Waking Up From Numb

A lot of fundy religious survivors describe being numb. I liken it to PTSD a bit. Others say it’s emotional trauma, spiritual abuse, emotional manipulation, but I’m not here to argue semantics. I want to describe how me not reading for a week has helped me wake up from numb.

We all go numb whether we’ve been in a fundamentalist patriarchal cult or not. Life numbs us because, well, life is hard. I don’t care if you’re living in Africa or North America. Life is hard. Each of us has things we face that make it so. So we go numb. We don’t let things touch us. We dive deep into our denial by reading too much (me!), working too much, focusing on redecorating and redecorating our homes, entertaining, becoming the perfect hostess, becoming the perfect mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend. The list goes on and on and on. I’m not impugning anyone here. I’m stating facts. This is how we stay numb. We focus on something so hard that we forget about other things.

Religious fundy folk do this with perceived sin. Just as Michael Pearl laughs at his critics when one of his followers tortures and murders their seven-year-old daughter for mispronouncing a word during homeschooling (read here), fundy folks focus in on what other people do to such a degree that they can be numb. And not usually strangers, but usually ones they love. Their own daughters, their sons, their siblings, their parents, their neighbors, their churches. This disturbing trend only comes from life being hard and them not wanting to pay attention to some of that. It’s a human thing, too. Look at Rwanda, look at the Balkans. Look at history.

Well, I’m waking up this week just a little bit more from numb and I tell ya, I can picture myself burrowing back down into denial again really fast. Thank goodness God only allows me to wake up as much as I need to. If I woke up all the way in a day, I would harm myself. That’s the issue I have with the New Age movement. They don’t temper it. They throw their arms wide to whatever comes and people frequently exchange the old numb for a new numb.

I am not interested in exchanging anything for anything, except peace where there was unrest, truth where there were lies, and constant where there were hits and misses. I want to be awake with God. I want to listen to His voice and I want to follow Him. For those who are really not comfortable with my semantics, I’m talking about a force that LOVES us. I want to wake up to that force, I want to be with it, listen to its message, and do what it tells me. That force to me is God. I’m sorry to use such grating terms. I know even that hurts a lot of people. Exchange whatever words you need, but listen: God, the universe, LOVE, that force can contain your awakening so that you will survive it. I believe that.

I have walked a different way this week than usual because I didn’t read. Just think of what wonders we’ll see when there is no more death! Ponder that!

What are you awakening to? Does it hurt? Can you allow LOVE, the universe, God to contain that pain for you so that you are safe? Trust a bit, don’t just hide in a book.

Tagged as: briliant, overcoming resistance, real