Why?

I welcome comments on this post: Why do you believe in Jesus Christ? When you come up with an answer, ask why to that. And keep going, until you cannot probe any deeper. Then ask this question: does my reason for believing reveal how I relate to God?

Mourning Losses

God uses a variety of things in our lives to speak to us. One of the ways He frequently speaks to me is through movies. He has used several of them as part of the process of my healing. I was reminded of that again this weekend.

From what I have read, in a time of intense pain or loss, the mind will actually numb itself emotionally for a period of time (this is usually the case). This is because to feel the total loss all at once would be completely overwhelming and very destructive. What seems to occur is that as the numbing goes away, we are confronted with actually allowing ourselves to feel the pain or dismiss it as non existent because it wasn't completely felt when the event happened. The mistake I have made in the past has been to interpret my numbness as a lack of feeling and then dismiss any pain that occurs in the short term future from the event as ridiculous because the loss has already been "mourned" with what little emotion I had at the time.

It seems that my behavior has been very destructive to my own healing. The pain is there, the emotion is there, but it has no place to go. I suspect it starts eating the individual up inside, manifesting itself in other ways. What I am having to do, in some cases by choice and others by accident, is to allow myself to feel and mourn losses that I haven't allowed myself to feel in the past. It is acknowledging that a loss or pain matters, and matters in the deepest parts of the heart. And then allow the heart to gush in pain as it is rinsed clean through tears.

What is my point here? Allow yourself time and emotion to mourn losses and pain in your life. You may not feel the loss immediately, but it is there, is real, and will need to be felt when the time comes. Completely. Otherwise, you might be watching a movie 2.5 years after the fact and burst into tears.

Update (11-30): That being said, such a thing is good, because pain needs to be felt. It seems that feeling pain is not wishful thinking about bringing the person back. Allowing the pain to be felt is simply acknowledging that the loss mattered (as stated above). I think this is a very important thing to remember. By feeling, in whatever way that manifests itself, I am admitting that the loss of the person (through death or separation) hurts me because I loved them. The pain will not bring them back. But that is not why it is being felt. And by attempting to deny the pain, all I do is lie to myself.

Phantastes, Part IV

This is the last quote I will post from this book:

"I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being beloved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but good; for in proportion of selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad." (p. 181)

All I have is a great big sigh of satisfaction.

Phantastes, Part III

"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit of a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as solemn gloom, burning with eyes? Or a clear morning after rain? Or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?" (p. 166)

Phantastes, Part II

Another quote from this book:

"But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious every-day life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning?" (p. 89-90)

Phantastes, Part I

I had the joy of reading Phantastes by George MacDonald a couple of months ago. I marked several places in the book that stuck out to me as noteworthy. This is the first -- the person reporting is talking about being in a library, and reading different books:

"If, for instance, it was a book of metaphysics I opened, I had scarcely read two pages before I seemed to myself to be pondering over discovered truth, and constructing the intellectual machine whereby to communicate the discovery to my fellowmen... Or if the book was one of travels, I found myself the traveler. New lands, fresh experiences, novel customs, rose around me. I walked, I discovered, I fought, I suffered, I rejoiced in my success. Was it a history? I was the chief actor therein. I suffered my own blame; I was glad in my own praise. With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took the place of the character who was the most like myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognizing the walls and roof around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book." (p. 75)

Isn’t that the truth about a great story told? That it transports you to another world, that for a moment, or hour, you are one with the character in the story? Time slows to a crawl (or in my case, flies by) in the midst of a novel that grips you and won’t let you go. This is the joy that stories such as Narnia hold for me – those in my childhood were moments of sheer joy and yet such longing that there are hardly words to describe them. As an adult, I recognize those longings for what they are: in part, for heaven. It is the desire for something, Someone, not of this world. A place, a Person, a God... the God.

How frequently I find myself searching for happiness in other places instead of turning to the only place it can be found. The American culture is very much like this with the abundance of advertising everywhere you look. I think that deep within us, there is the pursuit of something we aren't quite sure of. Even in the viewing of sports (not exactly my cup of tea), I wonder if one reason it is enjoyed so much is because of the victory we wish we could have. We long to be victorious.. and were made to have victory, but lost that in our fall. There are many other reasons for an enjoyment of such things, but I think underlying all of it is the desire which points to Him.

One day I will write my thoughts on design and desires and how they reveal God. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Cor 15:57)