Setting Emotions Aright

When you are physically involved with (and that can run the gamut, from just being around them a lot to being physically or sexually intimate with them) somebody who you are emotionally or romantically involved with, you are never really able to see straight, are you? You never have the ability to separate fact from fiction, truth from lie, feeling from…well, you get the picture. It isn’t until you are removed from that person, that you begin to see things as you should have seen them long ago.

Sometimes, for some of us, getting clear of the emotional feedback takes time. We can have that separation, yet still drown out what we should be hearing in favour of what we have been hearing; in other words, we happily go on refusing to do/see/hear/believe anything other than what we have been up until now. Rather than take the risk of making any changes of significance in our life, we continue to do things exactly the way we always have, even when it makes no sense to.

In history, when the presidential order came down into law, making all the slaves free in America, many of those same slaves continued to choose to live in slavery. It was the way that they had always done things, and they did not know how to do things differently.

Your heart can free you. Emotions can be wonderful things. But sometimes, even “good” (positive) emotions, can chain you to a life you are not supposed to be living. Our emotions can keep us in slavery.

But God has come to set us free. “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.”

But we need that separation. Until we can look at God through eyes that are unclouded by our emotional attachments, we will not be willing to hear what He may be saying to us about those attachments.

I am getting freer in my life. It is a slow process. I am allowing God to take those emotional attachments that were not right, and change them slowly into ones that are right. Through dis-attaching and being separate physically from the object of my former affections, I am able to be able to, day-by-day, think about her in terms and ways that are not wrong. Oh, I still have emotions for her. I still am “on her side” in life. I do still care for her deeply. But, I no longer delude myself into believing I am supposed to be with her, or that my feelings for her will ever again include the “in love” type of feelings. Those were a mistake on my part. And so I learn, and I move on. How I feel about her now, is the same way that I feel about several other women friends in my life – like I have gained another close sister, one who I care about and would lay down my life for.

And that is the sort of honourable feeling of love that I should have for others. Thank You, Lord, for working in me.

I’m getting it. It is a process, but I am getting it.