Feelings.

If your HAPPY and you know it....

Feelings are so deceitful. This is a huge lesson I am learning right now. I am definitely a person who has relied on and followed my feelings in the past and it has caused most of the messy situations I made in my life.

Feelings can be a good thing. In fact feelings can be one of the BEST things in life. Feelings make you friends, help you empathize with others, and cause you to fall in love.

Feelings can also make you hurt a friend, cause you to be selfish beyond belief, and aide in you ruining a 25 year marriage. 

So how in the world can we know which feelings to act on and which feelings to ignore? I have been learning ALOT about this very question in a women's Bible study I am doing with an amazing group of girls. 

The study is Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted, by Priscilla Shirer. 

Over the past several weeks of study I have come to realize this about feelings. Most of the feelings (good or bad) that were the most intense feelings of my life...didn't stay that way.

I fell in love as a teenager, I was even engaged to my first love for awhile...but now looking back I see those feelings so different than I did then. 

There was no honeymoon period for my husband and I. We went straight from wedding mode into "get ready for baby" mode. That wasn't easy. ALOT of the feelings I had in those years told me I had made a mistake and we would never be happy together. Six years later I am So glad I didn't just totally give in to those feelings. It was hard but we put in the work and it was worth it.

As a mom I can't even count all the little moments I have doubted myself, wanted to hide in a closet just to get away for five minutes, or cried exhausted completely overwhelmed tears bawled up on the kitchen floor. Then my kids do something completely amazing out of the blue, and I can't imagine a second of life without them.

So if we make our decisions based only on feelings than what do we do when those feelings change?

I love this quote by Priscilla "Many times God calls us to choose to walk by faith, and our feelings follow along in time."

I have been chewing on that for weeks. Where did I get this idea that my feelings were the most important thing? When did I start believing that I needed to put my feelings before anything and anyone else. I don't know, but what I do know is that I should control my feelings not the other way around. 

It is an amazing gift when our feelings and actions go hand in hand working towards a common good. However, maybe it is a gift we give others, or God, or in the long run OURSELVES when we act out of rational obedience and not on feelings alone.

I don't think there is a certain age or maturity level when we understand this concept I just think it's a process we all must go through. Some, like myself, must make a lot of mistakes they FELT were right to see the pattern. Others learn more quickly. 

Either way, God is waiting patiently for each of us to see the only thing that never changes is Him. If we are making decisions based in a true and growing relationship with Him and His Word, then I believe the feelings will follow and be lasting. If not...well just remember this blog when it happens. And know that God is waiting to trade "Beauty for Ashes..." 

and provide for those who grieve in Zion— 

to bestow on them a crown of beauty 

   instead of ashes, 

the oil of joy 

   instead of mourning, 

and a garment of praise 

   instead of a spirit of despair. 

They will be called oaks of righteousness, 

   a planting of the LORD 

   for the display of His splendor.

Isaiah 61:3

Doing Monday A.S.A.P.
(As Southern As Possible)