One of my favorite movies is a John Wayne classic called “Hellfighters.” It is a movie about a group of men who fight oil well fires. A major inspiration for the movie comes from work done by a man named “Red” Adair. Adair is largely responsible for developing the equipment and techniques used today for containing and extinguishing oil well fires. Some of you may recall his name from the time of the Gulf War. Adair spearheaded the work done to extinguish the Kuwait oil field fires that were set at the direction of Saddam Hussein.
Some time back I read a biography about “Red” Adair. In the book the story was related about how Adair got started in this business. He was a worker in the mid-west oil fields. One day an event occurred at one of the oil wells where he was working. Something went wrong which had either caused a fire or was going to lead to a fire. All of Adair’s coworkers were running away. Adair started to do the same thing. But something caused him to turn around and go back. He was able to assess the situation and take action that either prevented a fire or stopped it. (It has been a while since I read the book and the exact details are a bit fuzzy.) In short, a disaster was avoided because Adair resisted the natural temptation to avoid a scary situation. Instead he turned and faced it.
My point in this story is to encourage you to do the same with a lot of the scary pain in your life. All of us have it. We have painful memories from our childhood. We have traumatic experiences in our past. We have those situations and events in our lives that have hurt us deeply. The pain is so intense that we are scared to death of looking at it. Unfortunately, our running away from it is only going to make it worse. It is only when we find the strength and courage to go toward our pain and deal with it that we can begin to truly overcome it and begin to heal.
Please quit running away from your pain. You only give it more power over you by doing so. If you are unable to do this alone then do not hesitate to find a friend or professional counselor to walk with you in this process. Running away from our pain never makes it go away. Actually, it only gives it more space and time to grow more powerful.
Think about it.
You are loved. Peace.
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