A Sometimes Emotional Mess

It started with a simple task, to pick out a birthday card for a loved one. I saw the Mother’s Day cards were out and thought while I am here I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way. Picking out a Mother’s Day card is never easy.

As I stood there reading card after card I wondered, do mother and daughters really have the kind of relationships that are spoken of on these cards? I kept reading, trying to find just the right one. As I read I could feel my heart beginning that ever so familiar journey toward deep sadness.

I should have just paid for my birthday card and left, but no, I kept reading. I allowed myself to feel the pain, the longings and the loss once again. It was stupid I know. I had a choice and chose to “go there.” Then I allowed it to effect my entire day. Okay if I am really honest I allowed the cloud of sadness to hang around for days.

The pain, the loss, the longing of wanting something I never had is a very real emotion. It is an emotion many struggle with on various levels. I’m not always sure how to handle my emotions, whether they are right or wrong, truth or lies. I often need help sorting through them because growing up I learned to stuff emotions and not deal with them.

Now God has me on a journey toward understanding the complexities of my emotions and the gift that they are. Right now I have the deep ache of loneliness inside me. I feel very alone, forgotten even. Those feelings could send me down a spiraling descent of self pity. They could cause me to run to my friends trying to get them to fill it. But I make the choice to run to God. The deep ache in my soul right now is not sin. It is not a wrong emotion. It is only sin when we allow it to propel us to anything or anyone but God.

I am learning that God gives us the gift of emotions – even the painful side of emotions. We need to make the choice to run to Him when we are feeling lonely, forsaken, afraid, fearful, and discouraged. It is only in Him that we are given what we need.

I am confident that Jesus understands my loneliness. I am sure while on earth He also experienced feelings of isolation, being forsaken by His friends, rejected and lonely. When He experienced these emotions He went to His father and continued pursuing that which He came to do.

There are many days I want to return to that place of denying my emotions exist. I am so often tempted to stuff and pretend that I do not feel alone, but instead I choose to walk in truth.

The truth? I do feel alone in my journey at the present. I feel there is no one to listen, to share with, to process with me, to hear my heart crying. But those feelings are just that, feelings. They are lies of the enemy who would love for me to hide and return to that place of stuffing and pretending. I can make a choice to return there or go to my Father.

I choose to go to my Father and allowe Him to fill those places, to speak life into my soul. He does that through His precious word. Then and only then can I reach out to my sisters.