I’m Fine
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Psalm 25:16 NASB
Afflicted – Context, context, context. That’s the way you would determine the meaning of this Hebrew term, ʿānâ. It’s important because the consonants of this word are the same for two other meanings. These are designated ʿānâ I, II and III, and they mean, respectively, I) answer, respond, testify, II) be occupied, III) afflict, oppress, humble. Hebrew’s sparse character could not be more evident.
Once we determine that this occurrence of ʿānâ is about affliction, we must notice something else. In David’s thinking, loneliness is a form of affliction. TWOT notes that ʿānâ III is primarily about being forced into submission, being punished or humiliated. Perhaps our Western preoccupation with the individual sense of autonomy overlooks the real psychological pain of loneliness. Western thought emphasizes the independence of Man, considering the individual as whole without the necessity of connection. In the West, Robinson Crusoe is possible. But not in Hebrew thinking. To be cut off from dependent connection is not freedom. It is death. It is the reason God declared the good creation “not good.” Man is not man without relationships with others. Therefore, the experience of loneliness, that absence of identity in community, is not only a disease, it is a fatal illness.
David’s correlation of loneliness and affliction affords us an insight into growth. We grow only when we embrace our pain and that pain is the reality of disconnection. “Modern man’s greatest fault, Kierkegaard maintains, is his total self-reliance. It is his nineteenth-century delusion that he has progressed beyond his ancestors. This conceit derives from egotism. There is but one remedy for him: despair. It is only when he finds himself in the deepest extremity that he understands his true condition; then, and only then, does he realize that his self-reliance is a delusion.”[1]
God enters the equation when we welcome our despair over disconnection. As long as we pretend, distract or attempt to ignore the separation that infects our lives, we will be content with religion. But relationship requires more. It requires that I first come before the Father of all and ask Him to lift me from the darkness of my solitary existence. Then He pushes me toward vulnerability, the ability to choose risk as a means of human connection. As Steenkamp notes, “Life equals connectedness and meaning.”[2]
I’m not fine. I’m hurting—inside and out. And I know I cannot distract myself forever. I need a gracious God and the acknowledgement of broken people just like me.
Topical Index: affliction, ʿānâ, loneliness, Psalm 25:16
[1] Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 90.
[2] J. Steenkamp, SHIP: Spontaneous Healing Intrasystemic Process: The Age-Old Art of Facilitating Healing, (Pretoria, South Africa) 2002, p. 267.
Yep, this brings me back to my moment of emotional tumult over a damaged relationship with a young man I was mentoring. I mentioned recently the following “word from the Lord” and share agin for deeper understanding of the nature of the heart of man, our disconnect from that reality our emotional condition. I shows me Yah’s understanding and compassion for that condition and his desire that we become ok with the nature of our emotional being.
After a night of prayer about a relational dynamic I was in he called me to look into the tumult of the ocean waves. As I now interpret it he was suggesting my emotions are like the ocean waves and he is the rock.
He said to my heart as I looked into the churning seas of the coast of Sonoma County
” Rest in me the way the waves rest upon the rocks. They become what they are by forces beyond themselves, they are no less part of the sea. It is enough that they do their part.”
I have spent years since meditating on this and am still growing in understanding because of the revelation of it….
Anyone get this. There where no previous comments when last shared any
” acknowledgement of broken people just like me”?
I have a question for you, Mark. Have you been able to learn what your “part” as a wave is; which is to say have you figured out how to keep your footing and focus and function while life is throwing you all around? Rest, (shalom) is about staying in relationship even while everything (including yourself) is churning and burning. Where are you now with that? I’m still working on it!
Thanks Laurita for asking. For me now it’s about being present, just going with the flow of life and emotions without over reacting, defending or asserting. I suppose simply recognizing the movements of my heart and emotions within the moment without over processing it our intellectualizing it part as well. There is a point of discernment necessary regarding the difference between feelings and emotions. Feelings being my sensors and emotions being my reactors. I have been recognizing for a while I am no longer struggling with what, how or when I am believing, or being “in the faith” but rather simply “trusting” in YHVH to keep me. It’s really less and less about my awareness of me rather just being me. Tough to put into words the mysteries of life in space, time and Jah…The points of required discernment or understanding really now regard motivations for my behaviors in reactions or responses to the behaviors of others. My emotional tumult has come more often from the challenge to accept the un-comfortable or unpleasant actions of others or their challenging or un beneficial behaviors and not to react to them inappropriately . When I act out my inappropriate reactions then that churns up the situation rather than letting it spin down into shalom. The call to immediate forgiveness and returning to joy or peace letting the emotional reactions run their course quickly, crash and subside without acting, judging or asserting myself tends to be the call for me these days. It was rather convicting and humbling to recognize (I paraphrase from memory) in the Hebrew the sense of the word for wicked related to being disruptive of the peace. When I began to accept that I was called to make peace not disrupt it I had to take most of my actions and understandings of right, truth and religions behaviors to task. Participating in relational interactions requires more of the cross- simply nailing my old reactions to it and being still knowing that YHVH is God. We disconnect from being when we start judging ourselves about how we are rather than being who we are in Messiah. Falling out of him is falling off his cross for me now. He is the rock when my emotions run and return to the sea naturally quickly and without incident.
I get the damaged relationship part. I get the emotional tumult part where my emotions, like waves of the sea have became what they were by forces beyond themselves. I get the disconnect part. I get the “rest in me the way the waves rest upon the rocks” part. And I have had moments of revelation, a “word of the Lord”, that caused me to find my rest in Him.
I’ve sensed His very presence while crying out for His help in my sense of emptiness and aloneness and heard Him say, “I love you. I will never leave you nor forsake you”‘ My emotional tumult lifted and I experienced peace and rest.
I’ve felt desperately and painfully alone at another time. I prayed until I cried and fell asleep, and then awakened in the morning, feeling at peace and rest, and heard Him say, “I am your All in all.”
I think I get it, Mark, but no doubt, not as much as He gets it. I wish I could, but I don’t think I quite can. I could get it better if I knew more, but I still don’t think I would get it completely. He does, though, I know.
Thanks for sharing.
Shalom
“As long as we pretend, distract or attempt to ignore the separation that infects our lives, we will be content with religion.”
Thank you, Skip. As usual. I am dealing with a precious person who has learned to use religion as a drug to do the above, instead of a tool to teach them HOW to connect. We can use anything to avoid our pain!
I am going through my mama’s extensive writings and letters, which she copied and kept, and thinking about her evolution from a naive, earnest, but frustrated person who tried and tried to figure out what relationship was. She was unmet, essentially, in her marriage as well as by her community of faith, and was, I consider, “driven into the wilderness” in that search. She subsequently experienced a SEVERE learning curve out in that cynical, ruthless world! Religion can be used as an escape from the world, but it can also be used by abusers and takers to keep others in isolated bondage and ignorance and also teach them to perform for love, too. All these things can keep people from relationship as surely as the irreligious practices of that world, but I think religion gone bad, like a Jew or manna gone bad, can do the world one better in this regard. My mama was taught a version of love by those around her that set her up in a very naive way to be used by others, and taught that it was love. Well, the world was a whole lot more honest about it, and so therefore, for the first time in her life, she got some actual feedback and mirroring that not only revealed to her the fact that she was actually valuable and lovely, but also that she was naive and not good at recognizing or standing up for her own interests. Without this essential knowledge and self value, relationship is not possible. What a learning curve!
Trauma, I think, has a real seduction of its own to cause us to want to seek altered states of reality as a way to cope. Coping is a way for the flesh to stay alive, but it is not living (connecting). But I think trauma has another aspect, too, and that is to derail our train off the tracks that are merely maintaining and medicating fracture, and cause us to actually have to examine that fracture. My mama was disillusioned by religion in her search for love, but, in the end, she had learned what it took to make the choices of self sacrifice.
A true sacrifice can only use a perfect (functional) victim. We also only have something to offer others when we have the self worth necessary for that offering to be worth anything. Religion can be used to produce eunuchs and naive doormats. This is religion that has not been sanctified; religion that is of the flesh, by the flesh and for the flesh. Rare is the religion that teaches freedom, the power of self worth that can only be found in true community, as well as HOW to connect correctly with all around us in this flawed world.
Often we have to actually be fractured, like a crooked bone, before we can be “set straight” like my grandmama used to say. That fracture can be from our families and communities of origin; from our flawed concepts of Who God might be, as well as from ourselves. These are the fires of testing, but they are also the fires of cleansing, too. Erasing the fracture does mean that we can then color in a new and better bone. Perhaps this time around, a bone of connection instead of contention; a house built upon a rock instead of on the sand.
I’m not fine either Skip. But this post confirms my belief that it’s OK to not be OK. Gotta keep looking for the gladness!
Maybe you and I should investigate the biblical idea of joy which, I’m pretty sure, is quite a bit different than our cultural concept.
Joy would be a good topic. The profoundly helpfull book “Living out of the heart Jesus gave you” suggests “returning to joy” quickly is the critical key to mature relationships. For my discussion above Joy is the ocean and emotions the waves that hit the rocks. Joy is to be our default mode of being. Trama causes us to default to other places than to joy, our creator’s state of being
Excellent idea! Have never studied that out but know the misconceptions are likely to be significant for most of us.
The Hebrew words Amar and devar come to mind when speaking of joy. Best way the Ruach has helped me understand is this. When I became a new believer I was a diamond in the rough he was much more permissive and gentle when he started making the cuts .As the journey progressed the cuts became deeper and painful and the polishing part became suffering and affliction too my flesh.I was sensing more grief than joy. God reminded me at this time he loved me more than ever and I was coming ever more near to his heart. Than I realized through all this I was bringing joy to his heart and having the Amar in my life I experienced the devar. You can have joy as he makes you a beautiful diamond but the cuts and polishing is needed throughout your life.Thats what makes a diamond valuable and lovely and breaks light perfectly and who could resist being in the hands of the master cutter God through his glorious son and our messiah Yahushua. I think at this time believers are feeling very deep cuts trust him it will be worth it we will know that unspeakable joy.
If we truly are following in the footsteps of our Messiah, then we realize that our solitary commitment is vital. Yahweh found compassion for his people when they were in despair or distress, what is True Religion?
James answers this for us true religion is reaching out to the widows the orphans and those who are in distress. God gives Comfort to those who Comfort others Kama…. Those who have been comforted by the Lord have an obligation to show that comfort to those around them.
So beautifully written and so true