To Stir Up...

A few weeks ago, I posted about emotions and being honest with them and not trying to hide them. I promised more posts on that topic, yet here I am, weeks later...still struggling with how to be honest and open.  There are so many thoughts swimming in my head about this, so many emotional struggles that I'm wrestling with at the moment, so many things that I'm still learning, that I've been fighting with what words to say.  So bear with me while we figure this out together...

I talked briefly in that last post about realizing that my emotions are not a curse, not a hindrance, but instead are a gift; something that makes me more like my Creator, not something that pushes me further from Him. That, I think, has been the biggest lesson I've learned on this journey of emotional honesty.

Thoughts from an emotional girl...

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.