I am an extremely emotional person. I mean, I feel everything. Even stupid things. If I step on a flower, a pang of guilt shoots through me that I ended something so innocent. I still feel guilty if I can't keep all of my stuffed animals on my bed. Now I'm sitting here thinking about the two tubs of stuffed animals sitting in the garage alone in the cold and I'm feeling guilty.
I am attached to everything. If something tragic happens to someone, I can imagine what it feels like. If someone's upset or having a down day, I can tell. Sometimes I can tell if someone walking by me in the store is having a bad day. You might think I'm crazy or exaggerating, but it's true. It's weird, I know, but I ain't lyin' to you.
I feel everything.
But I don't often show it.
And you know, sometimes all of those emotions, along with the ones you have of your own, can really bottle up inside of you.
Now let's talk about other people.
Other people have gone through some real junk in their lives. Some real hard-core junk that no one should ever have to go through, but that's how life is, and we just have to keep climbing upward, but that's a different post for a different day.
Other people just have a hard time getting through this life. When you feel like you're drowning in yourself and your scared of everything, but most of all what's inside of you, that really drags you down to the point where you don't want to get up anymore.
And that kind of stuff can really bottle up inside of you. It can get to where you feel rotten to your core and you don't know where to go or where to turn to, and you're scared and angry and you don't know what to do.
In our society today, people are all about gettin' mad. Everyone's always offended about something, everyone's always mad about some "hate crime" or some "injustice". And the media loves it. People love it. The world loves false emotions and something they can rally behind and cheer for and put on a mask of false passion, when really they have no passion for it. As soon as the next "injustice" comes along they're running after that with guns blazing.
Meanwhile, the people who are hurting, the people who actually have a reason to get mad are thrown to the side.
And you know what else? Our society is all for being yourself and finding who you truly are.We're all for the homosexuals and showing them support and helping out the "transgenders" and all of that crap. But they really don't care about the people who actually need help. The ones who are deeply hurt and confused and don't have anyone to turn to. We just send them to a therapist and tell them to take these pills and they'll be fine. When that doesn't' actually help the real problem at all.
And one day, the neglected people who have been rotting inside for so long, the ones who actually need the help that we are so willing to give to everyone else... They finally snap. They lose it. They freak out and scream and holler and let out some of the emotions that have been festering inside of them for so long. If we're lucky, that is. Some of these people have had too much. They reach the conclusion that no one actually cares about them, that they're just crazy, that they're just worthless, and they kill themselves.
Oh, and guess what the world thinks of that.
They are horrified. It's so sad that girl would do that, so embarrassing that guy did that. They shed a few tears, utter a few exclamations and shrug it off, giving their children a firm reminder to never, ever do such unspeakable things.
When the only reason they did was because no one cared about them enough to take the time to help them!!!!!!
This is horrible, is it not? But you know what's even worse?!
CHRISTIANS DO THE EXACT SAME THING
Dang it all, we are supposed to be the ones that are helping these people, we're supposed to be the ones with the answers, and you know what we do instead?? We step back, horror filling our eyes, holding a hand over our righteous hearts.
We feel violated when someone screams a little bit, when someone shouts a little bit. We're disgusted at the things teenagers and the rest of the suffering people of the world are doing and saying and dressing and listening to. Oh, don't our hearts break when we hear about that poor boy who took his own life? Maybe if his parents had spanked him more as a kid or guarded him better that wouldn't have happened. So we build a higher wall around ourselves to keep all of the gross things out and pump our kids with some more good Christian things to make ourselves feel better.
When someone we know says that they're depressed or have anxiety, our lungs freeze with shock and we wonder if that person is really saved. Because surely you can't be a Christian and have those kind of problems. Only people without the Lord have those kind of struggles.
So we grab our kids by the hand and hightail it out of there as fast as we can before it starts spreading to us.
Because that's exactly what Jesus did when they threw the woman caught in adultery at his feet, when he found the demon possessed man in Galilee, when the thief next to him on the cross asked Jesus to remember him in heaven, when his closest friends in the world ran away and Peter denied him three times, when the man who had killed countless Christians was laying prostrate on the road to Damascus.
What in the heck am I trying to say in all of this??
I'm trying to say that people are so afraid of emotions. Just take a look at this: Don't yell at your mother, Tommy, don't talk to the guy with tattoos and piercings, Jimmy, why don't you ever leave your room, Sally?
People, especially parents, say these things all of the time. We don't want to be around those kind of people, And then when Tommy hits his mom and runs away, and Jimmy ends up doing drugs and living on the street, and Sally kills herself, we wonder why.
We shake our heads at the sobbing shoulders of their mothers and the shaking hands of their fathers and we say they should have sheltered their kids more. Because surely it wasn't because the kids were confused and hurting and lost. They went to a good conservative church all of their lives and listened to good preaching every Sunday and Wednesday. They didn't need anyone to take them under their wing and tell them it was alright they were feeling this way and that they were willing to help them figure out why and show them they way out of it. Because they were around good, godly things all of the time, weren't they??
Am I saying that it's okay for you to listen to death metal and get tattoos and piercings and yell at your mom because you're trying to figure yourself out?
No, absolutely not!!!
What I am saying is that the world and we as Christians are, like I said earlier, afraid of emotions. We're afraid of pain and hurting, and boy, are we really scared of things like depression and anxiety and self harm and all of the things that kids and adults are wrestling with today. What we aren't realizing, is sometimes the first step to fixing the problem is screaming and shouting and crying a little bit, whether it's at someone, by yourself, or maybe even with someone in person or in a song, and getting rid of some of the rottenness inside of you so you can start finally getting to the root of the problem. But all we want to do is skip over that first step and get straight to the next one. Because we're afraid of the dark parts inside of us, and instead of finding them and fighting them, we ignore them and hope it's "just a phase."
So let me end with this. Scream a little. Shout a little. Let your kid do it if they need to. And when they've gotten it out, then get to the root of the problem.
Because if we'd all stop being so afraid of emotions, the things God gave us as humans, one of the things that make us different than animals and a little more like God himself, those really important things that oddly enough no one likes...Maybe the world wouldn't be quite so messed up.
MR
((Sorry this post is such a train wreck. I didn't think it would be right if it was any cleaner.))
This is a really good point, thank you for writing this.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it. :)
Deleteso so so so so true
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