Titus 2 Men And Women

The Day My "Stuffer" Broke
Danette Tucker

I have always been a championship "stuffer."   What I mean by this is that I learned from the time I was young to "control" my emotions and not be ruled by them -- at least that's what I thought I was doing.   I rarely cried as a result of personal distress, but I cried if I saw or heard anyone else cry.   For many years I thought my sympathy tears were because I had a tender heart toward other people's pain.   I later learned it was my own buried pain that came to the surface when I saw others in pain.   I identified with their pain because I had it stuffed away myself.  

As I grew with God, I believed that emotions were unfruitful.   Our emotions don't necessarily tell us the truth; in fact, they often scream to us in opposition to the truth.   So I reinforced my determination to lock down my emotions when they threatened to overwhelm me.   Whenever I was in a hurtful situation I would clamp down on the emotions so that I could respond in truth.  

Now this is a good thing, to a point.   We do have to learn to respond to life's hurts and circumstances according to the truth.   When someone hurts us or treats us unjustly we have to make the choice to respond with love and to return a blessing, not responding out of our hurt emotions.   However, we also need to acknowledge and resolve the emotions.   This is something I just couldn't grasp.

Over the course of several years, one of my accountability partners (two friends with whom I have a mutual mentoring relationship*) often told me that I needed to resolve my emotions with God.   She said I needed to receive His healing in this area because I was hurting myself and limiting Him by keeping my emotions locked up.   But, even though I knew she was probably right, I just couldn't do it.   Any time I even thought about getting close to that locked door inside me I was overwhelmed by near panic.   It was just too big, too scary, too much to deal with.

I began to feel the strain of the effort to control my emotions, beginning in the months before my second separation from my husband (you can read more about that in my biography).   I was handling the circumstances well enough, at least I thought so, but the strain within my accountability group was more than I could handle.   One of my accountability partners and I had some profound disagreements about God's truth regarding my situation.   But God didn't allow either of us to abandon the relationship.   We were both determined to learn God's truth and love each other, even though we strongly disagreed.   Week after week as we met I held rigid control of my emotions in order to focus on the truth, even though I was deeply hurting.   The strain of this, in combination with everything else, began to lead to physical problems.   I began to experience heart problems at age 36.   (Ultimately we were able to resolve our differences and our relationship has become a precious treasure, forged in fire and stronger for it.)

During this separation from my husband, God led us to a precious Christian friend for counseling.   God's leading was clear, but here again I knew I was in a situation where this friend did not wholly approve of us being separated, even though God confirmed to her that it was right.   Although I knew she genuinely sought God and was willing to hear from Him to a degree that is uncommon among believers there was also a measure of judgment attached to her dealings with me, completely without her realization.   This was very hurtful as well.

The day came in our counseling when this friend suddenly turned to me and said, "It's time for you to get back together."   I instantly slammed the door on my emotions and did what I was told was right, regardless of my feelings.   But in that moment, it was as if my heart literally shattered into a million tiny fragments.   I felt completely abandoned and betrayed by God for making us reconcile our marriage when the main reason He led us in that direction had not been acknowledged or clearly reconciled.  

In hindsight, God did expose and heal that issue during our counseling as well as many others, but my husband was never required to acknowledge or apologize for what he had done.   After months of struggling with God over this I realized that I had obeyed the counselor without going to God for confirmation.   I obeyed the counselor in the name of obedience to God.   This is idolatry, which I had to confess to God.   I short-changed the process and reaped consequences for that.   But mercifully, God did heal the root problem.   My consequences were that some people I respected and loved judged me and I had to struggle with feelings of abandonment by God when it was really my own fault.   However, God used that struggle to finally break the bondage I was in emotionally.

I made a heroic effort to get a grip again and thought I had managed it for about six months.   Then abruptly, my control disappeared.   I fell into an emotional black hole.   Hurt and pain overwhelmed me, as I relived all the hurts from a lifetime -- and there was nothing I could do to stop it.   The pain was so overwhelming I withdrew from everything except church.   It was difficult to even go to the store because I didn't feel like I could make the simplest polite conversation with a checkout clerk.  

Interestingly, and not coincidentally, shortly before this happened I had begun to pray that God would show me what His love really looked like.   I knew mentally that God loved me because the Bible says so.   But I didn't feel loved by Him.   In fact, I really felt like His love was a distant, mostly theoretical concept.   In my mind's eye I saw God looking at me with his hands on His hips, shaking His head and saying, "Tsk, tsk.   I love you, child, but you just don't get it, do you."   I knew in my mind that this picture didn't match the words of Scripture, but didn't really believe what I knew was true.  

At the same time, I knew that I had a difficult time showing love to others.   I love my family deeply but have a difficult time showing it.   But the Word says that no matter how much we know and how much we do for God, if we don't have love our labors are without value (I Cor. 13: 1-3).   God reminded me again that Jesus' only commandment to His followers was encompassed in loving God and loving others (Jn. 15:10-17), so what does that love really look like?

During this process, I learned that there was a step of healing from my abusive past that I had not yet experienced.   Jesus came to set captives free (Luke 4:18, 19).   This process of freedom is what God's healing from abuse is all about.   My emotions were still captive, locked away behind barred doors.   But God created my emotions and the Word says I am created in His image.   If my emotions are created in God's image they can't be "bad".   We see God demonstrating the very emotions we consider "bad", such as anger, wrath, and jealousy.    Jesus wept and was moved with compassion -- tangibly responding to emotions.   So there must be an appropriate place for experiencing emotions.  

At the same time, if I have locked away my "bad" emotions, all the rest of my emotions are locked behind the same bars to a greater or lesser degree.   I can't just decide I won't feel some emotions but will feel others.   This was the reason why I found it difficult to express my positive emotions openly.  

It took six months of grieving before God could finish the work He had started.   I had to be patient with the process.   During this time I poured out my feelings in honesty to God and trusted that at some point He would make it right.   I also gave myself a break during this time.   I backed off from almost all of my obligations.   To be honest, there were a lot of days when it seemed like the resolution would never come and I just cried out to God about that.

Then one Sunday in church a guest speaker preached a message about the cross.   Of course, I've heard about a million sermons about the cross!   It wasn't until he neared the end of his sermon that my attention was particularly struck.   His final point was that we need to leave our burdens at the cross.   What caught my attention was that I wasn't leaving my burdens at the cross.   I was taking them to the cross then picking them back up when I got up from my knees.  

At the end of his sermon, the preacher read a story written from a first person perspective of Jesus as He was being nailed to the cross.   As I listened I thought about how I would feel if it were me there looking over at my hands, knowing that in moments those spikes were going to hammered into my hands and feet -- anticipating the very real pain that was about to strike.   I was overwhelmed with the certainty that I would not have stayed there and taken on that undeserved suffering.   But Jesus stayed there.   He chose to take on that pain for me.   Not only that, but He accepted the complete abandonment of His Father when He took on Himself the equally real sin of the world.   He took on Himself my sin and He took on Himself the sin of those who hurt me.   And when He took on Himself those sins He experienced the very real emotional pain I have felt.   Every minute of my pain He knows because He experienced it too.   He didn't just experience pain like mine -- He experienced my pain.  

In that moment the understanding of just how much God loves me overwhelmed me.   And the intense pain I had been feeling for months was lifted.   The pains of the hurts of life never go away completely.   And some days the pain is once again close.   But now I truly know God as my Comforter.

There was a sideline benefit that occurred in this process too.   Many times when I talked to my accountability partners about my reluctance to allow God near the barred doors on my emotions I said that I couldn't do it.   Beginning when I was four years old, I had asthma attacks.   Many nights I was under a steam tent for hours, exhausted and hurting from the strain of trying to breathe.   My father would rub my back and tell me not to cry because it would just make the asthma worse, which was true.   However, this rigid determination not to cry became a life-long pattern.   When I did cry I would get an extremely bad headache that would make me ill and last a day or two after my tears.   When I finally told my accountability partners this, one of them told me that the headache was because of the buried hurts.   She said when I finally worked through the emotions I wouldn't get a headache any more.   I was more than a little skeptical.   But she was right!   Now when I cry I have no residual headache.

If I had never allowed God to expose my emotions, I would not have been freed to express my positive emotions, I would not know the reality of God's overwhelming and very personal love for me and I would not know God as my Comforter.   As always when God works, the fruit of the trial was worth the struggle.  

* Accountability partners as I use the term describes a mutual mentoring relationship for the specific purpose of fulfilling Heb. 3:12-13, 10:23-25.   We are friends who have banded together to seek God together weekly for his specific insight and direction in our lives and to pray with and for each other.

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