The Weight of Unspoken Things
Week 10 of Being 32
Hello all, I return once again with a mind full of thoughts and ideas. Things have been challenging on the personal front of late. Thus, I have found myself wrestling with God as a war rages within my heart and mind. I recently sat down with someone very dear to me, and as I sat across from her, I had a question for her, and her response was, “This might surprise you, but I will pray about it.” The conversation continued, and I didn’t think much more about it in the moment, yet as I left the conversation behind, I found it repeated in my mind over and over again. I could not escape it.
As I meditated and prayed about it, I found my heart was broken to the point of tears. From that moment, I found myself overwhelmed by conviction, and I found myself led to ask the question: Why would she say that? Why would she say, “This might surprise you.” To be clear, she never made an accusation against me, yet the Holy Spirit did. I suddenly found myself forced to ask the question, What did she think I thought of her? How did she see herself through my eyes?
In all my writing, I have often voiced that I am a flawed and broken man, but I don’t think I have been willing to admit the depth of my flaws. A sin and place of wrestling that I have often contended with is pride. I grew up in a people group that is known for its pride and belief that they are better than others. As a child, I remember hearing that we won’t associate with “those people” because they were worldly people, and while my parents never intended to plant a spirit of pride in my heart, it did exist there from even my childhood. We are a fallen and broken people, each and every one of us. We all have a proclivity toward certain sins, and in my mind, it seems to me that often, there are generational sin struggles. From all my reading and study, it seems that German people as a group seem to struggle most often with the sin of pride. And as the saying goes, “Pride goes before the fall.”
As I have meditated and prayed over this moment, I have found my spirit broken, my heart broken for how I have silently judged others in my heart, how I have made others feel less than by my words and deeds. Even though I might not have said I was judging them, in reality, I was. I have made them feel as though they are not good enough for love.
We all carry wounds and scars of different sorts, so I think we often wound others in the same ways we have been wounded. We often lash out in covert ways because we are afraid. We are often like the drowning man who unintentionally tries to drown the man who is trying to save him. We are starving for love, affection, closeness, and community, and when it seems to appear, we smother it, and we try to drown it with us because we fear what could happen if we don’t. Thus, we often do one of two things: we either act like the drowning man and cling to our would-be rescuer and drown them with us, or we push away, afraid that the rescue isn’t real.
My favorite podcaster has often repeated a question he heard from a stranger at an event. This stranger asked, “The depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel things so deeply?” I feel this quote to my bones. Not that I think I am some great person of insight, but that I feel things so deeply.
I have, and often do, try to hide these weighty feelings, because I fear the weight of them. I fear the weight of these feelings will scare others away. I do not believe I am alone in this; I think we all do this to varying degrees, and I think we all fear the weight of our feelings to varying degrees.
Many, many years ago, there was a young woman whom I had the biggest crush on. We were both young, she was in a relationship at that time, and I, having been raised rather sheltered, was not very good at pursuing women, and so I remember praying to God that He would allow me to cut the strings that were on my heart, because I was afraid of the pain. Was I being a little overdramatic? Yes, ABSOLUTELY, I was a little wannabe emo kid. But I think it also reveals that we all have our defense mechanisms by which we hide our hearts, because we fear having them wounded again.
I do not know why she chose to say, “This might surprise you.” I do not know if she sees herself as less than, unworthy, unfit, or unlovable in my eyes. I do not know if I have taken these words and made more of them than intended, but these words have created havoc in my soul, they have forced me to look into the mirror and ask the question of who have I judged silently and who have I led to feel judged by me? Whose heart has been wounded with the words I have spoken and the things I have done? The answer is I don’t know, but what I do know is that through this, I have found that God has humbled me and has caused me to think more deeply on these things.
I do not wish to leave a legacy of broken things behind me; I want to build a legacy of loving people well and helping them see God’s love for them. I can’t undo the things I have done wrong, but I can commit to trying to do better with each step I take forward. With each word I say, every word I write, and every deed I do. That is my prayer, amen.