Love Me for Me

The last two weeks have been hard. I came to the realization a while back that I've basically been spiritually and emotionally numb for months now. I wasn't sad or angry, but I wasn't happy or joyful either. I just was. I moved through my days one at a time, rarely feeling anything. It's a terrible thing not to care, to have nothing in your life you feel strongly enough about to even get mad over. It's a horrible way to live. But, when you've done it for a while, you don't even realize you're doing it anymore. You just are. You don't live, you exist.
It's a difficult thing to admit, too. How do you tell people that you just don't care? "I know I should love you. I know I should feel something about you, the things you're going through, the place you're in, but I don't. I just can't." It's not really something your friends want to hear. It's really not something they can understand. And, why say anything about something you're not totally sure you can change or "fix." My friends are fixers. Do you have those? I'm a fixer, and I attract fixers, too. We're a bunch of fixers. So, when something's wrong, we do our best to fix one another. Usually, this just creates a bigger mess, but it hasn't stopped us yet.
Anyway, I think I hid my numbness pretty well. I'm a relatively outgoing person, and can pretend to be easily amused by many things. It doesn't take much to play the game. Act silly, make people laugh, have just enough of an answer to make them think you care about the conversation, then slip back onto the sidelines of life as it's passing you by. Scary how it happens.
Like, I said, I was making it along like this pretty well until very recently. Then along came "share time." I have a love/hate relationship with share time. I love to know what's really going on in the lives of my incredible friends, but I hate getting honest about my own messes. Love/Hate. The girl right before me really shared. I mean, there were tears and everything, and I felt so inadequate to follow that. I thought about making something up, something that sounded good, sincere, but nothing they'd want to pray about or worry about the next day. But, for some reason that night I couldn't do it again. I needed them to know. So, I just said it. "I'm numb. I don't feel much of anything. And, worst of all, I've been this way the better part of the last year, I think." Then came the praying. The hands clasping mine, the hands layed tenderly on my knee or around my shoulder, the hands telling me I wasn't alone, telling me whether they understood or not, they weren't going to leave me to go it alone. Those girls always say, "When we pray on Wednesdays, stuff happens on Thursdays." Well, they prayed.
It started simply at first, I think. A long day at work, a frustrating e-mail, a reminder that someone cared, and suddenly, unexpectedly, there were tears. It was comical really. Driving home on a rainy Thursday afternoon, the new mascara I'd been experimenting with burning the fire out of my eyes, making it difficult to see. Then, the phone rang. Ginger. She had a funny story. I laughed. (And I cried.) "What's going on?" she asks innocently. "I don't know!" I gulp miserably. "We prayed," she smiles into the phone.
I still can't explain it, but the feeling didn't stop that afternoon or when the tears subsided. The feelings (a whole broad range of them) have continued to come. Little ones, big ones, funny ones, sad ones, happy ones, teary ones, nostalgic ones, angry ones. Feelings for me, feelings for others. I'm honestly not sure I could say it's easier. Numb is very simple. But, feeling adds color. And, of course, complications. It's tempting every day to retreat back to numb. My carefully contructed emotional security system feels threatened, even compromised. But, maybe all really is just as it should be.
Here's the hardest part. Letting people love me. I mean, really letting them love me. Trusting that they can and do love me for me. Numb means not caring what they do. Numb means not really being able to feel loved or hated, so it doesn't make much difference. Feeling means being aware. Caring. Wanting more. Feeling is costly. It costs me, and it makes me more expensive for others sometimes. It's nerve-wracking wondering who's gonna be willing to pay the price on the tougher days. Feeling takes me back into the battle field. Feelings aren't bad, but they can't always be trusted, so they have to be weighed, measured, and applied carefully to the arguments in my head.
Most of you won't be directly impacted by this new flood of feeling, but for those of you who are, please be patient with me. Please remind me how blessed I am to have you in my life. Please try hard to just love me because Jesus does and he asked you to, not because you need or want something from me.