Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » Soul Care

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

Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..

Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin

What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (pt. 2)

Mikki — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:38:29 +0000

The question I have posed, what does it mean to have your soul restored, is an easy one – and a difficult one. Perhaps a first answer would include the return of our soul to God’s intended original condition. Surely restoration of a soul would include its return to its former dignity, if we speak in terms of returning to the glory of a soul as created by God.

This idea of restoration is what we, as followers of Christ, recognize as the ultimate plan of our Father. Glimpses of heaven as recorded in Revelation show us the restoration of all to God’s original plan. Acts 3:21 tells us that God is in the process of restoring all things.

The difficult part of defining restoration of a soul comes when we take a deep look into the mysteries of God.

Restoration is a process, perhaps not so easily defined as we might first suspect.

Every human soul is unique. Every soul has a story which encompasses the fullness of its history. Every human story includes pain, suffering, and the effects of the fall of man and sin which leave the soul wounded and scarred.

How do you feel about scars? In the natural, I don’t really like mine. I have scars from car wrecks, bicycle wrecks and motorcycle wrecks (yes, I had my own little cycle when I was much younger!). None of those wrecks were intentional, of course, but they are part of my story.

I have a nice little scar from cutting myself with an Alka Seltzer bottle back when Alka Seltzer came in a glass bottle. I have a scar from the first time I slipped behind my mother’s back and shaved my legs while at a friend’s house. Let me tell you that razors have improved!

I have a scar from my polio immunization. In fact, I have quite a few scars. You can see them and if you asked, I could recount some of the story of my life while telling you my ‘stories’.

All of my scars represent things which have happened during my life. I never intended to get wounded. Some of them represent my own sinful choices, some my carelessness, poor decisions, or immaturity.

Some of them represent things which happened to me by the hands of others.

None of my scars hurt any longer but when my injuries first happened, they were indeed painful. Then healing occurred. Restoration.

And while I would like to wipe away all my scars and have a perfectly scar-less body, I am unable to do so.

One look into heaven shows me my Savior with his scars still intact. Why did God choose to leave the scars on Jesus? Surely Jesus’ restoration to the right hand of God could have included (and would have if most of us had made the decision) the wiping away of the scars. But the scars of Jesus tell the story of the ultimate restoration. All of our restoration is based on the work represented by the scars of Jesus.

When I fall at his feet one day and experience His wounding for my transgressions, his scars will not cause me to feel shame for my sins but incredible gratitude for his willingness to purposefully experience the ultimate pain for me. I will be able to see in depth my own inability to pay for my sins and receive in fullness the gift of his sacrifice.

Dare we enter into the mystery? Can we embrace restoration as a process that ends with our scars intact?

As I’ve looked with new eyes into my own story, I have found that there were elements of my own ‘truth’ that I had banished into the back room, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. I have been learning that the wounds that are a part of my story don’t really heal until I allow God to touch those places in His light.

Can you accept your own story as a part of your own glorious restoration, realizing that while we don’t glory in our sin, we can glory in the way God works everything together for our own good?

Can you tell your story to a trusted other and have kindness and compassion on your own heart as God does?

Can you live in the truth of your story and believe that none of it is wasted with God, but that it all belongs?

Can you embrace contradiction and paradox and believe that your restoration is a valuable process in which you will find more of God’s heart and your own?

Can you find a beauty in your scars? Perhaps there is another whose restoration will draw on the strength of your own healing process.

Scars in heaven.

Oh, God’s ways are not my own. His definition of restoration doesn’t always match my own, but as I journey on with Him, I am growing in my understanding of his value system. I am beginning to be able to look at my own wounds and scars and experience acceptance as a part of restoration.

Stay tuned for more thoughts…

What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (pt. 2)

Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..

Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin

What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (part 1)

Mikki — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:16:23 +0000

Psalm 23 lures us into a picture of calm and beauty. Green pastures. Still waters. Ahh. Makes this country girl want to kick off my shoes and dig my toes into the cool springtime grass. I imagine closing my eyes and lying back on the grassy land. I can almost hear the ever present symphony of birds tweeting, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, as the multitude of God’s creation joins in the song.

And just about the time I feel I am beginning to connect with this calm picture, David slips in this phrase, “He restores my soul.” Oh, yes, awesome, wonderful, restoration of my soul. Troubling, however, is the imagery that follows.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

“I won’t fear evil.”

“Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but these phrases seem juxtaposed to the peaceful beauty of the previously mentioned green pastures and still waters.

Are these two ideas connected in any way? And what does it mean anyway to have my soul restored? Is soul restoration needed by only a few or does everyone need it?

What is a soul?

Our soul could be described as our mind and emotions, our heart, character, and personality through which we encounter life and respond to it. Our soul has to do with depth, value, relatedness, and personal substance.

Life wounds our souls. All of our souls. No one gets through life unscathed.

Blazed into my mind is the emptiness and pain I saw in the young prostitutes eyes in Pattaya, Thailand. Their stories included elements of poverty, dysfunctional family systems, abuse, and bondage of all sorts.

Those of us who live so far removed from such realities can quickly tag these young women as having a soul that needs restored, and surely they do, but what about you? What about me? What is there in our life stories that has left us wounded, disillusioned, hurt, unwhole?

To enter into a process of restoration requires that we can begin to see and name the damage of our own souls.

The Holy Spirit is our change agent. He works in a myriad of ways. Many times, He works through others who can help us name the damage in our souls.

We often learn to use defense mechanisms such as denial, minimization, compartmentalization, rationalization, and other ways of coping, to avoid the truth of the damage in our own souls.

Yet God invites us into a process of restoration. Restoring what has been lost from His original design for all humanity, in general, and what has been lost in our hearts, specifically.

If God wants our souls restored, then we must be able to begin to give attention to what is happening in our souls. Our souls speak to us through their reactions. Depression, anxiety, remorse, inferiority, despair, addictions, dissatisfaction, anger… the soul speaks. Our problem is the ability and/or desire to listen.

When we open ourselves up to the work of God in our souls, we open our hearts wider than they have ever been before. Such opening is imperative to the restoration of our souls.

And as much as I hate it, pain and suffering are used (not caused) by God to open up our souls, allowing the pain to spill out, bringing us to the end of our neatly laid plans, bringing us to the failure of our ways of functioning, bringing the truth of the damage in our souls to the surface so that we can see it, name it, and enter into restoration.

Those valleys with the shadows of death, the presence of evil, God’s rod and staff, the table in the presence of my enemies… these are not benign images. They evoke a scream inside of me, “NO! I don’t want this path!” I feel like telling God that my soul is just fine the way it is, thank You very much.

But He invites me to walk through these places because it is in these confusing, dark, obscure places that I find the truth of who I am and who God wants me to be. In these formidable places, I am invited to find the truth of the condition of my soul and allow God to bring new levels of restoration to my soul.

I plan to write more on this topic this week so check back, but for today, what is the condition of your soul?

Are you willing to listen to what your soul is saying today?

What needs to be attended to?

What needs to be restored in your soul?

Take the next step on the journey. Perhaps you should pray a simple prayer asking God to help you to cooperate with the work of His Spirit. Ask Him to allow you to be able to name the damage then commit your heart to the process of restoration. God will be there as you walk through the valley, comforting and restoring.

It has been said that the path to your future is the next step. Will you take it?

What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (part 1)

Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..

Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin