The past few years have been a great experience for me. I've finally gotten to know and understand myself in a way that I should have done years earlier. I've learned what makes me tick, my strengths and weaknesses, my love languages, and what tugs at my heart strings more than I've ever taken the time to understand before. It's made me more in tune with those around me and how things affect me. It's revealed some deep seeded truths to me. It's helped me express myself more honestly and without shame.
Most of all, it's shown me how I'm made just the way God knit me together and it's shown me how His character is built into me and how He can use that for His good.
I've always been an emotional person. For the majority of my life, I've tried to suppress that. Let's be honest - most of us usually view "emotional" as the equivelent of "weak". That's the way the world works and if we want to be seen as strong people, we can't let our emotions get in the way. So since I wanted to be perceived as a strong, independent female, I tried to push my emotional side back down where no one could see how "weak" I truly was.
Now, I see that I was terribly misunderstanding emotions. I was letting the world define my emotional nature, and not the One who made me that way.
I can't tell you how freeing it was to realize that...
To finally understand that my emotions have a purpose and are what makes me who I am is a beautiful thing. To watch others who haven't come to that realization is heart wrenching.
Yes, our emotions can cause us to make bad decisions. Yes, our emotions can distract us from the Truth.
But our emotions can lead us to follow the will of our Maker and can teach us how to love like Love Himself, if we'll just come to understand those emotions and how we process them.
For too long, we've tried to learn how to "control" our emotions. Go ahead and check out a book on emotions or surf the bloggy world for a few minutes, you'll find lots of ways to "control your emotions before they control you" and "manage" your emotions, etc.
We've been dealing (or not dealing, frankly) with our emotions in exactly the wrong way for far too long.
Our emotions are not something to be "controlled". They are a tool, given to us by a God who asks us to use them, to focus them, for His good. Instead of trying to push them back down, we should be learning what they can teach us about ourselves and about our Creator. Instead of trying to appear strong and like we've got it all together, we should be using them to show our vulnerability and tenderness and letting God show how strong He is.
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