Emotions, Schemotions

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of feelings. I remember laying on the couch watching The Santa Clause for the first time last year and experiencing approximately 7 different emotions at the same time. I think I freaked my male teammates out a little bit. My current teammates can tell you multiple stories of tears shed in the office due to different touching/beautiful/sad moments. Yeah, yeah, it's because I'm a woman - whatever. I like to look to my girl Zooey on this one:

I love this quote from Zooey because I think I have been told that my emotions are bad. 

Recently, my friend Matt made a comment that emotions are bullshit. When I went home that night, I realized I was really mad at him for that comment. So I vented to Jesus and I realized it was because I took what he said personally. And then I was annoyed at myself for feeling that.

I think what is hard about emotions is that when we feel something, especially if we feel it intensely, we think we have to act. However, simply following everything that our heart desires is an extreme and will not lead to you making the best choice you could make for yourself. The opposite of this extreme is to view emotions as 100% bad (or BS as Matt would say) and simply live in our heads. We need to understand that our emotions are not bad. Jesus had emotions! He cried, He got angry, and most of all He loved. Yet He did not let these feelings rule His choices. 

I think we each naturally gravitate towards one of these two extremes. We can shut off and completely ignore our feelings and over analyze everything - this is being driven by our intellect. Or we can lean towards being emotion driven. This is what we do when we follow the different ebbs and flows of our heart in each passing moment. 

The trouble with following one extreme over the other is this: if we shut out our emotions we lose the ability to know and understand the deep desires that God has placed on our heart, and if we only follow the emotional highs we can easily chose a lesser good. Our intellect does not have the ability to see what your heart feels, but our heart does not have the ability to order goods, it simply seeks to love and be loved. 

We need to work to find a balance. We need to learn to pay attention to what our hearts are telling us, but we need to learn how to reconcile that with our intellect, what we know to be good and True.

But what does listening to your heart and reconciling that with your intellect and your will look like!? It does not mean justifying what you feel. It means listening to Jesus, taking what you know to be intellectually True and fitting what you're feeling into that. Sometimes this will mean we have to walk away from things that our hearts are still attached to. But other times it means we can follow our hearts. The goal is to make a choice and live in a place where our hearts and intellect are aligned. 

Unfortunately, this is going to look different for everyone. My balance between my heart and my head is going to look different from yours. But the first step to figuring out that balance is silence.

The other beautiful thing about this situation is this: if you truly love God and are in communication with Him, you can do what you want. Seriously. This is a thing!

Last year my disciple Amy told me that "Love God and do whatever you please" was a quote from St. Augustine. I laughed at her and told her that was relativism. She then explained to me that it's not (my students were so much holier than me). Here's the whole quote:

"Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love of God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved."

If you really love Jesus, that means you're in a real, personal, relationship with Him. To be in a relationship with Jesus means that you are communicating with Him, listening to Him, and learning what He wants. If there is a good desire on your heart that is not evil, and you are talking to Jesus and a good spiritual guide about it, you can (probably) move forward with it. 

A recent example of this is my life was last year when I started feeling a desire to join the FOCUS Events Team. I was so torn up over this decision, I really wanted it, but did God!!?? I had no idea. Back and forth I went, until one day, my super holy spiritual director told me to forget about what God wanted for my life for a minute and asked me to consider what I wanted. I told her that I wanted to join the events team. Her response: "okay, then join the events team."

Here's the thing: God is now blessing that decision. I know I could still be in Nebraska living out life as an on campus missionary and God would be blessing that decision just as abundantly. This isn't to say that God doesn't have a plan for our lives - He does! And it will be an incredible plan beyond our wildest imagination! This just means that we are using the gifts God gave us by properly using faculties and our free will! (Check out my friend Caitlin's sweet post about free will in our dating lives.)

So, in conclusion...

Emotions are not bad. Our hearts are the maps that show us God's will for our lives; our heads are the tools for navigation. 

Don't beat yourself up for having negative emotions (Remember Jesus got angry too). Feeling angry, sad, or whatever is not a sin. How we choose to act on our feelings is how we will be judged. And don't get catch up in the back and forth of trying to figure everything out: take what you feel under advisement and then act. If your choice is wildly out of line with God's plan for your life, we must trust that He will correct it.

5 Easy Ways to Bring More Silence into Your Life

Yesterday I wrote about why we need to create space for silence in our lives. Which can seem really, really overwhelming at first and almost impossible. But I have good news. You don't have to travel all the way to NYC like I did or do anything really drastic to experience silence in your life.

Here are 5 Easy Ways to Bring More Silence into Your Life:

1. Wait to turn on the music in the morning

Use this time to think about the day ahead, to think about what you want for the day, and to invite Jesus into all that you do that day.

2. Keep the radio off in your car

Last year I gave up music in the car for lent. I kept asking Jesus what I needed to get rid of in my life to be closer to Him. Each time He answered with fasting from music and each time I would respond with, "okay...what else do I need to fast from to be closer to you during lent?" I'm not going to lie, it really sucked at first. But I grew to love it. Adding those 10 extra minutes of silence on my way to campus allowed for me to become more aware of Jesus' presence with me at every moment.

3. Eat your meals without TV or music

You can have dinner with Jesus! Or be present to your roommates! Either way, this short time of silence is a great practice if you are trying to be present. Even if you're just being present to the delicious frozen meal that you're eating.

4. Go on a walk - without your iPod

Especially if you live somewhere awesome, like Colorado. Being outside naturally allows you to clear your head without much effort. It also helps me incorporate more gratitude into my daily life.

5. Set aside intentional time to reflect at the end of each day

Oh gosh, this one is money. This year I've started praying the Exam Prayer (almost) every night and it has made all the different in my life. Basically it is a 5-10 minutes period where I walk through my day with Jesus and prepare for the day to come.

6. BONUS!

For me, it takes a while to settle down. I've found that focusing on repetitive prayers such as the rosary or simply repeating a scripture verse or the Jesus Prayer (Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner) slows my brain down, focuses my full attention on Jesus, and really helps me to be present to what God is putting in my life.

Don't be overwhelmed! Start small and work your way up. Don't beat yourself up (there are days when I can barely go 3 minutes without having to start over), and just keep trying. I believe that if you start incorporating silence into your daily life, you will come to know God and yourself in a deep, intimate way.

Why We Need Silence

A few weeks ago, I sat down with my cup of coffee and started scrolling through my CNN app so I could be a good, informed citizen. Among headlines on the government shutdown, Syria, and general depressing things, this video caught my attention.

If you don't want to watch the video (it's only 2 minutes), the general gist of it is this: a young chef spent some time in a Buddhist Monastery while he was in college and was struck by the silent breakfast they would eat each day. So he opened a restaurant in NYC where the patrons eat their meals in silence.

I think this is so interesting. Silence is definitely not a norm in our culture.

Last year I went on a retreat with the Sisters of Life in NYC. They spend their waking until lunch in silence, and have a full day of silence once a week. As retreatants, we were able to join in that silence.

Sr. Mary Pieta - a former FOCUS missionary!

After the retreat, I took a cab to my friend Kerry's apartment to spend a day with her before I headed back to Nebraska. I was so struck by the noise. In my cab, there was a TV that I couldn't turn the volume off of, the radio was on, and the cabbie was on his cell phone. The windows were open and all the noises on the streets were coming in. I had him drop me off at a coffee shop while I waited for Kerry to get off of work. The noises of coffee brewing, music blaring, and people talking filled my head and I just could not think.

I think people are coming to this restaurant because they recognize a need for silence in their lives.

I know a lot of people who need noise to fall asleep or say that they can't stand to be in silence. This is a problem. Silence creates space for us to breathe, to calm down and really understand what we are experiencing and feeling. I know when I am going through a rough time, or feeling a lot of anxiety, it is so tempting for me to blast my music or turn on the TV to drown out the negative things I'm feeling. But when I do this, I lose an opportunity to grow and whatever the situation is usually ends up worse in the long run.

I'm in the habit of praying daily, but a lot of times that looks like me word-vomiting everything that is going on in my life onto my journal or into Jesus' ears. Or it looks like me reading scripture and analyzing it and applying it to my life. This is all good and necessary, but we know that God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts. These past few years I've been learning that if I don't take time to create space for real, receptive silence, I lose touch with God and the core of who I am.

The more space I create for silence in my life, the more I crave it. Yes, it takes a lot of effort and self control (something I am not very great at), but the pay off is worth it.

Silence in our lives helps connect us to God, to our true selves, and leaves us with an underlying sense of self-awareness and peace. To me, these things are worth the effort.

Check back later this week for 5 easy ways to create space for silence in your life.

This is really hard.

Day six.

This is really hard. And this might sound dumb, but I am actually surprised at how big of a challenge this is. I took a big test Thursday morning and spent all of the last week studying for it. Abstaining from facebook and twitter was a little easier on Wednesday because I knew it was good for me.

I came home after my test and I realized I had nothing to do. I sat in my apartment for a little over an hour and I really just felt like I was wasting time. Which is silly because if I had access to facebook and twitter I would have been on those websites - actually wasting time. The absence of those websites has already shown me how much time I waste. I hope I can take that realization and learn to be comfortable with nothing going on.

After mass on Friday afternoon, Fr. Joel said what he thinks we all need to fast from is noise so we can make room for the silence and peace of the Lord. He is absolutely right. For some reason I've been inclined to keep the TV off (I'm running with it) and there's been a lot of quiet. I think it's good. I want to be able to open my heart to what God has to say to me. The silence has been a little uncomfortable, but I hope I will grow to appreciate it.

Because of this lack of facebook and texting I have now had really great conversations with two friends I normally would just facebook chat with. Tonight I had a particularly great conversation with my friend Ryan about the beauty of discernment and placing where we are at in God's hands. We talked about growth, sacrifice, and accepting God's plan for us. I only called him because of this fast and I'm so grateful for our conversation.

I also got to skype with my sister for two hours over the weekend.

It was great to really talk to her and hear all about Anchor Splash at SLU.

I really love conversation and connection and I am learning to truly put effort into my relationships. When we moved in high school I began to learn the lesson that you will keep in touch with those who matter to you. Here I am learning how to initiate that process in an intentional manner. I pray this season of lent will continue to bring blessings and conversations centered on Christ where I am able to be truly present.