The Liquid Stage

Sensitive.  That's the way I came into the world.  And then I was tossed into the middle of a dysfunctional family.  I'm not throwing my family under the bus to admit that we're dysfunctional.  All families are dysfunctional.  If you can't admit it, you may be more dysfunctional than the rest of us.  It wasn't easy to be me.  Just like it probably wasn't easy to be you.  I was just this little bundle of feelings.  I had a lot of feelings of my own and then I picked up other people's feelings and wore them around like a backpack.  I felt responsible for the whole world.  I just wanted to make everybody happy and wanted them to feel loved.  It felt like it was my role to play.  As a result, this planet has been a difficult place for me to live.  Somewhere along the line, I decided that these feelings were just too much for me.  I lost myself.  I stopped being me.  I stopped feeling.  I became absorbed by everyone around me.  Kathryn disappeared and she became a daughter, a sister and a friend, but no longer Kathryn.

In order to stay this person who didn't feel, I started numbing.  I did it in a hundred different ways.  Starving myself, eating too much, eating junk, going blank, hating myself, destructive self talk, perfectionism, obsessing over my appearance, to name a few.  I got so good at the numbing that I didn't even know I was doing it.  I bought into my own game.  I believed my own lies.

When my first child was born, the exterior started to chip and crack and the real Kathryn started to seep out.  She was ugly.  Nobody liked her.  She yelled a lot and was mostly made up of rage from being in the dark for so long.

Since then, my life has been about letting that sensitive, feeling girl out of her cage.  It has been a blossoming of authentic Kathryn.  It has sometimes been slow with trepid steps, and other times gushing like water.  It goes something like this.

"What is this thing in my chest, in my heart?"  And God speaks quietly to my heart and says, "It's a feeling."  And I say, "Oh yeah right, feelings!  What feeling is this?"  And he says, "It's hurt'', or fear, or some other feeling.  And I say, "Okay, why am I feeling this?"  That one takes a lot more time, but I'm getting better at it.  And God reveals it in time and I deal with the fact that I have feelings, and the feelings are not bad.  And then I usually express my feelings to my husband and my friends, and sometimes on Facebook, and on this blog.  And God helps me to come to forgiveness, or resolution, or whatever the feeling requires.  And what has happened in the process is I have found Kathryn, and for the most part, I've started to like her again.  She's not so mean after you let her out of the dark.

But here's another thing that I've discovered in the process, I am not the only one uncomfortable with feelings.  Very few people like them.  And when you express them publicly, some people applaud you, but a lot of people scold you.  They don't like it.  I guess they think that you are saying that God is not good, or something like that.  I don't know, but they try to tell you what to do to get rid of your feelings and what to feel instead.  It's weird.  I don't get it.  I feel like proclaiming to the world, I'm in process, people.  I'm not planning on staying here!

On Sunday in church, I was reminded by our pastor about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.  When a caterpillar is in his cocoon, he completely dissolves into liquid before becoming a butterfly.  It was like God tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "Maybe you're in the liquid stage."

I don't think feelings are something to fear, they're just another step in the process of healing.  You and me, the ones who can't seem to pull it together, maybe we're liquid.  Maybe our tears and feelings are evidence of transformation.  Is that why I'm often a puddle of tears?  It's just my liquid emotions seeping out of the cracks.  Liquid can't hold itself together, it needs a container.

I read a couple of weeks ago in the book, "Why Give." by John Devries, "God is not hindered by our weakness but rather he uses our weaknesses as the 'holes' through which his streams of eternal life flow.  Every human weakness is a new opportunity for the Spirit to pour out more of his goodness, because we, in our weakness, must rely on him; and it is our reliance on him that opens the door to let the Spirit flow through us.  The more independent we are and the more we rely on our own strength, the more we shut the door to the streams of eternal life flowing through us.  When Jesus said that in order to get into the kingdom of God we had to become as little children he was teaching that being saved comes only to those who have a childlike dependency on the Father.  It is this dependency that opens the continuously increasing flow."

So, if you're like me, a weepy one, or an angry one, or a hurt one, or a scared one who can't seem to hold it all together, maybe we're just a bunch of melted caterpillars about to be butterflies.