Dead Zones - Do you have them?

[Jim Palmer]

We've all heard of cell phone "dead zones." Sometimes I enter a personal dead zone. Here's how it works...

I'm going about my day, doing the next thing, perhaps even walking in the present reality of God's kingdom and mindful of the fullness of life and spiritual abundance within me...and then suddenly the "dead zone"...a surge of despair and emptiness and aloneness and despondency sweeps over me.

Sometimes it's a weariness like the feeling that I'm pretty much done with life and living and ready to move on to something different. Sometimes it feels like I'm observing the world in motion and every shred of it seems like total insanity. Sometimes it feels like I just want to unplug from it all, get off the merry-go-round and fade into the woodwork never to be heard from again - like move to New Zealand and become a sheep herder or something. That's a few of my dead zones anyway.

I kinda felt like maybe I should add all this other stuff to prevent you from thinking I'm going off the deep end or give this long God-explanation of the spiritual answer for dead zones and how I pull out of them and the better for it...blah...blah...blah...yadi...yadi...yadi...

But then I realized all I was wondering is, if anyone else experiences this and has their own dead zone moments.

[vicki]

hey Dianne - totally get what you mean by that "homesick" feeling.... it's for me... this ultimate sense that I am not yet "home" - not yet fully "home"....it was referred to eslewhere by Cheryl Anne Mohr... as a "lonely knowing".....ya - it's a great question jim posed cause it always helps me to know that i'm not alone and that others' get that feeling.

[Julie Knapp]

ok, your church dead zone finally got me to laugh out LOUD tonight. thx for that

Bryan Bliss said:

All. The. Time.

Somebody like Kierkegaard would say that our 'freedom' leaves us in a constant fear of failing our responsibilities to God.

I don't think that's my problem, personally...but, perhaps. I mean, who am I to argue with Soren Kierkegaard, right? ;)

I do get that feeling, though. It's like all of a sudden - BAM! - I'm hit with this feeling of total and abject 'I-don't-give-a-damn-itis.'

I'm told that's a scientific term.

I've often said that I really just want to buy a camper van, pull my kids out of school and just become a hermit or something. My wife isn't keen on it, though.

Just a small observation: the entire area around my church is a cell phone 'dead zone' - I always kinda laugh at that....

[Julie Knapp]

have u ever heard someone speak and think, 'ok this message has to be just for me, sorry for the rest of you having to endure it!'?

well, this dialogue is just for me! ha!

this very conversation starter has been freaking me out ALL week! i would catch myself one minute on cloud 9 about all the things I could see God doing in my life and in those around me and then the next minute I'd be bogged down in confusion that seemed to come from nowhere?! just this afternoon, i caught myself in one of those moments and i was like, "WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM?!" either it's gone on all my life and i've never really caught it, or it is much more prevalent lately!

before i read this dialogue tonight, this is all i had come up with as a cause....

for 8 years i was DEEPLY involved in my 'IC'. about a year and a half ago, it was like i suddenly had new eyes to see some of the religious insanity that i was participating in. i spent a few months just walking around the place thinking only to myself, 'are we all just taking the 'red pill' (whichever it was in the matrix!) it was like i couldn't put my finger on who was and who wasn't participating in this alternate reality!

then i went straight from this IC into a 'house church' where there are so many beautiful people and the message is SO extremely focused on LIVING in His LOVE. the paradigms in my environment not only seemed to change but from one extreme to the other!

this is all i can put my finger on as to why the 'dead zones' are happening so much lately! it's like, one minute i'm just backstroking in this pool of HIS LOVE for me and then the next my brain is saying, "it truly can't be this easy!"

i think this extreme battle going on in my head is causing MY dead zones. i just get to where i go, AHHHHHH, I'M FREAKING WORN OUT! and wham dead zone. i just want to NOT think!

yep, i must be nuts! lol.

so on an up note, ha, today in my dead zone i just started speaking out loud those verses that remind me of who I am in Him...and what do u know.....a peace came over me to simply be me w/ a really rockin Dad who somehow gets me :)

[Old Pete]

Paula Wright said:

But I found this comment particularly sad: "If I didn't go to church, I think I would backslide in a heartbeat." Speaks volumes.

I have been following Paula's story with great interest. It's an exciting and challenging journey for her - and rather fast-paced!
Other people are shedding some of the baggage of religion much more slowly - but I feel we have to recognise that not everyone is being called away from traditional churches.

I've been on this journey a very long time - and the story of the extended family cannot be told in a few words - which has encouraged me to create a separate blog entry.

But I did want to comment on the place of traditional churches. It is not uncommon for people on this journey to react angrily to what they had been taught by the church. But if it wasn't for traditional churches how much would most of us know about the gospel message? I sometimes liken churches to universities from which the students never graduate - they remain in the conformist stage while those who begin to mature just walk away! I have expanded on this in "Stages of Faith"

The comment about backsliding if she doesn't attend church works both ways. Timing is everything - we have to allow Father to call others at the right time. I sense that it is important that we must not undermine the faith of others - or to put it another way - we mustn't try to give answers to the questions that are not yet being asked.

[Audrey Hope Garratt]

Whenever a 'dead zone' becomes apparent in my life, I feel an excitement within me, because I know the spirit is starting to show me the next area of 'flesh and blood'. Flesh and blood CANNOT enter the Kingdom, so the spirit is dealing with (judging) all the parts of my life, so that nothing remains which is not spiritual. Recently I've been learning a lot concerning 'swallowing' or 'consuming'. It started with thinking about the bush that Moses saw, how it burned but was not consumed. That I knew was a picture of me. Then I was thinking about the law of bio-genetics, how there are 3 kingdoms, mineral vegetable and animal, and these are locked, not transferable to the next one up. Dead stones cannot begin to grow as a plant. My husband and I were saw-prunng some of our fruit trees, and I began to 'see' that this huge tree had begun life as a small seed. How had it become so huge? By absorbing the dead minerals in the kingdom below it to transfer those minerals into living cells, thus becoming wood. This opened up a new understanding of what is happening spiritually with us. Flesh and blood (our Adamic consciousness)cannot enter the kingdom of God. But, the LIFE from that Kingdom has reached down into our realm and is transforming every part of us to become HIS GLORIOUS BODY.
.
Having seen this, now I welcome those dead zones, because this is the next part of me to be dealt with by the spirit, ( because I cannot do this of myself as illustrated by bio-genetics) The spirit requires us just to recognise his voice and HE will do the transformation, so eventually I will be totally lively and death will not reign in me!

[Denie Tackett]

Well, at least I don't feel like I am going off the deep end now.....needed that blog, I don't feel so alone now. I call it being in a fish bowl. Seeing all that is going on around you, but never seeming to be a part of it. Swimming around and around but never getting anywhere and desperately waiting to get out of the bowl and get on to the next journey. Thanks for sharing!

[Old Pete]

Denie referred to swimming around but never getting anywhere and desperately waiting to get out of the fish bowl. I tend to see myself outside the fish bowl looking in. Not sure what to make of that - could it be something to do with being on the journey for a long time where the emphasis had been on head knowledge rather than heart awareness?

I am by nature an unemotional person (just ask my wife) - I seem to have lived life on an even keel - very few highs - very few lows! I'm not suggesting that is a good thing, but it does give you a particular perspective.

[Patti Palmer]

Maybe I am strange, well actually, I am but that is beside the point. :0)
All of the thread so far has taken 'dead zone' to mean tired, apathetic, alone, etc. I attach that term to the times when I feel those kind of feelings but I look at it as satan and his angels trying to distract me from the Truth.
They seem to come on me when I have been very close in walking with the Lord, feeling Him next to me and hearing His voice and then 'Pow', 'Zap', 'Boom'(for those Batman fans) I am alone in the dark so to speak.
Anyway I usually react by claiming the victory I have in Christ and go from there. I probably should look at it like Audrey does and see it in a positive way and look for the growth coming.
Thanks to everyone for being open and listening.

[Lenny Franklin]

Well put, Dyton. Love the quotes - made me laugh. Definitely something needed today...

Dyton L. Owen said:

Absolutely, Jim! My dead zone often manifests as a kind of apathy...don't care about much of anything. And when it hits, I usually "hunker in the bunker" and ride it out, often reading to try and re-focus. I have found it is often brought on by stress/overwork/worries, etc....especially financial worries brought on by unexpected legal stuff my wife has been dragged into for her kids' sake. But God's grace is sufficient.

When these dead zones hit, I have to remind myself of two "mantras": Coach Lou Holtz: "I know God doesn't give me more than I can bear; but sometimes I think God over-estimates my ability!"

And something I learned while growing up in an African-American church: "God may not come when you call, but He's always on time!"

[Lenny Franklin]

Pete,

The wisdom of your years and walk again bring things in to perspective for me. Thank you.

Old Pete said:

Paula Wright said:

But I did want to comment on the place of traditional churches. It is not uncommon for people on this journey to react angrily to what they had been taught by the church. But if it wasn't for traditional churches how much would most of us know about the gospel message? I sometimes liken churches to universities from which the students never graduate - they remain in the conformist stage while those who begin to mature just walk away! I have expanded on this in "Stages of Faith"

The comment about backsliding if she doesn't attend church works both ways. Timing is everything - we have to allow Father to call others at the right time. I sense that it is important that we must not undermine the faith of others - or to put it another way - we mustn't try to give answers to the questions that are not yet being asked.

[Sunflower Mama]

Yes Jim. I too have experienced this. I've never put words to it so Thanks. You said, "a surge of despair and emptiness and aloneness and despondency sweeps over me." For me it's in those moments that I've stepped away from the "oneness" and I look around and all I can see is despair. Hmmm.. This deserves much more thought.. Thank you as always. I love mind/heart expansion...

[Lenny Franklin]

Man, I am so glad you brought this up - yet, not... Anyway, I digress... I completely know the wave and can feel it coming on. And, I have no idea how to deal with it. Do you speak God's promises even when you don't feel them or do you just try and feel all the sorrow holds and let it pass as quickly as it came? I have no idea. Honestly, it's so hard to discern what is going on when that happens. Maybe it has everything to do with all of the transition in my life this last year. But until now, I never heard anyone talk about it. And for that, I am grateful...