My Feelings on Feelings

Thinking about it, I have been an emotional mess my whole life.  Ask my mom and she will tell you about the time when I was 2 and she found me crying hysterically in front of the television because of a show I was watching where a little boy built a snowman that became his friend and it melted.  As a child, I can remember being afraid to open a Christmas gift from my grandma because I was unsure of what might be in the box and I was afraid it was going to be scary (really?? Who does that??).

Fast forward to teenage years and I can tell you how I used to cry at the drop of a hat and get my feelings hurt even easier.  If someone looked at me wrong, I would get hurt.  If someone said something wrong, I would cry.  It was a constant battle in my head over pleasing people but never feeling like quite enough.  And worrying?  Don't get me started.  I would literally throw up before every first day of school and the looming pressure that it brought.  And if I had an important test or assignment, you can bet that I was driving everyone in my life crazy looking for reassurance that it would be okay and that I would do fine.  I can even remember my mom having to drive me to take my very last teacher certification test in college because I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to pass it and was too distraught to drive myself.  Silly girl.

Even when I became a full-fledged "grown up" and started my career, I never stopped with the emotional rollercoasters.  While teaching, if a parent wanted to meet with me, I immediately felt a pit in my stomach and just KNEW that I was going to get reamed for doing something wrong.  Even when I realistically knew I had done nothing wrong, it didn't matter.  I created something in my mind.  And you know what?  Never ONCE did it turn out to be something bad.  A lot of the time it was to thank me for helping their child. But I cheated myself and gave myself many hours and days of worrying over something that was intended to bring me joy.

And boy, oh boy, did becoming a mother send me into emotional overload.  Granted, I had just given birth but I can remember a sweet little old lady hospital volunteer bringing a "New Mommy" basket into my room the day Brian was born.  Tucked inside was a little bonnet that turned into a  handkerchief with a sweet poem about how a little girl could carry it on her wedding day, and a little boy could give it to his future bride.  Right then and there I went into hysterical mode and was crying so hard I couldn't catch my breath.  Literally, in my head in that one minute I was attending my 5 hour old son's wedding and having to let him go.  HE.WAS.5.HOURS.OLD.  Give me a break, Jessica.  I would've liked to blame that instance on the hormones of giving birth, but truthfully I could still have totally seen that happening when Brian was 6 months old.

What I am getting at is that I could sit here and write page after page of examples of how I let my emotions and feelings completely control my life in a negative way.  Not only would they lead me down a path of negative thinking (I mean ALL THE TIME) but it actually made me HATE that part of myself.  Slowly (and I mean slowly) through the years I am learning that God gave me a tender heart for a reason.  Even though I choose to use it negatively a lot of the time, it is also what makes me compassionate and care so much.  So I have always been desperate to try to turn my emotional self into something positive.  But it is so hard.  I have to literally TALK to myself at times to stop from going down that negative, obsessive, crazy road.  It works sometimes and I spare myself the pain.  But sometimes it is like a car that is about to crash and I have no clue whatsoever how to keep it from happening.

It has become even more important to me over the last 2 years to break this cycle in my life.  This week I started reading Joyce Meyer's book "Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You".  Her approach is in line with what God's word has to say about feelings and is backed up by so many scriptures that tell me exactly what I know to do: STOP.  But she also gives some practical ways to apply that knowledge to make it easier to accomplish.  I am nearly finished- I just can't put it down.

Today some things happened that would normally send me on the wild goose-chase of "oh my goodness this can't be happening this is the worst thing ever what am I going to do!?!?"  I literally started physically responding to what happened by getting that sinking feeling, sweating, just FEELING the worry.  But this time I consciously (not because it was my first instinct) stopped and just gave each of those feelings to God.  I logged on to my YouVersion account and typed out a prayer because I was already at the point of not being able to form a coherent prayer in my mind. I have to tell you, instead of taking the plunge into full-fledged emotional overload my spirit was comforted in knowing that God knows all about it and all about how I feel and HE is handling it. I actually was able to stop it with God's help.  That was a huge victory to me.  I pray that I can continue getting out of this cycle in my life and learn to do this in every situation from this point on.  If you are anything like me (which you probably aren't- I am nuts) I completely recommend this book as a starting point.

And something else that I always find comfort in at times when I want to pray so badly but cannot find the words is that I don't need to.  God knows what every tear, every sigh, every breath means because He loves me that much.