Sometimes we can get a little desensitized to pain. It often takes place over a period of time and we don't see it happening. A couple of years ago somebody became angry and completely irrational with me. While I was trying to deal with the irrationality, the anger took over and I got kicked in the shin with a hard, thick soled boot, twice. I was so taken aback that I hardly reacted. I felt no pain even though this person kicked me as hard as they could. While I was feeling no pain in my right shin, I got clopped solidly on the right side of my jaw.

I didn't retaliate because well, it would just have been wrong. This person was clearly having a bad day and was no match for me. I backed off and let them calm down. They apologized in their way later and I accepted. It was a kind of crummy day all around that day but at least the situation was resolved.

It occurred to me later that I still had no pain in my shin. I chalk that up to twenty-two years of martial arts. I've done a lot of kicking and used to beat my shins with rubber hoses and fighting sticks to toughen them up. I guess it worked.

I look back on that incident and I wonder at the person who wanted to cause me pain. They did their best, and I still don't know why it happened. (Laughing here.) It's okay though, because I see it for what it was. It was unthinking, irrational anger. That kind of anger is without any thought given to anything other than to cause pain. It's almost mindless.

It's a funny thing. At those times in my life when I've been physically assaulted, and there have been a few, not too much about it has really bothered me. At the times when somebody has said or done something hateful to me, I've been more hurt, emotionally. A couple of those incidents, ridiculous though they may have been, took some time for me to get over.

The 'getting over' comes from the pain it causes my heart to try and understand why someone would hate without reason, and me of all people. (Laughing here.) It's a reluctance to give these incidents in my life to God, to allow Him to deal with it for me that strings them out in time. At forty-eight years old, you would think that I was impervious to the kind of pain that unabashed hatefulness brings, but I'm not. But I eventually come around to remembering Jesus' words;

22 Blessed are you when men hate you,And when they exclude you,And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,For the Son of Man's sake. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!For indeed your reward is great in heaven,For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets. Luke 6:22-23

He always puts things in such a wonderfully perfect perspective.