Riding Out the Storm

I have been having fits of emotion lately. Lumbering, looming, lingering emotion that chokes away my joy and cheats me into thinking horrid lies at the cost of my precious peace. And as they are often times forgotten upon remembrance in a rose colored recollection of the past, when you live through them it is not difficult to become discourage at your constant fall into the gloomies.

Recently, I have felt more empowered in life. Empowered to not let people push me around, empowered to speak my mind, empowered to do what I like because simply I like it… and I suppose this has all contributed to my newly spawned feelings of confidence. How did it happen? I suppose sometimes you just get angry enough or fed up enough with people using you, hurting you, and pushing you that there comes a time to say: Enough is enough! And I have had enough.

It dawned on me the other day in the shower (where many great and revolutionary thoughts hit us of course) that as I conquer all these little enemies of my life, I could also conquer big ones using the same "enough is enough" technique. 

I have always been a slave to my moods, my depressed feelings, or my over sensitive emotional nature. But who says it has to be like that? I am sick of being depressed so easily! I am sick of being controlled by my silly female moods! I am sick of letting what I “feel” dictate how I think and act. God gave us a spirit of power, did he not? Well why not use it, I say!?

 

I’ve been trying a new strategy to fight my offish moods. I imagine it as a storm, and I simply must ride it out. I’ve realized most times when I try to fight these overwhelming moods that I get discouraged and become even more depressed when my attempts fail.

So I now try to view them as what they are: a passing storm. For they will pass. And if they are recognized for what they are: temporary, unreal, emotional, deceiving, and changeable as the weather— then comfort will follow. Ride out the waves, batter down against the storm, and have the wisdom and faith to realize that the storm isn’t your life… it is just the weather in your life for that particular moment. We must not let the waves control us, because we know that God controls it all. 

Remember those faithless apostles in the boat with Jesus? How they cried out fearing that they would drown—they had the Son of God in the boat with them! How could they have worried? But we do the same thing. We worry about drowning in our own storms of life, even when Jesus is right there next to us. 

So when we are in a storm of emotion, or bad moods, or whatever is disrupting our peace, ride out the waves.  Fight the good fight and know that smiles will come again as the sun begins to shine. And always remember that your God controls the storm.

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." 

2 Tim 1:7

"...for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him." 2 Peter 2:19b

"The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”    He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples..." Luke 8:24-25