"There's a hole in our soul that we fill with dope. And we're feeling fine."
-Marilyn Manson
You did not just misread that. I totally quoted Marilyn Manson because once upon a time long long ago I was a huge fan and while most everything he said gives me the total creeps now, this lyric has always stuck with me. I don't resonate with this because I was once or am still a drug user, I resonate with it because for as long as I can remember I have understood that hole. I have understood something that is a giant gaping wound leaking over into everything one day and a black hole swirling and sucking in everything around it the next. And then I found Jesus and slowly that enormous hole, that at one time if I were to illustrate it would have taken up more space on my person than anything else, began to shrink, but it didn't disappear. Its size and shape and function may vary according to which season of my life I am in and where I am struggling, but there is in fact, even with Jesus all up on it, a hole.
I know where my hole came from. I know the people responsible for putting it there, at no fault of my own, and sometimes, under the right circumstances that hole that has at this point in my life become generally not more than a flesh wound, expands and reforms itself into what feels like that giant leaky pre Jesus swirling sucking black hole mess. And I don't expect for it to disappear. I do not think Jesus and my love for him is a magic hole fixer. Hole shrinker, hole coverer, hole filler, YES- hole fixer, no. Finding and loving and following Jesus doesn't undo your past. It frees you from shame and guilt and living there but it doesn't undo it all. There are consequences to life that we all must live with until the other side. But that is another blog.
What I want to say is, so I have this hole that just is. Usually it is under my control, but sometimes it isn't and what I realized today is that when all of a sudden that hole feels ENORMOUS and open and like I cannot control it, I go about trying to fill it myself, and with all the wrong things because having an open wound hurts and no one wants to sit with that. I just flounder and flail like a fish on land looking for whatever will make that wound fill up or be covered and there is NOTHING at my disposal that will work, BECAUSE, it isn't MY job to fill it. It's Jesus' job. I am robbing Jesus of his job to cover and fill and shrink that wound by trying to do it myself. And not only does it not work, my quick fixes actually make it all so much worse.
I don't care who you are, you have holes. What are you filling them with?
