From Another World?

In the imaginary tale by C.S. Lewis, The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, three children discover a wardrobe which transports them to a magical land. Here they find a world very different than their own, and their role in securing Narnia’s future well-being unfolds in the pages of this allegory.
Sometimes I can relate to how Peter, Susan and Edward must have initially felt as they found themselves in a land in which they just didn’t fit.
I often feel discomfort with my seeming unfittedness for where I live.
I often look around in awkward awareness of my incompatibility with my surroundings.
Have I somehow landed in a world that really is not my own?
Before you commit me for psychological evaluation, let me explain what I mean.

With acknowledged hyperbole, I suppose…
I find myself in a context seemingly devoid of passion, nearly absent of emotion, and if feelings are acknowledged, it is typically in caution against them.
I, on the other hand, am nearly consumed with passion (good and bad), emotion (not all are evil) and feelings (not intrinsically wrong) so that as I interact in many of life’s contexts, I often feel like an overwrought PMS woman amid a convention of Spock-like Vulcans.
(I said FEEL LIKE, I didn’t say I AM one. The difference between analogy and reality is very significant here, take note.)

Let me extrapolate:

During Sunday morning worship, I many times am swept away in the magnitude of Christ’s gift to me, the forgiveness of my sin, the power of the Cross, the extent of His grace, and I feel like raising my hands…

During private worship, I often sing with tears running down my face, in broken, passionate gratitude, or repentance, or love because of God and his goodness to me.

During moments of God-awareness, I weep over words I’m reading which illustrate a truth of God that hits my heart. This week it was in the gospel of Luke; sometimes it is in a man-authored book about God, about ministry, about ??? But it strikes a chord in my heart and I feel it tangibly from within.

Sometimes, I dance. Not artistically, not beautifully, not even very actively (and not very often). But sometimes the joy of God moves me within and so I lift my eyes, my heart and my praise ever so privately to Him…because if I didn’t, my heart would burst.

And this passion, this emotion, this feeling….it’s not just for God.

I sometimes marvel at the love I feel for this very ordinary, yet extraordinarily-provided man God has given to me…and so I reach for his hand, his arm, at the most unlikely times as affection wells within me.

I invest in purposeful passion, believing that romance is not only for the new in love, the young in love, the naïve in love, or the (roll your eyes here) Hollywood in love. Tingles are present and welcomed…and continually sought as we enjoy each other.

I enjoy candles, love notes, get-a-ways, and still dream of my husband. I’m not saying it is all candy and roses, but you know that feeling (of love)? I’m determined it doesn’t have to go away, it only grows and matures into something better.

And this relationship thing with Jon? It makes me love God more. For as I appreciate and enjoy the gift, I can only appreciate and enjoy the Giver even more passionately.

Do you see my dilemma?The average person in my ‘world’ appears, shall we say, considerably less passionate.
At least as I observe, I see…
Rational, cerebral, calculated, dutiful, undaunted by feeling, absent of or uninfluenced by emotion, unimpressed by feeling, somberly convinced of their pitfall.
(What is it with you people? Don’t you feel anything? Are you all on emotion suppressants?!)
Seriously, I’m okay with how others are; I don’t mean to cast aspersions.
It’s just that it makes me question myself.
(Maybe all those artificial hormones in my beef really are affecting me, after all. Perhaps my Dad’s warning that they first used Cola as acid to clean off highways was a valid deterrent to my Diet Coke habit, and now it’s too late?!!!)

But I’ve come to realize that my measuring stick is not what others do.
Or feel. Or don’t feel.
My standard is God’s Word, His truth, what He thinks.
And this gives me great peace.

You see, He was the one that said I am to love him with all my heart, and soul, and mind and strength. (For Elaine, that definitely includes tears, passion, feelings, singing, dancing along with other more dignified behaviors.)

He was the one who told me to love my husband, be his helper, to allow him to enjoy the wife of his youth, to ever be ravished in (my) love. (For Elaine—and by extension, Jon—this means romance, passion, feelings, even some dreaming, along with the other more dutiful components of love.)

I need not concern myself with how others interpret in their lives what this is for them. They are free to live before God in their way.
But I, also, in mine. Even if this leaves me feeling a bit ‘different’.

But, as a word of invitation, if you, too, are raising-your-hands-in-your-heart on a Sunday morning during the worship songs, look over at me and smile.
It’ll make me feel like I’m maybe not an alien beamed down from who-knows-where after all.
I’ll consider it a ‘welcome to this strange land’ gesture.

Lord, may you ever keep me faithful in my feelings, passions and emotions to express them and rule them to your glory!