And so in my continuation of yesterday’s post on emotions… a.k.a. feelings… I was hit between the eyes by the Holy Spirit with Henri Nouwen’s words. He said, “Our emotional lives and our spiritual lives have different dynamics. The ups and downs of our emotional life depend a great deal on our past or present surroundings. We are happy, sad, angry, bored, excited, depressed, loving, caring, hateful, or vengeful because of what happened long ago or what is happening now.
The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our obedience - that is, our attentive listening - to the movements of the Spirit of God within us. Without this listening our spiritual life eventually becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions."
And I have been on some serious emotional waves the past few days. For me those waves are from a pituitary deficiency, and the need to get off some hormone replacement therapy in order to check some other blood levels to ensure there was no tumor involved. In other words my dark mood is very much attributable to a physiological issue, not a situational or psychological one.
So with that in mind, I would encourage anyone struggling with mood swings, depression, uncontrollable long term negative emotions to talk to your doctor. Even Christians are wrapped in a decaying flesh and there is absolutely no sense in struggling against treatable symptoms. Forget what it says about your faith, because having or not having health issues says nothing about your faith or your relationship to God. All is says is that you are human in living in a dead and dying world. All is says is that your body is doing what God said it would… returning to dust.
Beyond that we do have a choice. We have a choice about what, and who we are going to listen to. For the saved the Spirit is there with the truth. The soul struggles to please itself, to stroke its own ego, or to do what is best in following the spirit. And all the while the flesh is there is some form of mortal combat against the spirit. And so we have to not respond to the emotions, and as Henry says, listen.
I truly hope this finds its way to you by the Holy Spirit in the same way Henri Nouwen’s words have found their way to me in this incredible God ordained timing. Here again is Henri from today’s devotional. “Even though our emotional and spiritual lives are distinct, they do influence one another profoundly. Our feelings often give us a window on our spiritual journeys…”
My emotionally entwined spiritual journey received a great big blessing and kiss from the Father this morning. My test results are in, and my very treatable symptoms not because of a tumor.
So with a big sigh of relief, a hardly thank you God, and a return to my hormone therapy -- today is a good day on the feelings front. I will take it… and enjoy it while it last.
Here’s to another day of having feelings, but not allowing them to dictate my choices.
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