Wait, it's ok to feel?

Have you ever thought that emotion was sinful, or at least an irrelevant distraction from the important and significant things in life like love and faith and truth? I've always tried not to feel intense emotion about things, or at least to hide it if I couldn't help feeling it, because it always seems to get me in trouble! I've hurt so many people, including myself, with the anger that I feel; I've lost time and energy and been oblivious to the needs and joys of those I love because of the sorrow I feel; and I've alienated people and received their disapproval by expressing the crazy happiness and love I feel. It seems like I get a lot more approval from other people if I don't express or feel emotions, especially strong emotions. But then what do I do when I feel them? I can't be the only one who feels things so strongly that I sometimes think I might burst if I don't express it!

Most of the time, I show a little bit of my emotion and hide all the rest inside until a time when I'm alone or with people I'm more comfortable with, like my husband, and then let it all out. This is fun when it's a "positive" emotion like happiness or love, but can be really hurtful when it's a "negative" emotion like anger or sadness. I've lashed out at the people close to me undeservedly so many times in life, because I needed an outlet for the anger that I'd originally repressed. Is there a better way to deal with it than this? Stuffing it all in a bottle can't be the best solution when the bottle eventually explodes onto the people that I care most about in life, I think.

So it is with wonder, joy, and a bit of apprehension that I've been reading Matthew Elliott's book Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart. The title itself frightens me a little! It's like I believe that if I allow myself to honestly feel emotion it will inevitably lead to disaster, pain, and embarrassment. But is that belief really true, or just something I've been conditioned to think over the years? Elliott argues that God is both rational and emotional, and having been created in His image we are also both rational and emotional. One does not rule the other - they have to learn to work in tandem - and both have to be grounded in truth. They can both be used by God and they can both be co-opted by sin. Too often as Christians, he says, we teach and act as if calm dispassion and pure emotionless rationality are ideal, ignoring all the emotion that fills the Bible and is used even to describe the actions and characteristics of God. Instead of learning to repress and control our emotions, he suggests that we learn to understand and use our emotions in the way God intended. Even negative emotions can be thought of as counselors or friends that help us see problems in our beliefs, values, and patterns of thinking.

To me, this is a really new way of thinking. It kind of scares me to think of experiencing the power of emotion without the buffer of control. But at the same time it is so freeing. Can you imagine going through life without having to continually stifle that huge part of who you are, and instead get to use that part of you to grow spiritually and glorify God? I would love that so very much.