I love reading the Psalms. They are one of my favorite parts of the Bible.
The Psalms are so full of real life, of emotions; they are so relative and applicable.
This morning I was paging through the Bible, looking for something to catch my attention for my morning devotions, and Psalm 88 caught my eye.
It's titled, "A Prayer for Help on Despondency" in my Bible.
The first verses say "O LORD, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry."
The psalmist continues by crying out to God, detailing his struggles and pain; specifically, the feeling that God has withdrawn His presence and care, and the psalmist feels so alone and unheard.
"LORD, why have you cast off my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?"
I think we have all felt this way in our lives at least once....
We don't understand the situations and trials that we come to and we wonder if God cares anymore.
Of course the Bible also tells us that Jesus will "never leave us or forsake us," but sometimes we lose faith.
Thankfully, most of the time, just as in the Psalms, we can come back to a place where we remember and feel that God is with us, holding us, using even the hard times for our benefit.
Even the sadder Psalms usually come back around to praise.
But not Psalm 88.
It ends with he last verse saying,"Loved one and friend You have put away from me, and my acquaintances into darkness."
Depressing, especially for an ending, right?
My first inclination was to keep reading. Psalm 89 starts "I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness to all generations."
That feels better, a more uplifting, joyful way to start the day!
But then I stopped...I looked back over Psalm 88. And I realized how much we do the exact same thing in our lives.
We try to just skim over the sad parts, and we definitely don't want something to end sadly.
We try to push ahead, to "the good parts", and we try not to feel the sadness in our hearts or in others.
But, like Psalm 88, sometimes we have to have to just sit with the pain and sadness for a season. Sometimes, probably always, there is something for us to learn in our suffering.
Sometimes the best way for us to feel close to God is to feel far from Him for a time.
Darkness shows us our real need for His Light.
Suffering shows us our need for relief.
Sin shows us our need for salvation.
One of the things I have been learning lately is to really feel your emotions when you are experiencing them; we so often tend to suppress them and hold back, leaving them stored inside of us, which has real, physical effects.
That doesn't mean when you are angry, you are free to yell at people or break things, or that you should become so free spirited that you lose compassion for others.
But we are allowed to feel the feelings. And we should feel them, and also realize how important and unimportant they are at the same time.
Our perception of what is good or bad sometimes throws us off....we think being sad is "bad", so we try not to feel sad.
But it's very important to just feel that feeling and once you start really paying attention, you would be surprised how fast these emotions can pass.
I think we push back from feeling sometimes because don't want to get stuck there...but really, it's the suppression that allows the sadness or bitterness to consume us.
When we can just feel the emotions as the come, they can have their little say, and then they can leave.
When we ignore them, they have to stick around and bother us and weigh on us, and they end up having alot more power than they really need to.
Thoughts are just thoughts, emotions are just feelings, until WE let them be something more.
I found when I started learning about all this and took a good look inside that I was carrying so much emotionally that I didn't need to be....
In fact, during one of my NET treatments, we found that what presented as my struggle to accept my weight, at any number, was actually linked to a feeling that it wasn't ok for me to exist (!), and that I had been carrying this burden since conception. Yes, conception. And what was even more astounding was that when we found this, I knew it was true. For personal reasons, I am not going to explain the whole thing, but I had told Brian before that I felt like certain circumstances at that time impacted to me, but I didn't know exactly how. But when Alicia and I were finally able to uncover that "emotional blockage", that it wasn't ok for me to exist, I felt it physically change inside. And, I feel different now. I know it is ok for me to exist, and I feel differently about myself now. Once I was able to recognize that I was ok for me to exist, the feeling was able to pass, my subconscious belief system actually changed, and now it doesn't have control over me the way that it did before. Now obviously, this situation is a little different, but even the emotions we feel on a daily basis can take root and grow into something that completely changes us and consumes us if we are not careful.
What I'm trying to say is that we might think that we are doing a good job by not crying or yelling or even loving, but really, we need to learn how to stop resisting our emotions and just see what they are trying to tell us and what we can learn from our situation.
Sometimes, we want to jump over the bad parts of our story and just live in the good parts, but we need to experience all of it. That's how God makes us into the person that He wants us to be.
King David wrote many of the Psalms. He had quite the life...shepherd, warrior, king. He could sing and dance and write poetry. He experienced the pain and sadness of adultery and his child dying, and he experienced God's love and forgiveness and blessing, even being called "a man after God's own heart." He lived a full life for sure, and that is a big part of why the Psalms are so relative, even now, thousands of years later.
Sadness is part of this world. Jesus felt it when He was here. He cried. Isaiah calls Him, "..a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief....surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..." (Isaiah 53)
Even though it is hard, we need to let ourselves feel the heartache, knowing that it does not have to consume us just because we open ourselves up to it.
And it is good to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. If we don't, then we will end up stuck in the darkness.
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." (Hebrews 10:23)
We can know that God does hear us, He does care, and He will bring us through the hard things. He promised. Sometimes He wants us to "Be still" and know that He is God, to grow our faith and trust in Him.
"The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)
"I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth- Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the LORD." (Psalm 40:1-3
The Psalms are so full of real life, of emotions; they are so relative and applicable.
This morning I was paging through the Bible, looking for something to catch my attention for my morning devotions, and Psalm 88 caught my eye.
It's titled, "A Prayer for Help on Despondency" in my Bible.
The first verses say "O LORD, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry."
The psalmist continues by crying out to God, detailing his struggles and pain; specifically, the feeling that God has withdrawn His presence and care, and the psalmist feels so alone and unheard.
"LORD, why have you cast off my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?"
I think we have all felt this way in our lives at least once....
We don't understand the situations and trials that we come to and we wonder if God cares anymore.
Of course the Bible also tells us that Jesus will "never leave us or forsake us," but sometimes we lose faith.
Thankfully, most of the time, just as in the Psalms, we can come back to a place where we remember and feel that God is with us, holding us, using even the hard times for our benefit.
Even the sadder Psalms usually come back around to praise.
But not Psalm 88.
It ends with he last verse saying,"Loved one and friend You have put away from me, and my acquaintances into darkness."
Depressing, especially for an ending, right?
My first inclination was to keep reading. Psalm 89 starts "I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever; with my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness to all generations."
That feels better, a more uplifting, joyful way to start the day!
But then I stopped...I looked back over Psalm 88. And I realized how much we do the exact same thing in our lives.
We try to just skim over the sad parts, and we definitely don't want something to end sadly.
We try to push ahead, to "the good parts", and we try not to feel the sadness in our hearts or in others.
But, like Psalm 88, sometimes we have to have to just sit with the pain and sadness for a season. Sometimes, probably always, there is something for us to learn in our suffering.
Sometimes the best way for us to feel close to God is to feel far from Him for a time.
Darkness shows us our real need for His Light.
Suffering shows us our need for relief.
Sin shows us our need for salvation.
One of the things I have been learning lately is to really feel your emotions when you are experiencing them; we so often tend to suppress them and hold back, leaving them stored inside of us, which has real, physical effects.
That doesn't mean when you are angry, you are free to yell at people or break things, or that you should become so free spirited that you lose compassion for others.
But we are allowed to feel the feelings. And we should feel them, and also realize how important and unimportant they are at the same time.
Our perception of what is good or bad sometimes throws us off....we think being sad is "bad", so we try not to feel sad.
But it's very important to just feel that feeling and once you start really paying attention, you would be surprised how fast these emotions can pass.
I think we push back from feeling sometimes because don't want to get stuck there...but really, it's the suppression that allows the sadness or bitterness to consume us.
When we can just feel the emotions as the come, they can have their little say, and then they can leave.
When we ignore them, they have to stick around and bother us and weigh on us, and they end up having alot more power than they really need to.
Thoughts are just thoughts, emotions are just feelings, until WE let them be something more.
I found when I started learning about all this and took a good look inside that I was carrying so much emotionally that I didn't need to be....
In fact, during one of my NET treatments, we found that what presented as my struggle to accept my weight, at any number, was actually linked to a feeling that it wasn't ok for me to exist (!), and that I had been carrying this burden since conception. Yes, conception. And what was even more astounding was that when we found this, I knew it was true. For personal reasons, I am not going to explain the whole thing, but I had told Brian before that I felt like certain circumstances at that time impacted to me, but I didn't know exactly how. But when Alicia and I were finally able to uncover that "emotional blockage", that it wasn't ok for me to exist, I felt it physically change inside. And, I feel different now. I know it is ok for me to exist, and I feel differently about myself now. Once I was able to recognize that I was ok for me to exist, the feeling was able to pass, my subconscious belief system actually changed, and now it doesn't have control over me the way that it did before. Now obviously, this situation is a little different, but even the emotions we feel on a daily basis can take root and grow into something that completely changes us and consumes us if we are not careful.
What I'm trying to say is that we might think that we are doing a good job by not crying or yelling or even loving, but really, we need to learn how to stop resisting our emotions and just see what they are trying to tell us and what we can learn from our situation.
Sometimes, we want to jump over the bad parts of our story and just live in the good parts, but we need to experience all of it. That's how God makes us into the person that He wants us to be.
King David wrote many of the Psalms. He had quite the life...shepherd, warrior, king. He could sing and dance and write poetry. He experienced the pain and sadness of adultery and his child dying, and he experienced God's love and forgiveness and blessing, even being called "a man after God's own heart." He lived a full life for sure, and that is a big part of why the Psalms are so relative, even now, thousands of years later.
Sadness is part of this world. Jesus felt it when He was here. He cried. Isaiah calls Him, "..a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief....surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..." (Isaiah 53)
Even though it is hard, we need to let ourselves feel the heartache, knowing that it does not have to consume us just because we open ourselves up to it.
And it is good to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. If we don't, then we will end up stuck in the darkness.
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." (Hebrews 10:23)
We can know that God does hear us, He does care, and He will bring us through the hard things. He promised. Sometimes He wants us to "Be still" and know that He is God, to grow our faith and trust in Him.
"The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)
"I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth- Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the LORD." (Psalm 40:1-3
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