Am I Going to Be OK? Inside Out

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4: 23

Where do we start doing our part when it comes to guarding our hearts?

I believe Holley Gerth has good advice on practical steps we can take in order to guard our hearts and begin to restore the balanced and healthy flow of everything we do.

In her book You’re Going to Be Okay, the author talks about how it is helpful and important to first, identify our feelings. We need to name our feelings, put them into objective, concrete words. There is a long list of different feelings on page 75, but there is also a short list of basic 6: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.

While I type this list, I can’t help but to think of the movie Inside Out. I really like that movie. We see there these basic emotions represented, except surprise. Also, in the movie, happiness is Joy. I like that better! The basic premise of the movie is that as we mature, our emotions get more and more complicated because they blend into one another. When we are adults, sadness is often not just pure sadness, but a mix of fear, disgust and also joy. The movie also furthers the idea that often, joy comes after sadness:

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30: 5b)

Naming the feelings, therefore, becomes more and more challenging as we grow up. It’s not so clear-cut to be able to isolate and identify our emotions at any given circumstance. We have to do a lot of soul-searching in order to realize what really is going on inside of us. We totally have to bring the inside all the way out.

And that, might be hard for someone like me. Someone who lives in a constant state of rushing and hurrying has a hard time stopping to ponder.

Sigh…

But just like the traffic lights on the streets of my small-town attempt to keep the mid-December traffic flowing, I need to install and activate traffic lights in my heart, so I can too keep the flow balanced. How do I do that? Let’s explore that idea in the next post.