It seemed like I never had journaled since it had been so long.
I’d thought to, meant to, should have; but the collection of my experiences, even day by day, has felt too arduous and painful to set paper to pen and recount each hateful occurence.
Even now, the thought of recapping thevlast six months is loathsome.
But most of all, I have been fleeing the experience of my own thoughts. Being alone with myself in the lasting context of writing with unbridled honesty is terrifying.
And in this flight, the greatest victim has been my greatest love: Christ.
For without Him, I would not even be alive to contend with this present suffering. My ragged breathing would have been quieted years even before I knew what it meant to be anything but afraid.
Running from Christ has been the worst of my self-preserving activities. Motivated by the supreme fear of not just responsibility to heal, but the more odious tyrant of CLARITY. If I ran, I didn’t have to know how I felt, let alone the response GOD was calling me to have.
And so it was that my innermost being became alien to me.
This abandonment of understanding was a further reaching sin than I understood.
Not journaling coupled with the evasive measures I took to not read anything in scripture that may evoke deeper cognizance of my constant pain, I severed myself from the Holy Spirit to comfort me.
With the same surgical exactness, I had severed myself from being of use to the Body of Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:3-7 details the full need for awareness of personal suffering.
“3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
If one chooses to not admit how deep the pain is it is impossible to receive the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Without reception of such comfort it is impossible to share with those suffering also.
To deny ourselves this comfort, denies others this comfort.
In this, GOD chooses to illustrate that even the depths of our being are not ours to control. Not even over our suffering can we claim sovereignty. For it is by our sufferings GOD allows us to be even greater vessels of His Love.
We can only comfort with the comfort we RECEIVE.
Bible, Christ, Christianity, comfort, Faith, healing, journaling, pain, PTSD, recovery, Trauma