Awakenings

So yesterday in Small group (that's what bible study is called in InterVarsity), I realized something remarkable about life.  Now before I get to that,  I want to preface this a little bit.  I feel like from last week to this week I've had a reawakening.  And I mean that in the truest sense of that word.  For the past 8 months, maybe a little bit more, I've been seriously depressed.  I didn't even recognize it till about 5 days ago until I had the experience of vividly being awoken. On that day, I seriously felt like someone who had been asleep then startled awake.  Such was the transformation of my mind, my heart, the connection being reestablished between the two. For those 8 months, I realized I had been shutting down, turning off functions of my heart.  Burying pain, tragedy, heartbreak, trying to escape the damage that had been done.  Even more so wanting to hold on to the person I had lost.  Trying to remember the love you had for that person and how the pain of them leaving, felt, feels like burning.

Over 8 months, I tried to cover my grief over with action, as my heart was dying, suffocating over its own suffering, my mind continued to work, to push through. It would set a mental check-list of all the things that I needed to get done, skip over all the things I didn't want to think about, and the days would flow by.  I would realize things were wrong in the quiet times, like when I was at work surrounded by the quiet of the office, or when I was on vacation not inundated with the business that kept me protected.  The things I did acted as the buffer-zone to my heart, as long as I constructed more buffers I would be safe from ever having to deal with my issues.  So continued my pattern of buffering and trying to forget, till one day I looked around at my life and I said how the hell did I get here. I had no idea, literally no idea of how my life had progressed from then till now.

When I realized that, it consumed me, why couldn't I figure out what had happened? why do I feel so at war myself?  I even said this to a few people- "I feel such a mind-heart disconnect"  A part of me was compelled to figure it out, and finally 5 days ago I found out.  All the lying to myself, all the self-hate, all the business it was trying to make me forget who and why I was. Yes, why I was, I feel like I have a purpose given to me by God, and I had forgotten that purpose, buried it just as readily as I buried my pain, and that purpose is to love people beyond myself.  All during my hibernation I was so self-consumed, self-absorbed in what I was doing I forgot how to love people right.  I feel like during that time I was like a nuclear-reactor that had hit emergency stop, then refused to start, and finally I've turned back on. I've had a reawakening.

During the past 5 days, I've felt better then I can remember for a long time, living for others again has never felt so good.  I can't describe to you the level of perception that has been given back, its like seeing a friend you haven't seen for a long time, they look the same, but you can tell things are different.  That's how I feel, my attitude was like how it was pre-winter heart-destruction, back to going above and beyond for others, back to wanting to make others lives the best they can be. God I love that feeling.