I don't enjoy pain.
I pretend that I'm tough when it comes to arm wrestling my younger brother or getting shocked by the electric fence of our horse pasture, and I do like that sore feeling after a good work out (the key word being AFTER)...
But when it comes to real, deep, dark emotional pain, I don't like it.
Actually, my gut reaction is to run away.
No questions asked, no lingering to test the waters, I just want to run.
I want to bury myself under a pile of distractions. I get busy. I get task oriented. I get intensely focused on anything and everything that will take me away from what's going on inside of me.
I run away from myself.
...which doesn't work.
See, anywhere I go, there I am.
I know that ignoring and burying my pain hasn't worked for me in the past. In fact, it's only served to make things worse.
I don't want to make things worse by running from the pain, I just don't want to hurt.
I'm learning to run to Jesus. It's a new concept for me, actually. This whole falling-to-pieces-at-His-feet is uncomfortable. In fact, I balk at it pretty much every time.
Why?
Because I'm afraid.
What am I so afraid of?
I'm afraid that if I allow myself to feel hurt and acknowledge my need for comfort, I will drown in the pain. Once I stop running, once I stop denying it, then all the sudden I am faced with reality and I can't fix it.
I'm afraid that the comfort won't come. I'm afraid that I will be left alone to weep.
That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I want to run.
This season of my life really hurts. I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm experiencing emotional pain at levels that I didn't know existed (and for good reason, in the past I booked it in the opposite direction).
But through all of the mess of my emotions, I've gotten a heart revelation that I am compelled to share:
God meets me in the moments when pain threatens to drown me.
My tears never fall unnoticed.
Underneath the layers of reasons why I run away from my own feelings, lies the terror of being abandoned and lost in the reality of my pain.
That fear loses all power when I face reality and discover that "I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken" (Psalm 16:8)
He is the ultimate answer to my cavernous need for comfort and love in my darkest moments.
He has never failed me.
I have hope when it hurts because I believe that He never will.
My God is big enough to handle the reality of my feelings. This is a liberating truth and I am so so grateful.
While I feel my fear wash away in a torrent of perfect love, I am wrecked by the thought that my Savior chose to be left alone in His pain on the cross, so that I would never have to be alone.
Wait, what? He did it. So I wouldn't have to.
I am won by perfect love.
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