An Insight Unplanned

I’m kind of fixated on this idea of numbness and how we aren’t to succumb to it. I’ve found I kind of touch on it here and there when I write, ironically never going too deep or unpacking it too fully as a way to side step further pains and hurts that might well up within me. Go figure, right? Perpetuating the cycle of avoidance.

It is just so pervasive in the lives of each one of us - the autopilot doing and saying of things with nary a thought for their consequence, of what we’re doing. Of why. We go through our days avoiding our hurts and avoiding our healing. Because it’s easier that way. Because we’re scared of them. Because maybe, maybe, revisiting some real things will make us hurt worse.

But I had a phone call recently that kind of tore me up. It snapped me out of my preoccupations (and how small we suddenly realize they truly are when these things happen to us). But it also warmed me, for the mere fact that it cut right to my heart and awakened my senses and awareness of God’s truth and love in a way that was so right, albeit incredibly painful. It’s sick and wonderful and terrible all at the same time, life is.

But it’s really healing to courageously enter into hearing and feeling the truth about things. Hearing God’s truth about things.

Taking time to assess where He’s been with us all along. Where we left Him outside in the cold, when the moment was where we allowed Him to enter in and dine with us. What those times looked like. How our choices led to consequences we may still be facing, consequences loved ones may be facing -- and how to pick up those pieces now. How to walk forward with Jesus, even if you’re.. well, sad.

I’ve always been sort of silently proud of myself for being a really aware person. Its hindered my well-being at times, because I think about everything. I often take something and sprint a thousand steps ahead - always trying to prepare myself, always trying to think things through, to be ready.

It’s self-preservation. It’s so people don’t hurt me. It’s so I don’t hurt other people. 

After all, If you think of everything first - if you think of your answers, your side of things first- you’re always prepared. You’re always right. You don’t make a fool of yourself.

Take that, world. Right? No. Not right.

Because I have news for you, for myself - that’s not when life happens. And it’s not right to do. I don’t think once has God ever allowed things to pan out in exactly the way I tried to imagine they would. Not out of spite, or to shame me. But simply because His ways are better, His ways are higher - and mine are flawed, mine are sinful. My ways are not meant to be the right ways.There will always be, fundamentally, at its core, a problem in whatever I conjure up in my own strength.

And to try to doesn’t teach us to trust Him.

So this conversation I had took me out of a numbness I didn’t fully know that I was living in to begin with. I didn’t prepare for it, I couldn’t. It humbled me in my pride. Because I’m not aware, not really. It’s a lie to think that I am. I think discernment, however, is real and an art, a gift from the Lord - but that’s what it is. Awareness is Him helping me, it isn’t me.

And so sometimes, He causes circumstances to take us out of ourselves.

In my case, no conclusion was drawn. No solutions uncovered. 

But I was gently reminded of my wounds that I ignore as I let them scab over as I go for a run, go to work. I was reminded of the love I had for this dear individual that runs so deeply. I was reminded of the fallen world we’re in, and how it has hurt that person, how it has hurt me.

But you know something important? It also taught me the Gospel in a new way. It made me sit amazed at the glory of how unaware I’ve been that God has held us even when we didn’t even care to look to see Him there.

It made everything within me scream for answers, scream for peace.

Scream and reach out desperately for Good News.

And I delighted through tears to discover that it is already here. More than just that - it is dwelling inside of me, it takes residence within me, it walks each step with me, because of Jesus.

And somehow, some way, it encouraged me to be still in all that I don’t know and to remember what it is that I do.

That I need to trust Him. That I need to obey Him. That I need to walk with Him. Even in situations that don’t seem even faintly related to my “big problems”. Because that’s the point. He is faithful to us in those things so we are faithful to Him in all things. Suddenly, it’s all connected.

So I am grateful for what I don’t plan now, because our good, kind, and gracious Lord holds all of our moments, all of our phone calls -- and erases all of our sins in Christ.  He won’t let us stay there, in our grime, in our depths. And He works those brushed aside and pushed away details of our lives out for our good.

And when we begin to walk in the light, as much as we want to, we simply cannot take these moments of clarity we experience - our moments of “awakening” - and forcefully bottle them up to keep ourselves in this good place, to hold us in this discerning and seeing place forever. Our moments of glory won’t stay with us as we command them like a household pet to “stay”.

“Stay, please. So I don’t forget you. You are so important to remember.”

We can’t deify our moments. We were not intended to.

Because our thirst for clarity and hunger for wisdom and burning for insight into our matters and our sunshine-soaked moments has really just been our hunger and thirst and burning for Christ all along. And we may not be able to force these moments to stay, but we can walk with Him and abide in Him, the Source of our moments. The giver of truth and Truth Himself.

We can walk in the light as He is in the light. That we can do.

So do yourself a favor and welcome the phone calls. Not because they won’t be painful. But because they will be.

And because above all else no matter what happens, Christ is there.

---

²⁴ So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” ²⁵ He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

 (John 9:24-25, emphasis mine)