Uncontrollable Emotions - Day 24

Uncontrollable Emotions
Day 24

Fear, depression, anger, loneliness, despair -- these emotions come and go with dizzying unpredictability. Your life is like a roller-coaster ride that you can't get off.

Stay on the ride. You cannot hurry the grieving process. Each time one of these emotions comes flooding back, it is a sign that you are recovering.

"All the feelings, thoughts, and emotions rush back into my life. It's uncontrollable," says Dr. Norman Peart.

But God is always in control. He is a solid rock, unmoving and unchanging. Build your life's foundation on Him.

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock" (Matthew 7:24-25).

Lord, I am hanging on for the endurance of the ride. You are a constant presence through my ups and downs. Amen.

~I think something that is helpful to do is to acknowledge the emotions. I mean like I was angry A LOT! I saw that I was always yelling. I was angry about a parking spot. I was angry because we were running late. I was angry because of the actions of another. All uncontrollable actions that lead to my controllable reaction. It wasn't until I was in grief share class and we were handed a paper with about 30 emotions on it and were asked to circle any that we were feeling right then and I circled 21 emotions. I put an emphasis on my circle around anger. I didn't realize that my anger was anger built up from my grief.  Being angry all the time is stressful and hurtful. It hurts others as well. I heard more than once Justice ask me why I was yelling or why I was raising my voice at him.  I would answer "because you aren't listening to me" but my patience was short because my anger was deep. My patience was dependent on my other emotions being in check. Hardly the way I want my child to react to me. I don't want my child to fear my voice or me for that matter. And certainly not when I didn't realize that I was acting or reacting in a certain manner. My first step in moving forward in my healing was to acknowledge that I was angry. Give that anger its name and then figure out how to deal with the emotions that were clinging to that anger so that I could then redirect the other emotions and stop being angry. Today, I am a different person than I was just two weeks ago because I said out loud that I was angry at God. That I had anger in me and that I was angry more often than not. Now I don't have that holding me down or back for that matter and I am a happier person even while I am still in the beginning stages of my grief journey.