Responding to Criticism

All of us experience bumps and bruises along life’s journey. Injustice. Unfairness. Unkindness. Criticism. Meanness. When you’ve been wounded by those who you have loved, respected, and trusted you understand that kind of pain is not something you can easily or quickly overcome.

In fact, you and I can carry those wounds with us until they begin to revolve in a cycle of pain, and we can in turn become wounders ourselves. We can deeply wound others without thinking and often it’s those who are closest to us.

In a BBC interview, Princess Dianna acknowledged she was so wounded that she cut herself with a serrated lemon sheer, a pen knife, and razor blades. Explaining what drove her to harm herself she said, “You have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help.”

When we lash out at others with anger, blame and resentment we can subtly and unintentionally become enslaved to these negative traits. They become how people see us. It’s a vicious cycle.

Many have tried to release their pain through self-medication (fill in the blank)? It doesn’t work, does it? At best it only temporarily releases pain. It may feel good for a few moments, hours, or days, but it actually perpetuates your cycle of pain.

Hannah was deeply humiliated by the incessant ridicule and criticism of her husband’s first wife for her inability to bear children for her husband.
“Her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her."

Finally, after years of this non-stop provocation Hannah came to the point that she was so depressed she could only “weep and not eat.” Her pain was obvious and understandable.

Like many good husbands her husband made it worse by saying, “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” Did Hannah lose it and verbally lash out and retaliate? No.  None of this. The way she responded was so different than most of us would have.

The way she dealt with critisism was to pray.
She chose a beautiful alternative response that is available to us. Her deep disappointment and grief drove her to seek her compassionate God who she knew intimately understood and saw the sadness of her desperation and heard her prayer. Hannah prayed.

What long-term difference might it make if you chose to respond as Hannah did? It’s sad that even those we would consider exemplary people of faith wound others. Many of us know what that’s like.

As Anne Graham Lotz said, “Wounds can be contagious. One wound can divide and multiply as if it’s a living cell, until entire families are taking sides, not speaking to each other. Does that describe your family? What misery we can inflict on each other.

Families make up nations that have conflict in the Middle East; between Russia and her neighbors, between Iran and Iraq, between Japan and China, between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, between African Americans and Anglo-Americans.”

We are taught by our parents, leaders, siblings and even religious people to hate just because… Would the cycle of pain be broken in our lives if we would be the first to reach out and say we’re sorry or at least open up a door of conversation about the source of our wound.

We may never know the difference it can make until we do.

Join us next time as learn more from Hannah about coping with criticism.