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    When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life's Desperate Moments
    When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life's Desperate Moments
    When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life's Desperate Moments
    Ebook316 pages4 hours

    When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life's Desperate Moments

    By Kay Arthur

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    About this ebook

    Where Can You Turn for Hope When the Hurt Runs Deep?
     
    At some point in life, every one of us will face the dark pain of heartache and despair, a hurt that pierces so deep we’re left gasping with questions:
     
    Why me? Why now?
     
    What have I done to deserve this?
     
    Will the pain ever go away?
     
    How can God just stand by and let this happen?
     
    What do I have left to hope for?
     
    Writing from insights she has gained, not only through her own valleys of deep hurt but also from years of study and counseling others through their pain, Kay Arthur points the way toward genuine healing. With candor, grace, and vulnerability, she invites you to join her on a journey toward wholeness as you exchange your fears and frustrations, hurts and disappointments for a hope that will never disappoint.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 5, 2010
    ISBN9780307457127
    When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life's Desperate Moments
    Author

    Kay Arthur

    Kay Arthur is a four-time Gold Medallion award-winning author, member of NRB Hall of Fame, and beloved international Bible teacher. She and her husband, Jack, cofounded Precept Ministries International to teach people how to discover truth through inductive study. Precept provides teaching and training through study books, TV and radio programs, the Internet, and conferences in over 180 countries and 70 languages.

    Read more from Kay Arthur

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    • 5/5
      I just finished reading a great book by Kay Arthur called When the Hurt Runs Deep. As someone who has gone through some deep trials in life, I really appreciated this book. Kay Arthur has a done a great job addressing the hard times of life by pointing readers to the only true Healer, God. She too has gone through some deep valleys and knows first hand how difficult it can be to turn your focus off of your overwhelming circumstance and back onto the only One who can help.
      When addressing the issue of being angry with God, Kay writes, "...if you continue to hold on to anger against the One who loves you most, then realize this: that anger will become a deadly cancer--a cancer of the soul--that will eventually destroy you. It will rob you of peace, joy and ministry." (pgs. 45-46) She uses the lives of David, Job and Joseph among others to draw conclusions about how to react in different heartbreaking situations. When talking about the benefits of suffering, Kay writes, "If God chooses to allow suffering to enter your experience in order to advance His purposes in your life and give you a deeper experience of Him, the worst thing you could do would be to react in anger and bitterness. By doing so, you are essentially saying, 'God, I don't want Your plan for my life. If I have to endure this heartache, then I don't want You to advance Your purposes in me. I don't want Your provision of extra grace and the sense of Your nearness, because the price is too high!'" (pgs. 146-147)

      A great feature of this book is that there is a study guide in the back that can be used for individual or group study. She has done a fabulous job with the study guide. I love that she does not ask you to re-write what she said in the book. She asks great questions that point you to the Scriptures and get you thinking.
      I highly recommend this book for anyone who is going through a difficult experience and struggling with anger towards God or others, depression, forgiveness, and many other issues dealing with emotional pain.

      *I received this book free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

    Book preview

    When the Hurt Runs Deep - Kay Arthur

    CHAPTER ONE

    It Wasn’t Supposed to Be This Way!

    At some point in life, nearly every one of us finds ourselves pulled under by a tsunami wave of pain, overwhelmed by something large, sudden, and personally devastating.

    It can come crashing into our lives in any of a thousand ways.

    A phone call from the doctor about a lab report that looks suspicious.

    A wooden-faced supervisor who calls you into his office just before lunch and says, We’re downsizing the company. We have to let you go.

    A brief, cold conversation with your spouse one morning, and then the shocking words: I’m leaving. I’ve found someone else.

    A late-night knock on your door from a highway-patrol officer. Your daughter has been in an accident. I’m sorry to tell you this, but she didn’t make it.

    A quick, stricken glance from the obstetrician. I’m not picking up any heartbeat from the baby.

    At such times heartache and despair rush over us, pulling us down into a place of darkness until we wonder if the light of hope will ever again penetrate our lives.

    This is when the hurt runs deep.

    As human beings, hurts and wounds, bumps and bruises, disappointments and sorrows come bundled along with our birth certificates.

    Every one of us, starting in childhood, had to learn how to deal with the skinned knees, hurt feelings, dashed hopes, and heartbreaking setbacks common to fallen humanity. How well we coped with these difficulties, challenges, and unexpected obstacles determined in large measure what sort of man or woman we’ve become and how we navigate our way through life.

    But there are storms … and there are storms.

    It’s one thing to get caught in a spring thundershower; it’s another to find yourself in a Category 5 hurricane. It’s one thing to trip over a hose and fall in your backyard; it’s another to fall out of a third-story window. It’s one thing to be rejected for admission to college; it’s another to be betrayed and rejected by the one you love with all your heart. It’s one thing to lose your car keys; it’s another to lose a longed-for baby in a miscarriage. It’s one thing to get knocked off your feet by a surprise ocean wave, when you’re looking in the other direction; it’s another to be swallowed by a tsunami of pain.

    Sometimes the pain we experience goes much, much deeper than surface pain. Sometimes the heartache we have to endure pierces deeper than we ever thought possible, utterly overwhelming us.

    In my own life …

    If you had told me four years ago the events and circumstances that would come crashing down around me in just forty-eight months, I never would have believed you.

    I could have never anticipated—or even imagined—such things.

    It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It didn’t have to be this way!

    But now, there’s no denying the backwash of pain and sadness I feel. These aren’t the common, garden-variety wounds that we all encounter in the course of life; this is pain that goes bone deep.

    So where do we turn when we find ourselves beyond our own ability to cope? What hope do we have that the pain will ever go away?

    I’m thinking of a family, not so very different from many of the families you know.

    Neither rich nor poor, they were respected within the community but not especially well known. The dad in the family was a pastor.

    The little girl living under that family’s roof was just eight years old on the evening her dad first slipped into her bedroom to do her harm while her mother was out of the house. The sexual abuse that began that night lasted for eight horrible years. The little girl essentially became her dad’s slave, always at hand to satisfy his sexual whims.

    Her betrayer was her own father. The pastor.

    It wasn’t supposed to be this way! Fathers are supposed to protect and stand up for their little girls, not molest them, not destroy their lives. She was too young at eight to realize how profoundly her dad had betrayed her—along with her mom and the trusting people of the congregation. But it all came to light when she was sixteen.

    (Sixteen … isn’t that supposed to be a fun, lighthearted time of life?)

    In that year, her mother had an affair with a deacon in the church. And then the whole sad, sordid story about her father’s serial sexual abuse was revealed.

    Her father went to prison for having sex with a minor—his own daughter. That prison sentence, just and right though it was, only drove the feelings of shame and guilt deeper into the girl’s heart. Now her father was in prison because of her. And to her disgust, her mother made her socialize with the deacon and his family—as if nothing evil or out of the ordinary had ever happened!

    The adults tried to sweep the ugly truth under the rug, but they could not brush away the pain from this sixteen-year-old’s heart. The wounds and scars and unanswered questions have left her bitter and confused. Why, why did this happen to her? And what about God? Where does He fit into all of this? Does He even exist? If so, was He too busy or too indifferent to care … or too impotent to do anything about it?

    Had God betrayed her?

    Just a week ago, I received the following e-mail, and my heart just broke for this dear woman:

    Dear Kay,

    My husband died three years ago …

    Then three weeks ago my very strongly Christian, happy-go-lucky, nineteen-year-old son committed suicide. He thought he was going to lose his career when he failed a PT test.

    I am in despair and clinging to your studies on spiritual warfare, which I know attacked him, and your study on why bad things happen.

    Everyone said he was the strongest Christian they knew, so it is almost impossible to understand.

    My only other child is a daughter who is eighteen and very ill.

    Why do these things happen? I had it all. We were the perfect Christian family, happy, serving God, loving each other. Now we are left with rubble. Does God care?

    This woman’s questions are the ones we all wrestle with at times in our lives: Why us? Why now? Does God care?

    Where will she turn for answers, for hope? Where can you and I turn?

    I read an article not long ago in Vanity Fair magazine about the family of Bernie Madoff.

    Madoff, of course, was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange and the admitted operator of the Ponzi scheme that has been characterized as the largest investment fraud in Wall Street history. In March of 2009, he pleaded guilty to eleven felonies, admitting to turning his wealth-management business into a scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars.

    So much for the headlines; what about the real human lives behind the media frenzy? I want to consider, for a moment, the two young men who also carry the name Madoff: Mark and Andrew, Bernie’s sons.

    Were his sons in on the great swindle that swallowed billions of dollars and devastated countless lives? Did they even know what their father was doing? Maybe, and maybe not. But let’s just say they didn’t know. Can you imagine how absolutely humiliated and betrayed they must have felt to learn the truth? Can you begin to gauge the depth of their pain? Their dad—their own father—had done what?

    Bernie’s dramatic confession to his sons on December 10, 2008, would forever alter their lives. Mark was angry; Andrew fell to the floor sobbing. As a consequence, that very afternoon one of those young men picked up the phone and called the Securities and Exchange Commission, setting up an appointment for the next morning.

    Can you imagine turning your own father over to the authorities? Maybe you weren’t always pleased with him or wished he were different. But it was still your father. You bore his name, you loved him, and at one time you were very proud of him.

    Maybe you can put yourself in this situation all too well. Perhaps you’ve uncovered a devastating family secret that forever changed your relationship with a family member, someone you’d previously trusted and respected.

    In 2000, according to one source in the magazine article, the Madoff family was a contented lot. Mark Madoff had said it was fun to go to work and find all his family members there working together.

    In eight years, however, they went from contentment to sorrow, from prosperity to utter desolation. With each new revelation of their father’s unethical and criminal behavior, Mark and Andrew’s pain went deeper and deeper.

    Take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. These sons claim to have had no part at all in their father’s appalling mismanagement and dishonesty. But how many people will look askance at them for the rest of their lives? Can you imagine being totally innocent yet not have others believe you? Maybe you don’t have to use your imagination; maybe you’ve experienced the injustice of having your own reputation tainted by the actions of someone close to you.

    And how would you feel knowing that one of your dad’s clients committed suicide eleven days after your father’s arrest? Before taking an overdose of sleeping pills and slashing his wrists, the distinguished French financier René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, who had invested $1.4 billion with Madoff, wrote in his suicide note, If you ruin your friends, your clients, you have to face the consequences.¹ Would Madoff’s sons feel that blood spill onto their own hands, just because they shared the last name of Madoff?

    And what would go through your heart when you thought about all the widows, retirees, charities, and hardworking families who’d lost all their savings because of your dad?

    Madoff apologized to his victims, saying, I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. This is something I will live in for the rest of my life. I’m sorry.

    But what about the grandchildren and generations yet to come who will also carry the name Madoff?

    Story after story could be told of the deep hurts we endure; particularly agonizing are the horrendous accounts of man’s inhumanity to man.

    And so the questions come … for all of us.

    Will the pain ever go away?

    Is there anything left to hope for? Or is life just about pain?

    What do you do, where can you go for help, who can you turn to when the hurt runs deep?

    Let’s explore those questions together in the pages that follow.

    CHAPTER TWO

    You Don’t Suffer Alone

    How do we cope with the inevitable pain of life in a dark and fallen world so that it doesn’t damage us beyond repair or ruin our lives? Are we destined to a future of unrelenting pain, devoid of joy, peace, and satisfaction?

    No! I assure you with all my heart that hope, help, and healing are within your reach—and closer at hand than you might have imagined or dreamed. Obviously I wouldn’t be writing this book if I didn’t believe there was a solution.

    I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers. Far from it! Even though I may have lived longer than you, I realize I have much to learn. I’m still very much in process—just like you.

    But even though I don’t have all the answers, I know where to find them!

    Imagine you bumped into me in a large, unfamiliar airport and asked me how to get to a certain gate. I might know the basic direction, but if we happened to be standing close to an airport information booth, I could do even better than giving you vague or general instructions. I could immediately direct you to a person who stands ready, available, qualified, and motivated to meet your every information need.

    In the same way, I know how to direct you to the Source of wisdom and life, healing and hope. And it’s my prayer that you will not only conquer your hurt, but will come through on the other side, agreeing that, although it was extremely painful, the affliction was worth the end product.

    A STORY THAT COULD HELP

    Let’s go back to that information booth in the busy airport I spoke of a moment ago. Let’s say you come to that helper behind the counter in a worried, distracted frame of mind. You’re afraid you’ve already missed your flight. You’re not sure you’re even in the right terminal. And you have no idea if you have any chance of making it to the right gate in time.

    Let’s imagine the helper behind the counter says something like this: "May I see your ticket? Okay … well, first of all, you haven’t missed your flight. You can still catch it! And I will tell you exactly what you need to do."

    Just knowing that you still have a chance, that there’s still hope, can make all the difference. And so it is when we’re going through intense pain or grief.

    The Bible gives us that reassurance right off the top. The pages of this everlasting book assure us that, no matter where we are, what we have endured, or what we may be facing, there is still hope! We can make it step by step through the difficulties of this life and find lasting happiness and peace in the next life … if we follow some simple directions.

    As it happens, we find one of the most important stories about dealing with personal pain in the very first book of the Bible. It’s a story that sets forth a truth, and that truth is then substantiated throughout all sixty-six books of this great book that we know as God’s Word.

    I can almost hear your protest: But, Kay, you have no idea. I’ve been wounded by Christians … by the church … by God. If God is God, why would He allow me to go through this pain, this unbearable hurt?

    I understand, and I am so very sorry. However, if you have misunderstood God, or if the churches or people in your past have not represented God correctly, truthfully, and accurately, would you want that misunderstanding or misrepresentation to keep you from knowing what to do when the hurt runs deep? From finding healing and wholeness and hope? Of course not!

    And if the Bible holds the key that could unlock your pain and enable you to deal with it—and even come out the better for it—surely you would at least want to listen, to consider what it says, wouldn’t you? Of course!

    So then, let me take you to the book of Genesis, and to the story of Joseph. Even though you might have heard it before, why don’t you try a little experiment? Tell God—right now, out loud—that you want to encounter this story in a way that will bring true and lasting healing into your life.

    Do this, even if you don’t believe there is a God.

    Let’s read the beginning of Joseph’s story. For your convenience, the text from the Bible is printed out below. By the way, do you ever read books with a pencil or pen in hand? I do. Often some thought or question will come to mind, or I’ll want to mark something or write a note in the margin or at the top of the page so I can come back and think about what I read. You might want to read this book with pen or pencil in hand.

    For instance, as you read the story that follows, you might want to underline everything you learn about Joseph from the Bible. As you read the text, I will interrupt from time to time with a few words of explanation about what has gone before, in earlier chapters of Genesis.

    And one more thing: sometimes when the Bible is quoted, we think we already know it so we skip over it so we can read the author’s words or stories. Please don’t! The Bible is as good as it gets. It’s absolute truth—God’s words! Don’t choose man’s words over God’s words, which can bring such sweet healing. Just watch and see!

    SETTING THE SCENE

    Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan. These are the records of the generations of Jacob.

    Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. (Genesis 37:1–2)

    Back in Genesis 12, God had called Abraham to leave his land and his parents and to go to a land God would show him and eventually give to him as a permanent possession. God also promised to make a great nation from Abraham and to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants—which would eventually lead to the birth of Jesus Christ Himself.

    That promise of national greatness was confirmed to Abraham’s son Isaac and to Isaac’s son Jacob. Then God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Are you beginning to get the picture? God was creating a new nation, the nation of Israel. The land that was promised by God was the land of Canaan, later called Eretz Israel, the land of Israel.

    Jacob had two wives, although he’d contracted for only one. His father-in-law had veiled Leah and sent her into Jacob’s tent, when it was her beautiful younger sister, Rachel, Jacob had wanted and worked seven years for. Leah, however, gave Jacob a family, while Rachel remained barren for years.

    Finally Rachel herself, the love of Jacob’s life, gave birth to Joseph and, later, his younger brother Benjamin. All together, Jacob fathered twelve sons by two wives and two concubines. These twelve would eventually become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, but for now they were all living together in their father’s household. Got the picture?

    Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms.

    Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. (vv. 3–5)

    The dream? It was certainly from God, as we will see later. On the surface, it seems from the consequences that it would have been much wiser for Joseph to keep the matter between himself and the Lord. He dreamed of twelve sheaves of grain—obviously corresponding to the twelve sons of Jacob. At some point in the dream, the sheaves associated with his brothers bowed down low to Joseph’s sheaf.

    Joseph’s brothers, of course, immediately picked up the implication—and didn’t like it one bit! Already resentful of this pampered Daddy’s favorite, the brothers were deeply offended by Joseph’s recitation of the dream.

    Then his brothers said to him, Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. (v. 8)

    You would think Joseph might have received the message—his brothers didn’t want anything to do with the young man’s dreams of future greatness. Yet when Joseph had another such dream, he immediately related it to his family.

    Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. He related it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. (vv. 9–11)

    I know what you’re thinking. How naive of this young man to share such dreams with his ten older brothers! It seems like that on the surface, doesn’t it? But you won’t find the deep answers you’re looking for in the Bible by staying on the surface. Joseph will prove to be a deeper young man than we might first imagine.

    As Joseph’s story progresses, we see that the road soon became very, very difficult for him. He was about to encounter the deepest hurts he had ever experienced in all his young, privileged life.

    Jacob (sometimes called Israel) sent Joseph out to check on his older brothers and the condition of the flocks. Little did he realize, as he said good-bye to his son that morning, that he wouldn’t see Joseph’s face again for years.

    After looking in vain for his brothers and the family flocks, Joseph finally found them. The Bible doesn’t say what Joseph was thinking as he approached his brothers, but it does tell us what his brothers were thinking about him. And those thoughts were disturbingly dark.

    When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer! Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘A wild beast devoured him.’ Then let us see what will become of his dreams! (vv. 18–20)

    Can you relate to the situation Joseph is about to step into? Were you going about your daily life as usual, never suspecting the pain or betrayal that lurked just around the corner?

    But Reuben heard this and rescued him out of their hands and said, Let us not take his life. Reuben further said to them, Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but do not lay hands on him—that he might rescue him out of their hands, to restore him to his father.

    So it came about, when Joseph reached his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the varicolored tunic that was on him; and they took him and threw him into the pit. Now the pit was empty, without any water in it.

    Then they sat down to eat a meal. (vv. 21–25)

    Did you catch those last words? When did these brothers have lunch together? Right after they tossed their younger brother into a dry pit! I want to share

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