Yesterday we took our dog Gracie to the Emergency Room because she hurt her back. The day before, on Friday, I was on one of my weekly SHARE•apy calls with my good friend Diana and all of a sudden I hear Gracie start yelping/crying/whimpering. Honestly, first thought was that Hannah was trying to dance with her and she wasn’t havin it. But then the whimpering continued and I asked Hannah what was going on.
Little kids and pets man… when they are hurt, it’s the worst. You can never really figure out what’s going on because they can’t tell you. We started going over the events leading to her injury. She jumped up onto a Hannah’s bed, which is a pretty high jump, but she does it with ease normally. We could tell that it was her back half that was hurting and that she wasn’t really favoring either side. Her hairs were standing straight up in her back… in a way we’ve never seen before. She was yelping any time she tried to jump or stand up.
After about a dozen different calls to vets and animal ERs, I finally got in contact with one place that said there was a 9.5 hour wait to be seen… so we might as well wait until the next morning. So we did.
It was still about a 2.5 hour wait once we got to the animal ER but when we finally got her seen, we had a clearer picture of what was going on with her. She had slipped a couple discs in her back when she made that leap onto the bed. She’s showing some early signs of a degenerative disc disease that dogs with long spines can get. Honestly, as bad as that sounds, it felt like a relief to us… she’s got a couple little lumps on her side that we haven’t been able to get removed and it was in the back of our minds that maybe they were the cause of everything.
Anyway… another hard situation.
When we got home… after we had some answers… after heightened emotions from Hannah, Gracie, myself and my whole family (basically)… after worry… after stress… after I have a chance to sit still for a minute… that’s when it normally all catches up to me.
I look over and I notice that Hannah kinda has the same look on her face. I told her how proud I was that she was able to keep her emotions in check today as we took Gracie to the vet, waited with her to be seen, got her in and out of the car… I told her how important it was that our emotions act as a tool for us to live urgently and compassionately. I started explaining the difference between being driven by our emotions versus being in control of the tool that emotions should be in our lives.
I knew right away that I’d have to write about it.
I spent the rest of the night looking for examples of controlling our emotions vs letting our emotions control US.
God gave us emotions. We know that. We have the widest range and expression of emotions out of any animal on earth. Yeah… other animals have emotions. We can see it on Nat Geo when we see the mama gorilla get annoyed with the baby that’s jumping on her head. We see it in elephants who show love to each other. We see emotions on display consistently in nature.
But humans…. Are we the only beasts that let our emotion RULE our lives? Are we the only ones that can control our emotions? I think we are the only species that wrestles with emotions that could render them harmful or helpful.
I’ll give you 2, from the last couple days.
I heard Gracie’s yelps and cries for help and it broke my heart. Of course it did, right? It evoked an emotion in me that propelled me to act. I knew that I had to figure out a place to take her that could help her. I had to set the emotion of fear aside. I was fearful of the cost… to be 100% transparent. I know I couldn’t afford a bunch of x-rays, tests, treatments … and if it was bad bad… I was scared of what that would feel like for Hannah … and myself… There’s been so much loss. But… I had to let emotion be a tool to drive my actions and NOT to inhibit them.
A little bit later on in the day, after the stress and pressure of immediate action had passed, I had another emotional battle brewing. Ironically, it started with me giving kudos to my kid for keeping her emotions in check while we handled the situation at hand. I was explaining the power in harnessing our emotions to propel… and after that expulsion of energy… when the ‘tiredness’ set in, I started to slip… emotionally. I even tried to write it off as ‘exhaustion’, but, in reality, under that tired… under the exhausted… under the “enough is enough” … I felt defeated. I was experiencing the emotions associated with defeat.
One example is how to harness emotion. One example represents how emotions can get the best of us.
I didn’t want to just stop with the observations of healthy and harmful emotional relativity to our lives. I wanted to find a resource or two to pass a long. I was able to find a really good list of 10 ways the Bible actually instructs us to interact with our emotions. You can find the full article HERE.
How Does The Bible Say We Should Control Emotions
Here are 10 ways the Bible tells us to control our emotions…
Remove bitterness from your heart – Ephesians 4:31
Work on forgiving others – Matthew 19:20-22
Lift the gloom from your heart – Ecclesiastes 11:10
Remove murmuring from your lips – Philippians 2:13-15
Erase stubbornness from your heart – Romans 2:5-6
Stop fear in its tracks – Deuteronomy 31:8 (When you’re fearing a situation or emotional challenge, really envision God saying this, just to you. He’s on your side.)
Submit negative thinking to the Lord and think on good things – Philippians 4:8
No more slandering – James 4:11
Be grateful for what you have – Luke 12:15
Remove pride from your life – Proverbs 11:2
- Coffee with Starla
Lastly, I want to let you know that if you are on the journey to harness your emotions for the real power that God has put inside of you, keep it up! You got this!
If you are a person whose emotions get the better of you, I want you to know that you don’t have to be a slave to your emotions. It’s not a quick fix, but keep taking those baby steps towards healthy emotional balance.
If you are a person who nails emotions sometimes… and succumbs to the overwhelming nature of them sometimes… welcome to being human. We’re gonna get it right sometimes… and a lot of the times, we aren’t. Be gentle with yourself. Be accountable to yourself. Keep wrestling with yourself.
We got this.
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Emotions: Harmful or Helpful?