“You are emotionless,” someone remarked. Me? Emotionless, I almost smiled. How can that be? I immediately pictured a snail or even a slug in my mind and mentally shook my head. She obviously didn’t know me.
Or at least she didn’t know my past. She didn’t know about the intense feelings that had been a part of me for so many years as a result of suffering. How many of you also have endured abuse of one form or another in your growing up years, or maybe still are as an adult. Would you say you were emotionless? Unfeeling? That you were able to shed the pain, the shame like a duck sheds water? I very much doubt it.
My past stalked me. In fact as a teenage I started a poem this way: Chains of darkness flung around me, chaining me with fear…” Doesn’t sound too emotionless, to me, wouldn’t you agree?
As a good little girl ought, or so I supposed, I tried desperately to hide the fact that anything was wrong.
You can’t totally hide internal wounds any more than you can conceal a volcano erupting. It has to come out. Mine was lurking around, ready to show up in various way. For one thing I was excessively anxious about my children, our daughters in particular. If you know why, I won’t elaborate. Then there was the migraine like headaches, and other physical ailments that hounded me for years. And the depression, the bitterness towards someone who I thought I had forgiveness because of course that is the ‘right’ thing to do. But at that time I knew nothing about the joy and peace: the release that comes from true forgiveness.
You can’t totally hide internal wounds any more than you can conceal a volcano erupting. It has to come out. Mine was lurking around, ready to show up in various way. For one thing I was excessively anxious about my children, our daughters in particular. If you know why, I won’t elaborate. Then there was the migraine like headaches, and other physical ailments that hounded me for years. And the depression, the bitterness towards someone who I thought I had forgiveness because of course that is the ‘right’ thing to do. But at that time I knew nothing about the joy and peace: the release that comes from true forgiveness.
Emotionless? Nay, not I, but filled with joy, no, no, a thousand times no, not way back then. But later, and as a gradually growing thing, like watching a beautiful sunrise. The time came when that immense mountain of –feeling- was popped like an oversized balloon and I realized the predator thought he loved me, but it was a perverted love. And then finally I could forgive. But it was only by the grace of God.
No one waved a magic wand and caused me to live happily ever after. The severe mood swings didn’t vanish overnight. I had to work on it, by trusting God with my problems and saying a firm unshakeable NO to negative thoughts. They are NOT from God.
Me? Emotionless? No. I consider myself one of the most joyous persons around. The joy of the Lord is my strength so says the Bible in Nehemiah 8:10c. But what does strength have to do with joy, you puzzle. Well, I’ll tell you how it came to me. The joy , yes, and peace and love that comes from the Heavenly Father gives me the strength to overcome those extreme and often debilitating mood swings.
Praise God.
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