Facing The Giants; taking it P!

“I don’t feel my laughter inside anymore…”

That was my friend’s status on face book the other day and it felt like she was yanking the words from my mouth before I could even form the thoughts! You know the feeling you get when you’re trying to figure something out and it’s just beyond your grasp and then someone just says the words and it’s like Yes!!! So someone else gets the whole point! I was in that place again and I felt like I was on the side-lines, watching life flow by. I can’t exactly say I was sad or anything like that, but I wasn’t like happy either, I was just there. It made me wonder if, just if everyone else was faking it, I mean, how do you laugh with your heart, with your whole being?! How do you feel it deep inside, as in really genuinely bring forth that bubble of feeling from that place deep down within you?! I don’t seem to touch that place anymore, I’ve forgotten how to, forgotten how it feels, forgotten how to feel…

Then my friend goes, maybe they just think or hope that if they laughed longer or harder, it’ll banish all the sad from their lives, maybe they’re just as desperate to feel something, connect with that place deep within, or maybe they just know something we don’t! So I ask myself, what could they possibly know?! I wonder if we could trade  our muddy spectacles for their rose-tinted ones so we could see the world as they do, see the magic they see, feel it, live it…Or maybe we just have some wires in our heads that are crossed, you know, maybe we’re not quite right up there?! Or look on the bright side, maybe we're the 'ok' ones n everyone else is weird! *wink* ;D 

So, how then do you explain why we can’t figure out how they can feel it n they can’t understand the emptiness, the helplessness, the deep hollow feeling of nothing-ness, the feeling that’s choking you, swallowing you up, smothering you…“…so what do I do? I keep going back n forth, ‘cos I know I have felt it before, I’ve heard it before, and it’s part of me. It is me. And  once this tunnel is past, I’ll hear it again, ‘cos it was never gone. Not for one second…”

…He’s not given me the spirit of heaviness…but a sound mind[1]…so what then is wrong with me?! How long do I wait for the world to turn right-side-up, how long before the wires un-cross themselves?!!! This can’t be God’s will for me, what ever happened to the plans of good?! Is this the expected end?![2]

Then I realised I had to fight it! I couldn’t afford to let myself go, let it eat me up like a disease from the inside out. I had to reach out, grasp a hold before the coldness became deadness… I realised the real triumph would lie not merely in being happy and not-weird, but in being able to face it, coming out alive enough to fight another day, and yet another, and another. Not allowing it to swallow me up, not ever giving up, fighting my way through, even if it means fighting myself! I tell myself that amma keep getting up each and every time ‘cos I’m not giving up on me, Never! I won’t let the fact that I’ve been here many times before break my spirit, rob me of hope, snuff out the light. Even if no one understands, even if everyone thinks I’m a fruit cake (sometimes, even I think I’m a fruitcake) or that I’m just a silly cry-baby who needs to snap out of it, I’m gonna keep on keeping on! I know I can do this ‘cos He strengthens me[3] and if He says He’ll never leave me nor forsake me[4], then that means He was there through every single trip down to the dumps, that means. He saw the tears that came for seemingly no reason, understood the times they just wouldn’t come, He felt the indifference, the inability to feel, to care. He heard the stony silence, felt the blinding rage. He knew about the numbness that gradually turned to deadness, to nothingness. He was there. He is there…Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed[5]…I know I don’t have to walk this road another day, I don’t have to dread the next time I come full circle and it all starts again. I know there’s light even in this tunnel …we take every thought captive to obey Christ[6]… out with the thoughts that the sun will never shine again, that I’ll always be here, that I’ll always carry this weight, that I’ll never feel the laughter, that I’ll have to fake it…give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness[7] …so, like MercyMe[8], I realized I gotta keep singing, even through the rainy, sunless days. From that deep endless abyss, I pull out a song. I’ll trade this drab cloak of heaviness for a beautiful coat whose many splashes of colour are the beautiful shades of my praise, my coat of many colours that my Father lovingly made for me…

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[1] 2 Timothy 1:7

[2] Jeremiah 29:11

[3] Philippians 4:13

[4] Hebrews 13:5

[5] John 8:36

[6] 2 Corinthians 10:5

[7] Isaiah 61:1

[8] Keep Singing from the MercyMe album Undone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyixFR9tLo

Shoe-a-holic!!!

I wanted a new pair of shoes so bad! I dreamt about it so much, imagined the soft padding against the soles of my feet, the shiny leather, the perfect curve that outlined my feet, wrapping beautifully around them, like a caress, the miles and endless miles of the razor thin metallic heels, the slender straps sitting lazily around my ankles. I could imagine my calves firming up above them,

The slight thrust to my hips, tow my back would stand straighter, shoulders squarer, head higher

The confidence they would give to my gait…

Sigh! I wanted those shoes like arrrggghhh!!!! Okay, okay! Apart from all the day dreaming, I really did need a pair of shoes. I had lovingly worn my old pair to the ground and a new pair was a necessity and if I was going to get a new pair anyways, I could as well get one I loved, what’s a girl to do nah?! I was sooooooo done with the sneakers and pumps, it was time for some sexy, grown-up shoes! *Wink* There was one tinny-bitty problem though: there was no way I could afford the shoes! I was just another broke student and even if I’d started saving up every penny I could possibly lay my hands on, I would still have been far from being able to afford a pair like that one! So, it looked like all I was left with were my dreams and my tattered pair of sneakers.

Then one day I got home from school and there, sitting on my bed was a box from New Look! My first thought was that I’d probably been thinking about the shoes so much that I was beginning to see things! Then I saw my father beaming at me from the doorway. He said he’d known I needed a new pair of shoes and he got me one on his way from work!

Oh! My! Days!!! That man is simply amazing! How on earth had he known I needed the shoes, I hadn’t said a word to anyone, and how could he have known that I’d spent hours and hours starring into that shop window!!! That was the bestest surprise ever! I was so excited, I almost couldn’t open the box! It was going to be the best day of my life for sure! I couldn’t wait to slip my feet into the shoes for the first time! The feeling, priceless!!! I finally managed to rip the lid off…

So, I wanted a pair of shoes so bad. And my father, my sweet, sweet father got me a pair

And for the life of me, I didn’t like the shoes, and that makes me feel so terrible, it makes me feel like a monster, an ungrateful monster who did not appreciate the thoughtfulness of her father’s gesture, I think of my father, and I want so much to love the shoes he bought me. I’ve tried so, so hard, I’ve even told myself over and over that I do love them, but deep down, I know I don’t. I know I won’t. And coward that I am, I have not been able to confess that to my father. How do I tell him that?! How can I?!!! He would be so hurt! How do I look him in the eye after that? I know I’ll never have the courage to ask him for anything else ever again! After all, I didn’t appreciate what I have been given, I definitely do not deserve anything else! I put on my new shoes every single day. I wear them everywhere without fail. My new shoes that I do not like one bit.

Maybe a part of me just thinks that if I punished myself this way, I’ll somehow make up for the wrong I’ve done. But no punishment will ever be enough. Nothing can make me feel better about this. It was just a pair of shoes but it’s dug a chasm between me and my father. Somehow, I think he knows the truth and I can imagine how much that breaks his heart, how very disappointed he must be. He would never forgive me for this, I just know it. It would always be there between us. The chasm dug by a pair of shoes. No, two pairs of shoes actually. The guilt won’t let me talk to him like I used to, it won’t let me laugh easily with him like I used to. It won’t let me enjoy the moments I used to with my father. I wish I could go back and undo it all ‘cos I miss him, I miss him so bad! Somehow, I know I should just be honest with him, tell him the truth instead of carrying my guilt around with me. But with each day that passes, the opportunity to do that slips further and further away from me and it gets more difficult. Impossible. I want to be able to tell him that I don’t care about the shoes, the ones in the shop window or the ones that stared at me from that box. I want to tell him he was right, that he knows best, knows what’s best for me. I want to tell him I’ll do anything, even go barefoot just to get things back the way they were. I just want to tell him how sorry I am, that I love him, that I want him to love me again.…

…nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord...as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us...if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from our unrighteousness...

Romans 8:39, Psalm 103:12, 1 John 1:9