From the last 3 months of 2020 thru the first 8 months of 2021, I lived through excruciating emotional healing. I experienced a two-part healing: Breaking My Strange Addiction to Sadness, and Surviving the Insanity of Change. In this post, I’m talking about what it was like when I found myself just on the other side of change, no longer where I was, but still not where I am headed.
After 11 months of a gut-wrenching healing process and feeling as if I was fighting for my sanity as I squeezed through the portal from who I’ve always been into who I really am, I found myself waking up in the mornings and feeling nothing, and as if I was nowhere. I was feeling completely unattached and more disconnected than I’d ever felt before. Now, not only was I feeling a disconnect between myself and others, but between myself and the Lord. This was very odd because, for all of those months, the Lord had been so close, so ready to help me and explain things to me. Yes, I had wept to the point that my right eye, due to the stress and crying daily, had closed halfway. It shows in all of the pictures I took during that time and even in the videos I recorded. Still, in the midst of it all, I received so much clarity from Him every step of the way. I was able to put into practice what I had learned about how to handle my dreams and how to document them and to pray over them, and speak them out of my mouth back to God. I received so much revelation from practicing what I had learned. I was in more pain than I can describe but the Lord was right there with me every step of the way, giving me everything I needed, right at the moment I needed it. I was able to talk and pray my way out of sadness and even anxiety attacks. After all that God had done for me, here I was feeling as if I’d still done something wrong, for if I hadn’t, why was I feeling as if He wasn’t as present with me as He had been for so many months? I felt like, now what? What do I do? What do I say? How do I pray? During this time, I learned how accustomed I had become to my prayer life being fueled and driven by pain.
Happiness never lasted for very long, but pain was the dominant force in my emotions. Disappointment, rejection, mostly of myself, heartache, bouts of depression, and just general sadness were my constant companions for pretty much all of my life. For the past 11 months, however, I had cried out to God with everything within me for Him to heal me in every way. Heal my heart, my soul, my body, my brain, every place that I had been holding hurt. Every place that pain was hiding and peeking its ugly head up just in time to trigger me because of some unresolved issue. I asked for Him to dig it up, expose it, pluck up the roots and burn the hole it was buried in so that no new roots could sprout up. He did what I asked and then I was left with seeing how much space it took up. Quite a bit.
For a few weeks, I was concerned about what I was feeling…or not feeling. I grew silent. I wasn’t pressing my way in prayer. I was speechless. The pain was healed and no longer the fuel to my prayers and I didn’t know how to pray without it. How do I pray when I’m not hurting? How do I apply faith and pray with fervency when I’m not being motivated by heartache or disappointment? I needed to learn how. When the Lord sent my answer, I first learned that I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t lost. I didn’t miss anything. I was just in a new place called The In-Between. This is the place where I’m no longer where I was but not yet where I’m headed.
It is the place where what feels at first like all I had gone through was for nothing, turns out to just be the residue of what was, still being washed away. It's the last phase of recovery of my addiction to sadness. The in-between is also the place where I learned that it was normal for me to long for something that I had released in my place of pain as part of my healing and deliverance. Suddenly in the in-between, I missed it, was lonely for it, and found myself longing and reaching for it again. I learned that this longing for the thing that I had already let go of, was more of the residue, the remaining toxicity leaving my body and soul. I was basically having withdrawals. Oh my goodness! Even missing what hurt me was normal, because even though it did hurt me in the end, it started out feeling mighty fine. Understanding that this was also a part of my healing and recovery helped me not to fear it or doubt what God had already completed in me. Understanding it removed its power to pull me backward. I was able now to resist urges to repeat behaviors that always lured me back into a painful place of regret and tears for actions I should not have followed through on.
When we first find ourselves in the in-between, it can feel like the hardest part of our journey simply because it’s the place of no longer feeling those strong negative emotions that we had grown so accustomed to. It’s interesting how strange peace can feel after spending so much of your life in emotional chaos! When I found myself trying to figure out how to pray without hurting, how to press into God’s presence while not feeling like anything was pressing into me, it was strange, and a little scary. When I think about it now, that’s really sad. To be so used to sadness that peace feels like something is wrong.
In this place of feeling nothing and not being sure suddenly of everything that I was so sure of just a few months ago, I learned that I’m free now. I’m free to decide what life will be moving forward. My slate is clean, my heart and soul are healed, and my mind has been stretched to a new dimension. So, what can I do? I can do whatever I decide! How will life be for me? What exactly is this in-between place? It’s what I say it is and what I decide that it is! Is it challenging? Yes! Because it’s new and unfamiliar. However, when I decide what it will be and move in that direction with each choice that I make, it allows the Lord to light my way as I take each step.
The in-between is where the things that God has done for me are solidified. It’s where I fully accept that the past is the past and that not only do I not want to return to it, but I would have to fight really hard to try to go back there. It is the place where I allow the residue to be blown away and the remaining toxicity to leave my system. Where I allow my mind to heal of all the thoughts I used to think and allow the Holy Spirit to continue to walk me through learning how to think and speak and how to do so without needing pain to be the fuel for it!
Now, without the old companion of pain, I have learned that it is up to me to be more intentional, in prayer and in the decisions that I make. Now, without that old relationship or whatever it was that had my attention, I have to learn to walk in faith in a new kind of darkness. Believing God even though I see nothing to support my belief when at least before there was the possibility of a relationship…maybe…hopefully. Now my faith is to be fully activated for that’s where faith activation happens, in the dark. Where you learn that all you see is what you have been speaking and you are face to face with just how much you believe…or not.
The in-between can be a very tricky and dangerous place for you, because if you don't understand where you are you may give up, not understanding the progress you've made. One of the worst things that being in this place can do is to deceive you and blind you to the fact that you are no longer where you were! Remember: you are not yet in the promised land, but you ARE NO LONGER in Egypt! That place with all of its bondage and trauma is BEHIND you! The in-between can make you forget that you are still on your way to your promised land and that you are right on schedule. Think of it as a layover for connecting flights. Not having the enemy hot on your tail can trick the mind that’s been conditioned for emotional drama into thinking that you’ve gotten off track. No. You have simply grown from where you have always been and into a new normal.
I felt myself battling, as I was being squeezed through that portal of mental breaking points that felt like bouts with insanity, using every ounce of faith and knowledge of God that I had to survive it, only to come out on the other side and not have a clue where I was. Where I was…where I am is the place where finishing touches are being made on my preparation for the promise. It’s also my place of protection. It’s still building me and keeping me still so that I won’t enter the promise prematurely without being strong enough to manage or handle what’s over there. My romantic heart only dreams of certain things, but just like in the bible, there are also giants over there. It’s important to God that I don’t come face to face, hand in hand with my promise, and still, only see myself as nothing more than a grasshopper. In the in-between, I’m still being matured, trained, disciplined. New roots are growing where those old roots of bitterness have been plucked up and I’m still growing and learning. I’m not lost. I’m right where I need to be and more importantly, I’m right where God wants me.
Yes, this feels like a strange place and things are so new that it’s even feeling a little scary but it’s only scary to the part of me that loves trying to control everything while messing it up at the same time. It’s scary to the part of me that’s used to the familiarity of sadness. It’s scary to the part of me that is suspicious of peace. Just as God was with me in my place of pain, I have learned that it’s time to trust that He is just as with me in the place where pain is not the dominant emotion. He is just as present, just as available now as He was when I was drowning in heartache and in my own tears. I can pray as fervently now as I did then because His presence and power are always the same. The promise that He made me when I was bleeding is still waiting, just on the other side of this in-between. This is not the place to allow another form of anxiety to come and stifle me. This is not the place to allow doubt and second-guessing to come along and rob me of all that is just around the bend. I can still press! Still believe! Still confess and decree, and yes, even still prophesy over myself! This is not where I set up camp and sit and worry about things I still don’t see with my natural eyes. I have reassurance that whether I feel pain or not, even if I feel God or not, He is so with me, so close to me, forever present with me. The in-between is not so bad. This is a good place!
Copyright © 2021 Albertine Williams
