Hearing Voices

I started hearing voices. Don't call mental health officers just yet, though. The voice wasn't something creepy telling me to hurt others. It wasn't an audible voice. However, it was not my voice so I was a bit concerned the first time I heard the voice.  This voice was like the quiet stillness of the lake on a summer day. It was calming and enveloped me in a loving way I had never known. I became very aware of everything that was going on inside and around me. This included sensing the hurt and sorrow in other people.

I have always been very perceptive concerning the needs of others. God had given me a great desire to reach out to others and meet their needs when possible. However, this was more than noticing some one's tattered clothing and offering them a new coat. This was actually peering into their heart with spiritual eyes, feeling their ache, and knowing the cause of that ache. It took me a little time to know what to do with these new abilities. I ignored them for a while. Sometimes I thought the hurt I felt was my own hurt. As the days of not eating passed, my ability to sense hurt and hear this voice increased.

I believe that gluttony not only builds a thick wall of protection around you physically; it also dulls your senses emotionally and spiritually. I think this is true of any sin. If you are rebelliously living a life of sin and disobedience to God, you will not be able to hear His voice as well. As I learned to recognize the voice of God, I also became more discerning of my own past. I started to  feel hurt from my childhood as if it were currently happening. I started to detach from those around me because the hurt I felt confused and frightened me. I was so weak from the emotional roller coaster I was experiencing that I could hardly function. Everyone was so excited that I was losing the weight that no one noticed my emotional condition.

In addition to remembering things that had happened when I was a little girl, the pain from a recent miscarriage started to make me implode. My husband and I had grown so distant that I didn't turn to him. He was so busy with his work and we were both so overwhelmed trying to parent all of our foster children. I look back at those days and am amazed at the dichotomy I was experiencing. On one hand, I was growing spiritually by leaps and bounds and at the same time I was doing things that would seriously disrupt my life.

Since I was no longer anesthetizing myself with food, I felt everything. This was a very difficult time for me. I know it was a difficult time for my husband as well, but we were each individually dealing with our own hurts that we had no room for the other.

I could hear God speaking to me and beckoning me to be still with him. He had allowed me to experience these new revelations because he planned to help heal me through them. However, I was too busy to stop and allow him to do the restoring work that needed to be done. Then one day the medication stopped working. The side effects only lasted about a month. Soon, I found myself sitting in front of a large plate of food shoveling bite after bite into my mouth. "You don't need to do this anymore," said the quiet and now familiar voice.