I sat across from a new friend, secretly searching for signs that she could be the one that God sent into my life to be the answer to my prayers—to be more than just a friend, to be a best friend, a confidant, a safe haven. Ever since my mother died, this was something I’d been searching for. Someone who, like my mother, would listen to me, pray for me, and always want God’s best for me. Someone who would “get” me, from the depths of my fears to the heights of my dreams, and who would love me unconditionally through it all. Years have gone by since her passing, yet I still find myself longing for someone to fill that emotional need. Especially in moments like this, right at the beginning of new friendships, I find that old thirst rearing its head, dying to be quenched in the bounties of a new relationship.
Eventually, I caught myself and refocused. I was not here to inquire whether this individual could be a suitable best friend to me. I was here as the leader of a ministry. The objective was not to meet my own emotional needs. It was to get to know her for the purpose of encouraging her and not vice versa.
As I was leaving the meeting though, I found myself secretly depressed that the meeting did not surface someone who could peer into my soul and share my burdens with me. Then I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “Why are you still looking for the one when you have Jesus?” I felt like a kid who was caught with her hands in the cookie jar! I nodded in agreement. “I’m sorry Lord,” I said, “How many times have you told me that you have already filled the emptiness? And now, I must, by faith, believe the void has been filled and then trust the emotions will follow.”
How many of us live with emotional pain from our formative years, constantly searching for somebody to fill the void created by a tragedy that’s left a lasting impression? In my own case, the trauma of being uprooted from my home and experiencing abandonment, at a young age left tracks in my memory that evoke feelings of abandonment even when God has sent support around me. And in my mind, because I can trace those feelings to the moment that my mother first left me, I connect her presence to a time in my life when I felt safe and secure. I long for another person like her, believing that such a person would take me back to the safety and security I felt when my mom was alive. That’s human emotion, and it can cripple us in the present by making saints of those in our past.
The truth is, the safety and security that I felt when my mother was alive was the safety and security of a teenage girl that hadn’t experienced the harsh realities of life, and the pain of losing somebody special. As much as I may long for a person like my mom to make me feel like I did back then, no person is capable of making the pain magically disappear, because no person is capable of changing the past. As a result, to look for such a person is to set impossible expectations that set us up for failure, and the end result will always be disappointment.
What God has taught me in my spiritual journey is that emotional pain cannot be cured by indulging emotional desires. Healing requires the Holy Spirit, who Jesus sent to be with us forever. He walks with us from now till eternity.
The Holy Spirit, however, is not a passive antidote. The Bible tells us to be filled with the Spirit. This tells me that I don’t just wake up automatically filled, the same way the water from my faucet doesn’t just start running. I must choose to turn on the faucet. And I must choose to be filled with the Spirit by believing He is present and more real than any reality around me. And in this place of being filled, I will enter my day with God’s sufficiency, where I can finally find peace with my emotions and confidence in my purpose. I can finally live like I was meant to, the bold daughter of a King.
