Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » Emotional Healing

Navigating Uncomfortable Waters

Mikki — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:10:14 +0000

I like comfort. My personal choice is easy, painless, risk-free, non-confrontational living. God, however, seems quite at peace with asking me to be uncomfortable. In fact, He is somewhat insistent on stretching me, requiring me to face my own unhealed stuff, and gently reminding me that comfort does not always equal His will or purposes in my life or in the life of those I love.

I have found that God is not hesitant to ask me to walk through wilderness, desert, north winds, and mountainous terrains of my soul and spirit. The lessons I have learned as I have faced the uncomfortable places have greatly transformed me.

I think that most of us who are believers in Christ can identify many situations where God has asked us to be uncomfortable. From my salvation on, I can think of times when God’s invitation was to allow Him to change me IN AND THROUGH the uncomfortable place.

Why would God choose to work that way?

God, who knows each of us so intimately, much more than we know our own selves, has a plan for us. Scripture tells us that He intends for us all to be “conformed into the image of His own dear son.” This transformation requires change. Most of us resist change. We cling to what we know, even when it is not working.

Emotional and spiritual discomfort can teach us so much. When I feel uncomfortable emotionally, I ask myself, “What is going on underneath this discomfort? Am I afraid? Angry? Feeling a need to control? A need to rescue when God is not asking me to? What is God saying?”

A truth that has deeply influenced me in the last few years is something my counselor told me once. He said something like, “It’s not your job to make things comfortable for people in your lives but rather to help them mature.” He challenged my mindset and asked me to consider thinking differently. I have found that my default response of trying to fix things for others often was a detriment between them and God, them and their path of maturity, them and their opportunity to grow.

I have learned, most of the time, to back off in the moments when I sense others are struggling to express themselves, or struggling to deal with their stuff, or struggling to be responsible, or… . In other words, I have learned not to rescue others from discomfort. I have learned not to be so uncomfortable with discomfort – mine or others!

While I have learned to back off fixing other people’s discomfort, I have also learned to embrace my own discomfort. I have learned to look at it as a gift when it is a result of God asking me to change or showing me a place where I need healing.

We can opt out of facing our discomfort. God’s heart for us doesn’t include forcing us, having created us with a free will. Yet He invites us to live fully and to allow Him to change us.

So the next time you feel that inner discomfort, ask yourself if it is an invitation from God. Perhaps He is signaling you that your uncomfortable waters are a part of His beautiful plans.

Navigating Uncomfortable Waters

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How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions

Mikki — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:14:02 +0000

What emotions are you feeling right now? Can you name what is happening inside your inner world? Could God be speaking to you through your emotions?

Are you annoyed, ashamed, confused, hurt, depressed, jealous, anxious, fearful, stressed, angry, or sad?

While it may sound like a simple task to name what emotions you are experiencing, I haven’t always been able to do that and I’ve found in my work as a therapist, that many, many folks are not able to accurately name what is happening inside them.

One part of my journey during the last few years has been getting connected to my true heart and my emotional life.

I vividly remember taking an Anger Inventory at a ladies’ retreat a few years ago. I had organized the event for our church ladies’ group. A therapist friend of mine, Susi Harbour, administered a personality test and an anger inventory to our entire group, including the other speakers I had invited. I remember being shocked at the results of both my test and the tests of the other leaders who were seated around my table. My score indicated that I was rarely angry; it was actually more like a non-existent score. I’ve since told my friend, Susi, that she should have pulled me aside at that point and scheduled an intervention immediately! You see, what that screams to me now is that I was out of touch with my heart, unable to express my anger, and needed to learn new skills for handling intense emotions.

The other women at my table were, well, fireballs at times! Their intense emotions were strange to me. Could it be acceptable to feel such a range of emotions? Was it godly?

Within six months, my husband and I were in the middle of a terrible crisis and I found myself struggling to survive emotionally. Time and time again, I answered our counselor with a resounding, “No”, as he quizzed me as to whether or not I had shared my feelings about certain situations with my husband.

A long, long season of examination and growth have taught me that there were, in fact, lots of intense emotions in my heart, but I didn’t have a clue how to share them or feel safe with their intensity. And while that may be foreign to some of you, I had grown up in a home where avoidance and denial were our ways of relating. That does not mean that we didn’t have love, we did. You see, we should value the positive things in our lives, and yet move to change the negative.

Is it okay to be angry? Are we sinning when we are angry?

Scripture clearly answers such questions. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are shown to have intense emotions, including anger. Certainly, the Godhead is holy, and experiences anger. But can we?

We have guidelines in the Word about how and how not to express our intense emotions, including anger. I’ve learned that anger usually comes from hurt or fear, and therefore must be attended to.

God gives us emotions as signals. These signals can tell us when our boundaries have been violated, when we have sinned and failed to repent, when we are living out of balance, when we are ignoring our physical health, spiritual health, mental or emotional health, and so much more.

So it stands to reason that if we are unable to properly name what is happening in our hearts, then we are not living from our truest heart.

Looking back, I can remember feelings of frustration, irritation, anger, fear, and more, and yet I couldn’t really name those feelings. You see, if I had attended to my feelings, I could have heeded the signals God was giving me. It might have changed nothing, but I would have been healthier emotionally. When my world fell apart, I eventually become severely depressed. Still unable to name or express my anger, loss, or grief, I turned it all on myself.

It’s been a long journey of learning new ways to relate and communicate and unlearning old dysfunctional ways.

I remember one day a year or so ago that I felt so angry at my husband. I went to him and spilled it all with intensity. When I stopped speaking, he smiled and clapped his hands and told me how proud he was of me for owning my feelings and sharing my true heart. We both laughed and enjoyed the moment that pictured how we both had grown.

Can we be led by our emotions in wrong ways? Certainly! Just as I had capped off and denied a lot of my emotions, others spew theirs in irresponsible ways and are led astray by their emotions. Either is unhealthy.

My journey has led me to live in more peace, more rest, and joy. No longer denying my emotions, I’ve connected to a more passionate life, both in my relationship with God and others. Passion and desire are God-given, and when used in healthy ways, allow us to live-fully here on the earth. There is only one word for desire in the New Testament. It can be positive or negative. It can lead us to truth and purpose-filled living or it can lead us to a life of sin.

I now regularly notice what my emotions are saying. When I feel disturbed, I stop and ask God what has happened. I can usually retrace my day back to a moment when I ignored my heart or spoke wrongfully or violated my healthy boundaries. In other words, I use my emotions as signals to tell me what is going on in my heart.

What are your emotions telling you today? Are you connected to God’s life-giving flow? Are you listening to how he may be speaking to you through your emotions?

Our life journey should include becoming increasingly emotionally healthy. After all, God made us body, soul, and spirit; our emotions are a part of our on-board equipment that God has given us all. Through a life in the Word, led by the Spirit, and connected to Christian community, our emotions can become powerful indicators so pursue living from the truest place in your heart! God is speaking!

How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions

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Emotions: Moses’ Journey and Our Invitation

Mikki — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:23:04 +0000

I felt as if I were inside Moses’ skin yesterday morning as I meditated on Deuteronomy 31. I identified with his emotions. It was a moment when the Holy Spirit opened my eyes through my own journey to glimpse into Moses’ heart.

Moses, who struggled long and hard with his personal abilities, the call of God on his life, had come to the end of 120 years. He had learned so much. He’d been transformed in so many ways.

He now stood confidently before the people he had led for the last forty years. The moment was painful for him and for his people. He must release them to another leader and he must do it in such a way that they don’t struggle to follow Joshua, the new leader. That took a good measure of strength, wisdom, and self-control. He loved this people. He had felt called to lead them for eighty years.

The first thing Moses said to his people was that he was just not physically able to lead them any longer because the days ahead would be challenging and would require the next generation to use their energy and youthfulness to face what was ahead.

And while this was completely true, somehow I felt that Moses was saying the easy thing first. It was his moment of connecting them to something they could accept more easily before he chose to share the more difficult truth.

This difficult was that God would not allow him to personally cross over the Jordan. Moses owned his personal truth. He shared it with his people even though perhaps he could have been tempted to limit this moment to the physical truth of his age. He was vulnerable before the people. Previously he had been tempted to hide his vulnerability. Now he embraced it.

Moses had grown as a leader. He spoke for himself instead of depending on someone else. He faced truth. There was no anger in his words. His heart was for his people. He was preparing them.

He assured them that the Lord Himself would be crossing over before them and dealing with their enemies. Then he comforted them by telling them that Joshua would be crossing over before them.

He admonished them not to be afraid. It is God who was leading them through others and God would continue to be faithful.

Moses had come to the place where it was no longer about him. He was secure in who he had become, a servant of God, a friend of God, a leader of the people. He led them courageously into a difficult transition.

He passed the baton, so to speak, to Joshua in front of the people. Moses was deliberate in his actions and his words. This moment was so important for the people and he knew it.

What had happened to the Moses who was impatient, who was angry, and who often felt incompetent? He had matured. He had allowed the work of God in his own heart. He had endured a lot of pain and difficult days.

Perhaps this was his greatest moment, even greater than choosing to leave the palace and identifying with the Israelite people, even greater than the Passover, even greater than leading the people through the Red Sea, even greater than when he received the Ten Commandments. Oh surely not, you might say but can you see the beauty of what was happening?

Moses stood before the people and led them from a place of acceptance, self-control, and vision. His personal struggles had quieted enough that he was aware of the big picture and the importance of the moment which was so much more than just about him and his passions and his call.

A moment when, no doubt, his emotions were sky high inside his chest. He was attune to his emotions but not enslaved to them.

Perhaps tears fill his eyes. This was no easy moment. Moses was giving up a dream, one which had cost him dearly to follow.

With grace and beauty, Moses led. He led without denying his personal failures. He led without anger towards God or others over his personal rights. He led with a compassion that had been tried in the furnace of tough days and purified.

The journey of Moses’ life is portrayed in the Scripture in real, raw, and relevant ways. He was not a perfect man, yet he loved his God and he kept on keeping on. He grew in his humanity and in his spirituality. At the end of his life, his emotions no longer controlled him, in part because he had learned to listen to them and find out what they were telling him about his soul and his God.

Where are you on the journey? Do you struggle with your personal call? Does its importance seem to overshadow the big picture of what God is doing in the kingdom? Do you need to find more self-acceptance and self-awareness? Do you need God’s purifying work in your emotional life?

Will you embrace the journey as an invitation from God which will prepare you for the greatest moments of your life?

Emotions: Moses' Journey and Our Invitation

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