“You feel – even if you are unaware of it.” – Peter Scazzero
I am reading a book called “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” By Peter Scazzero. And, I love this book! I highly recommend reading it. Especially if you’ve gone through a season of your life numb, or have been telling yourself not to feel.
This book has been so relatable, and so helpful. I know that it isn’t a surprise that I am not the only person who was afraid to appear weak, or the only person who didn’t want to feel pain, and sadness. It is just nice to be reading about another persons journey through this, and how they’ve grown from it.
Turns out my revelation to feel, goes so much deeper than just expressing vulnerability. When I numbed myself to weakness, to pain, to sharing those emotions with myself and with others. I didn’t only numb the scary feelings, I numbed the positive feelings too. I numbed the ability to grow from painful experiences.
How can you experience true joy when you don’t know what true pain is?
How can you learn from the pain, if you don’t let yourself feel it?
“In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.” – Dan Allender and Tremper Longman
While trying to be “put together” I was actually slowly pulling myself apart. I was choosing what feelings were valid and which ones to ignore. I was living half alive. By doing this, instead of becoming a healthy individual who could be confident – I became an emotionally unhealthy individual who was always on the brink of rupture. I had to ignore the sadness, the hurt, and any painful experience – because it would sink me. I was on this island that I had created for myself of safe feelings. Yet, this island turned out to not be safe at all, because I always had to defend it from pain.
Pain in this life is inevitable. I’m sure all of you reading this have experienced more pain than you want to reflect on. It is obvious that you can’t run from it. You can’t run from an imperfect family, divorce, death, break-up’s, or your own perfectionism. You can’t run from the emotions that you deem are “unsafe”. Even if it works for a season, when the emotions do eventually surface they will surface even more strongly than before.
“The illusion that if they don’t think about it, it somehow goes away. It doesn’t. Unhealed wounds open us up to habitual sin against God and others.” – Peter Scazzero
You can choose to numb yourself to the pain. You can choose not to deal with the pain, but you can also choose to use the pain to grow you. To grow you in your own identity, in your relationships, and in your dependence on God.
What truly is safe, is being real with yourself and with God. Becoming self-aware so that you know how to respond in a certain situation instead of always reacting.
“Awareness of yourself and your relationship with God are intricately related.” – Peter Scazzero
God created all of the emotions we are feeling. Who am I to pick and choose which ones I should feel? Who am I to numb myself, and perhaps hinder growth, a lesson, or intimacy that the Lord desires me to experience?
“To feel is to be human. To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of our personal God” – Peter Scazzero
God is so much more than we can fathom. As much as I try, I will never be able to understand his vastness. I will never be able to understand the reasoning behind everything that has happened in my life, or will happen. The beauty in this relationship though, is that I can express all of that to Him.
Our God is a God who wants us to come to Him. He wants us to give Him that invitation to know us personally. He loves us, more than any love you can imagine. He desires to draw near to us (James 4:8). He wants to shape us into the people He knows we are meant to be, and He enjoys walking out this journey with us.
“There is perhaps nothing more pleasurable and healing than to be delighted by someone, especially if that someone is a God who loves us with an inexhaustible love with no strings attached.” – Peter Scazzero
What I am just now realizing is that by hiding my emotions from myself and from my friends and family. I not only hindered my self-awareness, and my intimacy in those relationships. I also hindered my relationship with my God. I didn’t come to Him broken and on my knees. I came to Him pretending to be put together. I came to Him telling Him what I thought He wanted to hear.
What kind of relationship is that?
“Emotional health and spiritual health are inseparable” – Peter Scazzero
God wants us to be healthy, emotionally and spiritually. He also wants us to be real with Him. If you are completely broken, or if you are just realizing that you may not have it all together. Talk to Him about it. Respect Him enough to tell Him the truth. Even if He already knows what you are struggling with, He wants you to bring it to Him. He wants you to be real with Him, and yourself.
I encourage you to feel. I encourage you to share your feelings, as vulnerable as that may be. Share them with yourself first, then someone close to you. Even if it is a stereotype that “men don’t cry” – Jesus himself wept (John 11:35). Do you want to be like Christ? Or do you want to fulfill a limit the world has placed on you?
Even if it is a stereotype that “women are emotional”, release yourself from the bondage of this world and embrace the emotions that Christ has created for YOU.
1 Corinthians 3:19 “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s site.”
We are called to be set apart from this world. How are we going to do that if we choose to limit ourselves by the world?
I will be the first to say it, broken. I do cry, I do get angry, I can be irrational, and I do at times have feelings of hatred towards other people. I am so far from perfect. I am weak, at times I am fearful, and I have been hurt. But the beauty in that is…
I serve a perfect God, and in my weakness He is strong. He loves me in my brokenness, because that is when I come to Him in surrender. He will catch ever tear, and understands my anger. He will comfort me, and love me even when I do not deserve it, He will help me walk in confidence, and He is a righteous judge who will avenge me.
I challenge you to be bold and choose to feel. Feel through the discomfort, through the fear. Feel the things you have locked away. Feel things you have hidden, even from yourself.
In those feelings, you will find healing – and it tastes so much like freedom.
