Stay Tethered (Part two on “Feelings Can’t Be Trusted”)
Lord, inside all of my reality—
tether me to You.
“Our mind is where thoughts and feelings originate. We get to choose what we think about which in turn affects our emotions. We live at the mercy of our ideas. This is never more true than that with our ideas about God.” - Dallas Willard
Let’s take a quick walk through a made-up example:
‘’I’ve been struggling with anxiety for years, I feel like I’m never going to get free. I feel hopeless.”
In this situation, their feelings are not telling them lies.
They believe that—their feeling of hopelessness is telling them the truth of what is going on inside of their thoughts and inner belief systems. It is revealing where they have broken trust and what is leading their anxiety further— powerlessness.
They will not get free unless they begin to go on a journey to trust and acknowledge what their feelings have been trying to reveal to them. Until they choose to fully begin to do the internal work to re-connect as well as re-establish trust with their heart; where they last abandoned it.
Again, this is not the same thing as submitting to the feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness.
And yes, sure, we can all blatantly argue—but the feeling of hopelessness is a lie, the truth is, is that there is hope!
Totally, the truth is that there is always hope. Hope is forever present, it is in the very air we breathe, nothing will shake that reality.
Yet, is their heart awake to this reality? No, and their feelings are trying to tell them this.
Will simply just telling them, “Don’t trust your feelings! There is hope!” actually free them from being led by hopelessness?
Softly, my heart in this is to simply help bring awareness of how this statement in the church has been hurting people on an emotional health level, more than helping them.
In very simple terms, anxiety is this: a closed door of the heart.
It is a signal on the dashboard that one is currently closed off and disconnected to areas of their own heart.
That you are in a form of flight, fight or freeze—compartmentalized and hiding in places—not fully sharing with others vulnerably, as well as, connecting in complete honesty with yourself.
There are unending scenarios that can lead to this feeling, that we have all experienced in moments internally. We are all human.
And even though it is true in this specific scenario, that hopelessness is always rooted in a lie, what can be trusted is what their feelings are telling them about the current state of their heart and how their belief systems have been leading them to the place they are in.
Because again, ultimately feelings don’t lead us, belief systems do.
We can only discover how we have been and are being led, when we trust what our feelings are speaking to us.
These core belief systems can only be transformed by love when one is fully able to acknowledge and trust the truth of what the heart has been carrying at its roots, usually for decades.
It is crucial to mend trust with our hearts inside our emotions; with the totality of ourselves outside of the judgement of shame or control.
Saying that “our feelings can’t be trusted”, is actually leading us to dangerously fracture trust with ourselves internally.
It is in trusting what our feelings are saying, that leads us to the honest and vulnerable acknowledgement of the core belief systems that are leading us—this is where a renovation of the heart begins—the miraculous mending within the gift of salvation.
Where the uprooting of these limiting belief systems takes place and the deepening of true maturity begins.
Where illusions begin to break, a holy sobriety taking place as we learn how to stay tethered to The Lord inside the totality of the reality we are experiencing—letting Him tether us together in all our fractured places.
I can be depressed and then lean all that truth into The Lord, experiencing Him tether me to Him, yielding control.
I can be rejected and then lean all that truth into The Lord, experiencing Him tether me to Him, yielding control.
I can be anxious and then lean all that truth into The Lord, experiencing Him tether me to Him, yielding control.
I can be hurt and then lean all that truth into The Lord, experiencing Him tether me to Him, yielding control.
I can be joyful and lean all that truth into The Lord, experiencing Him tether me to Him, yielding control.
His arms are wide open without judgement—waiting for us to lean every fiber of our being, into Him.
And we stay—bringing ourselves yielded fully to Him—over and over, becoming tethered as One further and further.
Until all that was once fractured is whole, all that once felt distant, close, close, close—tethered inside of His blood and His body.
Jesus, God Himself, teaches us what it means to be human in that He felt every spectrum of emotion.
He sat inside tension. He engaged with discomfort—He let love cost Him—a necessary pain.
Jesus teaches us how to acknowledge our feelings. He never beat Himself up for feeling grief or anger.
He never labeled Himself bad when He felt an uncomfortable experience.
He paid attention to what His emotions had to say. He let His emotions pass through Him, inform Him, affect Him.
He welcomed anger, sadness, confusion, even feeling overwhelmed in moments. At Gethsemane, He experienced all kinds of uncomfortable emotions, including anguish. He poured His emotions out, in honesty—leaning all of Himself towards The Father.
Jesus teaches us that our feelings are telling us something honest about our internal experience. They are teaching us, informing us how we are experiencing ourselves and the world around us.
Then, how to stay in contact with our reality and submit the fullness of all that we are experiencing to The Father’s transformative love, Lordship and Leadership.
Not my will, but Yours. A staying. A tethering. A yielding—relinquishing of control.
Also, The Father, didn’t berate Jesus for feeling anguish and fear before going to the cross.
He felt the full spectrum of emotion and everything about Jesus, is pure.
He, God, fully sympathizes with us, so why don’t we, with ourselves.
And us, well, I think the cross is continually longing to deliver us from shame and speak to us—that we are made in His image and we too, are good—worthy to be met inside every emotion held within the human heart.
So, the question is not to ask, is this feeling trustworthy?
The question is: what’s leading you?
And well, that will always be directly dependent on your level of surrender inside the totality of your being—to chose to yield yourself fully, inside all of your reality, to His Lordship and leading.
Stay tethered, let Him mend trust at the depths—within yourself and with Him—this journey goes hand in hand.
