An excerpt from Unraveled – available on Amazon, Kindle & Audible
I have experienced faith communities that communicate subtly but powerfully that emotions are bad. Or at least the hard emotions. Radiating thankfulness, joy, and peace? Great! You must be doing something right and have lots of faith! Anxious, lonely, angry, confused, or disappointed? Well, friend, you need to memorize more Bible verses about thankfulness! Find that joy and peace!
We don’t like seeing our friends in pain, so when someone grieves beyond our comfort level, we retreat from the hard conversations. Feeling powerless to help others overcome the pain they’re experiencing, we say the dumbest things ever: “Just get over it; he has.” “There are people who would love to have your problems.” As if painful experiences have a ranking system that makes some better or worse than others.
In my pain, I often experienced very real and powerful emotions. In the blink of an eye, the flood threatened to take me under. I got to the point where there really wasn’t anyone left who could help me navigate the surprising, all-encompassing waves. To be honest, I can understand how no one was interested in hearing me recount the same struggles, fears, and insecurities over and over. In suffering and grief, I needed people connected enough to their own humanity to sit with me and listen without going under with me. Friends could help me to a certain point, but I needed professional counsel to overcome the deepest parts of this wound.
Unfortunately, many do not move beyond the initial phase of compassion and empathy offered by friends, into true healing. Maybe you, too, have taken the advice of those unable to counsel you all the way through the deepest pain. Taking the well-meaning but extremely damaging advice to “just move past it,” the overwhelming emotions and wounds still bleeding get buried deep down as we attempt to “just be more thankful and joyful.”
I have heard for decades that Jesus followers should get their eyes off the problem and praise Jesus, no matter what’s happening. This is 100 percent true—unless it’s not. There are times when this advice isn’t helpful in overcoming pain. Instead, it creates an atmosphere that encourages hurting people to ignore pain, causing more damage than good. Emotions feel like reality. Thoughts paint images of what was and will be with such force that they are difficult to escape.
Pray or Praise through Pain?
We need to become aware of what our real and raw emotions are trying to communicate to us. There are times to praise through pain. There are times to pray through pain. There are times to weep through pain. There are times to talk through the pain. And there are times to listen quietly through the pain. The goal is to get through the pain, with the Holy Spirit guiding the healing journey.
The most freeing words for suffering and grief that I’ve found are from the book of James. These words welcomed and gave solutions to the depth of pain I was experiencing: “Is anyone among you afflicted (ill-treated, suffering evil)? He should pray. Is anyone glad at heart? He should sing praise [to God]” (James 5:13 AMPC).
There were absolutely times when I could declare and rejoice over what God was doing and what was to come. These were powerful times when I could praise God for His goodness and love in the middle of the pit. There were also times when the dark emotions overwhelmed me, and I needed to address them. I don’t believe we can praise away trauma. These words from the Bible state that we are to pray when we are suffering evil. Prayer for me is a deep, worshipful communion with Jesus, my Creator, Savior, and Lover. It’s a space where I pour out my heart, and He pours out His. My heart releases poison, fear, anger, and pride. He releases love, power, and life into me. Until I pour out what’s in me, there’s no room for what He longs to fill me with.
Emotions signal to us and those around us that something is not okay within. They point to where we need healing. They let us know something is wrong. Imagine your Check Engine light coming on in your car and having a mechanic tell you, “Turn the radio up louder, and it will go away.” Truly, the issue would go away eventually when the engine seized, and the car would be sent to the junkyard. A pure, believing heart must take the emotional warning lights seriously and without shame. Anger, fear, grief—these are signals that it’s time to slow down, spend time in God’s presence, and allow the flame of His love to reveal wounds, scar tissue, or infections lying deep within. And to pray. Talk to God about what you feel. Ask Him where the pain is coming from and how to address it.
Inviting Others to Meet Us Where We’re At
Emotions also allow others to meet us in our story. The word sympathy comes from the Latin word sympathia and encompasses feeling what others feel, and allowing what affects our friends to affect us. Emotions are not meant to separate us from each other. When shared and received, they bring comfort, connection, and healing. Do we view our emotions as assets that inform and bond us, or liabilities that are untrustworthy and evil?
Do we view our emotions as assets that inform and bond us, or liabilities that are untrustworthy and evil?
While we don’t want to fall into the habit of constant navel-gazing, as I’ve heard Bill Johnson put it, there are times when we need to sit with God and get clarity on what’s going on inside us. Are my emotions pointing to an area I need to renew my mind in, a lie I’m believing, an unhealed trauma, a spiritual agreement I’ve made that I need to repent of? I’m just not smart enough to figure this out on my own. I need discernment. I need God’s help. And I need wise counselors and trained therapists to help me discover what’s going on in my heart. There are also times we need to be brave, and invite, or maybe invite again, people to meet us where we are.
I am learning to be very curious about what I’m feeling. I ask myself, Why do I feel anxious around that person or place? What is this overwhelming sense of sadness? What brings me peace and clarity? What brings me joy and refreshing? A good counselor will help us dig below the surface of our emotions with curiosity, to help find the root of these emotions. Until we address what’s at the core of our feelings, they will continue to cause damage.
It’s not healthy to pretend we’re okay when we’re not. It’s not okay to feel as if we’re not allowed to experience negative emotions. It’s not okay to be around toxic positivity that neglects genuine healing (more on that in a moment).
God is the Healer of both our bodies and our souls. Our soul is the place our emotions dwell. It can be broken and crushed, wounded and bleeding. Jesus binds up broken hearts, minds, and emotions. He wraps in love, soothes with healing balms, and carefully attends to the wounds we allow Him to access. It’s the hard emotions that point us to the wounds that need the Healer.
We don’t need to be ashamed of what we feel. Finding professional counselors to walk through the healing journey with us and address the emotions screaming for attention is vital.
Wise Counsel or Toxic Positivity?
Years ago, a man came to me for prayer. He had a very painful past and a slew of health issues. We talked and prayed. I gave him some steps to take. Not long after, I found him having the exact same conversation with another leader in our church, and expressing the exact same prayer request. His health issues never seemed to get better. His conversation never changed from what had happened, to what a future free of this ailment would look like.
There’s a difference between seeking out those who can help us take the next step to freedom, and searching out someone new whom we can relive our story with as we seek validation and attention rather than healing. I pray that we would all ask God to show us our motives and deepest needs as we seek out counsel.
Wise counsel will help us see, name, and address what’s going on inside our hearts and minds, bringing real freedom. It’s okay to take your time with it, while also determining not to remain stuck in any pain or suffering. When we are genuinely seeking counsel that moves us toward healing, we will come across what has been coined toxic positivity. Those who follow Jesus might be the biggest culprits of this, but I’m not sure.
Proverbs 25:20 confused me, until I encountered toxic positivity in the middle of my pain: “When you sing a song of joy to someone suffering in the deepest grief and heartache, it can be compared to disrobing in the middle of a blizzard or rubbing salt in a wound” (tpt). Now when I read this verse, I can relate to someone who has been left exposed, vulnerable, and unsafe in the counsel of someone else who has little awareness of how to address the real needs of pain and suffering.
I mentioned earlier about the healing conference with Randy Clark. The worship team was small, simple, and powerful. They didn’t start with the usual “clap your hands and praise” routine, as so many worship leaders are in the habit of doing. They kept it simple, kept their eyes on Jesus, and gently led the room into His presence. Within thirty seconds of the first song, I had tears streaming down my face. I had been on the battlefield for so long, fighting for my marriage, and dealing with triggers and trauma and hypervigilance to keep myself safe. Yet this felt like finding a cabin in the woods, where an old granny lived. She gently bathed, clothed, and fed me before putting me in the softest of beds to rest. I was safe. I could rest. I could heal. I didn’t realize how much I needed the Comforter until this worship team led me to Him.
At the conference, we were a room full of broken and hurting people needing physical, mental, and emotional healing, and hoping for a touch from God. If the worship team had begun with upbeat praise music and had pushed to get the room excited, it would have hamstrung what the Holy Spirit wanted to do.
Why? Because beginning in that way would have put the responsibility on the people, as so many worship leaders do each weekend. Yes, we enter God’s gates with thanksgiving. But is thanksgiving always expressed in upbeat, exuberant praise? Starting as a quiet whisper might also get you there.
Going through the Roof
I love the story in the Bible of the four friends who cut a hole in the roof of a house to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus (see Mark 2:1–12). The home was full and overflowing with people who were there to see Jesus and hear His words. Many in the crowd likely needed healing. Yet look at these friends take action: “They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head” (verse 4).
We need to know when it’s time to help each other through thanksgiving, and when it’s time to lower a friend gently through the roof, into Jesus’ arms for healing. Spoiler alert: Jesus loved this act of faith on the part of these four friends.
The idea of “entering with thanksgiving” sometimes feels as though I’m being told that I can get myself there . . . I can enter the courts of God in my own strength and power. This is not God’s heart in giving us the choice to praise Him when we’re hurting. Have we taken this powerful gift and turned it into a task to accomplish before being welcomed by the Father? The truth is, we can’t do any of this in our own power. Entering His presence with a grieving, hurting soul sometimes takes being lowered through the roof of a house by your friends. Humble enough to realize you can’t push through and get yourself there, except for a simple prayer: Jesus, help.
I was the crippled friend who couldn’t press through the crowds to get close to Jesus. If upbeat, shouting, clapping praise had been the start to entering God’s presence that day at the conference, I would have walked out. It would have been fake for me, and I was tired of pretending I was okay. I was exhausted.
Praise is warfare. Praise is good and tells our souls that we will exalt God above our circumstance. Yet we also need healing worship that invites the Comforter to tend to our wounds when we’ve been on the battlefield. As the team that weekend so carefully followed the Holy Spirit, I was tearfully, worshipfully, gratefully lowered to the feet of the Healer. I didn’t have to work up anything; I just rested and trusted in His presence.
