What do cancer, depression, and the devil have in common?
You mean besides the fact that they SUCK?!
Their presence in your life is not your fault.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a gathering of homeschooled high school students at an NCFCA Speech & Debate competition. This organization and the culture surrounding it shaped much of my own high school experience. I was asked to lead a morning devotional for the students and their families by a dear family friend of mine, and she gave me full freedom to speak on whatever topic I wanted. So I thought back to my own high school experience and decided to deliver a message I wish my younger self could have heard in that context, one that I prayed would bless these students as well. The topic I chose was Brutally Honest Prayer: Processing Raw Emotions with God.
One of the most damaging messages I gleaned from my conservative, homeschooled, purity-culture-saturated upbringing, was that human emotion had moral weight…that experiencing emotions like anger, sadness, and loneliness was morally bad because by “letting yourself feel” those, you would be “actively choosing not to feel joy,” and would therefore be “giving the Devil a foothold on your life.”
After all, the Bible says to “be joyful always,” which must mean I’m supposed to be happy all the time in order to be a good Christian, right? Well, that’s what I was led to believe at the time. Or maybe that’s just how I individually misinterpreted scripture at the time, and no one checked me on it? In any event, it’s what I used to believe. I don’t blame any one organization or person for these damaging messages that shaped me as a child. I can only speak to my own experience and call out those messages I desperately want to snuff out in the next generation of young people who pass through that culture after me.
So hear me loud and clear when I tell you this: your emotions have zero moral implications. You are not a “good” or “bad” person because of what you feel. You can make good and bad choices in how you respond and act on your feelings, but there is no such thing as a morally good or bad emotion. Emotions just are. Feelings are just feelings. You don’t choose them, they just happen to you. And that’s completely healthy and normal.
This is probably not a revolutionary concept to most of you reading this. But for me, it was, until about two years ago when I started seeing a therapist for my depression (shocking how that might have developed right? We love processing flawed and life-altering theology don’t we? Lol) and became a preschool teacher and ironically had to teach curriculum to 3-year-olds about how to navigate their emotions using language like, “feelings are just feelings, and you get to decide what to do with them!” Who knew I would learn so much about mental and emotional health through a job that required me to spend half my day sweeping up Cheerios, organizing crayons, and oh yeah, teaching babies life skills I needed to learn myself!
They are no respecter of persons.
They can attack literally anyone at any time for any reason. Wealthy, poor, Christian, atheist, black, white, men, women, LQBTQ, academic, artistic, successful, struggling, young, old…
You never know when they’ll come back. You can guess. Doctors, pastors, and counselors can guess. But no one really knows except God.
They’re all losers.
(no literally, not one of these three monsters is victorious in the end) Jesus Christ will beat them all in the end.
AND OH! WHAT A VICTORY
