions, she may be harboring unresolved guilt and unforgiveness.

Imagine Marta’s mom sees Frank attack Marta, but only yells at Marta for her crying and even smiles at Frank.  As a woman, Marta might need to revisit this memory to seek God’s healing.  She might need to tell God, “When my mom allowed Frank to hit me and never punished him, even smiled at him while my blood ran, I felt she rewarded him for his evil.  She hurt me by yelling at my tears instead of comforting me.  He was cruel, but so was she by allowing it.  I feel hurt and betrayed by my mom who did not protect me.  My brother mocked my pain by smiling as I cried.  I am hurt that these people hurt me instead of loving me.”  In addition to this, Marta tells God everything she feels that still hurts her heart.  As she continues to tell God, she also asks God to smile upon her and to cry with her (He really does cry with us—look at John 11:35, where Jesus saw his friends weeping “Then Jesus wept,”).  She asks God to care about her pain, to comfort her, and to believe she is valuable and did not deserve to be beaten and neglected.  As she tells God everything, she will actually feel God’s mercy for her and his indignation towards the mom who clearly favored her son over her daughter.  She will realize God had felt anger at Frank for his abuse of someone so much smaller and innocent.

If she blamed herself and falsely decided she was worthless and must have deserved the neglect and abuse (and she might have learned to live with abuse right up to the present if she believes this kind of lie), she can accept God’s reassurance that she was innocent of the attacks, and she can learn to forgive herself for believing the awful lie that she was worthless.  As she receives God’s tender mercies, over time, she can even forgive her mom and brother or whoever harmed her. 

I shared more about this concept in my earlier post, called “Embracing Grief,” so if you missed that post, please look at it for more detail.  I did this healing over twenty years ago.

This method works, even for recent problems we encounter.  God continues to enable me to go to him with my hurts.  As I have healed of old hurts, they have lost their control over my life.  As I gave God my hurts, He enabled me to release hurts much faster, even more recent ones.

For example, years ago, a friend hurt me by accusing me of things I had not done. I felt shame and self blame.  I leaped to apologize to her, believing I was all bad.  I kept loving her and encouraging her, but she gradually pulled out of my life. 

During her pulling away, I could use my logical mind to bring clarity before I invited my emotional side to bring this to God.  In this case, I was confused and not sure what I did and did not do.  I realized this friend had anger in her life and had even aimed some of that anger at me before.  I had already apologized to her and if she wanted to see me I said I would like to visit when she was ready.  She eventually stopped returning calls.

Her anger was not in proportion to the situation.  I remembered things that happened earlier in our relationship that I had continually forgiven.  Now she felt I was neglecting her, and she abandoned our friendship.  After years of my forgiveness for her, she chose one grudge to end our friendship.  I had often offered her comfort, because I know many things about her life and how she suffered from people who neglected and harmed her.  Over the years of our friendship, I had urged her to grieve those losses with the Lord, but she always said she was fine or too busy.  I had sensed her anger at other times.

Now it bubbled forth against me.  I felt so sad, because I love and miss the friend.  So I brought that pain to God and received his grace, just a week after it happened.  I received his mercy, and I am sad she did not.  I cannot force anyone to do the grieving they may need.

Even for small things, I tell God how sad I am, even if I don’t feel a need to cry.  I ask him to comfort me, and I imagine him doing so.  I realize people might think this is burdening God, but he urges us to do this (“Cast your cares on the Lord, for he cares for you,” Psalm 55:22).  I also let him guide my logical mind to any ideas he wants me to have so I can resolve the matter if it is unresolved.  I need both sides of my mind, the feeling side, and the logical side to go to the Lord to work out my problems when they cause me pain.

For all of us gals, when we do not admit to the truth of the pain, we cannot release our ego to God the way that Bible verse from Mark urges us.  The wrong way to “deny” ourselves is to deny our past hurts and their impact on us.

Yet there is profound freedom in telling ourselves the truth, inviting Jesus to grieve with us and comfort us so later we can forgive ourselves and our oppressors.

At that point, we truly can deny our selfish side and pick up our cross.  Once our grief is truly healed, and we truly have forgiven ourselves, we want to pick up Jesus’ cross.  We know how well he comforts us.  We must never deny the truth about hurt others cause.

We must understand the difference between these two uses of the word “deny” lest we remain shackled to past sorrows.

I thank God he allowed my reading mistake, so I could better understand what he truly meant.  I am excited as God speaks to me in His Word, for he is helping me better understand his heart and what he actually means when he speaks to me in the Bible, and I pray for you to know God’s tender heart this way too.