Breathing in or Blocking out

Not too long ago I wrote of a picture that my pastor talked of in one of his sermons. It referred to this world being as smog and pollution. The sin and fallenness of this world and our sin is suffocating. We can't help but breathe it in daily. We are bombarded with it from every side and every angle and can't get away from it, even if we retreat to ourselves, it's there in us. Over time he said our lungs atrophy from breathing in the "sin smog", I'll call it. He remarked the only way to get a breath of fresh air and rehabilitate our lungs was to look up to the face of God; Lift our faces up and above the sin, pollution, and fallenness and breathe in the air of God's righteousness, holiness, grace, mercy and forgiveness. In doing this we practice our lungs and exercise them to be able to handle the pureness of being in His presence for all eternity, where we will be smothered with the pureness of Him alone. 

That picture has come back to me over and over again the past couple weeks. And lately, if you know me well, you know that I am struggling through an extremely hard area in my life. One that seems to smother me like the sin smog that my pastor spoke of. It seems to be at every turn in my life, every angle, every thought. I can't seem to get away from it. Now the illustration takes a turn off from the original picture here, in my life, because right now the Lord is calling me to remain in the smog of difficulties and hardships. They come in all of our lives, especially in the lives of believers. As my SS teacher says, hardships and sufferings are just as much a part of the Christian life as salvation is. Whew! That sucks for sure! 

From day to day I am overwhelmed by my thoughts, and honestly a lot of times try to escape from them. For example I fall asleep to a movie now, so I won't have to hear what's going through my head. It's not easy going day to day wading through past memories, hard events, remaining rebellions and different aspects of myself that I am being called to deal with. I am one who does not like to hurt, although I don't know of anyone who enjoys it. But I have amazing distraction and blocking powers that enable me not to hurt, probably a good thing as a child, but now kind of works against me in a lot of areas. 

Now, as the Lord is leading me down this path of unlocking hidden chambers, and releasing hurtful emotions, it takes everything in me to remain in the here and now and not try to escape. Over the past couple weeks, only a couple times, I have looked up and thought, Lord can't I just skip over this part and just be okay with you and keep living my nice neat lil happy life that I have crafted? Can't I just keep my nose above those smog clouds and never look down again?Here is where the picture differs for me. The distraction/escape mechanism in me uses many things to escape from the pain of reality; in the past it's been immorality with guys, busyness, going going going, so fast that I can't feel, busyness is ministry, doing doing doing for the Lord, lately it's been not eating, (some people eat for comfort, I don't eat for comfort), OCD, and I think the list could go on and on and on. 

At this point in my life to lift my face above the clouds to breathe would actually be blocking or escaping for me, because the Lord Himself knows in my heart of hearts that I struggle with all of these things and coming before Him with them in humble submission, in trust. And so to use Him as an escape when He is calling me to dig and work my way through the muck, is not really breathing Him in at all. It's actually part of my rebellion against Him. 

I am so thankful that at points like this, with tears running down my face, that He shows me how He is even still at work in me, just in the fact that my eyes can see what I am doing, how I have coped all these unhealthy years. I know and can see that He is at work, even though I am struggling with Him and all of this, He is there. I am the one that's struggling, not Him, He remains steady and patient with me, as my momma reassures me. :)

I praise Him that He has brought me to this place, even though it seems the deepest of the valleys of the shadow of death, I pray that it won't last forever, and that on the other side of it, He will redeem and make me stronger and more in love with Him than I have ever been. Then hopefully I will be able to lean my head back and press my face above the smog and breathe in His grace that I will know and believe and trust with all my heart in total, complete abandon. 

But until then, day to day I take really deep stress relieving breaths and press on.