How often do we hear it, “If you only knew what I was going through.”
How many times have we thought, if I had only known what was happening in that relationship I would have related differently.
How much time do we spend with some people and conclude, I never really knew her.
Abraham Lincoln once wrote to a friend, “If what I feel was divided in the whole human race, there would not be one happy face on earth.” How much of the world’s hurt is kept within. How many hurts are hidden from the eyes of others.
If we knew the internal cares of even our closest friends, we would not be so glib in our relationships. There is that agonizing pain of guilt, that broken heart from spurned affection, that crushed spirit that came when every effort turned to dust.
Here is a minister who must continue to minister to the heartaches and sorrows of others when he needs the soothing balm of understanding and love. His daughter, living in another city, is pregnant, though not married. What heaviness of heart that minister knows, because he feels he can’t share it. He must go on and seek to heal others when he himself needs a healing.
We all know these internal cares that come for some reason or another. Many times we bear them alone. Some crushing defeat, some economic set-back, some pressing temptation to unethical business activity, some addiction that we are not able to shake, the list is endless.
We look at other people in their seeming prosperity and success. We envy them in their happiness and wish that we could live as they live. Little do we realize that these people, who on the surface are happy and gay, are tenaciously bound by fetters that can’t be loosed. These same carefree people know desperate straits within. Audiences rollicked in laughter before Mark Twain’s mirthful stories, not sensing that these were written out of a heart torn by the loss of his idolized daughter. We may never know the hidden hurts of those around us.
How differently would we act if we would remember that all of life is not what we see on the surface? We would not handle the problems of others so lightly. We would temper our actions with more thoughtfulness. We would speak more kindly. We would not make hasty judgments. Above all, we would take time to listen. Mrs. Frederick J. Faulks has chided our insensitivity and casual approach to the needs of others in some poignant lines:
Last night, O friend of mine, unto your door
With wearied soul and heart most sore,
I came to cry your comforting–and you
gave me light words, light praise, your Jesters due;
I shall not come for comfort any more.
Take your laughter, since you love it so.
The little jests men juggle to and fro.
I did not guess how much I came to ask,
I did not guess how difficult the task
You solace for a heart you did not know.
Think about it. There are hidden hurts all around us. It wouldn’t take much more time than we often give, to understand and find persons in situations different than we ever dreamed them to be. Our words and our actions would change and we could be saving factors to persons who are hurting and looking for hope and healing.