I’m thinking about how we use busyness to avoid actually living. You know—staying so occupied with church stuff and family stuff and work stuff that we never actually have to look at anything hard inside ourselves.
One of the things that’s becoming clearer to me is how many of us learned, way back in childhood, to deal with pain by just… not dealing with it. By moving on. By finding something else to do. And we spiritualize it. “God wants us to be joyful.” “Don’t let sadness control you.” And before you know it, you’re sixty years old and you’ve never actually grieved anything.
The spiritual work—the real work—is going the other direction. Letting yourself feel what you actually feel. Sitting with anger. Sitting with grief. Sitting with confusion about God. Not because that’s the goal. But because you have to know what’s in there before you can let God heal it.
I see people do this in churches sometimes, and the reaction is immediate: “Well, that’s worldly psychology.” No. That’s Jesus. Jesus sat with his grief. Jesus felt his anger. Jesus didn’t skip over the hard feelings to get to the resurrection message.
If you’ve been taught your whole life that emotions are dangerous, that feelings mean you don’t trust God, that a good Christian is a happy one—that’s a lie worth examining. That’s a script worth questioning. Because wholeness isn’t about feeling better. It’s about being honest. It’s about bringing your whole self to God instead of just the acceptable parts.
A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope