Month: August 2020

I’ve always considered myself a sensitive person who wears her heart on her sleeve. I am more emotional than logical. I’m not afraid to be vulnerable and share what’s on my heart and mind. I am highly introspective and live in my thoughts and process them by writing and sharing my heart with others.

I’ve been thinking lately about emotions and how we store and experience them. Over the past several months, I have come to realize that I tend to store my emotions in a tall glass. I let myself become filled with and experience them, but I am not always good at releasing and pouring them out. Sometimes I think that because I am sharing my heart and being vulnerable that I am releasing my emotions, but really I’m still holding on. And by holding on to my emotions, to my thoughts, I feel as though I am keeping them contained and controlled.

While we do need to be mindful and keep our emotions in check, am I really letting myself feel the true depths of my emotions by trying to control them?

I have come to discover that I won’t be able to truly experience the depths of my emotions until I no longer let them be contained. There is a release, a surrender that comes from letting our emotions pass through us. To fully embrace and feel them, hold onto them and then release them. But this isn’t a catch-all for experiencing my feelings. Some emotions, like grief, will likely resurface again and again, and they aren’t meant to be released in one sitting.

Here’s the thing. Carrying our emotions around for a long time, letting our cup become more and more full until we overflow or reach our breaking point isn’t a healthy way to deal with them.

As hard has this year has been for me, it has taught me that I need to take care of myself beyond the surface – emotionally, spiritually, mentally. As I was praying recently about receiving more of God’s love, I pictured a sieve. And I thought about how it catches what you need, releases what you don’t.

I imagine how God intends for us to experience the depths our emotions – and receive his love – like that sieve. Knowing that we are going to experience both the beautiful and good emotions along with the painful and hard ones, we can’t let ourselves carry them around in our bodies until our cups become too full or cracked from the stress, losing control of ourselves in our effort to contain our emotions.

When we sift our emotions through the sieve, we allow ourselves to feel their depths. We let them into our bodies, but then we release them. We hold onto the good parts, letting them mold and shape us, turning us into something beautiful. We let go of and release what doesn’t serve us.

One thing I tell my girls frequently is that they are allowed to feel whatever emotion they may be experiencing. I sit with them through the hard ones and try to acknowledge how they are feeling without trying to fix or correct them, unless they are trying to hurt one another. In a sense, I am letting myself be a container for their emotions, a safe space. I help receive and filter out what is not serving them and show them how to process their emotions in healthy ways. I am far from perfect in doing this but what I am working toward is letting myself hold their feelings and helping the girls work through them. Even when it’s disappointment over what I’m making for dinner. 🙂

So when I got the picture of the sieve the other day, I felt it was God saying that He was my container, my safety, my filter of my emotions. He was helping me catch and hold onto the good, letting it mold and shape me. He was letting me feel the depths of the hard emotions, holding me in them and letting me work through them. And then I saw the sieve lifted to the sky and beams of light shone through, revealing His light shining through me, through the depths of who I am, showing the beauty and all that is good.