Thoughts on Feelings

I had an experience recently that I has me examining my tendency to temper my own feelings before I even give myself the chance to feel them.

A writer that I have been following for a few years has recently announced her engagement. That is super exciting, right? However when I saw the announcement, I immediately felt betrayed. This was a woman who was leading and teaching thousands of people around the world how to thrive as single people living in a Christian culture that elevates and idolizes marriage and struggles to connect to single people. And here she was, on Valentine's Day, announcing her engagement after keeping their whole relationship a secret.

I felt so angry. Hurt. Wounded. Betrayed.

My initial reaction to my feelings was to talk myself off of the ledge.

Of course it made sense for her to not publicly share her relationship - it is none of our business and it allowed them to build a lovely, God-centred relationship which is so, so good!

I should be happy and excited for her! She has an incredible man of God at her side, who am I to be jealous or upset?

I am not a victim here! She didn't "do" anything to me.

And yet, I couldn't deny these emotions roiling through me. A year ago, I would have tried to explain away the uncomfortable feelings while they lived on in my body, draining my energy as I tried to stuff them away and keep them in the back of my mind so that I did not have to acknowledge them.

No one willingly chooses discomfort. No one looks forward to heartache and difficult feelings, but by pushing them aside, we actually allow them to fester.

I've struggled for years with pushing down my feelings and ignoring them. I am a thinker. I analyze and try to see things from different points of view. I try to walk in other people's shoes. And sometimes when I do that, I don't step back into my own and therefore don't let myself truly process what is happening in my head, my heart, and my body.

A couple of months ago, this really caught up to me when, while at a workout class, I had a panic attack. Full on hyperventilating, uncontrollable tears, racing heart. I had to step out and try to calm down, and it took a while for the storm of emotions to pass before I was able to pick myself back up.

Want to know what set me off?

The coach had kindly helped me modify an exercise I was having difficulty with.

In that moment, my body remembered the verbal and emotional abuse I had experienced by a coach 10 years earlier, and all the repressed stress, anxiety, hurt, anger, and confusion flooded my system once again.

Was it embarrassing in the moment? Absolutely.

Did I feel a sense of relief afterwards? Surprisingly, yes.

You see, for every moment of abuse I have experienced and shoved down deep, for every uncomfortable and difficult feeling that I have packed away so that I don't have to deal with it, I will have a reckoning.

And that's ok.

I want to experience difficult emotions that I am feeling in the moment, and I want to unpack all of those moments of hurt so that I can let go and experience the healing that God has promised us.

One of the best examples of this is King David. He felt all the feelings. The book of Psalms is full of his prayers, crying out to God in all kinds of circumstances. When thing were going great and there was peace in his heart. Times when his enemies were at his throat. When he was full of guilt and remorse. When he stood in awe of creation.

Letting God into our hearts, being vulnerable with our Heavenly Father - that is how we begin to build a deeper relationship with Him. That is how we begin to discover His character and His heart. That is when the healing comes.

With vulnerability comes intimacy, and we can't have either of those if we are constantly denying and ignoring what is occurring in our own hearts.

I know what it's like to hold back. I know the fear of vulnerability.

As someone who tends to live in my thinking and ignore my feelings, I am really good at ignoring discomfort. But when I ignore difficult feelings, I am ignoring a part of myself. And if I ignore it, how am I supposed to invite God into it?

As Brene Brown teaches, we have to lean into discomfort. So that is my challenge. To myself, and to you. Give yourself permission to feel it all. Even the stuff that you think God would be ashamed of if you brought it to him. After all, 1 John 1:5 says, "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (ESV). That is a promise from our Heavenly Father. One that I intended to hold close as I learn to be vulnerable and let Him into the broken parts of my heart.