seeing God work yet feeling like crap: a strange kind of freedom.

So, I'm a counselor and a super-strong "Feeler" on the Myers Briggs personality scale. Emotions are kind of a big deal to me. Feelings, senses, and impressions are the primary way I process my reality. Now I have a Master's degree, and I do my fair share of "thinking," too - when I say emotions guide me, I don't mean that reason is absent. But I do mean that it usually takes a backseat unless I make a conscious effort otherwise. Along with this, I'm extremely relational. My big decisions in life are primarily guided by some combination of relational and emotional considerations. None of this should be surprising to anyone who knows me very well.

Recently I read an article by a respected Bible professor. He's in a theological camp who more or less believes that the tangible work of the Holy Spirit (i.e. His speaking directly to people, performing miracles, etc.) was mainly for the New Testament times - as in, the 1st century AD. His bias would be that even though God could do anything, we basically shouldn't expect to have a profound personal "experience" of His presence today. Our relationship with Him is based more on trusting that He is who He says He is, and being faithful to that belief regardless of what we feel.

Anyways, the thrust of his article was about intimacy with God, and our expectations around that. He feels that our generation has been set up for disappointment, because we've been taught to expect that an intimate relationship with God ought to give us ultimate fulfillment in this earthly life. His argument was that contrary to what we're often taught, intimacy with God doesn't work the same way as intimacy with other people, and we shouldn't expect it to. While touch, quality time, and good conversation might be the ways we're used to experiencing intimacy, these aren't necessarily the ways that we should expect to be intimate with God. While we can approach him, and talk to him, etc., he feels that the primary experience we should expect is simply the comfort of knowing He's listening and that He loves us. We shouldn't expect to necessarily hear back from him, or to get a sense of His personality, as we would with other humans. We should press on in "relationship" with Him, but we shouldn't expect the same emotional pay-off or experience that we're used to getting in our relationships with other people. That kind of fulfillment doesn't come until we go home to be with Him and are fully in His presence.

So I was reading this article and having a really strong, yet mixed, reaction to it. Here I am, a person who is extremely wired to experience my life through my emotions and my relationships. My whole world comes to me through these filters, whether I want it to or not. And here is a Christian whom I respect telling me that I should not expect to experience God through either of these filters. That the way I experience any meaning and substance to life, the values around which I have oriented my entire life, are not ways in which I should expect to experience or relate to my God (who, incidentally, created me this way in the first place).

So on the one hand, everything in me rebelled against this whole notion. It doesn't make sense to me that God would create us as profoundly emotional and relational creatures, and then tell us that we have to wait until after we die to experience Him consistently in those ways. It doesn't make sense to me that a God who is innately relational (the whole three-in-one Trinity thing) would not be interested in meaningfully connecting to us in a similar way. It also doesn't line up with my experience at all. I have consistently experienced God's "personality" and presence. It's a huge part of my relationship with Him. Sorry, sir; I can't buy this argument, because for me it just doesn't add up.

But there was another part of me that was gripping the magazine, eating up every word, and feeling a deep sense of relief. Because while experience and emotion are a huge part of my relationship with the Lord, there have been so many times when those elements are lacking or absent altogether. Like this current season, for example. I've been seriously slogging through life in the last few weeks (...months...years), at least when it comes to my emotions and my experience of His presence. Over the past year in particular, launching out of the Jubilee experience, I've been working through some intense emotional struggles and often feeling totally stuck or even numb. Lately I've sensed God consistently pushing me to spend time with Him, yet when I've tried to do that, 95% of the time I just sit there, my thoughts wandering aimlessly, struggling to focus, feeling/hearing/sensing nothing. I spend a lot of my days feeling crabby, stressed out, tired, just trying to be nice to the people around me and have the emotional energy for the tasks and relationships at hand.

While I could not buy into the underlying premise of this man's argument, there was a significant part of me that related all too well to his description of what we should expect from our relationship with God - that it will mostly feel one-sided, and basically we need to proceed on our beliefs about Him and our trust in Him, regardless of what feels true. The relief came in hearing that maybe nothing is "wrong" with where I've been at - maybe it's normal, even expected, for me to feel emotionally cut off from the presence of God much of the time.

But the tension here is where I'm still sitting today. On the one hand, I've consistently "experienced" God's presence throughout my life in all different kinds of ways. This includes everything from sensing His leading to knowing just how to pray for someone (when I know nothing about them) to physical healing. It also includes just the ordinary everyday experiences of receiving His encouragement through other people, connecting with Scripture, and feeling His presence. I mean, God has been actively intervening in my daily life almost since I can remember.

...Except for when He doesn't. Which is a lot of the time, too. Like long, dark, dry spells when I feel totally cut off from Him or what He's doing. Times when my expectations of Him seem to fall devastatingly short of the reality around me.

And over this past year, I feel like I've been experiencing a third "category" of life with God. It's one where I am cognitively aware of what He's doing, in spite of feeling emotionally like I'm in a mud pit. Almost exactly a year ago, through a huge series of events surrounding the miscarriage of my daughter Jubilee, He told me (in some of those more profound and tangible experiences of hearing from Him) that this (2011) would be a year of Jubilee for me. A year where He would bring newness, healing, and freedom into my life in a significant way. I blogged a lot about that back then and you can read about it if you want. In fact, it was out of that that I re-started this blog in the first place. I felt like He wanted me to share about what He was doing, that He had purposes in it for others' lives as well as my own.

In any event, I came into this year with huge expectations from Him. And truthfully, I have been super aware of Him working in my life all year long. Huge things have started to shift. I've been in counseling for most of this year, and He's been chipping away at some life-long wounds and issues. I've seen tangible growth in my life.

And yet, and yet: this has been one of the emotionally hardest, crappiest, and darkest years I've ever, ever had. Much of the time it's only been my family and counselor that's really seen it up close, but my emotional state has been downright harrowing at times. For me that looks like exhaustion, numbness, negativity, and isolation. Weeks of sitting on the couch all day avoiding conversation or meaningful thought, because everything "meaningful" I could think or talk about was depressing and overwhelming. (Don't worry - like I said, I've been under the care of a counselor.)

So, the tension I've been living in is this stark awareness of God working, juxtaposed with major emotional slump- and grump-iness. God leading us into the ministry of our dreams, meanwhile me struggling to muster the emotional energy to even have a good conversation. Him giving me a new freedom from shame around my parenting, while I still struggle moment-to-moment to parent my daughter the way I want to. Seeing him faithfully provide for us, while feeling like I can't possibly have what it takes to maintain our work of support-raising right now. Other people giving us consistent words about this being a sweet and spiritually refreshing season for us, while I wake up grumpy and negative almost every single day, struggling to feel any kind of meaningful connection with God.

I see him working. I see things shifting. Yet I feel almost nothing, at least nothing good, most of the time.  In the past when I've felt this way, I've also not been able to see Him working. This time is different. His work is obvious. Every paycheck we get is the result of Him leading people to support us - it's His tangible work. I look at my counseling experience and see so clearly Him giving my counselor just the right words and wisdom to bring about change. I SEE Him working. But it just doesn't seem to line up with my emotional reality right now.

In the past I guess it was usually all or nothing for me - I'd either see Him working and feel rejuvenated by it, or I wouldn't see Him doing anything and would likewise feel like crap. So this is a weird combination for me, to see Him working yet feel like crap.

And I guess this is where God is stretching and teaching me something new. There isn't despair here, because of being able to see Him work - and also because He's given me some big promises and big hopes for what He's still going to do with me, emotions included. He's made it clear I won't be in this [emotional] slump forever. But what I'm waiting for, what I'm hoping will come from this, is a new freedom I've never fully had: the freedom of actually trusting His work and His presence, regardless of what I'm feeling. Maybe this was the relief of that article for me - someone reminding me that His work and presence are in no way dependent on whether we're "experiencing" His fulfillment or not. Our fulfillment is just a side-bonus to following Him, not something we get to count on in this earthly existence. ( --- Even though I think it's a way bigger part of following Him than the author seemed to think.)

So, I guess the summary of my thoughts is this: I've been begging God to change how I feel. Desperate for a relief from my stress, negativity, and emotional exhaustion. I'm aware of the underlying emotional issues that lead to these things for me, and I've been pleading with Him to bring healing to those areas. I know this isn't the emotional space where He wants me to live forever.

BUT, I don't want Him to take these feelings away until He's fully shown me the freedom I have in knowing that He is so, so far above my emotional state. I am equally desperate for that deep assurance that His purposes will STAND, no matter what I'm feeling. And also that He can and will work through me, regardless of how I'm doing emotionally. I NEED to know with everything in me that who He is does not depend on how I'm feeling. And how the heck else am I going to learn that, except to see Him working huge things in my life when I am feeling like a total emotional wreck? Without living through that dissonance, there is no way I'll believe it.

So I'm starting to believe it. I'm starting to trust it and rely on it. I'm starting to accept that God owes me nothing in terms of my emotional and experiential state. I'm starting to separate my tangible expectations of Him from my emotional expectations, if that makes sense. I'm starting to rest a bit more in the truth that He's always working, always has a purpose, and it's always good - completely regardless of how I'm feeling or what I can see.

With that, I'm not going to lie: I am so stinking ready for a change. I'm so ready to wake up feeling emotionally able to handle my day, instead of with a huge sigh and thoughts of all the things I don't think I can handle. I'm ready for Him to shift those deep-seated emotional issues that lead to my waking up with that feeling. I know what those issues are; I'm ready [I think] for Him to touch them. But I think I'm also getting why He's been putting that on hold.

Okay, God, I'm getting it. You can move those mountains now. Because I'll trust You, and Your work, even if You don't. At least, I'm getting there.