On future hope and present hurt

Now that I've put all the events of our Friday in Thailand out there, I can go back and give some more personal details and reflections.

I'll start with Friday morning. I didn't go into a ton of detail about what happened in our team devotions and with me personally after our devotions, because it didn't advance the overall story, but the time was very significant for me. The word God had for me really crystallized in my mind as we were talking, sharing, and processing together in our team devotion, and as I was sharing and then praying to close our time, I really began to struggle to keep my composure. I managed to do so, though with clear emotion in my voice, until the end of our time, but we had about 20-25 minutes between when our devotional time wrapped up and when we were going to head over to Lynn's house to meet with the team, and so I headed back to my room for a bit. When I got into my room, I pretty much let it go.

Now, I'm a relatively emotional guy, so having this sort of experience in general isn't really all that noteworthy. However, this was one of the most bizarre set of tears I'd ever cried. I was clearly overwhelmed with joy at receiving God's word regarding this situation, but there was also pain coming out. It's really hard to describe how that felt, to have two very opposing emotions flowing out of me virtually simultaneously. As I said, the source of the joy was pretty obvious, but it wasn't readily apparent to me where the pain was coming from, until I reflected for a few moments.

I'll have to go back and give a little more background here. Lynn first let me and a number of his core supporters know he was likely looking at an ALS diagnosis back in mid-August of last year. If you've been around this blog for a while, you know I'm a Yancey guy, and you might also know that Yancey's worldview, which I very much resonate with, certainly allows for God to work through miraculous healing, but readily acknowledges the reality that that's very often not the way He chooses to work in these situations. So, while I had every confidence from day 1 that God was going to work this situation out for His honor and glory, to be honest, I'd pretty much conceded Lynn's loss in his upcoming battle with ALS. Then Lynn shared with my his belief that God had told him this illness would not lead to death, and about a month and a half later I believe God confirmed that to me independently.

So, I had this hope for future restoration that was guiding me, and yet it still hurt very deeply to see what my friend was having to suffer. In the first few weeks after I got the news, I'd allowed myself to let that pain out. However, once I had received this confirmation from God, I associated the pain I was still feeling with the defeat I had felt at the outset. And so, I felt like that pain was somehow an expression of doubt, and I bottled it up. The pain hadn't gone anywhere, but it had been a good 6 months or more since I'd allowed myself to really let it out.

And so those were the tears of pain that were mixed with my joy. It was as if as God spoke to me and strengthened my hope, he also spoke to me and released me to express the pain I was feeling on behalf of my friend. It wasn't an expression of doubt or defeat, anymore than the hurt we all naturally feel when a believing loved one passes is an expression of doubt that we'll see them again someday. The belief in future restoration doesn't make the pain of the moment less real, or somehow wrong. And furthermore, even if what I was feeling was somehow wrong, bottling it up didn't make it go away, it just made me feel bad.

One of the things that I "know" but don't necessarily always "believe" (you act on what you believe, not what you know) is that it's pointless to try and pretend that certain feelings aren't there, regardless of whether those feelings are good or bad. God knows that they are there, so it's not like there are "Good Christian" points for keeping them hidden. Hopefully that lesson will finally sink in this time, because carrying around pain unnecessarily for 6-7 months kinda sucks.