How to Heal From Past Pain (Before It Follows You)

Avoiding pain is impossible. Wasting it is optional. That difference comes down to one question, and it is not the question most of us ask. We ask God to take the pain away. Fewer of us ask Him what He wants to do inside of it.

If you have been looking for how to heal from past pain, the starting point is not a technique. It is presence. God can always produce something in us through what happens to us, but the question is whether we are willing to be fully present in our pain rather than numbing it, avoiding it, or waiting for it to disappear on its own.

The majority of the things I personally endured, I only revisited when I went through my own pain inventory, and I spent that time asking God how He could take the pain away. I did not ask Him a whole lot of, would You show up in the midst of this? Would You help me learn what You have for me in it? I just wasn't spiritually at that spot. I wasn't mature enough to see it for what it was.

What You Don't Heal, You Carry

I've been watching a ton of playoff baseball. I love October. I've been a baseball fan my whole life, played all through high school and a little in college, and in October you hang on every strike and every out because it all means something. Watching game after game, flipping from channel to channel, I noticed something. Certain teams travel well. I watched the Yankees play in Tampa Bay, and when I looked into the crowd, it seemed like there were as many Yankees fans in some sections as there were Tampa fans. The Yankees have always been that way, and so have the Braves, the Cubs, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, and the Red Sox. When we lived in Houston and the Chicago Cubs came to town, and the Cubs are my ball team, there were as many blue Cubs jerseys in the stands as there were navy Astros jerseys.

Pain is no different, because pain travels well. It jumps on board and follows you, and it meets you everywhere you go. What you don't heal, you carry, and if we never do the work of healing it, we take it with us wherever we go.

Some of us have even gotten used to the idea that we can wear our pain as a badge, so we never work out the healing. We just walk in a new identity, and that identity is that we are hurt. That is not the identity Jesus has for us at all. When our badge is our injury and not our victory, that is where the enemy is winning.

Why Does Old Pain Still Hurt After All These Years?

When you think about what happened to Joseph, do the math. Joseph waited 39 years before he saw any purpose in the pain that had taken place in his childhood. Can you imagine having to wait almost 40 years for resolution in life? Even then, his emotions were raw. After 39 years, he receives a message from his brothers in Genesis 50:17, and what the text says he did was break down and weep.

Why is he weeping all of those years later? Hasn't he dealt with it? He might have dealt with it, but we never truly get over it.

When I processed my own situations, it was heavy emotional lifting. I can take you back to when I was eight or nine years old and the anger I felt. I can take you to that moment in my adult life when I felt like I had blown it, when it seemed like the dreams I had for my life would be put on the shelf forever and I really thought I had screwed the whole thing up. I can take you to the times I felt completely misunderstood or left behind. What stayed with me was anger, hurt, resentment, rejection, and pain.

Ask God What, Not Why

So how do I get healing? I don't want to carry my pain, but it feels like more than I can stand.

I don't pretend to know what you're going through or what you've been through, but here is what I do know. Every situation and every moment is an invitation from God. So the first question we ask doesn't have to be God, why? It can be God, what? What are You inviting me into? That question helps enormously when we don't understand what is going down, because God rarely steps in and simply changes the situation. He far more often uses our situations to change us and mature us in some way.

Why Doesn't God Just Take the Pain Away?

Removal is not the only thing God can do with pain. We see that in Joseph's life, and we see it again in the New Testament with Paul. In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes a painful, persistent, unwanted thing he calls a thorn in the flesh. We're never told exactly what it was. He says he asked God to take it away three different times, and God never removed it. God simply told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in your weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Maybe you're reading that and thinking, I just need to feel that. I need to feel His power in my weakness, because I'm not living with my pain well. If you're not, it only means you're normal. We're all broken. Every single one of us has experienced pain, and every single one of us has caused it. The real question is what we will do with it. Will we avoid it? Will we try to numb it? Will we distract ourselves from it? Or will we ask God what He wants to do with it?

How to Heal From Past Pain by Surrendering It

Joseph's pain had to be more than he could bear. He was rejected by his whole family and lied about to his dad. His father, who loved him more than any of the other sons, thought he was dead and forgot him, and not for a year or two but for 39 years. What Joseph did was remain faithful to God. He offered his pain to God. He didn't avoid the pain and he didn't avoid feeling it. He surrendered it to God's providence.

Those tears in Genesis 50 tell me the pain was still right under the surface. At that point in his life, why would he feel pain at all? He is second in command of the nation. He is wealthy, he is powerful, and he has authority over an entire country. Yet there is a trigger sitting right under the surface.

Back in Genesis 45, he makes a statement to his brothers. When they realized who he was, they were falling all over themselves because they thought their life was over. They assumed he would want revenge with his pain, but he had already surrendered it to God. He told them it was not they who sent him there, it was God who sent him. He says it several times in chapter 45, and then in Genesis 50:20 he says, "You intended to harm me all those years ago, but God intended it all for good," and that it was done to save the lives of many people. The healing was coming.

Will You Submit It to God?

Would you be willing to consider that even though sin's influence has caused you pain, God's grace, mercy, and redemptive power could actually use that pain to mature you, to grow you, and eventually even to help someone else? Would you be willing to submit it to Him?

That is the maturing work on offer. Avoiding pain is impossible, but wasted pain is optional, because God can always produce something in us through what happens to us. Learning how to heal from past pain begins the moment you stop asking only why it happened and start asking God what He is inviting you into. You don't have to keep carrying what He is willing to heal.