Feeling It

Within the past year, God has really been helping me to take a genuine inventory of my emotional life. This is a topic that tends to have two polar reactions: The first is my favorite, intense interest and embracing of the deep conversation. The second makes it difficult to feel safe talking about it, and tends to be avoidance or in rare cases hostility. Even though this is the case, I want to talk a little bit about that topic here. 

I have always been a very self-analytical and a somewhat perfectionistic person, tending to hold myself to basically impossible standards and by proxy expecting the same from others. While I do consider myself to be very self-aware, I also have come to see that I have glaring blind spots as well. Unfortunately, I also now realize that this has made me quite judgmental in the past. The hard part is coming out of that but seeing the aftermath and the bridges that I have burned.

It is a lonely place to come out of, but thanks be to God who has brought me into a place of genuine relationship with Him and also a place of intimacy and true fellowship with my Godly husband.

The most important gift in my marriage has got to be the open, honest discussion of our feelings. We hit snags, and at times we argue - though much less frequently within the past six months, with the help of New Life Ministries and the way God is using them in our lives as well as a connection with Pastor Michael and Diana Welchert of Heart Renovation Ministries.

The beautiful thing about these discussions is the way the Holy Spirit has been sloughing off the flesh as we rub up against one another and become more empathetic to the feelings of the other through honest discussion and intent listening.

God is helping us to "work out our oneness," as the Welcherts like to put it :-). While we don't do it all perfectly, and find ourselves repenting quite often and apologizing to and praying for our children if we bicker in front of them, there is a genuine healing and an overall peace in our home that I have never lived with in my life.

It is worth it to "Feel It." I promise!