"Dudette, feelings are allowed."
What? This is news to me. Ok, I know I sound like I'm being sarcastic, but in some ways I really am being serious.
I write about feelings a lot. And yet I definitely don't understand them or know if they're useful or should be listened to or felt.
But one thing I do know: They are real.
That doesn't mean they're valid, but I've already written about that.
But sometimes feeling are felt, and sometimes I try not to feel them because they don't seem useful, and sometimes I feel bad for feeling things so sometimes it feels better to just avoid them altogether.
Avoid them altogether. That's what facebook is for, right? Scroll, scroll, scroll. Avoid, avoid, avoid. I don't want to be left alone with my thoughts and feelings. Nope. I'll swipe open this little box I'm holding to find things to distract me from having to feel things. Oh, I see a sad thing and it makes me sad, but at least I'm reacting to the sad thing on facebook and not facing my own feelings about anything. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Now it's time for sleep. But I don't want to turn the light off or close my computer, because that means I have to let my brain takeover, and heaven forbid I do that! That would mean I'd have to think about the things in my mind. Or feel the feels in my feelings. AVOID!
Ah, my audiobook. Excellent. Now I can just tune into that, and tune out of my world.
Ok, the above is kinda bleak. Don't get me wrong, escaping into a book can be great. I really don't have a problem with that. Sometimes I cry when I'm watching a tv show because it hits home and there's a realness to it that I can relate to. That's all well and good. I don't think books or movies are bad things.
But I know that I can get into a rut of thinking that I need my audiobook to sleep. And sometimes I do. Sometimes I cannot get my mind to slow down unless I give it a familiar enough book that it's not worried it's gonna miss anything if it falls asleep. Sometimes I do need my audiobook to sleep so that I don't get my mind tangled in knots of worry. Sometimes I do need to distract myself.
When something is true it's a lot easier for it to get warped into something false. I can justify an action by pointing to some truth as proof. But I think everyone knows that there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. Kombucha is good for you. But you shouldn't drink it all day every day.
Sometimes I just don't want to deal with my feelings, and "Sometimes" can turn into "never".
I never want to deal with my feelings. I want someone else to deal with them. Can someone else please deal with my feelings? Fold them and put them away? No? Okay, then I'll just continue to avoid them.
"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much...."
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This post resonated with me. Two years ago, I was released from a great oppression in my life, prior to which I was not given the freedom to express my own feelings for two decades. Even prior to those two decades, my disposition is more of a listener. Before the empathy was burned out of me by those two decades, I generally preferred to feel the feelings of others over my own feelings. These past two years have been quite the journey of trying to reconnect with my own feelings: to see them as not only permissible, but also as a gift. God created us as whole beings, including our feelings! My pastor wrote a book on what he calls "Biblical anthropology," in which one of the points is that even the "bad" feelings like fear, anger, and guilt are gifts, because they can serve as warning messages that something is not right. It's like a little "check engine" light that tells me that in some area of my life, I am not truly trusting God or believing Him. That's a very useful gift indeed, and He must have given it to us because He loves us!
ReplyDeleteI am quick to permit myself to feel the "good" feelings, and quick to share with others feelings of joyfulness or gratitude, for example. But it's been pointed out to me that it doesn't work to have lopsided feelings. If we squelch the "bad" ones, we will actually emotionally flatline, and we won't feel the highs of the "good" ones either.
I think a major obstacle for feeling our own negative feelings is fear. What if the feelings take over and paralyze us? I'm a single mom; I can't afford to stop moving, because little ones depend on me. But in the end, it comes down to trust. Will God take care of not only me but also those who depend on me if I open my heart to him? The best way to handle any feelings, but especially those that seem scariest, is to pour them out to the Lord. That's why we have the imprecatory Psalms. David had no inhibitions about saying some truly awful things to the Lord (e.g. Psalm 137:9), and we can similarly unload every last ounce of our feelings onto the Lord. He can handle it. Honestly, most humans cannot. But He can, and He knew we had the feelings before we even spoke them to Him, so there's no need to hide, and He loved us before the foundations of the world if we are His children, so there's no need to worry about losing His love through honesty. What an irreplaceable gift are our feelings, and even moreso, what an irreplaceable gift is the Lord Himself to us!