WHO AM I?

There were times during this period of my life that I had been so hurt that I just became immune to the pain and my reaction to the hurt was to stop feeling at all. I decided I wasn’t going to let anyone else injure me so I didn’t feel anything. It got to the point that my pain tolerance was so high that I was walking around smiling on the outside while I was slowly bleeding to death on the inside. Some of you may think well surely that’s okay, at least you didn’t feel the pain anymore - but there was an issue with that response. You see I couldn’t feel the pain or shame any longer, but I was also at the point that I didn’t feel joy, I didn’t feel peace, I didn’t feel hope and I didn’t feel love. I didn’t feel anything. I was numb. I was empty inside of everything and I was unconcerned and indifferent to anything that happened around me. It took a long time for me to realize that if I didn’t allow myself to feel again that the numbness would keep me in bondage to the very thing I was trying to protect myself from. If I didn’t deal with the pain then God couldn’t heal the pain. Think about it – you don’t go to a doctor or the emergency room unless you can actually feel pain. You have to tell the doctor what your symptoms are before you can be treated. We have to do the same thing with God (the great physician). Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that God doesn’t know what is wrong with you before you tell him. That’s not it at all. God is the great physician and He is able to heal anyone at any time of any affliction, whether it is physical, mental, emotional, social or financial. But God – like any other physician – is not going to automatically start medical procedures. We have to give consent to start treatment. We must go to God and let him know we want to be healed – giving him permission to begin the healing process. The great thing about going to the physician is that they will review your symptoms, provide a diagnosis and begin treatment. Once I recognized that I needed to ask God to deliver me from the shame and hurt I went to God and begin to cry out to Him like never before. I searched His word for those in the Bible that had been disgraced and found many examples. But there was one that stood out more than the others to me; it was the woman in Mark 5:24-34 and Luke 8:42-48. This woman’s name was never mentioned – we only know her as the “woman with the issue of blood.” I believe that the reason for that is because people sometimes can only see the issue that you’re going through. They tend to conveniently forget and erase all of the good that you have done and only see the disgrace and shame.