“The moment we learn how to feel our feelings and not run from them or judge them, we free up all that energy we were pouring into not feeling them all those years. We’re then able to live life as it was meant to be lived, complete with highs and lows and joy and grief and mourning and dancing and love and sometime loss. We get all the shades of existence where only gray used to exist.”- Jennifer Allen
Jennifer Allen concludes Chapter 14 of Untangle Your Emotions with gifts three to five.
Gift #3: We get God. As you grow in wholeheartedness and health, this benefit results. On an increasing basis — seemingly without having to will it, you start bringing your feelings to Jesus. Before you try to make sense of them on your own. Because if we avoid taking our feelings to God, our emotions are likely to overtake us.
We are not our emotions. Nor do those emotions last forever. Above all, Jennifer boldly states: God longs to use our emotions to help us become better at living this thing called life.
Gift #4: We control what we can, and we stop trying to control the things we can’t. Certainly, it’s possible to control some aspects of life. But so much of life remains outside our control. In addition, sometimes we’re able to interrupt some thoughts. Yet, other feelings refuse to go away no matter what we do. Most significantly, God want to be in all of it with us.
Gift #5: We start creating again. Life comes with rhythms. Hence, we expect to experience ups and downs, to go through seasons in our time on earth. And we begin creating again as we start to make progress in our emotional healing.
Therefore, Jennifer exhorts:
“God wants to go wild through us, for us, but if we ignore or get tangled in the ropes meant to bring Him and others close to us, we are missing all of it; the creating, the loving, the peace, the connection, the hope, the very best parts of our short life here.”
Today’s question: What most helps you experience all the shades of existence? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Fight for joy, sad, angry, fear”
