Say Cheese!

It's never comfortable to feel like you need to be more excited than you are; like when you've held a pose for a picture longer than you expected and you're being instructed to smile and keep smiling for the picture. Looking around the room, everyone is enthusiastically greeting one another and I can't help but feel like a stranger in a familiar place. The thing is, it's not even like I'm unhappy or upset. It's just, for whatever reason, I don't share in their outpouring of joy. This weekend has been filled with cause for celebration: time spent catching up with family, various Easter celebrations at church, my brother's baptism and the sunrise service. Yet throughout, I feel like there's something everyone else is able to tap into that is just missing for me. He is risen, indeed, but the words feel heavy and unnatural on my tongue as if the expectation of their arrival is responsible for their extraction alone. Expectation can be a heavy burden, even if it's only manifesting in an imagined sense.

The thing is, even from this position of discomfort there are conflicting emotions within me. I do feel a deep sense of joy for my brother, I do feel redeemed and alive in the work of Christ, and I feel at home when surrounded by loved ones. There is just some weight of unrest that looms over me when the projections others cast precedes me. I don't know if I'll ever understand why I can simultaneously feel loved and accepted while feeling uncomfortable. If you have any insight, I'm all ears.

This aside, I feel like there's a tension that exists within me between the person I am and the person I know I should be. Maybe this is the best testimony I can provide to the work of the Spirit of God inside me, but I don't know why it all feels so uncomfortable. I've been thinking a lot about sanctification and complacency and reflecting on how I'm caught in this tension, providing all sorts of excuses for why I'm stuck on the complacent side of the equation. Maybe the best thing to do is to get these feelings out so that I'm accountable to more than the thoughts inside my head, but I think perhaps the enemy's foothold is always something I've underestimated. Why is it that it always feels that the enemy's pursuit is stronger and more tangible than that of Christ? Is it because I dwell more on impacts of brokenness than love? Is there something greater going on here, or am I just caught up in deception? I definitely feel sick of making excuses and complaints, paralyzing myself from acting boldly.