During a recent, early morning drive to the hospital, my mind took a turn for the worse. It was 7:00 in the morning, the day was beautiful, I was headed to a job that I love, nothing had gone amiss with the day...and yet, negative emotions began to percolate as I drove. The percolating turned into battering and soon I was nearly ready to cry from a (bizarrely vague) sense of frustration.
The rational part of my brain would try to explain these crazy emotions saying, "you're just tired," "maybe you're hormonal?" "I'm sure it's nothing." The emotional part of my brain would fire back with, "it's not nothing!" "I'm not tired!" and "stop blaming everything on hormones" (Though, as we've written before, sometimes it IS about the hormones :P, ) and most importantly, "SOMETHING IS WRONG!!!!"
Back and forth, my mind argued with itself. The skirmish started to include a rapid fire assault of little, picky, nasty thoughts that only made the internal battle worse.
Thoughts like, "I bet Paul is upset that you woke him up to say goodbye," (sidenote: he wasn't. He didn't even care. He went right back to sleep and even slept in, and that was heaven : ) "you looked old today," "You're not really a very good mom," "they don't really need you at work," "why are you such a whiny baby," "you should have been more productive yesterday." On and on, little negative thoughts would bubble up and mix with the swirl of negativity causing exasperated tears to seep out of the edges of my eyes.
But then, just when I was starting to spiral, when the negative emotions felt suffocating, when my thoughts were gathering and tipping dangerously close towards the Does-God-Love-Me/Does-He-Care type, and when the tears were about the spill I heard the Holy Spirit very clearly speak (yell? Use a bull horn?) to me. And he said,
"STOP."
Our brains are sometimes (oftentimes, probably) inscrutable. Things happen inside that gelatinous wonder that are both astounding and befuddling. Jennie Allen, in her book "Get Out of Your Head" makes the statement that one of the greatest spiritual battles being fought by our generation is being fought between our ears. The way that we handle our minds, it's thoughts and emotions has the potential to define us as people and the church as the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the helper who offers strength and wisdom when facing these decisions. Now, it's true that sometimes, the Holy Spirit's leading is hard to discern. We wonder how to proceed, what to do, or where to go. But just as often, the Holy Spirit sends us simple, all-caps, single-word instructions.
Yesterday morning, I had to decide what type of Christ-follower I would be when it came to listening to the Spirit and dealing with the emotions of the moment. However, before I share the end of the story (a nail biter for sure!), I should tell you how I define "emotions," and how I believe we should respond to them.
First, emotions are the reporters who respond to events, both internal or external. For any number of reasons, my emotions were distinctly negative yesterday morning (shame, guilt, fear etc.) Sure, I knew the stimuli some were responding too (um, hello bathroom mirror, bathroom scale) but some were seemingly out of left field. But regardless of whether I knew the origin, I had to remember that those emotions were rising from some precipitating event. This is important. Often, in our rush to "fix" situations we forget to ask, "what started this??" WHY is my child melting down when nothing seems to be the matter? WHY is my husband feeling snarky and sarcastic (hint: it might just be because he needs to eat a granola bar : ). WHY am I suddenly filled with guilt when thinking about mother's day? The emotion rises from something...again, sometimes obvious (you just said a really mean thing to me and I feel hurt) sometimes not so obvious (I drove past something that inadvertently reminded me of a really horrible time in my life and now I suddenly feel sad or remorseful.) If you have time, try to get to the bottom of what the emotion is reporting on. Peel the onion. Dig a little deeper. In my case, it turned out that wondering if Paul was upset with me caused me to start thinking about all the reasons people, in general, might be upset with me, how I might be letting them down and how I was pretty much just a failure at every and all things. Spiraling for sure.
Second, emotions aren't instruction manuals. This is a hard thing to accept and act on. It often seems like we can't escape the tacit imperatives that emotions scream at us. You MUST avoid that situation because it is unknown or frightening. You MUST judge that other person and say something cutting in order to feel better about yourself. For me, when the emotion of anger wells up in my heart as a response to something my child did (after I specifically told him NOT to) it may seems like I have no option but to retaliate, using my words to hurt, using my silence to wound, or using my passive aggressive actions to harm. These actions are not right. Rather, I have a choice in the way that I respond to an emotion.
I HAVE A CHOICE. (Though, let's just all have a moment of stark honesty and admit that we really REALLY wish that we didn't, right?) Everyday I will have internal and external stimuli, responding emotions, and the corresponding thoughts that can lead me down a path devoid of faith in God or his promises. CAN lead me, not MUST lead me. Jennie Allen says, "Capture the thought...have the courage to face that defining, destructive thought and interrupt it [saying] I have a choice."
This ability to choose our path makes us human, not just a bundle of instincts and physical reactions. When God made us imago dei (in his image) he made us with free will which means we have the ability to choose. It's helpful to recall that Jesus was human too, and he made choices. He was beset with external stimuli (and maybe internal? I'm not sure, those are deep theological waters dealing with the hypostatic union : ) which caused an emotional response. News of a friend's death...sadness. The sight of corruption in the temple...anger. Little children running to sit in his lap...joy. Watching a companion get puffed up with pride...exasperation. In short, Jesus FELT emotions deeply but they never led him to making poor choices. When Jesus was facing the very real temptations in the wilderness, he faced the same type of Does-God-Love-Me/Does-He-Care situations that I face. And he chose to believe God's word more than the cunning lies that Satan presented to him. We must both rest in his finished work and righteousness AND fight to believe God's voice when all the lies of our heart well up in us. After the scale, mirror, sleeping husband, memory, sign, or unknown trigger prompted my emotions to scream "all is lost!!!" I had to obey the simple call of the Spirit to stop and then remind myself of truths that say, "God is for me, there is hope."
So by lunch time, after I made the decision to not follow the negativity and instead focus on the very real and hopeful promises of God, the emotions of the morning had pretty much faded. Again, this wasn't a battle for the ages here, this was just a morning skirmish. A skirmish that I won with help from the Holy Spirit, truth, and some good old-fashioned self-control.
You will probably face similar skirmishes today. Or maybe you are fighting an all-out war against truly powerful emotions and resulting thoughts. May I encourage you to keep fighting to not let the emotions and negative thinking win. May I encourage you to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit because he gives the best advice.
And finally, if you find that fighting the battle alone is just exhausting, may I encourage you to reach out to someone (write to me, I'm always happy to be a listening ear!) and share the struggle? It's a whole other blog post, but we are meant to battle together, locking arms so that when one stumbles, the others in the battalion can lift him up. Find a fellow believer who will give you support, encouragement, warm coffee and a listening ear. After all, you are not alone in this. We're all human, and as humans we are more alike than we are different.
Caveat: In this post I'm speaking of normative emotional struggles. Some are huge and some are small, but the ones I'm thinking of are things that humans tend to face at baseline. For someone struggling with emotions that swing outside normative boundaries, perhaps as the result of an injury, illness or impairment, this post might only represent a small part of your fight. And that's ok. It takes courage to look for help beyond the coffee and listening ear. You might need a medication that assists you in either ignoring the loudness of your emotions or calming them down before they get overwhelming. You might need to make regular visits to a specialist who offers advice and instruction that's not easily found outside of their office. All of these things are good and warranted. God gave us access to amazing helpers and amazing therapies -- we should avail ourselves of these blessings and see them as one of his means of providing for our needs.
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