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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.

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