Wow. I am just so overwhelmed by the Lord's mercies, right now. There's still so much brokenness and chaos in my life and self and relationships right now, but there's healing too. And I keep being utterly taken aback by the realization that I really had not believed that healing was possible.
And I don't mean that in a blatant, defiant sense--as though I had considered the possibility of healing and discounted it as unavailable and improbable. But, rather, that I had been living and comporting myself and considering reality in such a way that I had been utterly blind to the brokenness, having been long accustomed to living by means of adaptation and adoption of unconscious coping strategies. To the exclusion of awareness of the pains, having long been accustomed to their presence.
You cannot put faith in what you refrain from acknowledging, put another way. So, as such, I did not believe in the possibility of healing. Emotionally. And mentally. And physically, to a much lesser extent. ..as physical pains are all the more lingering, in consciousness.
As the Lord seems often wont to relay via multiple, parallel means...to put another way, I have also experienced recognition of awareness of the extent of physical healing recently, too. Which has and does reinforce the emotional and mental healing also become recognized.
Of the physical, I was utterly and unexpectedly caught by surprise in realizing a pain I'd been long accustomed to enduring and accommodating for...is no longer present. I am still taken aback by this to such an extent that I'm confused by the absence and keep altering my posture to the prior accommodations for pain.
I'd visited a friend whom I'd used to visit weekly, last Wednesday--for the first time in many months. And twice got up from the chair I was sitting in, to walk across the room. Each time, I caught myself rigidly holding my spine in a contorted fashion--marginally consciously aware of the expectation of pain regardless the stance...and that's when I realized what I was doing, because I found myself unexpectedly shocked each time. Because the pain did not come. And I hadn't known or realized I'd been expecting it, so wholly had I been accustomed to marginalizing, accommodating for, and minimizing its presence.
I didn't realize until being shocked that it didn't come.
Similarly, healing that has been given--emotionally...mentally--has not been expected or believed in because I've been a life-time in practice of actively deluding myself regarding the severity of incapacitation and pains. Largely for having no context by which to otherwise understand, except that which was broken and pain-wracked.
I have been so wrong about so many things. Utterly deluded. And He still hasn't brought me to the end of matters, regarding the extent of my self-delusions.
There's something about experiencing what is right and good and true and well...which provides anchor unto correction. Jesus, Himself, provides means by which to know truth and seek to yield to Him, as unto reconciliation to truth. Which is healing.
And by part and proxy of like mannered things and circumstances and relationships which also are reflection and manifest Him...then there becomes means of knowing what has been wrong per light of experiencing what is right. (Like as per reading Scripture.)
Someday, perhaps, the Lord will afford time here and means for open reflection regarding more of the specifics of some of these matters--the posts of recent have touched on many of these things, now that they no longer hold sway over me and thus can be openly regarded in light of the fact that Jesus has freed me and borne the shame and wrath in my place. For these things are shameful. And deserve wrath, punishment, eternal.
But God...He intervened. He bore my consequences and my shame. That in coming to Him, in submitting to the truth of Jesus Christ's sovereignty and power and forgiveness and mercy...I am free. Free to love Him. Free to love others, as He has loved. Free to be reconciled in body and soul to truth and wellness. Bit by bit. Image to image, glory to glory.
And so, I'm utterly confounded (ie, I don't know what's going to happen, and thus consider myself confused per such awareness as of my lack of foreknowledge). And yet at peace. I trust God. He has been good to me.
...and this next will seem like a completely random change of topic, perhaps, but I'm not going to clarify for the moment...
I don't have to watch movies. I don't have to listen to secular music. I don't have to watch the news. I don't have to participate in politics (though I will pray...and vote for Jesus--though He's already in charge, anyway). I don't have to do the things that will distract me from Him. Including art. Including further schooling. Including music (though I do want to worship more, and that is a blatant avenue of doing so, for me...but...learning instruments is so time consuming, when I could otherwise be devoting the energy and thought toward His Word or writing of His kindness or all so many things). And I'm still uncertain of social media. But that's fine too--the uncertainty, prayerful.
I don't have to do things which make sense to people. I can follow Christ.
And though I equate uncertainty often with being confounded that certain matters which appear so clear to me, in Scripture prayerfully perused and meditated upon at length (though not comprehensively, as that will be an infinite thus eternal thus never completed matter)...being utterly strangely practiced by many...then, still, I don't have to set aside my own convictions for the sake of being more socially acceptable. Not so long as I walk humbly with God, lovingly beside others. Seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with Him.
Now...there's still brokenness and pain. But I know there's healing. And there's a certain hope which hadn't been present before in the way it is, now. So I long for more healing, for the sake of more wholeheartedly following Christ and glorifying Him without regard for self. I don't know what His will is, with certainty, yet. But I will continue to submit to Him. Because He's my Lord and Master. Amongst many things. And because I trust Him beyond all things else. And whatever He would have for me, I know is good. Whereas also I know that whatever I would choose for myself, apart from submission to Him...is not wholly good.
So I'll trust, too, that He will help me walk in submission on these matters. Because I can't do that, either, apart from His help.
I keep remembering too, something made apparent two years ago. Around the idea of walking on water, convergent with following Him and walking by the Spirit--at the shoreline, the prospect of doing so is not nearly so offensive to fleshly reasoning, because the reality of plunging isn't dire since fleshly abilities are still considered adequate to wade the depths of that terrain. But the further from shore, the more vital to trust Him wholeheartedly (ever more so), as not to plunge into the murky depths of all which would seek to encompass and overwhelm. Being led, then, in circumstances which are utterly foreign except that the One leading knows their height and breadth and depth and width to the measure of all knowing, whole. And His guidance is utterly precise and unerringly wise. No matter the grief or pain endured in the passage, each is unto a weight of glory incomparable with the present sufferings. For we do have that hope: Christ, our God, will be glorified. Period.
So, though I oft and always have been utterly blind on matters romantic...He's restored to me vision. How complete, I have next-to-no idea, for having been prior unaware of even being blind. But enough to know that I just don't know, now. Except to know I need Jesus, first, foremost, and all in all.
I'm not going to try to figure things out, in other words. Because He's helped me know enough to know I'm not truly capable. And I'm strangely okay with that, somehow, but just because I trust the One to whom I defer.
I'm just caught reeling, though. I have been so completely deluded. So completely wrong. Flummoxed at the completeness of delusion. And deeply grateful to be gifted sight, even especially as not having had ample sense as to detect the prior lack. Then, further, utterly uncertain of what to do or how to proceed, being entirely on unfamiliar territory.
I'd once written, years ago--in a blog which I'd deleted shortly after coming to know Christ (of which such there were multiple, each with varying degrees of anonymity and depravity)--of feeling a stranger wandering from my own land into the realms of others, just to bear company for mere moments at a time. Though each time falling short of finding fulfillment, feeling the call of my own realm too powerful once more, despite the relative isolation. Seeking solidarity, yet finding none. Meeting on many grounds, yet never ones familiar or at home. Thus always having to turn back, turn away, for sake of the relative comfort of reclaiming some degree of integrity. For sake of returning to truth which would not bear silence or suffocation. Though alone, seeking solidarity of self if none else. Thus referred to as my own "land."
I'm not going to follow through on completing the thoughts later expressed in that prior posting, except to note that the sum of all those desires were fulfilled in Christ, ultimately. When I came to know Him, myself. And to walk with Him. And I posted that revelation, at length, and left it for a time before doing away with that hollow and strange cavern of mislaid dreams and desires.
But I'm reminded of that, now. Of the desire not to need to forsake truth merely so as to bear companionship. Because the whole point of that passage was just the notion that in order to be alongside others, there seemed again and again requirement to suppress varied aspects of my own reality in order to be acceptable and accepted.
And I had been carrying that same mentality and approach to relationships, still, unbeknownst to me. I am still so confounded by this, and still keep contorting myself back into that same stature, afraid of the pain that will come otherwise.
Yet for the past couple weeks, the pain hasn't come. Instead, there's been peace. And hope and joy. In Christ, my Savior.
What I'm finding though, is that as I straighten, other pains are beginning to cross into awareness. And I haven't idea how to deal with them either. But I know the one who can.
I had no idea healing was even possible. Or so vitally necessary to walking in the light of truth. Surrendering to and submitting to Jesus yields unto freedom from all that ails.
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