Seperation Anxiety
When I was twelve, my family had a very anxious dog. The first time we left her alone in the house, she destroyed my favorite pair of flip-flops. We ended up having to chain her outside when we went out to keep her out of trouble, but the dog was so afraid of being alone that she would often pull her chain out of its place or escape her kennel to find us. This dog had major separation anxiety: it felt our absence so keenly that it was willing to do anything in an attempt to be near the family again.
Separation anxiety in animals and people is usually irrational and can be quite harmful. But I think there is another kind- a sort of “spiritual separation anxiety”- that is very rational and sometimes necessary. It is the feeling we get when the Holy Spirit is no longer directing us every moment; when we are not constantly turning to Christ as our head and authority. It is as though we have been “unplugged” from the power source, and what is left is the feeling that something important is now gone.
Sorrow is the feeling of missing something, of losing something. We feel sorrow when we have an empty space, a vacancy. It isn’t that the space in our hearts has shrunk, but there is now a hole that should be filled.
Separation anxiety from the Holy Spirit is a purposeful emptiness meant to draw us back to the thing we once had. It is pain with purpose. We feel restless, even anxious, and the discomfort of those feelings are meant to compel us to seek intimacy with God again. Intimacy with God is not only something we desire- it is something we need! God created us to need a relationship with Him to thrive and feel whole.
We are currently in the Christmas season, a time that can be seen and felt with all the extremes of emotions: both exuberant joy and dark grief. Christmas is not a time of wholeness for everyone. For many, it is a time of loss, sorrow, and emptiness. A time when the separation from something important- loved ones, community, peace, God- is felt most keenly.
Before Jesus’ birth, the Jews were in a time of emptiness and sorrow for millennia, waiting for their Savior. The saddest part is many of them did not see Jesus as the Christ and are still waiting. The sorrow God’s people felt (and some still feel) was the sorrow of not having the One who they knew was promised to be their Messiah.
Isaiah 53 says:
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; … Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
Even though Jesus was rejected by the very people He came to save, He willingly went to the cross and bore their sorrows and sins. No matter how dark the circumstance or how dark the heart, Jesus bore the sorrow and grief. He experienced it Himself (Hebrews 4:15-16).
What a Savior we have! He suffered for us and with us, so that we might be His Beloved and know Him deeply and intimately. He willingly lived a lowly human life, died on the cross, was buried, and resurrected to bring us peace and eternal restoration to the Heavenly Father. He did this all because He loves us!
I believe nothing else but the full understanding of Christ’s love can bring us true joy. True wholeness and fullness comes only from the One who loves us and created us.
“… Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:7-8)
This is the Lord we serve. Whether this season is filled with joy or sorrow or emptiness for you, take heart: Jesus knows the grief and He is with you in it. Whatever place your heart is in at this moment, pause and let your heart know the depths of the Savior’s love for you.
From “Christ, the sure and steady Anchor”, by Matt Boswell and Matt Papa:
“Christ, the sure and steady Anchor
Through the floods of unbelief
Hopeless somehow, O my soul
Now lift your eyes to Calvary
This my ballast of assurance
See His love forever proved
I will hold fast to the Anchor
It shall never be removed
….
Christ, the shore of our salvation
Ever faithful, ever true
We will hold fast to the Anchor
It shall never be removed”
(Matt Boswell and Matt Papa, 2014)