A Brain On Fire

Sometimes God miraculously heals. Sometimes God reaches out His hand and in His infinite wisdom decides to remove a burden from the mind. To heal the wounded, the sick, the destroyed. But sometimes God’s answer is much more complicated than that. Sometimes God leaves the burden, sometimes you remain in the fire. 

I was made and uniquely crafted to withstand torment that many would buckle beneath. The walls of my mind were built around trauma. From a young age I became a void for negative emotion. I learned to see the microscopic emotions that flit across a person's face, to read bodies, tones, and inflections. I learned to sense the emotions of others long before they were uttered, and I learned how to put the cork back in the bottle before it exploded. I learned how to replace anger with laughter, how to ask questions and use comforting words to ease others' pain. 

The void did not come equipped with a way to empty itself, and eventually it filled up. Whether it was the sad story I absorbed from a friend or loved one, or the names I was called when I comforted those in my life who were hurting, hurt people hurt people, they lingered. Events that only I remember, or experienced the way I did, began to haunt my mind and shape its delicate form. My brain was formed from scars. Every event that I had witnessed, regardless of any attempt to shield me, left a lasting impression on my psyche. How I learned to cope, to love, to react. 

God made me soft, malleable, fragile. God made me a well within myself in which to feel emotions much more deeply than those around me. God gave me the gift of understanding. The ability to dig through what was said by others and find the heart of it. Whether it was said out loud or with their face and stance. He gave me the ability to see people as they are. But with all of this my fragile nature remains. The void within me, filled with darkness and pain, metastasized. It began to consume parts of me, to change the way I lived, loved, and thought. It began to ooze, dark viscous tar. It coated the inside of me, it welled up and up until it spewed out of my mouth. The darkness within me spraying out, without care nor concern, on whoever was unlucky enough to be around me. 

My purpose grew clouded, the life of it choked out by the black tar that invaded everything it touched. It became painful to love me, to get close, because I had no control over the eruptions. The void within me took control, it made me mean, angry, and inflicted pain. With words I have spewed I have hurt nearly everyone who got close enough. But this tar was hot, and as it welled up within me and spewed out on those I loved, it burned. It scorched my insides, its dark vines creeping up and infecting my brain. A parasite that lit my mind on fire. Pain, hurt, and an endless vicious cycle was all I knew. The darkness within me clung to me tightly.

Over the past few years, God has evicted this darkness of my mind, and ended its permanent residence in my brain. God has taught me to forgive, to let things go, to not dwell on things that used to torment my mind. God has taught me how to resist the pull of this darkness, and to see the lies for what they are. But God has not elected to remove me entirely from this fire. My God, glory to His name, is capable of removing every speck of this darkness from within me, and in His infinite wisdom He has elected to let me remain here, engaged in this battle. God has a purpose for all of this pain. Nothing is done without purpose, and I know that I am left with this battle for a reason. This knowledge however does not remove the pain, or the turmoil of living through its destruction. 

So, when I open my eyes to the sound of my alarm, some days I find the darkness has already clung onto me, other days I wake up and the burden is gone. Then there are days like today. When I wake, not consumed, and move forward with my day. But as I sit here in my chair at my desk, I feel a weariness come upon my mind. A numbness passes over me as the darkness crawls toward me, its limbs sticky with tar slowly climb up the back of my chair and it wraps itself around my shoulders. The weight of the burden causes me to slouch, and the coldness of the darkness clouds my vision, my mind lights ablaze with fire as it settles in. Right back where it thinks it belongs. My thoughts are stained an inky black by its presence, and my movements slowed by the lethargy brought on by its weight. This is the burden I must bear, this is the fire in which God has elected that I continue to walk. Darkness has once again burdened my mind. 

But God. The key difference between the old battle and the new.  Comfort comes when I open His word, when I find the strength to utter His name. But God. I am not alone. Joy is not dependent on circumstances. God has elected not to fully heal me from this burden, but He has not left me alone. He sees every tear, He knows every cry, even the ones I cannot muster. If you are engaged in a battle today, spiritual, mental, physical, I encourage you to cry out to your heavenly father. God is not some far off deity that pays us no mind. Our God is relational. He loved us so much that He sent His only son to save you, so that you could be His. God loves you so much more than your pain hurts you. Remember this, in the face of all the world's lies. 

“15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” Romans 8:15-16 ESV

Light casts out darkness. Darkness cannot consume you.