Feelings are a very real part of life. I’m a ‘feely’ type person (I know I’m not the only one) and it’s often as though I feel every emotion at a heightened level. This is a beautiful thing when it comes to feeling compassionate or joyful – but not so much when feeling sad or discouraged.
HAVE YOU EVER done something wrong, or fallen back on an old habit you thought you’d overcome, only to have feelings of unworthiness and guilt descend upon you? They settle with claws in your heart and whisper in your ear that to draw near to God is not an option: ‘You failed and so God is angry with you. You did it and you knew it was wrong. You call yourself a Christian? Hypocrite.’
WE ALL HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE. This is true for everything really: how can we start anywhere but at the beginning? And doesn’t the end of something often look very different from the beginning – and even the process in the middle? Think of a cake. An iced cake looks very different from the gooey mixture in the oven – and vastly unlike the individual ingredients at the beginning.
ONCE UPON A DARK TIME, I loved to party. One morning I had to go to a club because I had misplaced my driver’s license the night before. For those of you’ve ever done this, you will know that a club in the light is a vile thing. Everything is cheap and tacky and filthy. All the supposed glitz and glamour of the night before has disappeared. Any satisfaction has fled and all that is left is a disappointing reality.
THERE IS AN ‘ADMIN SIDE’ to absolutely everything. Accepting this fact is part of growing up. But if there’s one thing I’m learning it’s this: you can choose what to focus on.