“Hope is the feeling that the feeling you
have isn’t permanent.” ~Jean Kerr
For most of my life, I was a fugitive from my feelings. I
was driven by two connected motivations: to feel pleasure and avoid pain. Instead
of being proactive and making choices for our happiness, we react to things
that happen in our lives, and fight or flee to minimize our pain.
Instead of deciding to end an unhealthy relationship and
open up to a better one, we may stay and either avoid confrontation or initiate
one to feel a sense of control. Instead of leaving a horrible job to find one
we love, we may stay and complain about it all the time, trying to minimize the
pain of accepting the situation as real—and enduring until we change it.
From a very young age, I felt overwhelmed by pain. As a
pre-teen, I ate my feelings. As a teen, I starved them away. And in my twenties
and even thirties, I felt and cried my eyes red and raw.
And I wished I’d never chosen to feel them, but rather
kept pushing them down, pretending everything was fine.
Except when I did that, they didn’t just go away—they
compounded on top of each other and built up until eventually I exploded, with
no idea why I felt so bad. One time when I was 17, I couldn’t open a jar. After
ten minutes of twisting, banging, and fighting, I finally threw it at a wall
and broke down.
You may think that was a sure sign I had emotional
problems, and assume there was some pill to help take away that sadness.
That’s what a lot of people thought. But the reality was
a lot simpler: I simply never dealt with my feelings from events large and
small, and eventually they dealt with me.
As unpleasant as it may sound, I needed to learn how to
feel bad—but first I needed to understand why I felt bad so often. It’s a whole
lot easier to deal with pain when it’s not the default feeling.
Then I met Jesus who taught me to take an honest look at
reactions.
·
Do I frequently jump to conclusions without
knowing all the facts? Do I need other people’s approval to feel comfortable in
your own skin? Do I assume you know what other people feel and take
responsibility for that? Do I freak out over stressful situations, blaming
other people, getting hard on yourself, and panicking over possible
consequences?
·
Simply find the cause and effect.
When I make a decision to change, I do it. My power comes
from realizing we don’t need to act on pain; and if I need to diffuse it, I can
channel it into something healthy and productive, like writing, baking, or
doing something physical.
Pain is sometimes an indication we need to set
boundaries, learn to say no more often, or take better care of ourselves; but
sometimes it just means that it’s human to hurt, and we need to let ourselves
go through it, but we cannot go through it alone. That is where Jesus comes in.
He wants us to relate to have, to have a relationship with Him and to allow Him
to teach us how to turn the negative into a positive.
I choose to be a source of pleasure, for myself
and the people around me.
In His love
Leslene
