Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked,“Who touched my robe?”
His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept on looking around to see who had done it.
Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had
happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told
him what she had done.
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.” — vs 25 – 34
There’s a saying: “act your way into feeling.” For the longest time I didn’t understand that phrase. I thought it encouraged deceit. Over the last year I’ve begun to truly apprehend what it means; I think I get it now.
I may not always feel forgiven; I may not always feel free from shame. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am. I touched the hem of His garment and I have been made whole. That is the Truth that God speaks. I am free. So in those times that the feeling isn’t there, when my emotions belie the Truth of who God says I am, I still need to act “as if” — as if I felt it, as if I am convinced in the depths of my soul it is True. Because the fact is, it is.
I can choose whose voice I listen to; I can choose what I will believe. I never knew that before this year. I don’t have to remain covered, buried, in the shame that has so enveloped me all my life just because I feel shame at this moment. I can choose to believe something different; choose to do something different.
So today I am. Right now I will. I will believe the Truth even though I don’t feel it. I will act my way into feeling.
These Nicole C. Mullins songs have been on my iPod since I got back
from Women of Faith last month. God used them to speak His love and infinite grace to me. They truly tell the story of my life; my shame-filled yet blessed-beyond-measure Life. And God continues to use them as reminders of the Truth of who I am in His eyes; and encourage me to keep acting my way into feeling. I thought I’d pass them along to you today, in case you need encouragement too.
One Touch
Nicole C. Mullen – One Touch from 2nafish on GodTube.
I Know My Redeemer Lives
Call On Jesus
This brings up many thoughts which are hard to put into the limited resolution of words. One of them is something I’m very familiar with: using intellect to overpower emotion, as you suggest in “I will believe the Truth even though I don’t feel it. I will act my way into feeling.” is, in my experience, fraught with danger to the soul.
Looked at from another aspect, that of needing truth to anchor the soul to God’s way of doing things, you’re right on the money. Feelings can run away with us.
How do you balance between falling into the emotional abyss or the intellectual quagmire? This is where the words are really hard to use. It’s something I’ve been learning recently. God would do, and has done, anything to save us, and His purpose isn’t to trim off parts until we fit some idea. I think he wants us to grow. As Lois Bujold describes in “Paladin of Souls,” it’s not an improvement of a falcon’s life to force it to learn to hunt birds by walking. You just end up with a very cranky, footsore bird.
But who knows what the soul is intended to be? Amid the noise of our own making there’s God’s voice calling us, a sweet fragrance wafting. Once recognized it’s forever attractive. This can’t be forced, can’t be legislated, can’t even really be taught. It has to be lived.
So, yes, it’s a very good thing to *know* that you are forgiven. It’s also a good thing to be so closely tuned to God’s song that you hear it and feel the resonance all the time. All these things grow together, I think, with our awareness of God’s presence.
Keep in mind that what I’ve written here is an approximation and needs to be discussed and thought about more.