One winter morning somewhat recently, I awoke shortly after my extremely adorable, extremely beloved little cat Choochie scratched my nose with her extremely sharp claw. You can't see it very well in the photo above (if you can see it at all), but it left a small scab on the left side of my nose. It healed quickly, and it was kind of hidden in my sea of freckles, anyway, but it was a painful way to start the day. I don't think Choochie was trying to hurt me. She was just trying to snuggle under the covers with me because she was cold and because snuggling and napping together is what cats do. (Actually, there are a lot of strange things that cats do. While I was typing those past two sentences, Choochie was chewing on the collar of my T-shirt. I'm convinced that she has a pica, and she is a neverending source of natural, non-electronic entertainment.)
I've drawn a boundary with Choochie. As much as I would love for her to snuggle with me on my pillow at night, I can't let her do it anymore because her whiskers poke my face and keep me awake. And now she accidentally scratches me. But here's another crazy fact: When I took her in 11 and a half years ago, I basically rescued her from getting declawed because her previous owners couldn't afford the procedure. I chose to let her keep her claws. I want her and my other cat Macho to keep their claws because, in my opinionated opinion, a cat without claws just ain't a cat. (Declawed cats, from my experience, are exponentially meaner than clawed cats. Declawed cats bite, possibly to compensate for their lack of claws.) I have to chase my cats around the apartment about once a month to trim their nails, and I occasionally get scratched, but they get to keep their claws. And I have to keep an eye on their nails because if they get too long, they could get caught on stuff, and my babies could get hurt. (When Choochie was a kitten, her little thumbnail got caught on the metallic part of her collar once.) So, nail maintenance can get complicated, but in my opinionated opinion, it's worth it.
Here's another thing about being a cat in my household. My cats are my furry family. My cats and I are a package deal. I want my cats to be as close to me as possible while observing the boundaries that I set for them. (Why do I feel like submitting an idea to Cloud and Townsend for a Boundaries With Cats book? On second thought, it would be a very short book. Insert rimshot here.) I want them to be comfortable enough around me to be the cats they were created to be. I just don't like my face to get scratched. (And I haven't even mentioned my furniture, but that's replaceable.)
"Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge." (Psalm 62:8)
"Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O Lord." (Psalm 139:4)
I think I've quoted Psalm 62:8 before on this blog. Teaching me how to pour out my heart to Him was a major way that God began to set me free from depression about 11 years ago. In many ways, I was like a clogged drain emotionally. I needed to learn how to keep the flow going by puking out my emotions to Him, receiving His love, and repeating the process continually. Recently, He took me through another season of learning how to do so at a deeper, scarier level.
Perhaps anyone who follows me on Twitter remembers me mentioning a few months ago that I was learning how to cuss in God's presence. Because I was extremely angry at God while I was depressed all those years ago, the concept of being angry at God pretty much scares the crap out of me. But recently while I was going through a deeply emotional, scary season, after I did some majorly crazy things that God had told me to do, He basically encouraged me to be angry at Him, because that's how I was feeling, and He wanted me to just let it out. Jesus showed me that He died for me so that I could have that honest of a relationship with Father God.
I would like to balance what I said in the previous paragraph. I love God. I fear God. I don't want to disrespect God. I don't want to recommend anyone disrespecting God or hating Him or spitting in His face like I did in my suicidal past. But what He taught me personally just a few months ago was that there was some stuff inside me that He needed to remove, and His presence was the safest place for Him to do so.
So, in the refuge of His presence (like Psalm 62:8 mentions), in an environment that He controlled, where He called the shots and kept me safe, He squeezed some stuff out of me, and much of it happened through me cussing. Instead of whitewashing over my feelings, I needed to be exasperated about some bad stuff that had happened to me in my past. God needed to show me His perspective on the bad stuff and correct what I had believed about it. This all happened during a brief season. (He doesn't allow me to cuss in His presence anymore.) He showed me that I was like a tea bag that needed to steep. I was just obeying what He told me to do. From what I can tell, the anger and bitterness are gone, I'm much more honest with Him than I used to be, and He and I bonded through that series of experiences. It was kind of weird (I don't think they offer a How To Cuss With God class at church), but that's how God restored part of my soul. Actually, I've noticed that He tends to do a lot of cathartic exercises with people like me who were hurt in the past by being stifled emotionally.
When Jesus redeemed me, He didn't declaw me emotionally. He let me keep my emotions and my free will, and He didn't turn me into a robot. He doesn't want me to hurt Him, but He wants me to express myself to Him honestly. He already knows how I feel, anyway. Perhaps He wants me to discover how I honestly feel. In this post, I specifically talked about anger, but I really think God wants us to pour out all of the emotions in our hearts -- sadness, happiness, fear, contentment, confusion, relief -- not just anger.
Jesus is my Lord, but He's also my Best Friend. Intimate friends are extremely honest with each other. They aren't rude to each other, but there are times when the polite masks just come off and they're more real with each other than ever.
A mask -- why the bleep didn't I think of that bleepin' sooner?!? What a good idea for protecting my face from untrimmed claws! I'm kidding. My kitties delight my heart, no matter how sharp their claws get. As I type this, Choochie has nestled into a purring ball of feline snugglylove on my lap. Wait. No, she just jumped off. Oh, well. She's welcome back anytime.
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