Healing Through Hell
10 . 10 . 11
There is a time for everything but I…
My finger jerks spastically between the “f” and the “t”. Which key will I tap? I feel and I think and I can’t tell which is which right now. What is the word for both?
There is a time for everything. I don’t know whether I feel it or think it, but it seems I am living with everything all at once as opposed to living things one by one.
I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to think it. I want to know it. I want an intimate, real knowledge. I don’t want to guess anymore.
Day by day, it gets both harder and easier to live in the space between contradictions, in that state of perpetual tension.
And just as I let go of reason, someone tries to thrust it back into my grasp. And now I have to fight the thing I once held on to.
But at least I have a vicarious knowledge. I know that God told Moses to go back to Egypt and do a hard thing. I know that it didn’t happen right away, but that doesn’t mean that Moses was wrong. Moses wasn’t wrong about hearing God. Just because it was hard, just because it didn’t make sense, just because it made things a helluva lot worse for quite some time, that doesn’t mean that Moses was wrong.
Sometimes God calls you to Him and the most direct path is from the hell you’ve numbed yourself to and through a raw hell. And just because I’m entering into the raw hell right now, just because it looks painful, just because it looks like there is an easier way, just because it doesn’t make sense, does not mean that I am wrong.
When you numb yourself from the pain, you numb yourself from the healing. You have to deal with the reality of your hell.
You can’t get over what you refuse to feel; in doing so you refuse to heal.
And if I look completely undone, good. Because what was holding me together was a lie. And if you mourn my circumstances and wish things to be as they were before, then you are wishing imprisonment.
I have to walk through this flame. It is hard enough. Please don’t encourage me not to. I may listen.
Amen, sister! I think the numbness is the real Hell. Being open and raw and rough and making that journey through the labyrinth is real life and worth it AND it’s hard AND you can. not. do. it. alone. (I’m reminding myself of that too). This came up for me in a big way this weekend. Cool that we’re embarking at the same time. We can keep each other honest.
I think you’re right about the numbness. The numbness implies that you eventually start changing your view of yourself. That’s when you’ve really lost. When you look at all of it and say that it’s okay, that maybe it’s what you deserve or maybe that being in that place is just something you need to get used to. The numbness affirms that you’ve lost hope. And that is a very scary place indeed.
Thanks for reminding me, too, about not doing it alone. It is the truth. It’s so hard to sort out the good advice from the good intentions, because they aren’t always one.
If I’ve learned anything about expressing what’s going on inside, it is this: someone is going through it, too. I’m glad it’s you in the best possible way. Not in the, “glad you’re going through a raw hell” kind of way.
Also, this phrase keeps coming to mind,
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. ”
-Leonard Cohen
Beautiful. : )
Reminds me of how imperfections in the air magnify the light. Like light streaming through the smoke or how dust particles float in a suspended universe of their own.