If you’re an adult, you’ve had experiences where people have said and done hurtful things to you. I have. We all have.
They were painful. They were inappropriate. But they’re over. Done. Gone. In the past.
So, get over it.
Really. Move on.
Stop repeating to yourself how sad it is this was said to you and that was done to you. Really. You don’t have to do that anymore.
You don’t need a therapist. You don’t need a priest. You don’t need a life coach. You don’t need your mom. You just need to move on.
Talking about it may help a little. But not a lot. In fact, talking about it might just reinforce your victim feelings.
What you experienced was bad. It was probably worse than I have experienced, though I’ve had my share of hurts. So, how do I get off in telling you to get over it?
Because you can. Because you should.
You may have had worse than I have. But there a plenty who’ve had worse than you. And they’ve moved on.
Read Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. He was a child soldier and experienced horrific things. But his book is written out of joy and gratitude. That’s the most shocking part about it. In my mind, he should never smile again. But that’s not the case. He is full of smiles. He has moved on. And if he can, so can you.
I’m not trying to be dismissive here. You’ve probably had to deal with some incredibly rough stuff. None of us gets far into adult life without taking a beating along the way. Life is brutal that way. We all walk with a limp.
I had a period in my life where I rehashed the deeply inappropriate and hurtful words said by a person in authority over me. For a couple of years, there wasn’t a week where I didn’t waste mental and emotional space to bitterly replaying words that took less than 10 minutes to be said to me. Hours upon hours of pause-rewind-replay. Soul space wasted.
But after years of nursing the wound, getting over it was a matter of moments. It took place in a worship service, where we were coming to the Lord’s Table. There was a reminder that just as we have been forgiven in Jesus, so we are to be those who forgive. Just as the death of Jesus wipes out the record of our sins, so it wipes out the record of others’ sins against us. And with that, I was done.
Gratitude saved me.
The real problem that we deal with is self-pity, isn’t it?
Gratitude is always the right response to self-pity. If we can move from this “I’ve been treated so badly” selfishness to a “I’ve been loved so well” thankfulness, we have what it takes to get over anything said or done to us.
But too many of us love our self-pity too much to move on.
Again, you’ve been treated badly. I don’t doubt it. We all have, though not in the same way. But we all have been loved, too. Deeply loved. The cross of Jesus is proof of the depth of God’s love for us if you’ve never experienced it elsewhere.
Live in the love that is available right here, right now, not in the pains of the past.
And forgive. You haven’t gotten over it until you’ve forgiven it. This is a tall order. But when you know yourself to be fully forgiven, then you can get on with forgiving those who have treated you badly. It does require being honest about your own inappropriate words and actions, but the result is so worth it.
So, instead of pause-rewind-replay, be grateful-forgive-move on. There’s a lot of great living to be done without carrying that baggage around anymore.