Fulfilled Tip #4 - Emotions make us human.
If you neglect to feel, you neglect to live!
Reverend CoJo
I had a conversation a month or so ago that didn't quite go the way that I expected it to. As a matter of fact it hasn't quite fit into any of 67634 scenarios I imagined. Maybe because the conversation isn't complete, which sounds bonkers because it's been closer to two months since we sat down. Something happened though that I didn't expect, and it shook me to my core: I went numb. I couldn't feel any of my emotions. It was weird at first but it soon became unnerving because I was knocking a number of milestones off my list but I couldn't recall how I felt in those spaces because I didn't feel. Everything was bleh, which made the experiences inexperienced. I was there I did them, the honors were conferred to me but I missed them.
As I sat and reflected I couldn't quite figure out what was worse:
- being in pain
- being numb
In pain. I knew how I felt. Each memory stood out becuse it was attached to emotion, it forever has made its stamp on my existence. Being numb however made forget that I was indeed living. I was walking into days I had anticipated my entire life, only to miss them, but be present.
Numbing is just as bad as hurting, they are both torture in their own rights. Our emotions stamp memory into our being, without them our humanity is in question. It's ok to feel. Actually it's great to feel. Although I couldn't feel the hurt I also missed the excitement of one of the biggest days of my life. I'll look back and only remember what I saw, and not what I felt and that sucks.
The good news though is that I got my feelings back. It wasn't from the return of a cherished relationship it was from me pressing into the presence of God.
“ And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
When I pressed I found him, and in him I found me. Everybody knows Jeremiah 29:11, but very people press just a couple verses further to verse thirteen. Verse 13 is power packed into a formula for breakthrough. Verse 11 makes us warm and fuzzy, but verse 13 makes us dangerous. Somethings you can't get out of of complicated situations with patty cake religion, there are somethings you have to pursue with your whole heart. When I found him I found myself. I found my emotions, and it wasn't the person I was trying to reconcile with that I had to worry about, it was just about me and God. People can cause you to experience a whole host of things, but God is the restorer. He cleanses and fixes, and renews, but we have to seek him to do the fixing, because half looking doesnt find anything. The embarrassing part is I allowed myself to remain numb for a month, before I decided to press my way into the throne room. Don't mistake me, I was still praying and meditating, but I wasn't all in because for some reason I was dependent on what I felt for God and not what I knew of God. How we feel for God is what makes us human, but what we know of God makes us powerful. The key to life isn't really what you feel, its having faith in what you know even when your emotions aren't falling in line.