trying to explain depth of feeling to someone is one of the hardest things to do. trying to explain breadth of feeling to someone who doesn't understand depth of feeling is also really difficult. the two go hand-in-hand so comfortably.
it's hard to explain to someone who doesn't, at first mention, understand the discipline that it takes to not allow an internal emotion to manifest itself in an unreasonable or unnecessary physical action just because it feels like the right thing. it's harder to explain to someone that mostly though it requires no discipline at all, because if every feeling i experienced in a single day manifested itself with particular mannerisms or ways of being, i would literally be eighteen different people in twenty-four hours. that's approximately one personality every forty minutes. that just gets tiring. mostly people laugh when i tell them that, but it's true.
there is a natural dischord between my internal emotive mechanisms and the things i say and do, not because i'm pretending to be someone i'm not, but because i'm working really hard, and trusting very much that it's possible, to be someone better than i already am.
i went through a stage of really disliking that i could feel things, mostly because a lot of what i feel doesn't necessarily match up with reality. it would frustrate me that my emotions weren't responses to actual people, places or things. it seemed nonsensical that a lot of the time my mood was being held captive, by, well, nothing at all really. or a hormonal cycle. which is dumb. because maybe they're an explanation for volatility but they are hardly an excuse for being crazy and doing crazy and saying crazy things.
so, at the beginning of this year i made it my priority to start turning my emotions into prayers.
it sounds dumb. i'll take it on the chin if you're smirking.
but it seemed right to turn my frustrations into prayers.
and so far God has been nothing but patient and kind in teaching me things.
when i read proverbs 4:23, it makes complete sense to me now that we'd be told to 'above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.' more than anything, look after that thing that 'beats in your chest' and makes you feel things, because it matters, it affects your whole life.
i've had this verse of scripture quoted to me when maneuvering situations with something-but-nothing boys, almost as a warning to be distrusting, to keep to myself, to not let go of anything or give any of me away. with a focus on the guarding. and that never sat quite right with me because it seemed to miss the point of chapter four and seeking wisdom and looking to someone else for counsel, someone who knows better, rather than closing yourself up and in and trying to do all the protecting on your own. with a focus on what flows from that; everything.
it's counter intuitive to open yourself up to another's words in order to be guarded.
but that's life with yahweh for you.
(one day i'll start expecting counter intuitive things to be the case. i should be better at it by now. the gospel is so full of them, in a wonderful way.)
and i'd rather have my heart in his hands than anyone else's. and i'd rather be shaped by his words more than my own sentiments.
in understanding that notion of guarding-by-giving-away better i've realised how kind it is that God has given us things both external and internal that are out of our hands and out of our control and out of our foolish, proud, weak dominion. things both without and within that we have to ask him about, plead with him about, know that he is in control about. he doesn't just beset the land we live on with fires and floods but rains and fuels flames at the very core of who we are. whether we are set alight with anguish or drenched through with melancholy, our hearts are often fickle and fleeting in their affections and affectations at any level. we are forced to trust him with all that is intrinsic and seems most naturally to be manufactured on our own. we are forced to give him even our inmost parts and i'm so thankful. everyday he's helping me feel things that make sense in light of forever.
so, i try less to make myself feel less.
and i rejoice when i feel things that i know are righteous things to feel.
tonight i learnt a lot of things about artifical reproductive technologies that i didn't know before. especially about how many tiny, little six cell babies die all the time because people don't realise and i was glad that i was so sad about it that i almost cried in front of seventy strangers in a lecture theatre.
and, for the first time in a long while, i didn't mind that some of the the seventy strangers probably would have had no idea why i felt like crying when i could have responded in any number of 'more productive' ways.
by God's unnecessary grace, i am, more and more, shamelessly sentient.
