i'm a feeler

I’m a feeler. A lot of my walk with the Lord is very feelings based, when I’m having a bad day, everyone usually knows it. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Take today for instance, I had to leave campus because I was on the verge of an emotional breakdown. I got halfway back to my apartment when the tears came… and I couldn’t stop them. Sunday is the one-year anniversary of my grandmother’s death, and quite frankly I can’t believe it’s been a whole year. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a fantasyland – she’s so vivid in my memories. I think that’s what’s hard, I’ve blocked out a lot of the bad memories, seeing her on her deathbed, and my brain has only chosen to remember the good things – the summers spent at her house, the beach walks and the Sunday night phone conversations. You might say, why would I want the bad memories? Well, I feel like I have no closure. I sometimes believe that this fantasyland is going to end with her alive again, ready to talk to me about People Magazine’s Oscar Issue. Yes, the rational side of my brain knows this isn’t real life, but the alternative is that she’s gone forever, and dealing with that is worse than living in fantasyland.

Today, it became painfully clear that God didn’t want me to live in fantasyland any longer. It was like my heart broke on a million different levels today. I’m not angry and I don’t feel like I need answers, but I’m just plain old sad. Real life sucks. My date night with Jesus tonight looked pretty much like my day today – lots of tears. God is good. My identity lies in Christ. Those things haven’t changed, I know I’m loved, but I’m just a sad little broken mess.  Amongst the tears I learned a couple things.

1) God is sovereign over my feelings

2) My feelings are part of the sanctification process. 

Yes, we have control over our lives. God gave us the gift of free choice, but He also has the ability to control how we feel. When we feel like crap, it’s usually so that we know what it feels like to not feel like crap. Feeling like crap doesn’t mean that we don’t experience joy, it just means that we’re sad, that we don’t have permanent smiles on our faces. God doesn’t like to see me in pain, but it’s part of the growing process. Jesus cried. Jesus suffered. If we want to be more like Him, which is our goal as Christians, to follow Jesus, we too must cry and suffer. This does not mean that I can cry when I don’t get my way, but I can cry when I’m sad; I can allow my sadness to lead me closer to God. In being made more into the image of Christ (sanctification), I must experience pain and suffering. Because I’m a feeler, these feelings cut right to my core. God is in control. He is good. Just because I feel like crap, those things don’t change. So as I deal with the sadness, I’m choosing to remember that God is in control, that He’s good and that He loves me… He even thinks I’m beautiful when I cry.