The Deepest of Hurts

Betrayal.  The word alone imposes such deep emotion as to almost immediately put a person on guard.  A shield goes up.  It is perhaps the harshest dart that can be thrown, it penetrates deepest of all, and creates the most painful of wounds.  Why is that?  It is because in order to be betrayed, one must first have allowed another inside her walls.

My children have suffered the sense of betrayal at my hand many times.  Most vividly in my mind still, after six years, is when I took Nyssa to her 4 month old well care check up.  She was at the stage where she was smiling at everything and adored me above all else.  But, at this very young age, she was going to truly experience this terrible feeling for the first time. 

She did so well at her check up.  She was a little half pint for her age, but she was gaining weight at a slow and steady pace.  All her vitals and measurements were consistent with the last visit, and she was alert and falling well into the category of passing the normal childhood developmental milestones.  We were ready to leave except for one more item.  She had to receive her shots.

She was to get two of them, one in each leg.  We gave her infant Tylenol a few minutes before the shot; they said it would shorten the period of discomfort.  When it was time, the nurse came back in and got ready to administer her vaccinations.  She took the alcohol pad and rubbed my little girl's leg on the place where the needle would go as I firmly held her upper body while Nyssa lay on the examination table. 

I smiled sadly at my baby and told her gently that she was going to get shots and that it would hurt.  I wanted to be honest with her.  I promised myself that I would always tell my children if something was going to hurt.  Of course, she didn't understand what I was saying at the time, so she just smiled and cooed at me.  Then, to her, the unimaginable happened.  I just stood there as the nurse gave her the shot.

I will never forget the look of shock and horror that suddenly came over my precious girl's face!  Her eyes grew bright and her brows furrowed together at the pain, physical and emotional, that she was suffering.  I could see it, almost hear the words she could not express in her scream, "How could you?  You betrayed me!"  And then it happened again.  The second shot was given.  The scream, the cry, the look of utter incomprehension that was on her face was almost unbearable.  As soon as I could, I gathered her up in my arms and just held her close and spoke softly in her ears, mindful of her sore thighs.

There are times when we feel we have been betrayed because someone sits back and just lets something happen to us, something that is painful.  We have opened our heart to another and they just sit back and let us be hurt or they personally throw the javelin themselves.  How do we deal with that?  What do we do when someone says something that cuts to the heart, to an area that has already been ripped open?  How do we get past the hurt?

There may come a day when we realize that this "bad" thing that happened, like Nyssa's shot, was a pain that we endured for a reason to benefit us in the end.  It may or may not be the intent of the betrayer, but it will be the outcome, regardless.  Nyssa, by poke of the needle, was being strengthened and protected from these diseases that could cause her much greater harm down the road.  In the same way, sometimes things we endure in life are to make us stronger, to help us in our fight against greater things in life. 

Sometimes these things we endure are not for our own strengthening, but for the strengthening of others.  Because when we go through a hard, seemingly unbearable path and come out the other side, we can help others, just by the sheer fact that they know we have been there.  Our strength becomes their strength.  Sometimes, the greatest hurt can be the means of the greatest source of healing for not only ourselves, but for many others.

I have a friend who was such an example.  He endured a great deal at the hand of someone he had known for several years.  His silent suffering was an example to me of how I would like to be were I to be faced with that kind of betrayal.  In a way, his suffering and forgiveness showed me that I can handle whatever comes my way, because of the strength that HE has.  Sometimes it is the very act of betrayal meant to expose a weakness that reveals the greatest strength of all.