I don’t value emotion as much as logic.
I especially don’t value negative emotions like sadness, anger, loneliness, hurt, and fear
I’m not as logical as I want to think I am.
Can these emotions I’ve described as “negative” ever be good? Grief is normal and healthy right? That’s not a “good” emotion. Even as I’m classifying emotions as either negative or positive, I think I’m missing something kind of big. I am trying to logically explain something that I don’t think is logical. Emotions seem to have a mind of their own. Sometimes they don’t seem to come as a result of something good or bad they just come out of us, like the stomach flu. Which leads me to my next thought: maybe emotions can be easily explained away scientifically, like hormones, or what I ate, or how much I slept, or my gender because I think we can all agree that those things at the very least play a role. To my husband, emotions are a choice, something that can be fixed or changed. I don’t think I agree, but I’m working it out.
Either way, explainable or not, I don’t want to have those emotions. I prefer being in control. I would rather be strong, reasonable and logical. Today negative emotions won. I was drowning in them. I was not logical or reasonable, and even when I tried to be I just couldn’t. I could only feel and I needed time to just feel for a while before my brain would work again. Yuck. Right now I think I’m treading water, keeping my head up, making sense of it. But I’m not that great of a swimmer and those pesky feelings seem to pull me down when I least expect it. Somewhere inside me maybe they still exist, maybe I’m just fooling myself.
But why do I think they’re bad?
David was emotional. Check this out: “I cry aloud to the Lord; I plead aloud to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before Him; I reveal my trouble to Him. Although my spirit is weak within me, You know my way….no one cares about me. I cry to You, Lord; I say, ‘You are my shelter, my portion in the land of the living.’ Listen to my cry, for I am very weak” Psalm 142
Here’s something God gave me today as I was feeling and thinking and asking God to please help me make sense of it.
Paul said, “we rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us”
Romans 5:3-5
Rejoice in our afflictions.
Afflictions=endurance=character=hope
Hope.
Hope is a “good” emotion; and affliction, although by my classification is “bad”, leads to hope. According to Paul, this isn’t just any kind of hope, but a hope that will not disappoint. I still can’t really make sense of it all, but I feel like maybe I’m starting to.
