The Biggest Cause of Emptiness

No one needs to tell me what it feels like to have a big hole in your soul. I have some personal experience with this, and I can’t think of anything more miserable. I was very young when I started to feel it, and as I got older, of course the hole seemed to get larger. I had an appetite for something I couldn’t name, and like many people, I started to look for love in all the wrong places. I wish someone had told me that growing up in an environment where domestic violence was common place can cause an individual to develop false beliefs about why he or she feels empty. We tend to think that it’s because we didn’t receive enough of something or that our lives are unfulfilling and boring as heck. Unfortunately, many people who feel this way try to address the symptoms and not the cause.

I walked around with this dark cloud until my mid-twenties. Then one day, I decided I had to put a stop to the way I was feeling, because I was becoming increasingly angry and disillusioned about my life. I was sick of that cloud, and I grew determined to help myself, because I really believed it when I learned that Jesus Christ suffered miserably so that we wouldn’t have to.

I don’t think I was ever an impatient person, and believe that this is one of the things that has helped me most; because I’ve given myself time to build my relationship with God, and have allowed Him to take the lead. I also must state that I’ve never been able to stomach the ‘pie in the sky’ stuff. I could always see right through folks who are power-hungry, cultish, or fake. So my approach to understanding the Gospel of Christ has always been based on finding real answers to real problems. It didn’t hurt that I met loving Christian people who I believed genuinely cared about my well-being, and took the time to help school me about the deep things of God.

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus Christ instructs us to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first; when we do this, the bounty of His blessings will be ours. In my quest to fill up my empty places, the first clue that I discovered was that a spiritual transaction happens when we seek God first. Something that we need for our souls shows up.

1 John 2:11(NLT) says, “But anyone who hates another brother or sister is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.” Every spiritual person knows that what we focus on grows. For a very long time, I focused on my emptiness, and it kept growing. I was so consumed with being unhappy that darkness blinded me. The discipline of Christian love escaped me, because I thought that another person owed me something that I was without. This is the biggest cause of emptiness. It’s waiting for the hole to be filled, and letting anyone who talks a good game try to fill it.

Emptiness is caused and perpetuated when we abandon the person Heavenly Father created us to be. We are not weak. We are not empty. We are vessels meant to be continually filled with His love. 1John 4:16 tells us that God is love, and the person that dwells in love dwells in God, and God dwells within him or her. We are His children, made from His love, and made in His image. 2Corinthians 3:5 tells us that He’s our Sufficiency. We were not designed to be sufficient unto ourselves. We were created to depend on His love, and when we open our eyes to this, we’ll step out of darkness. It may take a little while to see the light shine brightly, but if we’ll put our trust in Christ, Psalm 23:3 says that he’ll restore our souls, and lead us on the path to right living. ■

“The Biggest Cause of Emptiness” written by Fran, edited by PMB for Overcomingdomesticviolenceorg.wordpress.com. Copyright ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!

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