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If I should say, “My foot has slipped,”
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up.
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul.
Psalm 94:18-19
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.Psalm 34:18.“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.Matthew 5:4.
For those who have been hurt by a narcissist*, a serious amount of comfort and healing are needed. While a certain amount of comfort can be provided by friends, there is a limit to what a friend can provide. Even if your friends have not also been fooled or tainted by the narcissist’s deceptions, they may not really understand the damage the narcissist has done. But even more fundamentally, no other human can truly feel everything you’re feeling.
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For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?I Corinthians 2:11
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God is the only one who truly knows what is going on, and as a result is the one who can provide us the fullest comfort in our distress.
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There is a special intimacy which comes from being consoled by someone – the consoler is expressing a heart of understanding, love, and compassion – many times out of having experienced the same hurts themselves – while the one being consoled responds with openness, honesty, gratitude, and a hope that some day they will have the chance to bless the consoler in return.
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With God’s comfort, the one who has been hurt receives the comfort of understanding that God really knows, really understands, and has experienced it himself. God speaks words of comfort and encouragement, letting us know that some day things will be better – and knowing it to be true. He provides little side encouragements, someone for us to talk to, and somehow actually heals our heart. And this all includes the knowledge that He will be involved in healing our pain for as long as necessary – not just engaged for a little while and then walking off.
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Intimacy with Him provides comfort, and being comforted by Him provides intimacy. There is an intimacy of “getting inside each other” that would not have happened if there had never been hurts that needed healing. In fact, one of the reasons that God allowed the hurts was for us to more fully experience intimacy with Him. For those who have experienced this, it is a special place to be. And He definitely desires it.
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And as an added bonus to this special intimacy with God, after we have experienced His comfort we are better able to comfort others who are going through the same situation.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
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- Narcissist is the modern colloquial term for what the Bible calls “insolent pride” – see here
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