Life is hard. The journey of life is a bumpy ride. Full of rocky roads, sharp turns, mountain highs, valley lows, and everything in between. Rare, do we find ourselves smooth sailing in gentle waters with a cool breeze. Life. Is. Hard.
Emotions are hard. We desire for a life that is mostly covered in joy, happiness, excitement, and celebration. Those are good times. They come and go as life happens. When they come, it’s great. When they go, it’s hard. We find ourselves in a place where the sad, hurt, grief, and pain of life become all consuming. Then there is the mundane, boring, blah, moving through the motions of the day detached from everyone and everything. Including ourselves.
Jesus is the source of our contentment. Our joy comes from his salvation. (Psalm 51:12)
What do we do when we don’t have that?
We search for numb.
The search for numb is how the world navigates the hard of life without feeling. It is a dangerous search. One that leads to destruction and demise. Numb is never numb enough. Until it’s so numb you have lost all feeling and evidence of life.
The very definition of numb is a loss of feeling, responsiveness, or deprivation of the power of sensation.
When the pain of this hard life consumes your body with earth shattering, bone chilling, breath taking ache so deep the wall of your chest feels like a hollow canyon with echoes of silent screams frantically searching for their release, you desire numb.
Everything you do is driven by the innate overwhelming desire to be numb because the pain is unbearable.
Friends, the reality is, we are surrounded by a world of lost and broken people who are struggling to experience the journey of life outside of being numb. Their misery is masked by the fleeting emotion of happiness covered in fake smiles, artificial hugs, and the sound of laughter that quickly fades into the dark corners of their empty hearts. The frantic search for numb is found in ways that alter our emotional responses to circumstances of life including alcohol, marijuana, CBD, pharmaceuticals, as well as an entire gamut of other drugs. Some of these things we are taken aback by as we gasp in shock that people use such tragic means of self-medication. Others the law of the land has deemed them legal so we either use them ourselves, prefer not to use them but hold no concern for others who do, or we fail to recognize at the core of their being – it all serves on purpose – to be numb.
The problem my friend, is numb to the world around you robs you of your intimacy with God. The emotions you carry through the experiences of life, are the very emotions God asks you to submit to him as you allow him to be your comforter, prince of peace, shelter, provision, and protector. If you have given the emotions to the pagan god of self-care, what is left to submit to God?
I pray you hear my heart; self-care is not in and of itself all together bad. Caring for ourselves is quite important to a healthy life. An empty cup is difficult to pour from even if it’s intended to pour into others. Oh, but my friend, how you self-care IS the key. Caring for yourself in a place of altered mentality with numbed emotions to rest and find peace through the manufactured things of this world IS a problem. It is temporal and without sustenance. The emotional demand of life will remain long after your numbing episode. It will never satisfy. You’ll hunger and thirst for more until it becomes all-consuming as it eats away at your soul like acid on metal. You’ll need stronger, more, two drinks not one, a whole joint not a hit, a few pills not one, and three drugs not half.
Do not be deceived by the world even when they call your altered state of emotion and mind self-care. It is a lie straight out of the pits of hell where the adversary of your soul celebrates your stupor.
There are emotions of this life we lay at the altar from a place of deep despair. The cry is ugly as our mouths move but words do not flow. The tears are big until they dry up and come no more. Breaths shatter in our chest as we hold in what feels like an overwhelming emotion with a great need to release but we fear how we will return once we do. Oh, but once we have laid those burdens at his feet, we rise with a refreshing of our soul, a victorious power we are unable to attain on our own, and a need no longer to be numb because the heat of His Holy Spirit shuts up in our bones and warms us slowly, gently, lovingly, graciously, and mercifully from the inside out.
Do not allow yourself to search for numb. Numb is a place of hypothermic near-death existence until you are no longer.
Lay your heaviest burdens at the feet of the Savior and stand up new, warmed, held, healed, and victorious.
Even if you have to do it every day. Be made new.
Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. Ephesians 5:18-19 NLT
The world does not know the Spirit of the Lord is all they need as he graciously peels back layer after layer of pain, tragedy, aches, fears, and anxieties of the world from you healing you as you go. They search for a painless numb trajectory of life unknowingly slowly slipping into four seasons of winter until the cold has consumed their last breath.
Bobbie
