Feelings And Faith

I’ve been feeling all the feelings for a little over three years. Anger, joy, sorrow, delight, hurt, contentment, rage.

I learned early that I wasn’t allowed to express emotions, unless they were deemed positive. I learned that Christians should be joyful 110 percent of the time. {Well, unless you were an adult behind closed doors. Anything was permissible then.}

I started stuffing my feelings so early I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.

Contrary to what I read in the Bible, I was taught that faith and feelings could not coexist. And, for heaven’s sake, to never trust or act on my feelings.

Being sensitive and emotional, stuffing my feelings was difficult for me. Any negative feelings usually bubbled up as anger because I didn’t know how to properly express my emotions. That’s still a struggle for me. I’m still mocked and chastised for being angry.

My inability to properly express myself also led to a lack of boundaries. And, whew! When you have no boundaries, it takes a long time to set and stick to them.

When I read about the life of Jesus, I see Him expressing anger and sorrow, even a bit of rage {Let’s face it . . . turning over tables isn’t a mild-mannered behavior. “Housewives of New Jersey,” anyone?} I also see Him setting boundaries with the Pharisees and the rich, young ruler.

We wouldn’t dare say that because Jesus expressed negative emotions and set boundaries that he exhibited a lack of faith. No . . . instead, he trusted his feelings, and in faith, acted upon them.

I’ve been living in the messy awkwardness of my feelings for nearly three years, trying to learn to embrace and trust those feelings, and trying to figure out how they coexist with my faith {and, sometimes, the lack of}. I’ve been learning that feelings aren’t positive or negative; they just . . . are. And if we weren’t supposed to feel all the feelings, perhaps He wouldn’t have given them to us.

Over the past six weeks, though, I’ve been stuffing fast and furious. I took one unwarranted and malicious, verbal chastisement to heart, playing it in my mind on repeat. I’ve stuffed with food, with tv shows, with sleep, with mind-numbing activities. I’ve withdrawn and quickly erected protective walls. I’ve wanted to push down the feelings of anger, hurt, sorrow, disappointment, and rage.

I know enough that when I stuff my emotions, I numb my feelings, which causes me to tune out the whisper of Holy Spirit. He speaks in the wind, through a book, in the words of friends, through lyric and melody, in the stillness of the night. So if I want to hear Him, I need to feel. And cry. And grieve. And I need to trust that those emotions are healthy for the situation. And I need to have faith that even if I turn over tables in anger in order to set boundaries, grace is sustaining me.