Betrayal...

This is a new one for me, without going too far into it...I have recently faced up to the fact that people who I loved (and still do) have betrayed me in some way in my life. This has proved most devastating and has become a real area of shutdown in my communication with God.

Towards the end of last week I felt that I was really moving forward to the last stage of preparation in order to begin the first stage of healing (try to keep up if you can...) This week I am stuck and it is all because of the betrayal I feel. It has had a most immobilising effect on me...I am simply existing...which feels like a backward step. So all in all, I feel beleaguered.

Having just read this back, I sound like a woe-is-me sort of person today and I don't really like being that person but I think that I will have to face up to the fact that I am allowed to feel pain and not just brush it off with a 'I'm sure I'll get over it', which I have noticed I am apt to do more and more. I need to stop belittling my feelings because everytime I do, I put a stop on them.

Back to betrayal. Like I said this has had a strange glue effect on me this week. Like a rabbit in headlights I have not really known what to do with it, or where to turn...God would be the obvious answer but I have felt...anger (?)...towards Him for the lastest installment and so have unconciously closed myself off - although still communicated with Him for other people - it seems it is just me that I have the God issue with.

I decided today that as I have noticed that I am distancing myself from God, I need to do something proactive to stop it and to re-engage. So I started to think about betrayal in light of God and how people have betrayed Him, He who gives us grace by His love...

The biggest betrayal I have been reminded of is the betrayal that Jesus must have felt when Judas kissed Him in the Garden of Gethsemene, and more than that, when His disciples denied Him to save themselves.

Jesus, fully God and fully man, did not shy away from His feelings of worry and betrayal that He felt. In fact He spoke with God in the Garden of Gethsemene the night before Judas was to give Him over to the Romans and the Jews (Matt 26:36-44) asking God if He could take this cup (duty) away from Him. Jesus was scared of what He knew He must go through and yet He submitted to His Father. He knew the pain that He was to feel and yet He knew that He must push through it...and all for US - not for even for Himself!
This has had the effect of humbling me a little in my own pain...and at the same time giving me permission to own it...
1) Owning my pain - If Jesus was able to worry and ask God what He knew He could not have and talk with God to understand why He must go through it, then surely I can too. Surely God is big enough to hear my fears, worries and anger - even my accusations against Him. I know more and more in my head that God is not to blame for my pain but as I go into it I have to admit that I feel anger towards God and I can either ignore it and pretend, or be truthful and own it.
2) Humbling - my pain is just that MY pain. It is for actions of the past - Jesus' pain was not for His wrongdoing and it was for all actions -  past, present and future. It puts, what has been rather consuming, in a wider setting so that I can see how small my pain is in reality - that doesn't mean that it is insignificant - to God all pain matters. But it does mean that if Jesus can survive the pain of the cross for us, then with His help I can survive my pain.

Betrayal is a new feeling, a horrible feeling, and I don't know what to do with it...but God does because He felt it most keenly in Jesus, when His own people sent Him to death and denied Him...I suppose, therefore, I should turn to the expert.