Feelings are something that have been a struggle for me most of my life. I usually feel things very deeply and have often struggled to control my emotions. As I look back,it seems I would either stuff them and move on pretending they don’t exist because they were either too big, hard or scary and I didn’t know what to do with them; or allow my feelings to have full vent and wreak havoc on both myself and everyone around me. Until recently, they were something that I really didn’t think about too much. I am not really sure I felt at all, I just reacted. I found that intense emotions came on very quickly and would often dissipate or change within a short period of time. I am finding that perhaps I struggled to allow myself to feel because I was fearful of my inability to control my emotions. I seemed to go through life existing in the standard glad, sad or mad. I couldn’t understand because as a Christian I was supposed to be joyful, but why did it seem so elusive. As I have begun to look at myself, I am finding that I have many other emotions than the standard three. I am beginning to see that my emotions are a natural part of being human. God created me in His image to have feelings that may take some work and surrender to uncover,  understand and put under God’s authority. 

I think as a human, it is natural to believe that what I think is reality. However, when it comes to feelings, there is this combination of head and heart that can make what I think misleading and possibly bring me to an erroneous conclusion. For example, if I text someone who doesn’t text me back, I may feel hurt that she didn’t respond. Very quickly my hurt can create a hamster wheel of thinking and analyzing what happened and why. The more I stew on it, the more my fears settle in and my feelings may grow out of proportion to what happened; which can lead me to make any number of assumptions without any basis in facts. I could come up with anything from she is busy or upset with me to she is in the hospital. All of this is speculation and I may not have even considered the real reason, like maybe she never got my text. So while it is valid that I felt hurt she didn’t respond, my feelings that she might be angry at me or avoiding me are simply not true. This is why it is so important for me to search for the truth in my feelings and find out what part of them is based on what happened. If I can determine why I feel a certain way, I can begin to see the patterns that drive me and determine how to better take care of myself because I can look at them and separate how I feel about it from the reality of a situation.

As I begin to look at my feelings, I need to figure out what is the underlying feeling and what is motivating it? It got to the point where I felt anger whenever anything happened, but I have found along the way that often my desire to control based on my fears, built up hurts and resentments were driving the train. I reacted to every situation without any real idea of what I felt or how to deal with it. Because I had no idea how to deal with those feelings and the underlying issues, I stuffed them. Those built up feelings got bigger and often became resentments in my heart. I was run by my feelings and allowed them to dictate my actions without any concept of what was happening which caused me to often make irrational and impulsive decisions. I have to learn that stuffing my feelings leads to explosions where I am dominated by them and allow them to rule me. But this is not where I want to be, and I need to see I can’t do it on my own. 

I need God’s help in opening my eyes to the truth of my emotions and realizing that the enemy preys on my feelings and uses them to manipulate me. God can reveal things and provide awareness of things I can not see when I ask and am willing for Him to show me. He can reveal the truth of what I’m feeling and why, an old situation that still needs work and surrender in my heart, how the enemy is using these feelings to drive my behavior or maybe even something physical that I need to take care of like I’m tired or hungry. What’s interesting is that as I started taking the time to ask why I felt so angry, at the beginning it took a really long time for me to sort through the layers that were burying the real emotion. Often God would reveal to me things that I never even knew were there.  As I continue to practice this discipline, It gets a little easier every time and now I can even ask others for time and space as I try to sort out my feelings with God. Thankfully, He can provide guidance in managing and expressing my emotions in a healthy way that respects both me and those around me…But I must be willing to ask with an open heart and mind, being willing to have my eyes opened to the truth, accepting what He reveals to me even if I don’t like it and then surrendering all those things to Him saying not my will, but Thy will be done; trusting that only He can change me one step at a time, one day at a time.

Practice for Today

I will choose to remember that God gave me a wide range of emotions as a part of being human. I will choose to respect my feelings by allowing myself to feel, then pausing and asking God to reveal the truth and root of those feelings, no matter how long it takes. I will seek truth and let God deal with whatever is unresolved in my heart knowing this is the path to God’s healing. It is only through this pathway to peace that I can feel my feelings without being tyrannized by them.

Jeremiah 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Psalm 139:23-24   Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.