The Week That Was Series 17 – What Is Driving Your Emotions?

“Emotions are the next frontier to be understood and conquered. To manage our emotions is not to drug them or suppress them, but to understand them so that we can intelligently direct our emotional energies and intentions….It’s time for human beings to grow up emotionally, to mature into emotionally managed responsible citizens. No magic pill will do it.” ~ Doc Childre

These past days, even weeks, I hardly want to listen to the news on TV or even read the newspaper. From the four corners of the world, it is becoming more and more depressing to listen to the stories that continue to emerge of heartbreak, crime, violence, suffering, oppression and the atrocities upon humanity.

Here are a couple of examples of such stories that made headlines this past week that I would like to highlight in today’s column –

The parents, family members and friends grieve over Christopher Lane, from Australia, who was gunned down in Duncan, Oklahoma while he was out jogging last week, shot by three teens, ages 15-17, who said they had nothing better to do…one of the perpetrators Michael Jones, 17, telling police, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.”

Then shocking reports of sexual assault made headlines again in the South Asian nation of Mumbai, India where it is said that a female photographer, 23, was gang raped on Thursday evening while on assignment.

Antoinette Tuff and Michael Brandon Hill

Not that there aren’t stories of modern day miracles such as how God demonstrated His omnipotence and omnipresence with us here on earth through Antoinette Tuff on Tuesday August 20, who used kindness and love in the face of terror, saved many lives at a Georgia school and showed unbelievable courage to talk a very troubled young man, Michael Brandon Hill, 20, armed with an AK-47 type weapon to lay down his weapon and to surrender himself.

Not to mention, how she became like a mother to him, connecting with him on a level that drowned any possible thoughts of murder and suicide, as she even mentioned words such as love and forgiveness. Such an amazing and remarkable way in which mayhem was averted and skills of negotiation were learned by many from a women who in the midst of that stand-off situation and her own life endangered, revealed to the world how she too have had to push through her own pain, and who tried to commit suicide last year after her husband left her. It was heroic what she did and for that we give God all the glory, praise and honour.

It has been shown however, that many of us never truly allow ourselves to feel the emotions that we carry inside of us…sometimes painful and raw, we mask them and keep a tight lid on what we are truly feeling on the inside and never talk to anyone about them. When asked by those close to us or even genuine well wishers, ‘how are you?’ We put on this facade and the quickest and easiest thing that comes from our mouth is, “I’m okay.” or “Girl, I’m too blessed to be stressed,” when in fact we are torn by our emotions on the inside and too afraid if we tell, that others may look at us like a wimp.

When our emotions are allowed to be expressed, often times it’s in negative ways, enough to do damage to ourselves and to others. By starving our emotions we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped.

Emotions become aggressive and ugly as revealed in the twitter feed of one of the teens in Lane’s murder. Channeling ones’ emotion in negative ways in cyberspace has become so nasty that the founder and editor in chief of Huffington Post this past Wednesday in Boston have announced plans to ban anonymous commenting from its website. One source quoted Arianna Huffington as saying, “trolls have become more and more aggressive and uglier.”…..”Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity.”

So what’s driving people’s emotions that ever so often lead them to behave in such unlovable ways? Have we as a society become so caught up in our own world that we are missing the warning signs of the people around us who are troubled and need help before it reaches to the point where they vent their emotions of frustration, anger, hopelessness and hate through crime and violence upon innocent victims?

Have we strayed away from our early biblical teachings that we are our brother’s keeper and instead of hurting others, we watch out for them, ‘cover their back’ and pray for them rather than throwing them under the bus?

Are we loosing ground when it comes to keeping our family structure together, training up our children in the way they should grow to become God-fearing, well respected, and productive citizens in our society? What if it was not for the mercy and grace of God earlier this week? – I shudder at the thought of how there could have been a repeat of what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School eight months ago.

Doc Childre was spot on in his assertion that ’emotions are the next frontier to be understood and conquered.’ They must be understood and managed so that each one of us can make intelligent decisions and direct our emotional energies in ways that brings peace, joy, happiness, love and unity into our lives, our homes and our society once again.

Our only hope of survival I believe is total surrender to God. He is the only one we can take our issues and problems to and the one with all the answers who can bring about transformation and lasting change in our lives – not the psychologists, not the pills, not the guns, not crime and violence, not repressing our emotions that we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou.

God welcomes us with an open heart and open arms as He says, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18 KJV)

The choice is yours today, make it the right one!

God bless you!