Emotions

“My spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled… Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” – Psalm 143:4, 8

I heard a retreat speaker once say that some of us are brought up thinking of our emotions like cabooses: they should always follow the locomotive of fact. While it can be important in our faith not to be led by feelings over truth, somehow I’ve come to internalize this model for life in general. If I’m honest, I believe that my emotions should make sense. They should not affect me overmuch, and if they do, something is wrong.

In other words, I come to my emotions with a pretext of judgement. But I’m realizing that sometimes I need to notice them without judgement. Judging our emotions is being quick to assess a cause and find a fix, to determine whether what we feel is appropriate or not, right or not. Noticing our emotions is taking time to name them, to acknowledge how we feel and allow ourselves to feel it. It is to sit with those feelings, without trying to correct them, or cast value upon them. When we judge our emotions, we tend to subvert, deny or disparage them. But when we notice our emotions, we allow them to show us something. And we find that sometimes, they can be like signposts, pointing us toward deeper places in ourselves worth exploring.

I constantly struggle with this as a parent. I tend to react to moodiness by immediately finding a cause and a fix, usually with some kind of lecture thrown in: go to bed earlier, manage your time better, adjust your expectations, etc. Basically, I treat my children the same way I treat myself. And I’m realizing, what they often need is not for me to judge how they feel, but notice how they feel. They need me to sit with them and say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling kind of down and tired.” And just be silent for a while, looking at them, being with them, rather than analyzing how their emotion is affecting the task or schedule at hand. 

I’m so grateful for the Psalms, because they show us how to be real with our feelings before God. David does not flinch from his emotions: he tells them to God without filter. The word for “faints” literally means “overwhelmed”—to be clothed with, to be enveloped and completely overcome by. The word for “appalled” means “desolate, stunned, devastated.” David names how he feels. He notices its effect on his whole being. And what he wants first, before any kind of action plan, is to hear afresh of God’s steadfast love. That’s what I’m saying to my kids when I notice their emotions rather than rush to judge them: I’m saying, beyond whatever kind of inconvenience, confusion, or personal hurt I’m feeling because of how your emotion is making you act, I love you. I care about how you feel. I’m willing to be here with you in it. That’s what God has said to me, many times in my life, and that’s how I’m learning to be with my kids and with myself.