What a day...

The title of this post says it all really...it must rate as one of the most emotionally tiring days of my life...

Last night I recieved an email regarding something to do with Church. The content of the email was not the issue, it was the tone of it. It wasn't addressed to me per se, I was cc'd. When I recieved the email (straight to my phone) I began reading it without a seond thought to what it might be about. What followed was a feeling I have never had before...the attitude that the email had been written in was very familiar...I could not put my finger on it but I felt something of upset, dread and a full on knee-quaking fear all rolled into one. (Even now I am struggling to convey the feeling....suffice to say that all I wanted to do was run - away from my life, from my past, from me.)

So when I got up this morning and went to Church, it was not without some trepidation...Church has a very disarming quality - the presence of God and the worship has me almost crumbling most weeks - I was not looking forward to going to Church, already as disarmed as I can ever remember being.

But I did.

Now what I haven't said thus far is that with the feeling of dread came the knowledge that there was something that I knew but was just out of my reach - a truth that I would rather forget...when the speaker in church encouraged us to open up to God and accept His invitation to minister to the weary, I had no more energy to fight. It was not a conscious decision, I had no more reserves. I let God in. I remembered.

This had the effect of winding me twice as much as the email had.

At the end of the service there was an invitation to prayer...I wasn't going to go until my friend, who is having struggles of her own, came past me and said 'Are you going up?' took one look at me and answered it herself with a 'yes'. So up I went.

I recieved prayer from a variety of people and words regarding God's strength and love for me, and encouragement that God wants me to hand it all over to Him. I heard them all...yet still fought to regain control over the silent tears that continued to fall. One friend then said that she had a picture of me as a pipe that was twisted and full of kinks. She said that God would undo those kinks one by one and allow the flow to be resumed and that He would do it slowly and allow me to continue, it would not be an all or nothing sort of thing. I have long considered myself to be a mess of twisted knots so this made complete sense.I will have to trust God to untie them at the right pace I suppose...although this is a downright scary thought.

After gaining a little normality in conversations I left church and spent the day helping a friend to gain some order in her house. I often find service is a great medicine to emotional upset - at least it is for me.

So I am now left reeling. I believe that I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit today (for more than a fleeting glance), that in itself has to be worth a couple of posts (!!) but more so, I am left with the new knowledge and not sure what to do with it. I believe that this is what it is to feel truely heartbroken.