Forgetfulness - 4-18-10

I’m beginning to forget. It’s been happening for a little while now. I can’t remember the things that used to move me about him. Even when I consciously remember how he used to call me “hon” and “my dear” or how he would playfully gnaw on my arm to elicit shrieks of laughter, it’s like I’m watching a movie on mute. I remember but have no memory.
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More than forgetting things about him and us, I’m forgetting myself. I know I have been changed from knowing him, but for the first time in a year – has it really been a year – I feel like my old self. Unseen and unwanted. Even through the ups and downs of our relationship, even after December, I never really felt that way. But I’m forgetting what it was to be delighted in, what it felt like to be seen and have something unbearably lovely to look forward to in the immediate future.
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I am sexless. Womanless. I can’t really feel anything, good or bad, but I’m not really worried. It feels like all the other times when I shut down and went numb, but it’s not. I’m not depressed, really. I just can’t find any good feelings right now. But I know and believe the truth as I didn’t before.
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The numbness is pervasive, though. It infiltrates everything, every purpose or dreamed-for end. I can feel nothing for B____, even the painful. My brain keeps flitting back to him but there’s nothing to find. It would seem a perfect opportunity for God to move me away from this calling, this purpose, show it to be my own stubborn, slow-to-die feelings for this man, but inexplicably – incomprehensibly, more like – he keeps giving me the same verses he’s been giving me for months, verses like Ezekiel 36:26-27, when I’m randomly opening my Bible and having no thought of this book:
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I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to follow my laws.
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This is one of the verses I have been praying over the M____ clan. It has been so meaningful to me because it doesn’t focus on what the people have to do. God is planning on doing things of his own volition, not petitions by anyone, for his name’s sake.
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And he keeps doing this – giving me verses over and over again. He’s not giving me a fresh word – just the same ones again and again. He’s clearly not releasing me from this purpose. And though I feel nothing, neither good nor bad, and though it seems like he should let me move on now that even my emotions are utterly still, I will be obedient. I do want my people’s freedom. I stand against the increased whispers that maybe they weren’t really “captive” after all, that I was just inventing a quest to make myself feel special and have an excuse to keep holding onto B____. I know I am not just seeking out these verses for my own satisfaction. I want to waste myself no more than God does. Even though all those truths I have been standing on – the verses, the books, the conclusions in my spirit – all feel like mist and silence, even though the memories themselves have become a crackling silent film, I am stubborn. For the first time in all these months, I don’t feel my stubbornness, but I know it’s there. And I am stubborn that God is guarding me. I cannot imagine or even feel good about my glorious future, I cannot feel my dream of being seen and loved by a man who will let me love him, of my children in my arms, of work I don’t dread. But my hope is in the Lord. I know he sees that future just as clearly as he always has. I know that he is exactly the same God today that he was two months ago and will be tomorrow, when I’m surrounded by cloying kids. I know that he is working tirelessly on my behalf, that his Spirit is interceding for me in groans that cannot be uttered in words, that he works all things and all seasons to the good of those who love him. I know I love him even though that feels as numb right now as everything else. I know that his heart’s desire is that B____ and all his family are free from their old, old patterns, their tired, exhausted relationships. After all, Christ came to set us free for freedom. So even though my emotions have changed drastically, I know that he has not. Now that all is fog and swirling shadow so I can’t see my hand in front of my face, so that I am pressed in on all sides by the cold damp of my present circumstances, my face is turned in his direction, knowing he is far above the clinging darkness and has his eye fixed on the harbor for which I sail. He has not lost me. And he has not lost my people. We will all be free. And all who see it will know that he is the Lord.