Spiritual Seesaw

The last few days have been an emotional seesaw for me. Up an down, up and down, over and over. It seems that when I am having a good moment, it is quickly followed by a bad, or at least it seems that way. I have become more aware of this seesaw.
When I was a child, I loved to ride the seesaw. My dad made one for my brother and I and we abused each other on it. It was great. It was John Deere green and we usually got splinters every time we rode it, but that did not matter. We would laugh and laugh until we could no longer breathe. It was great trying to knock the other one off, especially when they were up as far as they could go. It's something that siblings do, at least, that is what we did.
Now, as an adult, I still enjoy the seesaw....... at the park. The emotional seesaw is another story. I am typically upbeat, outgoing, and energetic. As of late, I am finding myself a bit more introspective, introverted, and looking within. I know this is a growing and mending process. After all, you cannot heal it if you do not acknowledge it. Or, as we say in Celebrate Recovery, you cannot heal what you cannot feel. For too long, I repressed my feelings and my emotions and did not allow myself to feel. I kept my head down and my heart quiet. I was living in the land of denial.
In this land, my feelings became disabled, I lost energy, I had no spiritual or emotional growth, I became isolated from my friends, my family and God, my relationships became weak (or I became alienated from my relationships), and it only lengthened my pain. So, why was I living here? That is a question I do not even know the answer to. I just know that it is where I existed. It was my coping mechanism. It was.
In my denial, I knew fear. The crippling, disabling, debilitating fear. I was unable to move left, right, forward or back. So, I went in circles, got dizzy and fell often. Now, I realize that my fear was a lack of faith. A lack of faith in myself and a lack of faith in God. With little faith, comes great fear. With great faith, comes little fear. As I have moved out of my denial, I still have fear. I will always feel fear. It is what I do with this fear. Do I allow it to control me, or do I use it propel myself forward? I now have courage, unlike any I have ever had before. My courage is now managed by my faith.
In the book, "You want me to do what?" by Michael Youssef, he puts it like this:
"It's not sin to experience a moment of fear when we face a genuine threat. But a pattern of habitual fear, worry and timidity will rob us of our joy and our effectiveness for God. Fear and faith are like opposite ends of a seesaw. When fear is up, faith is down. When faith is up, fear is down. The stronger our faith, the weaker and less significant our fears. Courage is not the absence of fear. Rather, courage is fear managed by faith. When our emotions are ruled by faith, fear cannot control us.....people of faith and courage do not let their fears determine their actions."

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." Matthew 14:34
This small part of scripture spoke to me, overwhelmed me as I read it today. Currently, I am going through a molding and breaking process. I know that as I travel through this trial and journey, that I will come through on the other side stronger and more resilient. That does not mean that as I go through this molding process that I do not despair. That my soul is not overwhelmed with sorrow, that my soul is not overwhelmed with grief, and that my soul is not sorrowful to the point of death.
The reasons why I am here are not as important as the journey that I am on. This journey will strip away parts of the old me. Ones that I, the human part of me, feel that I need, yet God knows I do not. I feel at times like cookie dough, being shaped by the cookie cutter, with the excess being pulled away. As the excess is being taken, my human side is fighting to keep it. It is like my safety blanket. And with this, I enter into the heart and mind battle. This is an overwhelming point in my life. It is like standing in a river during the spring thaw. At points you feel like you are going under and being swept away. And it is at this point, when I am at my weakest moment, this is where God comes through and shows His strength and glory.
I would like to say that it is easy, knowing that God is there and will keep me safe. It is the hardest point in my life. I have complete faith in God and completely trust Him. This is from my heart. And then enters my mind, and what a battle ensues. My mind thinks it can do it better, that it can hunker down and do it on it's own strength and might. That it can bully my heart into submission. I would be deceiving myself if I were to say that this will never happen or has never happened. It has and it will. My mind has silenced my heart for years and I have allowed it to happen. It was during this bullying from my mind that my heart began crying out, crying for recognition, crying for affirmation. My mind kept trying to keep it quite, making excuses, and lying. This is when my heart went to God, crying to Him, asking, seeking and knocking.
And now, at this crossroad, I am standing at the door that God has opened and find myself not being able to go through. I was reminded by a good friend that the most radical changes in my life will occur before I enter this door and that God will give me the strength to proceed and the courage to step forward.
So, here I am, standing in the river. Asking, seeking and knocking.