A Reason for Joy

I don’t usually wake up crying… but I did last night. It was not a lone tear trickling down my face. I woke up in heaving sobs. And, it felt good to cry. I cried about the dream I had just had… about the things I’ve lost… about the things that will never happen… I cried over several people. I cried about the past… the present… and the future.
Have I become so fake, that what I truly feel only comes out in the middle of the night because of a dream? Or have my dreams deceived me?
I feel like the big gashes in my heart have finally healed… but now the new cuts are stinging. In fact, they are becoming infected. I don’t want them to be scars, I want them to be healed and go away all-together. I am not dead to the pain.
But it doesn’t hurt all the time. Sometimes I forget about it all-together. Other times it’s like a song that’s stuck in my head. I know I sound extremely dramatic… but when I feel things, I REALLY feel things. When something hurts me, I have a literal pain. When I miss someone, it literally hurts.
Do I wish I didn’t? Kind of. But maybe I’m like this for a reason.
….I just want to know why.
I need to let go of this… but I don’t think I want to yet… and that kind of makes me angry. I feel pathetic. I feel stupid. I am just sad.
“How stupid could I be?”--- Sarah McLauchlan
Tonight in the sermon, the speaker said that God doesn’t take things away from our minds. “We don’t have delete buttons, you know!” It’s so simple… but I had never thought about it like that before. I keep asking God to take this desire away… but instead, I should ask God to help me focus on Him more. Then God’s desires will become my desires. It’s easy to sing songs about that… but it’s harder to legitimately show that’s what I want, by striving towards it.
Sitting around beating myself up about this is prideful. It’s like I think I shouldn’t be struggling with this… because I’m above it or something. Of course, that’s ridiculous, because I’m obviously NOT. HOW MUCH I have to learn.
I guess this is the bottom line… it’s ok for me to be sad and miss them… but it’s not ok for me to live totally focused on that, and looking for them to fill me and sustain me. That’s God’s place. I need to learn how to leave that job to God, instead of making it my job… since obviously, I am failing at it!