Handle with Care

Emotions are at the wheel and our world is out of control. In just 35 years, I can't help but notice that we as a society are becoming increasingly emotionally driven. It's commonplace to hear things like, "If it feels good, do it." Nearly everything we do is driven by how we feel, directly opposite of discipline and self control. I've been convicted of it quite often and it's taken me this long to realize that being a Christian means I must put my feelings aside in order to experience the life He meant for me.

Here are my observations. Self esteem and faith are intertwined all for the sake of feelings because we all think we have to feel good about our self to the extent that we miss out on experiencing true joy. Marriages are falling apart because people decide they don't feel "in love" anymore. And parents are more permissive than ever, making their main goal to make their kids to "feel good" even if it means discarding all the right things to teach them. You see it in the news constantly - someone is out of control, making decisions that they won't be happy with later all because they followed their feelings.

I get hung up on my feelings as much as anyone, and I'm not pointing any fingers here. Nonetheless, we shouldn't let our feelings boss us around, and the proof is in the Word. Times when I have chosen  to be a slave to my feelings, my life has been a huge mess. I have found that you have to actively check your feelings against God's guidelines or you'll just be tossed around like a small boat in a hurricane.
 
Keeping my feelings in check provides for accountability. When someone hurts my feelings, it's up to me to get over it and to forgive. And even if they do apologize, I have to make a choice here to move on past how I feel. When an unhealthy thought crosses my mind, it's up to me to decide whether to continue pondering on it and if I don't my feelings will get too big for their britches and try to rule me again. When I feel emotional, it's up to me to maintain control of myself. I often have to remind myself, "Just because I can doesn't mean I should."

Feelings change but God never does. Feelings are fickle, and we never know what we'll get if we count on them to guide us. However, feelings do have a valuable role. Feelings often steer us from danger. They can serve as a compass when used properly, but never on their own. God's word has to be our check and balance point for thoughts and feelings alike in order to avoid misery.

We are called to be the salt and the light. Salt isn't easily manipulated - it changes everything it touches. With salt, you always know what you're getting and you can't miss it. Light can't be hidden no matter what, even if you bury it and it would still shine on something. If we're to be light and salt, we can only be those things from the faith we have in Him - not in ourselves and surely not in our feelings.
 
Some valuable resources I have found on feelings are:
Bible verses about our Feelings
Attitudes and Emotions
Please feel free to share any resources you have as well.

Cry Baby

The pressure is on us everywhere we go to be something we're not. We put up a strong exterior when we're falling apart inside. We hold back our tears, convinced that if we let anyone see them we're weak. Somehow we convince ourselves that it's wrong to show emotions, and we bury the pain as we force ourselves to believe that it's the right thing to do.

Sometimes we put all this pressure on ourselves. Sometimes Satan sneaks in a lie or two--that's what he is good at. And then there are times when people just put pressure on each other, whether it's been spoken or not. I think we humans cause each other at least as much harm as Satan does because even in our own efforts to look outside ourselves we take some extreme approach. We're hard on each other and we show little compassion. We refuse to see past the stuff on the surface, clenching our own narrow-minded ideas.

" Jesus Wept." John 11:35

It's becoming more and more uncommon for humans to show emotion to each other. We see it in marriages and families all the time. Many husbands think that their wives only need to see their strength, which couldn't be further from the truth. And many of us wives convince ourselves that it's wrong to be vulnerable to anyone, even our husbands. We fear telling our husbands about our feelings and mindset struggles because we fear that our husbands will think we're weak. And so, we miss out on opportunities to grow together as one.

We even teach our children, through our actions, that it's best to build a hard exterior towards others in order to protect themselves. We teach them that trusting anyone aside from us will do nothing but get them hurt. And then when they harden up towards us we stand there dumbfounded. Sound familiar?

I'm forced to ask myself some hard questions: What if my someone thinks ill of me for revealing my heart? What if they abandons ship once they see the ugly things in my heart?

Those questions force me to ask myself yet another question. "Who do I really serve?"
If I seek to please someone more than Him, then I have a bigger problem and it's called "idolatry". If I disobey God in order to serve  man, then I have created nothing more than an idol before God.

My effort is not to slap anyone's hand because, if you've read my blogs, you know that I only talk about areas where I've been myself. Last night, as I watched the show "Hoarding: Buried Alive" and as I sat there with my mouth hung open to the things I saw, God spoke to my heart about something He's been working on me for quite some time now. I often hide behind an emotionless exterior because I fear what others will think of me. And that fear just has to go, if I'm going to grow any further. Here are some things He showed me about the fear of showing others what's on our hearts.

There is no strength in hiding. Faith calls us to have courage to believe and obey, no matter what seat you have in the arena and the view it provides. Courage is refusing to hide and challenges us to overcome our fears. Courage brings us out from behind the rocks that we hide behind as it brings about entirely new mindsets and thought patterns. Courage starts with transparency in our Christian walk and transparency is nothing more than complete honesty, to ourselves and to others. We, as believers, are called to be courageous. If we are led more by our fears than by Him, we're missing out on the blessings of faith.

If other people think we're something that we're not, and that we're stronger than we really are then it's not just their problem. There is real danger in hiding who we are / our struggles from those around us. I've seen more people give up on something because they had the perception that no one else struggles like they do, therefore they conclude it must not be meant to be. Others grow angry and bitter with the other person because they perceive the lack of emotion as a lack of concern.

That being said, I'm not advocating that we say whatever we want to others. That's not Biblical either. We're called to be compassionate, yet firm. I'm not advocating that we focus on only our struggles either and become a bunch of whiney babies. The Bible commands us to have self control. That does not mean we lie about who we are, it means we control ourselves from sin as we practice transparency.We have to learn to look beyond the opinions and expectations of others and realize that other people need to know that we struggle too.

Emotional Management

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds;  and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24 (NIV)

I've been avoiding this topic for weeks. Emotions are so complicated, even for those of us who are more in tune to our own. Negative emotions are, by far, my biggest struggle. Anger, frustration, resentment, jealousy, pride and stubbornness can lead me in the worst of places. These things can sneak in on me just when I think I have it under control. It never ends well because they always wind up causing trouble.

I've been reading a book about the struggles of the women in the Bible and they all have one thing in common, negative emotions. Each of them have their own struggles, and I find myself relating to each one in some way. As I read more, the message becomes louder and clearer: get your emotions under control.

This morning, what should have been an easy conversation with my husband turned ugly fast. It was all due to my lack of emotional management. If we can't take whatever hits us, whether it be out of criticism or love,  and handle it without short circuiting then we have some growing to do--and that is the conclusion I draw for myself.

I'm sick and tired of living by whatever my emotions tell me to. They aren't The Truth yet I let them rule over me in a way makes them my King. I allow them to bring distance and confusion to otherwise perfectly great and fulfilling times. If I feel it, my knee-jerk reaction is to run with it. The slightest things can cause me to feel rejection, disrespect, humiliation, and most often resentment. I can go from feeling SO close to God and having SUCH loving relationships with those around me to feeling lonely in mere seconds. A simple misunderstanding leaves me feeling defensive and the result is overreaction on my part.

I'm a vocal person, and I find myself having to slow my tongue and wait on the rest of me to catch up. He's been reminding me to slow down and listen. The times when I struggle to hear Him most are those when my emotions scream the loudest. I've often found myself pleading with Him to speak to me about this just to realize later that He has been all along. I choose to let the noise of my emotions get out of control. I treat them as if they were someone else's children running wild in Wal-Mart. I let them go and hope someone else will deal with them before they tear something up. Even if no one else notices, the noise they cause takes over in a way that nothing else can get my attention.

My husband reminds me often that "we can choose our reactions." This is true in more way than one. Not only can we choose how to react outwardly, but we have a choice on what goes on inside us as well. We can calm these "children" of ours before they take over, or we can let them run rampant. We can choose to dwell on them, or we can choose positive thoughts. We are in charge of our own emotions, no matter who we want to blame for their uprising. And we have to be, because no one else can tame them for us. And does it not say more about us if we allow ourselves to be overrun by negative emotions, than it does those whom we blame for causing them?

I read an article this morning, in my effort to understand the role of negative emotions. I come away with this: we have to evaluate our emotions in the light of God's word. This is quite significant although for some of us it's close enough to bite us yet we just can't manage to see it. God's word gives us all we need. He, if we allow it, will show us the morsels contained within. But we have to want it. We have to be sick and tired of doing it our own way.

I've also come to understand that our emotions are a sort of check and balance built within us. They tell us that there is some dysfunction within us, and within our relationships and that we are not what we need to be. They are a reminder of our brokenness and the broken world we live in. They remind us that we are in danger in some way. We wouldn't feel negative thoughts if everything inside and around us was perfect, now would we? Relationship deficiencies cause us the most problems and sometimes cause those emotions to short circuit, leaving us in need of a great electrician --our Creator.

We were made in His image, thus we were made to have a relationship with Him and His people. We were also made to serve others, and until we learn to love others as He loves us, we will all battle negative emotions. We have to learn to set ourselves aside, which in itself is the hardest thing in the world no matter how unselfish you consider yourself to be. We have to learn the right balance in everything we do, because it is quite like juggling with both arms and both legs. But anything worth doing doesn't come easily, right. The value in doing things His way is that we are rewarded with emotional health because we come to expect less and offer more.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...Proverbs 23:7

My prayer lately is that I learn to be led by Him and His truths, not by my "feelings". And when I do feel those negative emotions, I'm trying to learn to look to Him. A big part of that for me is learning to quiet those noisy things in order to hear Him. Just as physical pain is meant to cause us to seek medical care, emotional pain is meant to lead us to The Great Physician--Jesus Christ.

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Luke 22:44

He doesn't generally remove those things right away, but He teaches us how to deal with them. He sheds light on what's hiding underneath in order to heal us from the inside out and make us clean.

We were made for more than just this. Only He can take something meant to hurt us and make it benefit us. Only He can truly heal us. Only He can make us whole. And He's obviously has a "God at Work" sign hanging on me. This, my friends, is gonna take a while because I have a lot of "dirt". But Thing 1 and Thing 2 must be tamed in the process.

I encourage you to hang in there, fight the good fight and keep believing in Him. Don't quit, you're not clean yet.

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled”.
-Matthew 5:6