do I want to feel?

I've been thinking a lot about feeling.

Feeling hurts. It digs at our souls and pulls from the depths of our hearts. It leaves us raw, exposed. It causes us to reflect on the nastier moments in our lives, the times we'd rather forget. It can open old wounds. Even feeling deeply happy things can hurt.

So we try not to feel. We pile on distractions and comforts. We plug in to our computers, our TV shows, our movies, our ipods. We hide under books and under covers. We eat through cartons of ice cream and bars of chocolate. We sit in rooms full of people and talk about nothing. We do everything but feel.

And for awhile that feels like the answer. But if we never advance past that stage,  it just leaves us hollow. We become a version of the Grinch, with a heart two sizes too small and eyes that can only see ourselves.

I know that I've posted this quote before, but it's developed a new meaning for me. I feel that Mr. Lewis's words not only apply to love, but to feeling in general. We're human. We were equipped with a whole range of feelings that we were meant to feel. When we don't, those emotions don't go away, they harden us.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

These past few months as I've tried to cope with the ups and downs of The Big Move, I've begun to relearn how important feeling is.  If I don't feel, I am not really living, but simply passing time. If I don't feel, I can't give and love and grow. Sometimes I'm scared or ashamed of how I feel so I choose to ignore it. But that never solves the problem. It only hardens me.

But I want to testify that there is always a way out of the dark and twisty webs of being past feeling. It is called the Atonement. The Atonement can take our broken, small selves and help us experience what it is to feel again. Sometimes that requires that we feel pain in deeper ways than we thought possible, but I also testify that it allows us to feel joys that are beyond comprehension. The Atonement allows us to become people of feeling. People who are brave enough to face fears and have faith and be strong. People who are capable of looking beyond themselves to see and experience how others feel. In fact, it allows us to get rid of the self altogether. We become new creatures through Christ.

And that knowledge makes me feel light and happy and beautiful.

That's all for now.

love,
M