It’s Okay to Feel the Feels
Published Apr 22, 2020
You and I have a lot in common.
Like you, I’m a mom figuring out how to juggle social studies questions and Google classroom hiccups in between Zoom calls for work.
I’m a wife who hasn’t had a silent moment to carry on a private conversation with the husband person since March 13.
And I’m a Christian who loves and trusts God, yet I kind of want to shout at the sky right now. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?
But I know what He’d tell me.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8–9)
In other words, lean not on your own stinking understanding, Becky.
Here’s the truth about this pandemic that I keep coming back to, like a bean bag chair indented with the shape of my behind. I try to get up and wander the room, but it sucks me back in and says, rest here. Quit squirming.
We can’t see the future. Because we’re not supposed to.
God knows everything we don’t know, and He alone can handle it. Even when it makes no sense, somehow—somehow—everything He does or allows is for His glory and our good.
Even the coronavirus.
So I run the gamut within a single day from feeling hopeful to sad to frustrated to desperate for a dinner I don’t have to cook.
I have moments of pure joy and gratitude and moments of anxiety and grief.
I want to bear-hug my kids and embrace this time at home with them.
And sometimes I want to hide in the closet with a bag of chocolate chips.
You, too?
It’s okay.
We were created to be emotional beings. Rational yet emotional at the same time. Wisdom, worry, hope, panic, love and angst and joy and sorrow. Do you know where all these meet?
At the cross.
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 11:19)
Last week I sang praise songs aloud in my living room with our middle school chapel airplay. I learned to play Quiddler with my 10-year-old. I marveled at my seventh-grader’s ability to assemble a 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle, and I belly-laughed at a friend’s hilarious video on Facebook. So many good things. Precious things.
But I also stressed about money and groceries and toilet paper supply. I cried over my child’s worries. I growled in anger at an email from the SBA. I covered my ears in frustration when three voices in my house and a half dozen notifications on my phone clamored for my attention at the same moment.
I wrote an obituary for my dear friend’s mom.
You guys, this is real life. It’s sad and it’s happy and it’s everything in between.
And we’ve got to keep on living it.
Even under quarantine.
A few days ago, my 13-year-old showed me the new lockscreen on her iPad. It was a picture of her cabin pals from last year’s summer camp. “It reminds me of the good things to come,” she said.
“That’s right, Lovey, good things are coming.” I smiled and added, “But you know what? Good things are happening right now, too.”
In all our hope for the future, for days of freedom beyond the pandemic, let’s remember not to lose sight of the blessings God is granting us meanwhile. In the midst of frustration, isolation, uncertainty—even as we feel ALL the feels—God will bring us joys each day to balance out the trials.
We have to keep watching for them, counting them, and allowing them to keep us afloat.
“From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
Blessings to you, my friends. We’re in this together. You, me, the whole waiting world—and Jesus above us all.
With His love,
Becky
