Emotions

I've always been an emotional person.  Tears come easily, as does laughter.  I'd like to say that pregnancy and motherhood changed that, but I'd be lying.  It is scary how quickly I can change.    This morning, for example, I woke up with a cold.  Nothing that serious, but serious enough to make me pull the covers over my head and wish I could pull a duvet day.  My husband very sweetly went and got our son up and gave him his milk.  Despite that I had managed, within the space of about 10 minutes, to start a row which ended with the line, 'I just don't feel like you love me'.  Cue tears.  Irrational, unwarranted and far too emotional.

In an effort to combat my emotionalism I've just finished an amazing book called 'Living beyond your feelings: controlling emotions so they don't control you' by Joyce Meyer.  It is awesome and now full of lots of pen marks (I used to underline in pencil so I could rub it out... but after years of doing this I never rubbed the lines out so I thought I'd be a bit rebellious and underline in pen.  Just one of the ways I'm living on the edge.  But I digress.).  There s a lot of wisdom in this book - too much for one post - but here's a few of the things I've taken and am trying to do in order to be slightly less emotion-led.

1.  Meyer defines wisdom as 'doing now what you will be satisfied with later on'.  Starting (or finishing) an argument may seem satisfying.  And I may make my point.  But I'll later regret it.  So I'm trying to focus on how future-Bekah will have wanted to have acted.

2.  When David wrote, 'This is the day, I will rejoice and be glad in it' he was making a conscious decision.  He didn't get up and wait to see how he felt.  He decided - irrespective of circumstance - that he was going to rejoice in the Lord.  An early baby-related wake up call is usually followed by day in which I spend a lot of time complaining.  But I have a choice. I can rejoice.

3.  Refusing to let my emotions dictate my day is Hard Work.  But I have made a choice to walk the narrow way which leads to life.  The Amplified Bible puts this verse from Matthew 7 as 'narrow [contracted by pressure]'.  I will experience a lot of pressure when I attempt this, but it's the way Jesus went.  He didn't let his fear or apprehension about the cross sway him from walking that path.  And it's in His footsteps that I am attempting to follow.