don't run.

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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