Episode #29: How to acknowledge your feelings but not stay stuck in them

Today we’re talking about how to acknowledge your feelings but not stay stuck in them.

Over the next 20 minutes, we’ll break down:

how to honor our emotions without being overwhelmed by them
so we can act in love

I feel a tension between, and maybe you feel it too, the desire to feel what I need to feel while knowing I can’t stay immobilized because I need to act. I know I can’t stay stuck in my frustration, irritability, and fog forever.

Y’all, I don’t want to stay stuck in my emotions for very long at all. I don’t want to miss out on what God is doing. I don’t want to be so self-absorbed in my own life that I miss out on what’s going on in the hearts of our girls. I don’t want to lose out on what this season has to offer because I felt like I was swimming in emotion.

I just want my feelings acknowledged. I don’t want to skip ahead without honoring what was lost. I don’t want to wallow in the heaviness but I do want time and space to feel it.

Because acknowledging what’s going on in our hearts and heads, honoring what was important to us, and feeling our God-given emotions, is part of what it means to be a human.

As my writer-friend Sarah Westfall says, “Emotions are the language of my soul, “which means that to ignore, stuff, or push down what I’m feeling strips away the voice of my soul. And I never want to do that.

So how can we try-hard girls, feel what we need to feel, and also be women of action?

How do we bridge the gap between:
Emotions and Effort?
Feelings and Forward progress?
Woe-is-Me and the Wisdom to see clearly?

The key to not letting our emotions steer the ship, according to Timothy Keller, is to sow our tears. Not to ignore them. Wallow in them. Or cater to them. But to sow them.

Keller shares three strategies and I’ve tacked on a fourth:

Celebrate that God welcomes all your feelings.
Remember the cross.
Focus on future glory.
Act with the agency you have.

To sow our tears, we celebrate God’s character.

He is the creator of all emotions and is surprised by none. God is holy and must be treated with respect, AND also we can come to Him and vent about what’s ticking us off, causing overwhelm, and bringing tears to our eyes.

To sow our tears, we must remember the cross.

Jesus suffered for us. He was physically crushed and wounded to the point of irrecognizability. And He did it not for Himself but for us. For the joy set before Him that through His sacrifice we could all be reconciled to God.

Remembering the cross doesn’t mean that my suffering is unimportant or not real. And it doesn’t mean I power through like Eeyore, like, “Well, if Jesus can endure the cross, I guess I can power through this.”

Remembering the cross gives us perspective on our own emotions and trials.

To sow our tears, we focus on future glory.

Suffering isn’t needless. It doesn’t last one minute longer than necessary. It has purpose.It produces within us patient endurance. And patient endurance will refine our character, and proven character leads us back to hope.

And hope doesn’t disappoint. Hope is our unfailing soul-anchor.

Now that we’ve sown our tears, we need to allow them to grow. We need to remove ourselves from them. So we act with the agency we have.

So much of life feels dictated to us right now that we wonder what we do have control over. It’s easy to sink into the pit of despair, right? So sometimes we must remind ourselves of the agency we have.

We have the agency to be kind to our kids.
We have the agency to pick up the phone and check on a neighbor.
We have the agency to speak life and encouragement to the cashier.

You do not have to ignore your emotions to make forward progress, and you don’t have to give in to every feeling.

You can allow your emotions — that language of your soul — to speak to you then you use that language to speak to God, who will move you to actively love others.

Key Quotes

You can allow your emotions — that language of your soul — to speak to you then you use that language to speak to God, who will move you to actively love others.
Acknowledging what’s going on in your heart and head is part of what it means to be a human.
Remembering the cross gives us perspective on our own emotions and trials.