Release Your Emotions - Day 230

Release Your Emotions
Day 230

Barbara Johnson shares practical advice that she had once given to a woman who could not stop crying because of grief. Her plan involves accelerating your emotions by releasing them for a set time each day. She says, "This woman worked at a department store, and she was selling clothes. And she was crying all over the clothes. She said, 'I just can't stop crying. I'm just crying all the time.'

"I said, 'Well, go into your room and be sure you're home alone. Turn on some sad music. Lock the door. And then just pound the pillow and cry and grieve and let the emotions out. Set a timer for thirty minutes. Then every day lessen the timer one minute. By the end of thirty days you will have exhausted yourself with all this crying.'

"She called me after about a week and she said, 'Barbara, that really worked. I mean, I've only done it a week, and I can even work all day at the store and I don't even cry on the clothes anymore.'

"So, it does help when you can ventilate and drain some of that abscess and pain out. See, tears are a good escape. I think God sent us tears as an escape measure. We need to cry."

Release your tears for a time, but learn to compose yourself for other times.

"This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you" (2 Kings 20:5).

Sometimes, Lord, I just have to cry. Amen.

~ Don't I know it! I don't really get much time to be in the house alone being a single mom. But, after Justice is in bed for the night, I find a sad movie and can release at that time. I try not to be sad around him. I don't want to burden him with my sadness, because I've told him that heaven is a beautiful place and that is where Mimi and Auntie Boobies are. He asked me if they would come back and I told him that it is such a wonderful place that it would be mean to ask them to. He asked if he could go to that wonderful place and I was all .. ummm no. Because you will in your own time, but right now it is time to be here and live life on earth.