One of my favorite scenes in Forrest Gump is when Jenny returns to her childhood home. All of her anger and pain and resentment built up, she reaches down for a rock and hurls it at that house. That hurling of the rock must’ve felt so good. To hear the glass shatter. To see the house break. She picked up another. And another. And another. Until finally in exhaustion she collapses onto the ground. Spent. Drained. Forrest sits beside her and says in that way he does, “Sometimes I guess there aren’t enough rocks.”
I know it is human nature to want to hurl rocks at the injustices in life. To hurl them at something that has hurt you. Trust me, when the doctors were telling me that my Mom was not going to make it, I understood.
“Then you aren’t doing enough to help!” *hurl*
Or when someone would tell me that she was in a better place and better off now. I didn’t want her there. I wanted her here. I was angry that someone would tell me it was selfish of me to be mad that she was gone.
“What do you know? Have you lost your Mom?” *hurl*
There are times when someone you love and trust hurts you so deeply you can hardly breathe. You have no idea what to do, so you pick up your rocks of words and hurl them at them to make them hurt.
“I know your darkest secrets and I will expose them!” *hurl*
But the thing with hurling the rocks when you are hurting is that they have a tendency to boomerang back towards the very pain within you. In that one instance that you throw that rock, it feels good. I mean, admit it. It feels good to fling that rock of anger and pain with all of your might at the target that caused it, but all it does is exhaust you and ends up boomeranging back towards your own pain. The rock you hurled with intent to hurt someone else, ends up hurting you in the very spot you were aiming to hurt them.
There just aren’t enough rocks to hurl to heal your own inner pain. To heal yourself when you feel someone has wronged you. To make words that devestate you be taken back. There are not enough rocks to ease that.
I am blessed in that this last week I had two very dear friends of mine confront me.
One gently took my hand and softly said, “Jenn, it is time to drop this rock. You need to let it go. You are the only one it will hurt in the long run.” And with the love only a good friend can show you, she shook the rock from my hand and told me to stand up and walk away.
The other asked me what I gained by hurling rocks.
I told her defiantly, “It felt good. I don’t have to take that.”
“But what are you gaining?”
I had no answer. I only had a handful of rocks and a hurting spirit. I dropped my rocks and became silent. “So what do I do now?”
She softly answered, “Quit picking up rocks.”
You see, no matter how good that initial hurling feels, there will never, ever be enough rocks to make it better. There will never be enough force behind the throw to make the pain go away. All it will do is cause pain to myself and to my own heart.
Sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks. So I’ve dropped mine and moved on.