Sometimes I really struggle with my emotions.
I’m one of those people that feel so deeply, that sometimes I don’t understand how I’m supposed to live a life not governed by these things. They seem to be constant, unwavering in their determination to be heard and to be validated.
The more broken I’ve been through my life, the more intense these emotions are, and the more pull they try and have over me.
Recently, I’ve really been struggling with emotions of despair and hopelessness. It seems like if I give into them for a mere moment, I start to drown in a deep hole that feels endless. Typically, if I were a bit more rooted in faith, I’d be able to come out of them quicker. But, I’ve been beaten down lately. Struggling with faith, in a season of trials.
Sometimes it feels challenging to see and accept that these emotions aren’t the truth, and that there really is another way. I guess that’s because emotions are basing themselves off of what they see, sense, and have experienced… rather than the ultimate truth of God’s reality.
They are the cries of our soul.
When our soul is in anguish, when we don’t see the hope or promise coming to pass, it makes “sense” as to why we’d be experiencing these heavy emotions. And for me, I’m such a feeler, that I can really get sucked into the emotional experience of it all.
It doesn’t feel natural to me to stay rooted in a place of neutrality. I’m typically wanting to swing from low to high, to bad to worse, good to greater. It feels challenging to simply rest in the unknown, the discomfort. To stay present in suffering, in the place of tension, knowing that it may not be good right now, but eventually God will work it out.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m struggling particularly with deep internal battles, like fear, unbelief, and feeling unloved… it feels even harder to distinguish truth from emotion. In other situations, I may be able to reason with someone else’s perspective on a situation, but when it’s a deeply personal battle that I feel understood in, I guess I want to hold onto that emotion, almost as a sense of identity and a thing that’s protecting me from outsiders who don’t “get” me.
I feel like my body and brain have been so accustomed to feeling and agreeing with all of these emotions for so long, that it takes a radical move of strength to get me out of where that tidal wave is trying to go.
What I sense the real work in this relationship with emotions is, is to distinguish the emotions that are more genuine to my core, the ones that would benefit from being expressed from a vulnerable place before God. And, the ones that really are not wanting to submit to the truth and just want to kick and scream.
Not to say that I need to shut those in a closet and force them to be quiet, but there needs to be discernment. There needs to be a maturing in my walk with these things so that I can actually see clearly and work through them, rather than spit out in them.
Emotions can interrupt our wellbeing on so many levels. If hard emotions are left unchecked for too long, they can create a really sticky, depressed mindset that feels hard to break out of. Not to mention, they can create a whole host of health issues and an overall sense of being unwell. (I know this well.)
If we take a step back and see how much emotions actually do affect our lives, it only makes sense that we invest a lot more care into understanding and working through our emotions.
I think I’ve gone from two extremes…. One, shutting down my emotions and just trudging through despite how I feel, and two, succumbing to whatever I’ve been feeling and getting completely knocked down on my butt because of them.
My most recent experiences have looked like the latter. And I’m exhausted.
But, by the grace of God, I’m learning to reign myself in and come back to truth. To actually see what’s happening.
Because honestly, they haven’t done much of anything good for me. No personal breakthroughs, no sincerely beautiful moments of release with God. Just me, kicking and screaming in despair, without hope in sight.
So, this process of discernment….I don’t think it actually is a process, I think we all probably do have this discernment already.
Maybe a question I can start to get more rooted in myself is “Is this emotion drawing me near to God, or further from Him?’
Not in terms of, “Is this a good emotion (happy, pleased, excited)” or “is this a bad emotion (angry, sad, depressed)…
But, sincerely, is the emotion in me creating a soft heart in me to draw near to God? Is my heart broken and I am recognizing my need for His love and comfort? Am I feeling burdened by my own anxieties and feeling crippled by them, needing to share my heart with God so He can help me find rest again?
Or am I kicking and screaming, shutting Him out, angry at Him, wanting to be validated in my emotional turmoil?
Not saying that God doesn’t meet me in both, or that the latter emotional expression doesn’t have a deep, genuine core of fear or neglect that God wants to heal.
But this is about me addressing my own position in my relationship with God. If I showed up to my husband kicking and screaming, and he validated me for that and did something through his words or actions to simply try and make me feel better and validate those fears …. Would that help me mature in myself? Would that settle the deep sense of unrest in my soul? I don’t know.
I think what we all seek, deep down, is true reconciliation with God. To be genuinely whole. And that doesn’t come from validating stories that aren’t rooted in His truth over our lives. It comes from sincerely working our way through and out of those stories and finding full healing from our wounds. It comes from embracing the fullness of what God has for us, now, as adopted and redeemed children.
What we deeply want, is to be seen in our pain, and to experience the care and comfort of a God who loves us in that place. To be children of a holy, loving, and perfect God that we can trust and run to.
Maybe our expressions of kicking and screaming are just our attempts as little children to say “I’m hurting! Help me” Maybe that’s just how we learned to get attention from our caregivers when we were younger.
I think on an even deeper level than addressing my emotions, what I’m really learning here is to understand the needs of my heart.
My need to be comforted. To be nurtured. To have someone there for me when I’m hurting and tell me that it’s going to be okay.
And not only that I need those things, but that I do genuinely have them with my Father.
I don’t have to go off the deep end trying to get His or anyone else’s attention. I can just be here with Him and share with Him what I’m struggling with.
Have you ever had this experience of being so honest with God in your heart, that is almost seems like your sharing or prayer in that moment went directly to His heart? It’s a sense of “Oh, He really heard me there.”
That might sound foreign to some people, but I’ve had this experience of when I’m being fully real with God. And unfortunately, sometimes it has taken me working through a lot of emotional chaos to get to that point of “God… this is actually what I’m feeling.”
It's coming from a place of trust. A place of recognizing who I am in relation to God.
If I could just find a way to cut through the chaos to get to the root of what I’m actually feeling, and then to take that to God in faith to help me…. Wow. That would be great.
Maybe what God is showing me in all of this is how to get the needs of my heart met. Maybe I actually am learning how to be a daughter that trusts her Father to fully support her, while also learning how to stand on my own two feet, in faith of His strength and love for me, without collapsing into lies.
As absolutely messy as this process has been, I think it will be well worth it.
<3
Have you had any breakthroughs in your relationship to emotions in your walk with Christ? Please share any heart reflections you'd like on this topic in the comments below!