I’m pretty anti-New Year’s Resolutions. (If you know me, you may have just rolled your eyes or let out a sigh… I label myself as “anti” many prescriptive traditions.) More than anything else, I fear New Year’s Resolutions, when placed in the hands of inveterate scorekeepers, can yield the opposite results I intended: what began as an expression of hopeful growth and healthy change turns into one more voice in my head telling me I’m not enough and good for nothing when I inevitably fall short.
As our speaker for our Faith and Work/ Vocation retreat Bill Fullilove said yesterday, avoid the gym in January because that’s when all the eager New Year’s Resolution-ers will be there. By February, they’ll have burned out until January 1st of the next year and it will be safe to go again.
All that being said… I do think the change of seasons and years and events is a good time to reflect and ask what are the things I want to keep, and what are those I want to leave behind. (Growth is good, just not the self-flagellation that often accompanies an expectant growth that doesn’t come to fruition the way we hoped). Speaking of self-flagellation, that is one of the things I’m hoping to kick in the a$$ in 2021. Several people this past year have gently told me they have noticed an unhealthy tendency in me to berate myself for being a deep feeler or “too emotional.” I have noticed this tendency perhaps more than anyone. I’m painfully self-aware, which is both a gift and a burden.
I have a complex relationship with my somewhat intense emotionality. On the one hand, I like it about myself, because it makes me compassionate and empathetic, and it makes me better at things I enjoy doing, like writing. But there is a dark underside that threatens to overshadow the light: my emotionality means I can be taken down more easily and plunged into sadness, which in turn can make me feel isolated from others as I recognize that my depth of emotion seems unusual when I compare myself to my peers, which in turn makes me view myself as different, uniquely broken, and weak, which in turn leads me to withdraw in shame and feel even more isolated. It’s not always so extreme, but nevertheless, it’s a nasty cycle.
I can tend to focus on the dark side rather than the light, and also begin to label emotions as “bad.” I demonize my sensitivity, and wage war with my emotions. In this ungodly war, the stakes are high, the winners are nowhere to be found, and the outcome is always the same: disdain for myself. A mentor recently told me, “Your emotions are not your enemies but your superpower. You notice things other people don’t – nuances. You see things. That’s the gift and burden of creatives… I want you to learn to trust and love your sensitivity.”
…woah. That’s a definitive jolt away from my previous mindset. If I could stop viewing my emotions as threats to be repressed, shoved down, or even viciously attacked, I could see that they are actually a gift, and maybe even a “superpower.” With great joy comes great sorrow. I refuse to apologize for my yearning to experience life to its fullest, and every emotion that entails.
Reading our latest fellows book, Abba’s Child, I was both struck and comforted by Brennan Manning’s following description of Jesus: “To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life. Jesus listened. In John’s gospel, we are told that Jesus was moved with the deepest emotions (11:33)… The gospel portrait of the beloved child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of man did not scorn or reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive emotional antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action.”
Wow. Jesus felt more deeply and profoundly than any man before or since. He was relentlessly attentive to the needs and feelings of others, tender, and compassionate. While feelings should not rule my decisions and life, they are gifts from the Father and I want to regard them with respect and gentleness. With God’s help, I hope for inner peace where there with strife. It will be a lifelong struggle (with this particular issue and many others) and certainly not a box to check in 2021, but it’s one I want to entrust to God’s much more capable hands.
-Sarah