For the last 6 weeks I have been thinking about and drafting this post about feelings. I don’t know exactly why it has taken so long and been so difficult. I might have imagined something more spiritually ambitious, but I am finally breaking down the topic to something more basic. I am taking a lesson from parenting: parents must teach their children to accept that we sometimes have bad feelings, and experience negative outcomes and circumstances. We don’t always get what we want! Similarly, I have seen how the Lord continues to teach this same lesson throughout the lives of his children. More specifically, I have been learning how to accept bad feelings, outcomes and circumstances, and not always getting what I want.
I love to play games with my grandchildren. Games offer plenty of opportunities for players to learn lessons about feelings and attitudes. Everyone wants to go first. Similarly, everyone wants to win. It is great to see how my grandkids are learning, not only how to obey the rules of the game, but to let others go first, and to be a good sport when they come in last. When I am with my grandchildren, I am always trying to model these things for them, and my desire to teach them good sportsmanship completely suppresses my own competitive nature.
On the other hand, playing games with Bill brings out the competitor in me, and I consciously want to win! If I lose our nightly Sudoku games too many times in a row, I get grumpy about it. I have been losing a lot lately, and I haven’t been a terrible sport, but I haven’t been a good one either!
Of course, playing games is not as important as other aspects of our lives, unless you are a professional athlete or something like that. But it has been a small indicator for me of how well I tolerate situations that make me feel bad. Some more important occasions of bad feelings recently have been sensing disapproval from someone in one of my social groups, or seeing that I said the wrong thing, or dropped a ball that I wish I hadn’t, or seeing that my skill in a particular area is so much inferior to another friend’s skill.
What are the strategies for learning to tolerate those realities?
The first one that I have used with my grandchildren is to practice empathy., an ability to care what others want and how they feel. With this strategy, I am working at the feeling level to provide an alternative way to feel, which is joy from making someone else happy. Even if I don’t get what I want, I can give pleasure to someone else by giving them what they want. Now, let me caution against people-pleasing in dysfunctional and harmful ways, giving selfish people what they want at the expense of what you want or what is right. Truly it isn’t good to let my grandchildren grow into tyrants who always MUST get what they want. But within reason, I have found that it is good for me and it is biblical to practice empathy and to learn the delight of pleasing another person above myself. Philippians 2:3 teaches us from Jesus’ example to count others as more important than ourselves. Our fears of people-pleasing must not negate this highly important principle of “death to self” for the purpose of loving others.
I drew my second strategy from Philippians 4:5: “Let your reasonableness (sometimes translated as gentleness) be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.” If God is at hand, I want him to find me being the kind of person who brings him honor, and in this verse, Paul identifies such a person as reasonable or gentle. Here is a note from the Net Bible, and particularly from Tom Constable on this verse:
We should also demonstrate forbearance (Gr. epieikes) to everyone, saved and unsaved alike. The Greek word contains connotations of gentleness, yielding, kindness, patience, forbearance, leniency, and magnanimity. It recalls Jesus Christ’s humility in 2:5-11. The forbearing person does not insist on his or her own rights or privileges. He or she is considerate and gentle toward others. Of course, there is a time to stand for what is right. The forbearing person is not spineless but selfless.
This verse clarified for me over the past weeks how God was leading me to be in all my relationships. This strategy gives me the power to do what is right even if I don’t feel like it. I am working not on the feeling level, but on the doing or behavior level. If God is at hand, he is present to help me be reasonable or gentle. As it says later in the chapter, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” So despite bad feelings, my conduct can still be constructive. Right conduct can generate a good feedback loop, which can eventually change my bad feelings. So taking the situations I mentioned above – feeling disapproval, saying the wrong thing, not being as skilled as another – I can treat others with consistent care, apologize for specific wrongs I committed and give praise to the talented. I can testify that when I behave in these ways, I feel satisfaction. I do not feel diminished. I feel God’s power strengthening me. From his Word, I know his affirmation as I behave reasonably. For my grandchildren, I provide spoken, tangible affirmation of their right behavior. A Christian counselor, Jay Adams, used to call this strategy, “Act yourself into a new way of feeling.”
My third strategy is to pray for help. Philippians 4:6 and following, goes on to instruct me to pray about anything making me anxious. I sometimes pray immediately for help and sometimes I pray only after much angst and rumination. I don’t know why it often takes me so long to pray, but thankfully, God has been patient with my tardiness. Our prayers are not always answered exactly as we hope or as quickly as we hope, but I have definitely experienced the peace that passes understanding that Paul writes about.
I’ve written nothing new! These are common human experiences, to which Scripture has applied for centuries. I want to add my voice to the chorus of witnesses to say that God is faithful and true, and that his Word applies to our daily lives and it works. My feelings do not negate his truth, but rather, my feelings submit to his truth. Glory to God!