8. Pillars of Rest - Emotions Rooted in Rest

I remember a time when I was going through stuff in my life, and knew I was feeling a lot of emotions, I just couldn’t get a grip on them. I realize now that I’m a very extreme up or down feeler. For a long time, I didn’t understand the concept of feeling in the grey areas. It was either up or down, black, or white, either you are, or you aren’t. This was a complete opposite to my now ex-husband. I used to say his emotions are at one level only, or he only expressed it at that level.

As you can imagine that this caused a lot of confusion and heartache. So much so that he didn’t know what to do with me in these moments. I have learned over the years I can be very passionate about change, growth and life. But not everyone share that passion, nor do I believe it is always correct to expect that from everyone, we grow and move at a different a pace.

Suppressed emotion is still emotion

Our response to life was so different from each other. I remember sitting on my bed one day making a decision to switch off all emotions. It was my way to protect myself from hurt, so I thought. An overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood made me act out in two ways:

I withdrew and became quiet, a choice not to express myself ended up in more frustration.
I suppressed emotions, in most common language a ticking time bomb, ready to explode as soon as you step on it.

Scripture talks about this as a hardened heart. Once your heart is hardened, offence, walls, misunderstanding, bitterness etc. build up, and you react from that position. I thought I wasn’t acting out of my emotions because I suppressed them. The fact of the matter is, we are created to create and to express, we do however have a choice as to how we will express ourselves. Either from heightened triggers or from a place of rest.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel36:26 ESV

Rejection of self

I tried so hard to change but couldn’t get it right and eventually became very depressed and sick. Having a deep internal knowledge that this wasn’t me, but struggling to snap out of it, with only limited moments of success. I eventually started hating myself for not “getting it right”. As someone deeply in love with Jesus and trying to live like Him and express Him fully, I rejected myself for being so emotional and not strong, and healed. Eventually I viewed my emotions as evil, wrong, bad, etc., and judge myself all the time.

While going through something traumatic in our lives a lot of different emotions might rise. The trap is that we end up being led by a whirlpool of emotions instead of following our spirit and Holy Spirit, causing us to make emotional choices and speaking out of judgment, pain, or trauma. While in this state we tend to not feel, sense, see, encounter His presence.

Rest creates an awareness of your new heart.
Rest creates space to watch and hover over your emotions without judgement to others or yourself.
Rest allows healing to take place.
Rest allows us to respond instead of react. Reacting is usually based upon fight, flight or freeze mode.

My encounter with rooted emotions

In 2015 I moved to USA with my now ex-husband. My idea of our life here was, we were going to become very busy very fast. (I don’t know why I thought that, I just did). But after a couple of months, I realized this was not the case and it was slow going. I was extremely frustrated because I came from South Africa where I worked 12-hour days to now doing almost nothing. Not even painting seemed to help. Enter the journey of understanding rest for the first time. Oh, my goodness what a frustration to a Martha but with the heart of Mary.

I decided I have the time so now would be a good time to do a 40-day water fast. So, it began I consumed my time with Him. Sitting in silence, reading this amazing book on meditation and contemplation.

About 2 weeks into the fast I discovered some unpleasant photographs between my ex and another person. My response even shocked me. I didn’t feel the need to yell at him or accuse him. I was at peace; my emotions were stable and not all over the place. I didn’t even confront him the day I found out. I did eventually confront him and even he could not believe my response to it. The story continued and a year later another traumatic event happened in our marriage that ended up in our divorce. However, I could feel my approach to this was different and more traumatic. Even though the event was a lot bigger, I knew that I had shifted from my position. You know the saying “the rug was pulled out from under you” well that’s exactly how it felt.

The only explanation I could come up with, I was not in the same place of rest. That showed me the importance of practicing His rest daily. When we stop the practice then the “Yasod” foundation we build our emotions on will also be unstable and the house will come tumbling down.

I’m not saying don’t have emotions, emotions are important, and we need them. Nor am I saying you need to go through a 40 day water fast to discover this for yourself. I am however saying, you are not your emotions, they don’t define who you are. Nor should they define your response. You are defined by your Creator made in His image and likeness. Entering rest allows you to take a step back from triggered emotions and allowing Him to wash over you to respond from His TRUTH. Rest allows you to come out of the chaos cloud into the light cloud of His love.