I’ve been doing a lot of heart digging lately, soul searching and HEART checking (for CR peeps.) I have seen other areas in my life that I struggle in in a whole different light. A good, beautiful and liberating light. A brother once told me, “All truth is parallel.” Another one said, “Truth stands alone.” I see that Truth does not have to prove itself either. I guess perhaps because of its undeniable reality. So it seems, that truth sets me free into reality once I have received it into my heart and being. The word says the things that are not seen are the things that are eternal. To me, that seems like reality. It doesn’t go away.
Back to my struggles. The can of worms I have opened are emotional dependency and enmeshment. Enmeshment is a doozy. I see as a boy I enmeshed with my handicap mother and was totally disconnected from my emotionally distant father. My mother had a number of ailments. As her son, I empathized with her (I think now) with unhealthy boundaries. If she felt good then I felt good. If she hurt then I hurt. I worried about her. In the back of my mind towards the end I knew she was on borrowed time. Something an elementary child does not have the capacity for. My family like so many others was a prime example of dysfunction.
I have discovered through various avenues and sources patterns of enmeshment and emotional dependency throughout all of my life. An example would be if I feel sad then someone I am close to must feel sad. That right there is a red flag. Why should someone else have to feel what I feel? So, I can feel better? If they are sad I must feel sad. I saw this emotion tonight. I saw that I was wanting someone else to feel and understand my sadness. Then I asked myself, “Why?” It is as if the other person has to feel what I feel for me to somehow discern or validate what I am feeling. If that is the case, then am I truly feeling what I am feeling? That is enmeshment. Also, co-dependency like a mug. When I saw this, I said aloud, “That is truly sick.” The emotions of two or multiple individuals are so intertwined or rather tangled that personal, independent, unique emotion is distorted and not released. It has no real basis because it does not emote from the individual. Instead, it is birthed or really an aborted emotion of two or more enmeshed individuals. I say aborted because the outcome is not healthy or godly. It is unhealthy, twisted and rooted in self and fear.
So, I asked the Lord, “If enmeshment is this….then what is it called with Your Son Christ?” I heard, “In Him.” Then I asked what does that look like, “A new creation in Christ.” So, my conclusion was enmeshment is man’s emulation of self-redemption through self-will. The prophet Samuel said, “Stubbornness is as idolatry.” If I am basing my emotional reaction (not response) on someone else then that is an ungodly motive. HE sets me free from me, Romans 7:24.
Romans 8:2-6 declares, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God [did] by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those [who live] according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded [is] death, but to be spiritually minded [is] life and peace.”
It seems that Jesus has taken this to the cross also. Praise God. And now, I can receive it from the Holy Spirit through the throne of grace. Glory. I recall when He said, “Father, Father, why have You forsaken me?” His disciples betrayed Him. His own people crucified Him. His thoughts and ways are truly not mine. And He doesn’t change. In Him, there is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. There is no lack. And He is the Last Adam, a quickening spirit. Life-giving spirit. Eternal life-giving spirit. He is also my High Priest and is able to empathize with me because He was a man just as much as I am, but without sin! Who is this Jesus? He is man and God.
So now, when triggers occur or whatever situation I am being mindful, “preparing my mind for action”, as Peter says, and identifying the emotion, the thought and the motive. If I don’t then no light is being shed. Once I have recognition of its identity then I can know the truth about it. And the truth will always push me into the eternal pool of liberty.
Quote from Darkness cannot comprehend Light and Truth,
Darkness cannot take hold of Light because of its inherent nature.
Quote from PreceptAustin.org,
1For a little while longer the light (He is alluding to Himself, Jn 1:9, 8:12) is among you. Walk (present imperative – as your lifestyle, your habitual practice) while you have the light, that darkness (skotia – absence of light, personified by John of the forces hostile to God) may not overtake (katalambano – grasp or seize) you; he who walks (present tense = as the habit of their life, as manifest by their lifestyle) in the darkness (skotia) does not know where he goes. (John 12:35)
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