Emotions pt. 2

So as I started in my previous post on Emotions...... it was my turn to share my testimony of how we had come to live in the local church community, and I started off well enough, I think.

Then I fell apart. I wept openly about moving, and how hard it was, and how sad I was. Thankfully everyone quickly rallied around me and prayed for me. The prayers were touching, but afterwards I felt so stupid.

I was so afraid I had totally overstepped some unspoken rule, like the rule about 'no overwhelming shows of emotion at first home group gatherings'.

That week I fretted, and felt embarrassed, until one day my husband came home and said he had run into one of the home group leaders. They said, "wow, it was great of your wife to be so open, it really broke the ice."

It was the first time I can recall ever being complimented for letting my true emotions come out in a group setting. It was the beginning of a new season where I began to understand more fully the way the Lord had created me to be. And to like myself at a level I had never dared to like before.

Somehow I had always felt so sure that my emotions were a flaw, not a fashioning. But the Lord made me, and my emotions!

I certainly had a thing or two to learn about how to control those emotions, but self control is a fruit of the Spirit, and therefore, can be cultivated with time and effort. Once you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, your ability to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit is assured. It just takes time and effort and allowing the Spirit to work in you.

So the emotions weren't the problem, and that, for me, was a heady revelation! They had purpose, and the Lord could even use them - even to 'break the ice'.

Now, in the handful of years since that time, I have learned more and more about how to use my emotions. How to curb them too, but all for the purpose of loving the Lord more fully. Through my words and actions AND emotions!

With that, has come a tearing down of those previous lies.
Lies that said:
Me and my emotions were too complicated to figure out. 
No one would ever want to be around such a mess of a person. 
No one could handle the real me, if they knew how I really felt, they would reject me. 
I must always seem simple and uncomplicated if I want to have friends.

What lies!!!! The Lord has shown me again and again that the real me is beautiful in His hands. He is using all of me to speak to others. I am not too messy. I am not rejected. I have lots of friends, and I can be the real me in front of them. My emotions are an asset.

And that is a beautiful truth that is worth the journey it took to finally understanding it.

So be blessed. You are beautiful too! You and your emotions.