We have all said many times in life, “I wish I didn’t feel this way.” If we would just get what we want by wishing, life would really be easy, but it doesn’t work that way. Emotions are powerful, and sometimes we feel overpowered by them. According to Webster’s, the root source of the word emotion is the latin ex-movere, meaning “to move away.” And that is exactly what emotions do. They move up from somewhere deep within us and then they move out and pressure us to follow them. An emotional person is one who tends to follow her feelings most of the time. Emotional people think, speak, and act according to feelings. God has a good plan for our lives, but we do have an enemy named Satan, and his desire is that we follow all our feelings and end up in ruin.
The dictionary also says that an emotion is “a complex, usually strong subjective response... involving physiological changes as a preparation for action.” Emotions drive us to take some kind of action. When we experience intense emotion, it is difficult not to follow our emotions, but if what they are leading us to do is wrong, then we must say no to them.
Think of a situation that makes you impatient and remember how you feel when that occurs. If you’re like me, you want to lash out somebody or something. But experience teaches us that we will later on regret most of what we say when we are feeling impatient. The key is to learn to live with impatient feelings and wait for the emotions to subside before deciding on any course of action.
I recently canceled an appointment twenty four hours in advance, per the business’s cancellation policy. On the day of the appointment, about five minutes after the planned appointment time, I received a call asking if Joyce Meyer was going to keep her appointment. I stated that we had canceled it, but the girl on the other end of the phone assured me they did not make mistakes like that and the appointment had not been canceled. She further told me that the bill for their services would be charged to my credit card. I definitely had emotion rise up and start to move out. I tried to use my nicest impatient voice and told her that we had canceled for sure and she was not to charge my account with anything. She told me once again that we had not canceled and unless we would prove that we had, she would have to bill me.
Since I was ready to explode, I told her that I would have the person call who had canceled the appointment for me. I also told her that I had given them a lot of business in the past, and it was rather foolish to tell me I was not telling the truth about the cancellation. My assistant assured me that the appointment had been canceled, and after two more calls and speaking to a manager, the situation was straightened out. The office apologized for the mix-up and said they would not be charging my account and looked forward to my business in the future.
Had I said everything to the girl on the phone I felt like saying, I would have made a food of me. I felt like yelling at her, but I was able to be quiet, take a breath, pray and make a decision that even if I ended up getting charged for the appointment, I was not going to lose my peace over it. I knew if they cheated me, God would take it away from them and get it back to me, even if He went through thousands of people to do it. I would like to say that I have handled situations that well all my life, but I haven’t. Many times I have wished I would not have said or done a certain thing, but I have learned that I can have a feeling that is very strong and not let it force me to say or do things that would be improper.
When the emotions of a situation are more than you can control properly, it is best to get away from it, even if it’s only for a few minutes. That will give you time to think and have a chat with your self. Thoughts do affect emotions, so having a talk with yourself is helpful. Remember all the other times you have behaved and spoken from emotion and all the trouble and embarrassment it caused. Then ask yourself if you really want to go around that same mountain again.
Nobody will ever reach a place in life where they don’t experience a wide variety of negative emotions. If we get hurt, we feel angry. We don’t feel like being around the person who hurt us. We feel like shutting them out of our lives. We feel guilty about mistakes we make; we feel impatient if we are not getting out way; we feel frustrated if we are trying to accomplish something and all our efforts are thwarted. We may feel enthusiastic and passionate or cold and uninterested. Some of the emotions that we experience are pleasant and to be desired, yet others are very unpleasant.
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