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Thoughts for a Woman's Heart |
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encouragement in things that matter |
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God and My Emotions
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I know there are a number of you who share my fate. According to personality type testing, I have been dubbed a "melancholy." Great. A gloomy brooder, serious and pensive – that’s me. Why couldn’t I be a fun-loving "sanguine"? Some personality type tests enter the animal kingdom and call melancholies, "beavers." With a compulsion for busyness, beavers are orderly to the point of being meticulous. "Lions" just roar. That sounds so much simpler. It seems that most melancholies don’t like being melancholies because of all that gloomy, brooding, serious, emotional "stuff" that tends to darken the personality or temperament. I do remember the day though that I stood in front of my mirror, looked myself in the eye, and told God, "It’s okay that You made me a melancholy." That was my point of acceptance of a very emotional side of me. When I look at God’s Word, I see emotion from cover to cover. In desperation, Hagar fled from Sarai’s harshness into the wilderness, and found the God of understanding. Hannah in her emptiness, wept bitter tears to God. David’s unworthiness and sense of guilt are evident in his prayer of penitence before the God he sinned against. Feeling inadequate for the task God had given him, Solomon was graced with wisdom. Shamed by twelve years of having an issue of blood, an unnamed woman wanted just to touch the fringe of Jesus’ garment. Mary and Martha, and Jairus, despaired with the sorrow that crushes the heart when a loved one dies, and for Jairus, it was his young daughter. The thief on the cross, deserving of his punishment, yet afraid of death, cried out for mercy. Enduring the pain of his "thorn," Paul beseeched God to remove it. And how many came to Jesus tormented in spirit, fatigued by broken bodies, defiled and rejected by leprosy, or confused by a world of darkness or silence? For all of these, their emotions and feelings found a connecting place with God, and in turn, God met each one in their need. I’m learning to not only accept, but also to fully embrace my emotions. They speak to me very vividly of the things that go on in my life, and they have become God’s way of saying, "Come to Me." Emotions are really a gift, and all of us have them. They help us to experience life, but I believe, God also gave them to us to draw us to Himself. |
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— Bev |
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