So God got me to the place where I actually wanted to feel emotions again and be capable of interpersonal intimacy.  Once I was willing to go there, God still had to show me where to go.  He had obviously spent time in preparation for this moment, moving things around in the spiritual and natural to make sure I would have everything I needed to be able to hear Him loud and clear.

• First, He had to talk me into getting my Pastoral Counseling License because of the Good Shepherd Recovery House that God had laid in our lap to open.
• Then he had to help me decide which organization (National Christian Counselors Association) to get licensed through.
• Then I had to take a required personality profile (Arno Profiling System) that I would eventually be giving to my clients.
• In the meanwhile, God had been working on my marriage so I could ask my husband to go over the profile with him and get his feedback (he didn’t want to do it, because he figured it was a lose/lose situation for him, and I would get upset with whatever he would say).
• I was also taking a course to be a Certified Life Patterns coach, and the classes had revealed my tendency toward “excessive” restrictions on myself.
• Lastly,  I was in the beginning of my sixth Celebrate Recovery Step Study, and I had been discussing and thinking about God’s directive for me to restore my emotions.

While reviewing my spiritual temperament profile, I discovered things it stated about me that I didn’t agree with.  I asked God to show me if those things were true, especially about having a tendency to feel worthless and unlovable, and believing that no one would ever want me. I thought I had moved passed that, because honestly, I like me.  I may not be perfect, but I think I have some great characteristics which would make me at least intellectually, spiritually and emotionally attractive, even if not physically attractive to people (that is still an area I am not convinced of).  But here it was, in black and white.

I even had my husband go through the profile, line by line, and ask what he thought, because he is around me and knows me better than anyone else.  He pointed out certain things I had been unable to see before.  I started opening my mind to the possibility that those feelings of being unlovable were still there, beneath the surface.

Then God revealed a Word of Knowledge to me.  I thought I had cut off my emotions so that I would never again feel the soul crushing disappointment I experienced from the lack of fulfillment I had in my marriage.  Emotions and desires would lead me to want something I couldn’t have, such as a fulfilling intimate relationship, which might result in another affair on my husband.  But God showed me that I had substituted that reason for the real reason.

I wasn’t protecting myself, God and my husband from me having another affair.  I had cut off my my emotions to stop me from feeling or thinking about the fact that not even the man who had an affair with me wanted me – he still really wanted his wife’s affection and love, not mine.

Up to that point, my husband had acted like he didn’t want me, and the man I left him for didn’t really want me.  The inevitable conclusion I came to was that no one would ever want me (confirming what I had perceived my father had told me as a teenager).  It meant that I was unlovable, and that I would never have a fulfilling, intimate relationship – ever.

That “truth” was too painful for me to accept.  It was death to me.  It was my worst fear realized. There was no more fantasizing that someone out there could ever love me and meet my needs, because that door was eternally closed.

So I packed all of my emotions away so I would never have to feel those horrible, gut wrenching feelings. I denied every desire, because it would remain unfulfilled and would leave me miserable.  I learned how to be ok with only me and God, because that is how it would be from here on out.  I was preparing for emotional Armageddon, and I had lived that way ever since.

In my next post, I’ll share what happened once I decided to go there – to the place I had been avoiding all these years.

RESET ASSIGNMENT:

1. Can you think back to when you turned the faucet off on your emotions?  Was it one event that caused it, or did it happen over an extended period of time?
2. What specific emotions do you avoid at all costs? Some people run from fear, some from anger, some from sadness. What do you run from?