Feel, Learn, Respond

Rhonda (a BoW member) inspired me to write this with her post “It’s Okay to Feel Your Feelings”. I commented on her post, but wanted to share with anyone who may be following my posts as well as retain my thoughts about the subject on my own blog. Thanks Rhonda for a provocative post.

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On to my post…

I view emotions as symptoms, but I think many people see them as problems or blessings. As symptoms, emotions tell us what’s really going on inside of us, when most of us are busy putting on masks for others (and even try to fool ourselves), our emotions (as long as we’re willing to feel them) clue us in to our true reality, which allows us to learn from them and do something about it.

As a parent, my responsibility is not to teach my children not to “cry” (or feel other emotions). My responsibility is to teach them how to appropriately express their emotions, how learn from what those emotions are teaching them, and how to figure out what to do about it. For example, it’s ok to feel anger, but how my children express that anger, learn from that anger, and respond to that anger is my responsibility to teach.

Feel… Learn… Respond

To try to convince yourself that you’re not angry (or sad or whatever) is simply repression – it doesn’t deal with the root cause of the emotion. As Christians, a healthy response is to recognize the anger, and then seek out council (Bible, prayer, pastor, etc) on the root cause of the anger and how to deal with that specific situation that is creating anger within you. Repression is only a temporary tactic – you will deal with the emotion sooner or later.

On the other side of the emotional spectrum, joy and peace are examples of symptoms of a state of connection with our Lord. They are natural “fruit” of our relationship with Him. We don’t seek peace, we seek Him and peace is produced. We don’t seek joy, we seek Him and (true) joy is produced.

In a personal relationship, happiness is not the blessing, the healthy and fruitful relationship is the blessing and the emotion (happiness) is the symptom (fruit – and rotten relationships produce rotten fruit).

What do you think? 

How would you expand on what’s written above? Do you have any examples from your experience? Please use the comments to let me know!