At first no one stood.
Richard Dahlstrom, the speaker at the 2011 Sandy Cove Men's Retreat, had just taught us the importance of forgiveness. He pointed us to the simple (but hard to do) words of Jesus in Matthew 6:14-15: 'If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'
Then, in a moment of practical application, he asked us to take the piece of paper on our seats and write the name of someone whom we needed to forgive. Someone who has wreaked havoc in our souls.
Then everyone seemed to stand.
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Flowing toward the front of the room, men of all ages, ethnicities and stages of their spiritual journey, brought their pieces of 'forgiveness' papers.
Some had just one name. Some, many.
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Don't tell the ladies - but there were tears. There was a feeling of pent up pain being released onto the floor. Some guys ripped the paper into shreds while they threw them like a disease into a fire.
Later, during Spaghetti Time (small group time) hundreds of guys expressed how painful that was.
And yet how freeing.
A 48-year old man revealed to his small group of guys that he had been molested by his golf instructor as a child. For the first time, his pain was released in his act of forgiveness. That vulnerability bred more vulnerability. |
But it was painful.
Growth usually is painful.
It reminds me of a story our Director of Program Ministry, Stephen Weaver, told me...
Growing Pains
When I was about seven years old, I would regularly wake up in the middle of the night with my legs in immense pain. I would get out of bed, writhing in pain, and make my way down the hall towards my parents' bedroom. Sometimes my mom would hear me crying first and she would help me back into my bed and would just rub my legs until I eventually fell back asleep.
My mother took me to the doctors and explained what was happening. They ran some tests to make sure that everything was okay. The results showed that I was experiencing "growing pains."
Growing pains are a very real thing. Who knew!? The bones are essentially stretching and growing and there is not much that can be done.
If you had asked the seven year old version of Stephen, "Would you like this pain to go away?" you would have received a loud "YES!" And even if you had asked me to consider the cost of not having my legs grow, I would have probably still told you "YES." But the mental picture of my adult torso on my seven year old legs, as absurd as that may look, would have been the result.
Not much has changed. I still don't like pain.
I don't like physical pain. I don't like emotional pain. I don't like spiritual pain.
Pain is not optional, especially in the growth equation. If I want to see growth in my spiritual life, there will be pain. If I want to see growth in my physical life, there will be pain. It brings to mind the reference in Hebrews 12:11, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (NIV)
In conversations about how to do things, I often hear myself saying, "If it doesn't hurt, you aren't doing it right!" I am usually saying that to make a dramatic point, but I realize that I am also saying it because it is true.
Our desire at Sandy Cove is to see growth in your life through our programming and experiences.
And I guess based on what I have learned about pain: We wish you a "painful" time!
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