Thank God for Emotions

What are we without our emotions—the faculties of the soul?

Certainly we’d be less than human. We are gravely to be forgiven for being emotional, for getting emotional—it’s the rawest ‘us’ there is; us, at our most authentic.

Emotions are the full spectrum of life, every colour of the spiritual rainbow, and the fullest expression of experience and existence. Emotions are the treasure of the privileged life; the bequest of God to the living being.

Reality And Emotion

Who can exist within reality and not become emotional?

We love our families and ours spouses and our children, and all these test our emotions, most often because of love. Even in our workplaces our emotions are tested.

And what reality reveals most of all is our weakness. Our emotions make us vulnerable yet, somehow, also reachable. Within the boiling pot of life there is the unpredictable nature. What we cannot predict we cannot organise responses to. Our plans are turned upside down in an instant. We plan, yes, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord (Proverbs 16:1). We do not control our incoming days, and even less our innate emotions, though we can learn to harness our emotions.

Reality tests us mostly regarding our conviction toward self-condemnation; if we are not careful our emotions condemn us. We languish in a filthy self-talk. We observe ourselves in a full emotional state and reason vanishes. Reality can be a cruel taskmaster.

But just as much, God holds the way open for us to notice the stability of our world within both emotional and unemotional spheres. At least with emotions we can feel.

The Blessedness Of Feeling

Nothing to be underestimated or be ungrateful for, the blessedness of feeling is the prize for humanity.

We may harness some of our emotion, whilst other emotion remains unkempt. Like a naked brumby certain situations continue to prove to be our emotional stumbling block as we kick and buck and hiss. But at least we are feeling. At least we are reminded we are human; fallible, unbrushed diamonds are we.

Being blessed in our feeling means we are not only weak, but we have the capacity to love, to be hurt, and to experience a loss. Not all this is good, but emotions are what make us human.

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Rather than complain that we are emotional creatures, it would be better to thank God that we can feel. To feel is not only to perceive betrayal, loss, and fear, it’s also about the capacity to love, to remain loyal, and to face threats with courage.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.