“In running, we miss His Peace. And overlook His Provision.”
We run fastest and hardest from what we Fear most, our deepest Pain.
Not realizing that Fear is what gives our Pain so much power.
But we run, and we stay busy, and we run some more.
Not aware that our running is causing us to miss Life.
Our running causes us to miss the Beauty that God wants to show us every day in the details of His Love.
In running, we miss His Peace. And overlook His Provision.
Ann Voskamp writes in her book, One Thousand Gifts,
“Our hurry makes us hurt. And maybe it is the hurt that drives us on? For all of our frenzied running seeming toward something, could it be that we are in fact fleeing – desperate to escape pain that pursues?
Whatever the pace, time will keep it, and there’s no outrunning it, only speeding it up and pounding the feet harder. Race for more, and you’ll snag on time and leak empty. The longer you keep running, the longer the gash, and you drain, bleed away. Hurry always empties a soul. “
But we do have a choice.
We can stop running. We can stop the bleeding. Our emptiness can be filled.
But we have to be willing to face our Pain.
For Pain is not our enemy.
When we experience Pain, it is because we have made a choice out of our limited understanding to believe the Lies that tell us,
“God made me flawed. I’m not good enough. So I have to pretend, recreate myself, perform.“
“God doesn’t love me. He isn’t big enough. He won’t come through for me.”
“I have to get it right for God to love or bless me.”
“It’s up to me. I can’t trust God or anyone else. I am going to have to get for myself what I want if I am ever going to be happy.”
When we believe these Lies, we hand over our soul to something other than God, who is not the author of Pain.
And that’s when Fear grips us, paralyzes us.
We are deceived and bullied by its lies that tell us .
“If we stop running, stop getting for ourselves what we want and feel that we deserve, and we stop battling to make life happen for us, then we will go without, be disappointed, be unnoticed, forgotten, and we will ache in our emptiness.”
We hate pain because it feels so alone, empty, hopeless, and smothering.
But if we dare face it, encounter it, and expose its Truth,
We are finally set Free.
And we realize that we are not alone.
In exposing the lies of our Fear and Pain, we encounter God.
We ask Him, “God what do you want to speak to my heart in this Pain? What do you want me to know about your Truth and how you want to love me in this place?”
And if we really listen to His Loving Whisper of Truth,
If we open our Hearts and remain present to His Gift for us in that moment
He heals our deepest Pain and sets abounding Peace in our hearts.
But we have to be willing.
Connie Jones, MA, LPC| 770-862-6088