Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello, BW tribe. How has your week been going? If it hasn’t been great, be encouraged to know that this too shall pass. If it’s going great, be fully present for all of it. To my new readers, welcome! You are already loved here. To regulars, welcome back tribe. We are in week 13 of our series Can We Be Honest and this is probably my hardest write because I was triggered today and have to talk about emotions. Whew….let’s do it anyways.

I follow many accounts on Instagram that advocate listening to your emotions and giving yourself space to feel and express them. Beyond these valuable mental and emotional health accounts, I am elated and encouraged to see many churches particularly in America bring conversations around trauma to the pulpit and have expert panelists speaking at high-profile conferences. I see more and more young African and black American families striving to show and model kingdom-healthy families and marriages. We have many resources that help couples in strained relationships and marriages unpack the root problems they face and singles being encouraged to heal, find, and love themselves before they meet their life partners. It’s truly a gift to be alive at this time in history and I am grateful that God chose you and I to be alive right now and witness all of it unfold. 

However, the generations that preceded millennials and Gen Z were raised and also cultivated a culture of emotional suppression, normalizing dysfunction in families and patriarchal dominance which they took to the extremes. On the other hand, the two youngest generations have also gone to the other extreme. I am one of the oldest members of Gen Z and I can see these extremes at play. My generation as well as millennials are bold about expressing every emotion and demanding that they be respected, women and their rights are highly advocated for (I love this), they call out dysfunction in families and relationships pretty easily  and we are two generations that are proponents of “self-care and self love.” Where it has often gotten dangerous is when emotions have become the master of our lives. Women are increasingly demanding and expecting men to feel, think, and behave like them, people expect and pursue perfection in families and relationships, and self-love slowly becoming an idol.  

How we feel is now the principle truth and if it does not feel good to you then you immediately let it go. “If it disturbs your peace, then walk away,” and “Do what feels good to you” are common statements I hear often. I have said all of them too and to be completely honest, I will say them again in the future. I want to be very clear that it is not wise to wait for years on end while you are mistreated by a person. I also don’t advocate being a pushover. However, as a believer, there are going to be seasons in your life where God is going to impress it on your heart to endure a little longer and stay in a relationship with someone difficult and hard to love. Some of us have a difficult parent/s, a sibling, a friend, a coworker, etc. It’s not that God wants or even enjoys seeing you suffer, but he knows continuing in a relationship with these people will change you for the better if you corporate with God more than the change you want to see in that person. However, when emotions run supreme in your life, you will disobey God in moments when he wants to refine your character and your heart.   

 Social media accounts that affirm our feelings and validate the fragility of our emotions tend to have the most amount of followers today. Posts on different social media platforms perform better if they talk about or evoke positive human emotions. God gave us emotions because he wanted us to feel just like he feels. We are emotional beings and with women, we are slightly more controlled by our emotions than men simply because of the way God wired us. While it is very good that our generation has learned the importance of emotional regulation and expression as a result of how we were raised, we must be careful to not see emotion as the sole truth. 

The weakness of emotions is thwat they are constantly changing and fleeting. You wake up feeling irritable and groggy, by lunchtime you feel energetic and happy, by 3 pm you are anxious because of an email you just received, and by the time you go to bed you feel tired, but accomplished. If you live with a highly emotionally unstable individual the mood changes are quicker. If you are not convinced of the temporary nature of emotions, spend a day observing a woman who is going through a heartbreaqk or processing a big loss or a person(any gender) who is in a transitioning period in their life.   

In the first scenario, yes the woman will be in a vulnerable state but it shows the changing nature of emotions. I have done this experiment with a male and how they process similar circumstances is slightly different. It’s very important to learn how to feel, process, and express every emotion healthily. However, it is very dangerous and unwise to make decisions when you are emotionally or mentally unstable. It’s amazing how culture today encourages and models the opposite. Lovers get married because “they feel in love” with their partner and can’t wait for the wedding day, and tenants sign rental contracts because of how aesthetic they feel the house looks, with convenient online shopping, people overcome a hard day through therapy shopping things they don’t need and may never use, on Twitter, everyone releases every thought and emotion they feel throughout the day without thinking of their digital footprint, people reshare videos that excite them in the moment before they fully listen to the quality of the content they are sharing and the list goes on.  

Emotions can guide us to the root problem of our behavior, but they cannot be our master. How did letting anger control you turn out for you? How did updating your status when you were emotional feel when you were back to your normal self? Where has therapy shopping when you are financially strained left you? What happened to that business that you started because you were excited, but ended up becoming a burden when the excitement wore off? How did you feel after raging at your coworker only to find out they had done the task already, but you were stressed out from other things already? In what predicament did you find yourself in after a year of continuous emotional eating or having sex with the person who promised to be with you forever and kissed goodbye after they got what they wanted? These are real-life circumstances that people find themselves in and I am not judging you or anyone who has done this because I am just as guilty. My intention is just to show you that emotions are a wonderful guide to unpacking the roots of destructive thoughts, emotions, and behavior but we can’t be driven by them. 

Most problematic emotions are also routinely in tune with our sinful nature. They are intense at the moment but usher in shame after you give in. Romans 8:7-8 says “ So letting your sinful nature control you leads to death. Letting the Spirit control you leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature never did obey God’s law and it never will. “ Ironically I read this portion of Scripture this morning as part of my daily quiet time and it jumped out to me like it was the first time I had read it.  The enemy often uses your emotions to tempt you to sin because he understands human nature probably more than we understand ourselves. He knows that when he puts us in the right environment and stimulates us at just the right time, we will eventually give into our flesh what it wants. 

The Spirit’s leading will often be counter-flesh and demands that we die to our flesh and even though this is clear in the word, many Christians are also merging with the world’s pursuit of life and peace. Culture says, “Do what feels good, travel the world, eat good food, make lots of money at whatever cost, go to spas, read every new book, get every trendy hairstyle, fashion or gadget, etc,” then you will find the peace you are looking for. Everything is about how you feel and when our emotions fail us, we sink into an even deeper hole. You may have seen how letting emotions be your master destroys the life of a person you know or yours. If you haven’t, wisdom is best proven when you learn from other people’s mistakes instead of waiting to learn the lesson yourself. 

I challenge you this week to consider the emotions you have let control you. For me, it was anger and shame, and maybe for you, it may be fear, a short temper, anxiety, worry, chronic sadness, or another emotion. Remember what I have said in many of my posts before, the first step to finding freedom is to admit you do have a problem. It’s not your identity, but simply something you struggle with. You are not less than because guess what, everyone has a weakness and struggles with something. For my natural feelers, you tend to be more vulnerable to being controlled by your emotions. Partner with the Holy Spirit to help you keep that part of you as a gift, not a weapon. Keep your compassion, empathy, and gentle love, and refuse Satan’s bullying tactics. I love you tribe and I will see you on the next one.