Recently, I was talking to a friend who has a nine-year-old son. She was worried because her son was experiencing a sharp pain in his left side that her doctor was unsure of. As we were talking, she mentioned that she was afraid it was something serious which was her worst fear. I responded by stating that it most likely wasn’t anything serious and that it was either a pulled muscle or a kidney stone. She grew furious and ended the conversation. Later, I found out that she was upset because I assumed the pain may be a kidney stone and she did not want her son to be in pain. At that moment I realized she chose to be offended. I found it strange to me that she was offended because we were friends and I had never done anything purposefully to harm her.
The point is we harm ourselves when we live offended (taking many things personally without critical thought or benefit of the doubt). When we think the worst of someone’s statements or actions and find ourselves unable to give someone the benefit of the doubt particularly when they have only demonstrated kindness towards us, that’s a key indicator that we have unhealed emotional wounds that we need to resolve within ourselves. The problem with unhealed emotional wounds is that they turn the people that love us into targets of our pain. This is why it is so vital that we heal so that we will not lose the people that God places in our lives to love us.