clutter and scar tissue

you know what sucks most about being a Christian? we are expected to react differently to painful stimuli.

for the rest of the world, when someone hurts you, you hurt them back. may not solve the issue, but it sure as heck can feel good for the time being.

for the rest of the world, when someone tees you off, you can cuss them out. may not solve the issue, but if you curse them out juuuust right and look crazy enough, that person will think twice before crossing your line again.

for the rest of the world, there are so many mechanisms available for handling your anger, your frustration, your pain.

maybe that's why the rest of the world is so jacked up.

but you know what? Christians are jacked up too. probably even more so than some of the rest of the world. why? because instead of the "normal" outlets for our pain, we suppress it. someone ticks us off, we take a deep breath and "give it over to the Lord." we quote scriptures to make ourselves feel better. we tell ourselves we always have the victory in Christ and that the Lord will fight our battles because vengeance is His, sayeth the Lord, and no weapon formed against us will prosper.

the problem is, though all those things may be true, we often don't handle our emotions that result from the painful stimulus. we may pray on the issue, "let go and let God" and every other Christian cliché you can muster, but we often don't learn how to handle the residue left behind.

even after a fire has been extinguished, there's smoke damage left behind. the flames may be doused, but the walls are covered in darkness. ashes now reside where strong structures formerly stood.

when someone hurts you, there's residue left behind. there's a scar there, there's pain there. and what happens when we don't address one scar is that the next scar piles on top of the previous one. and the next scar on top of that one. before long, there's a massive amount of scar tissue in our emotional hearts. and if you know anything about biology, scar tissue is pretty tough. it's tough yet fragile and easily torn apart. take for instance when a woman has a C-section for one childbirth. many doctors will prefer and recommend that her subsequent births be via C-section also, because the uterine scar tissue from the first C-section may rupture during the stress of pushing during a vaginal delivery.

scar tissue is tough, but fragile. no wonder so many of us have such tough hearts. no wonder so many of us are so broken inside. no wonder so many of us carry around such deep inner wounds and are hurting.

remember yesterday i said that i couldn't figure out why something was bothering me so much? something that i've replayed in my mind over and over. something relatively small, something that really doesn't involve me much. something i shouldn't technically be bothered by, but i am. i realize now it's because i'm cluttered. i have so many unresolved emotional issues that even the tiny things cause eruptions, cause scar tissue, cause hurt and pain that seem impossible to move past. don't get me wrong, i don't think about all of these things daily, sometimes i think i've forgotten a lot. most days, things are chill. but all it takes is one trigger of something i thought i was over, and BAM, it all comes back.

it's like our hearts have a queue. a running list of memories of pain. and unless we learn how to expunge those indelibilities left behind from past pain, the queue just gets longer and larger. right now, i feel like my queue is 291,247 MB large. and even tiny additions, tiny pricks of pain, are adding to the bulk and slowing my system down.

i need defragmenting.

sure, i pray. sure i try my darnedest to "give it over to God," but the truth is, even when i trust God to make situations better, the emotional residue is left behind. and i feel that pain when i look at him, or look at her. or remember what she said, or remember what he did. or remember what i did. or remember what i didn't do. truth be told, no matter how much you love Jesus, praying doesn't always make that pain go away.

so what do we do with emotional clutter? what do we do with the scars and holes that pain has left behind?

that's why forgiveness is so hard. though people come and go, and situations arise and fall, and painful stimuli arrive and leave, the residue left behind isn't in that big a hurry to flee.

good news is: there's hope! there really is a way. more to come....