Honest Emotion

I can not recall the moment I started to unconsciously protect my heart. My guess is, it was when I was a child. The first time I felt heart ache and my trust was broken. That's my guess anyway. Over the years denial became my alcohol...comfort food...my drug. It kept me numb. Disengaged. It kept me from feeling the full blow of any uncomfortable emotion. I lived in an illusion of control and feeling safe.

Emotion. We are warned to be wary of it. We are told to be cautious and not react to it without taking a step back and rethinking things. We are taught to be in control and not feel too much because it's careless and irresponsible. Everyone around us has a degree of separation from emotion. We aren't told there is a balance. There is a healthy necessity to be in tune to what we feel. You can't know and experience the truth of love if you haven't felt and interacted with anger. Passion is in love and anger. You can't know the true sweetness of bliss if you've not tasted the bitterness of sorrow. The cozy warmth of belonging and feeling one with someone without the deep frigid emptiness of loneliness. He made all emotions. He wants us to know and feel the full spectrum of being-alive, awake, engaged...if we'll let Him. It's how we can feel, know and see Him in every aspect of our life. There is stunning beauty and life in honest emotion.

That being said... where there is numbness at some point in time there will be an intense deep electrifying feeling. That time for me is now. Over the past week He has opened my eyes to this truth. My numbness was beyond the pins and needle feeling...there was nothing. No feeling. I think what shocked me more than anything is I was completely oblivious to the fact I felt nothing. Honestly...absolutely nothing. In self preservation I severed any connection of anger, disappointment, fear, discouragement, hurt to my heart. Until recently you could have plunged your hand into my chest ripped out my heart and I wouldn't have shed a tear.

He has been chipping away the alcatraz like fortress I've built around my heart. With each precise and intentional strike fragments of stone, ice, steel, darkness have splintered off and feeling has begun to return. It takes time for sensation to come back to any part of the body that was once numb. Like waking up to an arm that is hanging at your side because you slept on it wrong... dead weight-no feeling-no motor skills. You have to literally lift your own hand to move it. As you massage it, pinch it, hit it, bite it...circulation slowly starts to return and the pins and needles start poking and tickling you. The strength to lift your arm and bend your elbow starts to return...your fingers start to move...the funny pins and needles sensation gives way to painful nails and stakes and just when you can almost not stand it any longer the discomfort and pain subsides. Your arm is back to normal...slightly sensitive but strength is back...the fine and gross motor skills return and homeostasis settles in. I am feeling those nails and stakes right now. It is deep...intense...nerve endings feel overstimulated...heart feels crazy sensitive feeling every little movement. I've never felt more alive...engaged...AWAKE.

Honest emotion. The ability and strength to feel. The desire to experience life at it's fullest...every sense awake and teeming with a heightened awareness of all that's around you. To feel...everything. Uncomfortable and comfortable and seek Him in it. It's raw. It's risque. It's unnerving. It will leave you undone.