Knownness
How many different feelings can one person feel in a specified period of time? Do you suppose there is a world record for either the variety of feelings or perhaps the intensity thereof? The mathematician and data scientist in me wonders how one would even measure it. How do we measure feelings? <<<Gazes off to the corner of the room meditating on the Psalm that says He has our tears in a bottle thinking that could be one way, but then recognizing that not all feelings are expressed through tears… resolves to contemplate that topic another day>>> I know for me there are days where feelings are so varied and so intense that whatever means might be used to capture or measure them would burst, like a balloon popping, shattering into a million pieces, releasing its contents to the extent of the surrounding room. Those are hard days. Those are draining days. For me the days following them are sometimes even harder as the ecosystem tries to recover and restabilize.
I had one of those days this past weekend, but first a little background: A little over two years ago we welcomed our 4th and final child, the final chapter in a miraculous tale that only God could guide. Shortly thereafter, I decided to apply to seminary. Several months later, I applied for a job in another state within the same global company and also miraculously was awarded the job. I started the new role, and in January last year my family relocated to New Jersey, sadly leaving our adult children behind. My husband left teaching and miraculously was granted a job as technical director at a church, but it wasn’t horribly close to my office. He started his new job and our (then) kindergartener started at a new school. We sojourned through a temporary housing situation for a few weeks and moved into a home in February. The very next week I began my seminary studies. The next few months were all about getting settled in with its usual bumps. Just as we were finally starting to find our groove, we had a few changeups that made it abundantly clear our location was all wrong. The logistics were already a challenge, and they were going to get exponentially more complicated. A wise colleague sat next to me on a train one day as we returned from a meeting in the city. I was explaining my angst over the situation when she emphatically interrupted me, “I think you need to simplify.” Seven months after moving in, we put that house up on the market, found another one closer to our church (and much farther from my office), enrolled our now 1st grader in yet another school, moved in, and anxiously awaited the sale of the first house. And waited. And waited. And waited. We got caught in the crosshairs of the real estate mess brought on by the entanglements between inflation and rising mortgage rates. Eventually it sold… at a loss, but we were happy it was done and behind us, just in time for the holidays… and for the youngest to need tubes put in her ears. Did I mention she doesn’t like to sleep? Then it’s been nearly endless work travel for me since the end of January.
The last eighteen months to two years have been hard. Moving is hard. Making new friends is hard. Starting a new job is hard. Helping your kids navigate new schools and childcare is hard. Joining a new church is hard. Finding, clicking, and getting established with new doctors is hard. Finding where you can contribute and use your gifts is hard. Starting school again is hard. Juggling our respective job responsibilities (especially with my travel) with small kids with us both in seminary, while moving twice, starting all over again in another state, in a world that seems even more difficult to navigate than usual while hopelessly sleep deprived is just plain old hard. I’m exhausted. And if you you’ve poked around this blog enough you know what that means. For people like me who’ve struggled with depression, anxiety, rejection, and all things that fall under what I call “the voice of destruction,” we’ve got the ingredients for a code orange situation here. And I feel it. The signs are there.
A few months ago, I was on a flight reading B.B. Warfield on the inspiration of Scripture. Despite my very pious reading material, I was visibly agitated by the passenger next to me. The decorum of air travel has crashed and burned. The straw on the camel’s back was when he started snoring loudly enough that I could not drown him out with my headphones. The horror! (I know – first world problems…. but it was snoring). I posted about it on Facebook, specifically how I wanted to drop my suitcase on his head when he darted under my arms, bypassing me after landing. As entertaining as that might have been for others to read, it didn’t sit well within. I had a call scheduled with the online seminary pastor and decided to discuss this incident and my concern over the incongruency of my reading materials and demeanor. He was encouraged that I was essentially bothered about being bothered. I suppose it’s good to be bothered about being bothered, but that was unsatisfying for me. I want the antidote! I wish to feel joyful again and not bothered in the first place by these nuisances. I remember being the kind stranger who tried to smile and display Christ’s love to others in the dismal space of the airport. I want to return to being that person. Now I’m just another entitled curmudgeon grumbling from point A to point B about the good ol’ days of air travel, but worse because I carry pious reading materials.
Old thought patterns have resurfaced too, as have old, ancient, church hurts I once thought were put to rest. And remarkably, they feel stronger than before, not merely phantoms of the initial hurts. I feel as though I were in the midst of those situations all over again. PTSD perhaps? And trust me when I tell you that I want no part of these feelings. I want nothing more than to package them up, put them in a box, and ship them to the other side of the earth. Or maybe I could send them where they dispose of nuclear waste in the bottom of the ocean or out in the desert somewhere. They’d be in like company there: toxic waste. Also, I’m angry, so angry, so often. I described it recently as my throttle is stuck in rage. Maybe I should take a nap? If only my body would let me. I realized that I need help, a little tune-up if you will. So, I reached out for help, and I’m getting help. It’s good to ask for help. We all need help. Help is reminding me that I must walk in truth, which, ironically, is what this blog is all about – “sharing truth, together, one post at a time.” And I’ve got some truth to share.
Back to this past weekend.
We traveled back to Cincinnati for a friend’s wedding. While there we saw our grown kids (oxymoron much?) and visited our old church. In that short time span I had all the feelings. Good, happy, joyous, feelings. Anxious, sad, mournful, even angry feelings. All. The. Feelings. I felt so many feelings over the weekend that I am depleted. I’m feelinged out – except for tired. I feel a lot of tired. One particular feeling I felt was known. It was glorious, intoxicating even. And it was that kind of aha! moment where I realized how in the chaos, busyness, and turmoil of the last two years, I have deferred grieving leaving my kids and community. Instead, I have been desperately seeking to replicate and quickly rebuild that level of “knownness” here.
What do I mean? We were at our former church for eight years. My husband worked at the school that was a part of its ministry. Nearly all our friends were somehow connected to the church or the school. We were there for many big life moments: graduations, our daughter’s wedding, two pregnancy losses, the birth of our two youngest children, job changes, COVID, and so much more. We served and learned in that community with multiple touch points through the week in worship ministry, Sunday School, Wednesday evening classes, and college ministry. We had life groups and prayer groups where we held each other up and supported each other. Being known meant that not only were there those who knew my name and relevant census information, but they also knew my story, my struggles, my strengths, and my snares. It meant having that friend in prayer group who wouldn’t let me get away with looking discouraged on a dark day of doubting without calling me out from across the table, “something’s up with you; spill it.” It meant having another sweet friend and mentor check in with me every few weeks and ask me how my now dust-collecting manuscript was coming along. “I just know God’s going to use it” she’d say with such calm confidence. It meant having a pastor who specifically took me aside a few weeks before we left to hand me a book reenforcing our identity in Christ that he hoped would be an encouragement for me because he knew of my rejection triggers and how exposed they might be in a move such as ours.
It took years and lots of life stuff to cultivate those relationships. I struggle with patience. I am more emotionally needy than the average bear, which I accept. My mind is vulnerable to that ugly lying voice, especially when sleep evades me, as it often does now. I need the touchpoints. I need community. I desperately want to be known. I get discouraged. I start to fear we’ve made a huge mistake. I spiral.
I need truth.
As much as I want to feel known and to be known by God’s people, the truth is that I am already known… by God. Psalm 139 is a glorious proclamation from King David of the level of intimate knownness we have from God. It begins:
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
David is saying here that not only does God know his comings and goings, but He knows David’s very thoughts. Who knows your deepest thoughts? Who knows your greatest longings? I would wager that even those with the most intimate of human relationships would admit that they haven’t revealed every single thought or longing to another. I know for me, I have so many thoughts in a day it would be impossible to express them all to another human. There simply isn’t enough time, nor are there even the words to be able to express some of them. The burden of receiving the totality of my thoughts would probably be enough to kill a person (sidenote – how do counselors survive?). But God knows us so well that He discerns our thoughts. He knows them. He can handle the weight of them. David also writes that God knows the words he is going to speak in advance of David’s saying them. We’re familiar with that sentimental notion of having a friend or companion who knows you so well they can finish your sentences. David is saying God knows him so well, that He can finish the entire sentence before David even starts it! When I’m having one of those moments feeling alone and isolated, like a stranger in a room of familiar faces, I can read these 6 verses and chew on the truth that I am intimately known by God, even though I am feeling anything but known.
This is but one passage of many we can withdraw from the bank of truth to deposit into our accounts when our knownness balance nears insufficient funds. Here are a few others for a future rainy day:
· “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” John 10:14
· “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27
· “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” 1 Cor 8:3
· “But you, O Lord, know me; you see me, and test my heart toward you.” Jer 12:3a
· “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.” Nahum 1:7
As I sit and write this, I am convicted about how tricky our memories and minds can be. I recall how I read some journaling about my hospitalization several years after the fact and realized that my mind had rewritten some of the facts of that day. It’s easy to romanticize the way things were. Truth about circumstances is important. Even being so demonstrably known in our former church, there were still days I walked in dying for encouragement and ended up leaving heavy for want of another with whom to share my burden. It is likely a function of “life in this old broken world,” as my former pastor would put it, that some days there are more burdens to go around it seems than there are shoulders to help carry them. It is equally true that in our new church, there have been more days that I have left encouraged than discouraged. There are many ways in which we have seen the tremendous and miraculous provision of the Lord in this move, and with double moves and so much life stuff in the last 18 months, we are well on our way to forging those knownness bonds I yearn for.
I am also convicted that knownness is a two-way street, and I have shoulders and the Spirit within me as well to guide me to those whom I can likewise encourage in the Lord. I need to remember that the Lord will meet my needs, including my emotional ones. He provides His Word, His Spirit, and His people, the church. I need only ask. Remembering that frees me up to be less focused on frenetically grasping for everything I think I need and more focused on allowing Him to work through me to be His hands and feet to others who have need.
It is my prayerful hope that these words, lived experiences, and discovered/remembered truths may be of encouragement to you as you desire to be known. And if I may be so bold to ask something in return, please pray for me that I may be granted good and plentiful sleep.