When Disillusionment is Good
a part 2 musing on deconstruction (a somewhat paradoxical response but isn’t tension where truth is found)
but when is disillusionment good?
When illusion becomes dismantled.
When we enter the dark night of the soul—as Saint John of the Cross says, “a loving, purifying fire.”
Where He May feel more distant than ever but has only come so close with His severe mercy to cover us inside His shadow. Allowing a chastisement to take place that haunts our beliefs systems.
The way we thought we heard Him so clearly—we’re not so sure anymore, was it me or God? Was it ego? Was I swept up in hype? What is real? What have I been doing with my life?
Where every veil begins to be torn and all the fog of religion, of poor theology, counterfeit views of God and limiting belief systems begin lifting. Yet the clarity of the weakness and fragility—the need within ourselves and our ego so unsettling, disorienting, altogether terrifying.
Here we feel the tearing yet it’s actually a tethering. Like a blacksmith to metal, where His leadership is mending every fractured place into Oneness.
These seasons are the invitation into the deeps.
In exchange, He is inviting us into the holy of holies, fully behind the veil of separation, yet the threshold is an undeniable death to self.
Where many, in this invitational season from The Lord, misunderstand the fire of His drawing inward to face the interior chambers held within and can remain unwilling to deeply face all of the core limiting belief systems, areas of broken trust with The Lord through the years and ultimately with self. Where instead of losing total control inside a resurrecting surrender, they opt out of the purifying fire and self-justify on lofty reasoning, deciding, ‘well all that I ever experienced most not have been real’, or this and that ‘just must not be true’. ‘I give up on Him ever coming through here’. ‘prophetic words can’t be relied on, I haven’t seen them come to pass and it’s been years’, ‘this doesn’t make sense to me at all, how could God be that way, there is too much pain’ so this and that, is “deconstructed” and never fully to be rebuilt.
Yet, it is necessary to question all these things we wrestle with in relationship with Holy Spirit and allow Him to sink us deeper into a truth outside our own preconceived understanding.
It is in these seasons, when His coming through might be the very chastisement and disillusionment one may be experiencing.
It is here, it is most important to not grab unto control but to wait…as He begins deeply fathering, teaching a new way of living. For it is never because of Him that we don’t taste and see His goodness but always because of the self. He never walks away, we do.
Unbelief is a self-inflicting separation.
It is in seasons of disillusionment, that there is an invitation to go behind the veil of separation; to yield under the blood and water that flows out of the wound in His side and come fully awake seeing through His eyes.
Though awakening out of illusion is terrifying and sadly, we all—too often—choose a self-preserving blanket of comfort like a child that can’t let go.
Though, there is always a choice to choose to yield or not.
To blame the churches impurities and/or its poor leadership in a refusal to fully take responsibility for ourselves and our belief systems; or to draw near to His presence and bleed out our pain to the Person of Jesus.
We are not victims to the realities of this world, to experience, to circumstance and especially, to ourselves.
It is here, inside disillusionment, where we can find the Lord wanting to answer all our prayers and draw us closer than we could ever dream of. That He is longing to heal trust in the deepest parts of us—His hand wanting to reach so deep into the unprocessed trauma, pain and grief to truly, fully mend it.
He is longing to lead us into a new way of living, behind the veil of separation.
Yet His hand can be gloriously terrifying and heavy, when we are the clay falling apart and He is the potter. Scarier then anything when trust with Him and ourselves is broken.
Though healing and clarity like we’ve yet to know, is the invitation.
A holy hush and displacing—where silence becomes an eviscerating mirror. One, we all too much, avoid daily.
A critical reflection of what we truly believe about God, and in turn—what we truly—at the core believe about ourselves.
Where in the breaking of illusions by the power of the Holy Spirit, all selfishness and pride begins to be uprooted.
A full fledged death to self becomes hauntingly real as we feel the stripping of all pride, selfish ambition, curated masks of performance, the white boa constrictor of religion and legalism, self-righteousness and self-reliance—for these are the blindfolds of the soul.
Here, we are dismantled and melted down into a deep and ever tender neediness. A gentle, lowly, selfless, extremely open, awake and quiet spirit.
This is the miracle of salvation—the miracle of disillusionment where all illusion becomes dismantled and His personhood becomes real.
Where all illusion of separation disappears and we fully touch the scars, the face, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the wounds, the hair, the skin, the laugh lines, the body, the heartbeat of the Person of Jesus.
Where we become One with the Man. Our body hanging on the tree where His hands and feet were nailed. Our minds washed by His blood pouring out on Calvary, our thoughts anointed with the oil of His Spirit. Where everything gets flipped on His head and every scale on our eyes taken off by His spit inside our own mud. His hands on our eyes. Where we are finally—deeply, seeing. Breathing in relief. Our souls going down into Sheol to only experience Jesus unlocking everything that binds us with the keys of death and hell. Our being then fully ascending, resurrecting out of the tomb inside Union, inside matrimony, inside covenant with His reality, beauty and glory.
Where we become extremely sober and let go to our own judgements, our narrowed perspectives, our self-imposed tunnel vision. Where everything that can be shaken, shakes off and true discernment begins to heightened and we begin making a brutal and healing, contact with reality. The true reality within ourselves, our pain, our striving, our control, our false motives and the spectrum of beauty and pain held within the world inside and around us.
Fully moving past all the facades, every mask melted in His fire, fully naked and exposed to our need, sinking deeply into an awakening awareness that is embraced internally without judgement.
Where we experience a godly grief of divine core repentance internally of the deeps, accepting where we were wrong, where we were living in harmful patterns and cycles we hadn’t yet truly acknowledged or faced, where our worldview begins expanding past our own limiting experience and all pain and emotion and grey space is no longer scary but liberating.
Where He truly becomes God and we fully become a child, a son and a daughter, altogether yielded and dependent.
Where we are no longer leaning on reason or things needing to make sense.
Where we repent completely of where we were simply just terrified and in attempt to cope, we became altogether selfish.
Led by pain and fear and rejection and judgement and control instead of unconditional love. Where in coping, hurting inside broken trust, apathy felt and became safe because nothing else did—where in pain, we believed more that we could save ourselves by taking control than to show up fully, surrendering everything.
Where, here, we get on our knees alone in our rooms and bleed out telling Jesus, you can have everything, I’m done withholding.
Where we begin to listen more than we speak, in a holy sobriety of learning.
Where grief rinses us and the embracement of mystery expands our souls and compassion fills all the space in between.
Where all is soft soft soft and we are like Him, a baby in a manger, helpless yet cradled by our Savior who took our place, abandoned inside a union of holy dependency.
Yielded completely—to the Helper and the Teacher. To Adonai, our Leader.
