It seems like often life throws us curveballs and we just can't seem to understand why. Not only does the confusion not make it easier, but it also seems like once we're on the ground, life likes to continue to kick us while we're down. And as terrible as it sounds, if it happens to some one enough, it becomes such a normality that the person taking the blows doesn't see anything wrong with it anymore. When we get to that place, the constant explosion of emotions and mixed feelings tend to come to a complete halt; the numbness takes over.
Its almost like living a different person's life. You don't know who you are, what you feel, whats wrong, you don't even know whats happening to you. All you know is that you feel something, but that something is actually nothing at all. You feel like you're stuck in a place and you can't move forward. You feel paralyzed. But if we're being honest? That stagnant place of total uncertainty becomes the most comfortable place you have been in a long time.
Finding comfort in a dark place sounds like a terrible thing, but sometimes its the only thing you can do. Sometimes its the only place you find where you can breathe. Its the place where you stop drowning in the sea of brokenness where you have been trying to constantly tread water. Being stuck in a dark place can steal so much from a person. It engulfs everything - personality, emotions, perceptions, life itself. But that dark place is where you can finally find the materials you need to light the flame to start navigating your way out.
Walking out of that cave can be terrifying. It can feel as if you'll never find your way out alone - but are we ever actually alone?
We are constantly taking these struggles and hardships upon ourselves as if we have to carry these burdens with no help at all. We put ourselves in this position where we have no where to turn and no where to go and no one to trust and no one to talk to. We have a God who loves every single one of us for who we are, who made a decision to send his only son to die for us. We have a God who made a decision to show us through sacrifice how much he actually loves us and how far his unconditional love for us goes. We have a God who reminds us so constantly that he is walking our life journeys alongside of us every step of the way, and that we have someone to trust no matter how stuck we feel or how alone we feel. Our Lord is ready to consume us as long as we are ready to allow Him to. All it takes is a little vulnerability and realizing that we were never alone in the first place.
We allow ourselves to get comfortable in the dark cave of consuming numbness, solely because we are afraid to face our fear of feeling alone - but we're never alone, nor were we ever alone. Its a risky thing to take that first jump across the gap between not feeling anything and feeling everything. We just have to remember that all that stands between us and that walk we are so afraid to take is the brighter light and the joys that wait at the other side.
All we have to do is place our trust in God that he will hold our hand and illuminate that small light we have guiding us out of the tunnel and walk with us down the emotional path that awaits until we get to see the beauty of the light at the other side of our pain.
