emotional

I never liked to cry much that I remember. I was “logical”. I’m a scientist. I don’t like to be swayed by my feelings, and I enjoy consistency. I probably give in to emotion more than I realize, but I don’t like the idea of reacting subjectively to life.

This is especially true about faith. My most debilitating fear was that all faith has been subverted by emotion. When some feel calm, or feel happy, or feel like being a friend, or feel like going, or feel like changing jobs, it must be God. As though God hijacked just our feelings and now everything we feel is a sign from him. I have not often considered myself to be a “spiritually sensitive” person, and so my quest to determine how spirituality is different from continually giving in to feelings has been a rough one from its beginning years ago.

So I turned to what I now realize was an intellectual pursuit of God, since that is what I believed was missing. The more I knew about him, the more I would understand him and the closer I could be to him (what I learned from that alone might end up in a whole entry by itself). And I ended up with a list of questions a thousand miles long – a lot of beautiful understanding as well, but lots of questions. My crisis of faith was wrapped around the things I couldn’t explain or argue through. And I lashed out at emotionality again, thinking how useless that would be to my questions.

And then I temporarily put just one big toe in the water of what I will call “physicality” – wanting to see spiritual things manifested in a physical way. Wanting to see, hear, touch. A little bit angry that so little of the spiritual realm is ever physically apparent. Questioning why.

All of this because I wanted to find out what it means to be spiritual. I thought a simple thought a few weeks ago that hasn’t left me yet. “God created my emotions.”

It started there, and has grown in my heart to be something much more important. God could have created me to be purely physical, intellectual, and spiritual. But no, made me an emotional creature as well. And I am to love him with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength – notice which one is first? The heart. The emotions. He loves my feelings. I am starting to see WHY the first commandment is what it is. Spirituality is not entirely separate from FEELING things, or LEARNING things, or SEEING things, any more than it is JUST feeling or learning or seeing. I am entirely knit together by a God who loves my intricately woven design – he made me this way. We are a complex project, we humans. Somehow each of these layers of who we are exist very distinctly from one another, and yet they flow together and need each other.

In an Eden world, I would see and hear and walk with God. I would have a spiritual communion with his Spirit. I would know and learn about his character and his deeds and his creation. And I would be overwhelmed with emotion and adoration, I’m sure! What if God, temporarily distant in many ways until he completely redeems it all, really does interact with us in all of these ways now?

So here I am, learning how to love God with the emotions he gave me. Not be controlled by them or satisfied with only knowing God emotionally. Not stifle them and fear them, considering them weakness, but understanding them and allowing them to be used for his purposes. What an amazing thing to be overcome by compassion and moved to action. To actually feel deep hatred toward sin. To be emotionally and physically and spiritually and intellectually CALM.

God loves my emotions. What an odd thought.