Controlling Your Emotions

This morning, at 8am, Rob texted me, "Can you meet me and Katie tart he church to talk about the girl's retreat?" Thankfully, I was awake and able to make it! even though it was short notice. Our theme for the girl's weekend (coming up in two weeks!) is "Emotions." Last week, Katie gave me a handout titled "Controlling Your a Emotions" and asked me to read it. So I did and this morning! we talked with Rob about how to divide up the teaching time for the weekend. I will probably tackle most of the teaching time because I am a better extemporaneous speaker. I'm a little nervous about that, since I am the youngest staff member, but I'm also really excited! I believe this is a topic that is really important to address with teenage girls.

Foundational to understanding our emotions is understanding that we are emotional beings created in the image of God. God expresses emotion all throughout Scripture. Because of sin, the door was opened for our emotions to control our beliefs and behaviors. The emotions themselves are notso NFL; rather, how we respond to these emotions that is important. Emotions (even negative ones) can actually be really positive when they inspire us to make changes in our lives, seek help, or turn our hearts to God. Oftentimes, they communicate a truth to us about our underlying thoughts and behaviors toward ourselves, our circumstances, and towards God. Katie's material provided a nice little acronym to use as a framework for understanding them: REED

Recognize your emotions. Acknowledge them instead of ignoring them.

Express them to God, because he cares about how we feel.

Evaluate what our emotions are telling us and ask God what wrong beliefs or thoughts are fueling them.

Decide to replace wrong thinking or behavior with God's truth. Once you have identified wrong thoughts or beliefs, you must replace them with truth founded in Scripture.

Obviously, this is a very simplified model. It's not a "quick fix" to understanding yourself, but it is a good starting framework for these kinds of discussions. I'll admit I wish I'd had these tools when I was going through highschool; I really struggled in this area, mainly because I just didn't know how to express myself. I buried emotions or sought release through art (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but didn't deal with them. Several of the many battles Christian and I fought related to my inability to express myself. Fortunately, I am getting much better at it. I like that the lesson discusses handling emotions within the context of examining our theology and our beliefs about God. It helped me make sense of a few past experiences in new ways. (I'd give a more specific example, but this post is already getting long.) I am very excited for the weekend and look forward to see God working among the girls' hearts!