If I'm being honest, I'm not a fan of feelings; I actually dislike them quite a bit. They tend to make me stupid, and I never make good or correct decisions when they are involved. I have always fallen in love too easily, gotten angry too quickly, and cried at the most inconvenient times. So basically, I'm a girl, and I don't like it. These past few months I think I've hated feeling more than ever, and God has used that to his advantage.
I can think of several times in my life when I've hated the fact that I have emotions and feelings, but none of those times can compare to the last 3 months. Name an emotion and I've probably felt it: love, dislike, disappointment, inadequacy, uncertainty, fear, anger, sadness, and the list goes on and on. And for the longest time it was like I had no control over them, and they seemed to just overtake me. I had been completely drowning in my own feelings, but I couldn't understand why it was happening much less how to stop it. I remember one night about a month ago just asking God why we needed emotions. I was to the point were hurt and anger were too much for me, and I was done. It was at that point that God began slowly teaching me.
Now I could talk about how feelings are important because they make us who we are or about how without the bad we wouldn't have the good, but that wasn't the lesson I needed. I already knew that. What God has been teaching and showing me is how to overcome and control all those crazy feeling and find peace and rest in him and his plan. How is he doing this? Well, I'm glad you asked! He's doing it by putting me in a lot situations that I really don't want to be in. Now, that might not sound like a good thing, but it definitely is. Like so many others do, I've been camping out in my comfort zone (which means by myself since I'm an introvert), and not telling others about these feelings or facing the people who they're toward. He has thrown me into more uncomfortable situations in the last month than the last 3 years combined, and from those my life has made a drastic turn. Friendships have been mended and new friends made. I've been vulnerable and open with people, which is something I'm not good at. From these seemingly bad emotions, some very good things have happened.
I don't know that anything I've said has made any sense, but I felt the need to get it out. If you got nothing from all of my ramblings, I hope you get this: even when it seems like there's a lot of bad in your life, God can use if for your benefit.
Although it can often be hard to see, God really does work for the good of those who love him. All of my unwanted feelings haven't just gone away, but God is using them to mold me into who he wants me to be. And just like any refining process, sometimes it hurts and is really hard and feels totally pointless, but if he is being glorified it becomes totally worth it.
