My whole life I have been a very intuitive and empathetic person. I believe God has gives our hearts what I like to call antennas. These antennas can only pick up emotion, not radio signals. I have come to realize that one of my spiritual giftings is empathy, which I have no doubt I inherited that from my mother. My antennas are strong and love to pick up the slightest of anyone's emotions on my radar. So that means I cry at everything: when I pray, when I love, when I laugh, when I am mad. It is a good tool when it comes to loving people. The problem comes when I no longer use the empathy as a prayer tool and I keep everyone else's emotions and mine on my shoulders. That is what I have been doing the past 2 years.
In 2008 I reached my boiling point. I had so many tragedies previously that it felt as if my heart's antennas shattered from the pressure of the things that kept occurring. Instead of rebuilding them back, I wrapped my heart up in a soft blanket to shield it from pain. I stopped crying as much at movies, or at other's struggles. I no longer cried when God cried. Although I was still myself, somewhat, I was no longer letting God mold me. I realized that I wanted to not feel anything because latley it had been painful to feel. I allowed myself to feel the imense love for my daugther and family, but I was all done with everything else. In doing this, I was putting myself in a prison of my own making. A spiritual battle commenced around me, and I was too stunned to keep figthing. My weapon I fight with is love. I was created to love, not to sit in a prison cell. Sometimes you have to feel pain before you can really love.
One day I came across famialar verses in the bible.
~Galations5:1 (message) "Christ has set us free to live a free life"
This is when I realized I wanted FREEDOM! I shattered my home made prison in that moment. It was nice to breath fresh air.
~2 Corinthians 1:3-7(message) All praise to the God and Father of our Master Jesus the messiah! Father of all mercy! God of healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort- we get full measure of that too.( granted, I know in this context Paul is writing to the church in Corinth to not give up following Christ even though they were being persecuted. It still spoke to me about picking up my sword again and keep running )
Do you notice how in this, God never told us because we followed him it would be easy. That because we are christians God erased all the pain and problems. He promised we would never be alone. How great is that?
So pretty much, I will feel every emotion deeply and I will cry them out with my heavenly Father to whom wants to answer my prayers. I was not meant to carry these emotions by myself, what a simple yet HARD lesson to learn. To let my pride go and ask for help from my heavenly creator requires trust and belief that is harder than I thought it would be. So I will take it day by day.
