Aloha mahalo nui for stopping by! Aloha mahalo nui? I only know these three words in Hawaiian. I better switch back to the language I’m better at. Aloha mahalo nui means hello and thank you big time. I can’t get enough of Google-ing things I don’t know.
I hope that you are doing better than okay today. I’m going to limber up my typing fingers and grab the bull by his ankles. I got a goody for ya. And it rhymes with the word commotion. So hi ho blogger, awaaaaay!!!
Does anybody know about emotions? Hey, right here dude! I got my hand up. Okay, I can see that. But let’s give a reader a chance to answer first, okay? But I can answer the question. Yeah but nobody asked you to answer the question. That’s not true! I just heard you say anybody. Okay, I did say anybody. But you’re not the anybody I was talking to. You are the guy that writes the Write Teller dot com blog. You’re the blogger, remember? Yeah, I remember. But hey. Wait a minute. Who are you then? Aw c’mon, don’t you recognize me? I’m you. Okay. Let me get this right. YOU are me, and I am me? That’s right. You are you, and I am you. We both have the same name and live in the same body. Now do you get it? Uh… I think I do. All this time I have been talking to myself, right?
Now before anybody, and I do mean anybody not in this room, starts to thinking that my mind is running a little low on gas, let me tell you the reason for my little self talk. It was to get an emotional expression. Laughter to be exact. Laughter is an emotional expression. …Or so it says on one of the major internet search engines.
See, what I did was provide a joke to get an emotional expression going. Hey, go ahead and tell me. I’ll keep it on the down low. Did it work? Nice! With a joke, laughter usually kicks in right near the end, or at the very end of a funny story. If it didn’t happen for you, I probably need to get my keyboard looked at. But don’t worry. I plan on trying another jump start on you later. But let’s get back to emotions.
Emotions can be pretty powerful stuff, right? -Joy, grief, fear, anger, or jealousy, just to name a few. Ever try to control some of your stronger emotions? It can be about as difficult as stacking water.
Just for grins. Let’s put the emotions I mentioned in a bag and pick one at random. Hey, what do you know about that?! We have a winner! It’s fear. Okay. You got me. I rigged the selection process. I feel terrible about it. But you know how it is.
Fear can be a monster emotion for sure! It can compromise our ability to move, think, make decisions, or have faith in God. When fear hits you square in the brain, it can be like trying to wrestle an angry six hundred pound gorilla with your bare hands. Is it humanly possible too overcome this emotion? I mean, without the use of a prescription, or anti-prescription drugs, therapy, or divine help?
From a child’s age to adulthood, the fear monster is lurking around to put us in a panic.
Now I’m no psychologist. Me? …A psychologist? Pleaase! But I can share with you what I know. Fear is something that is not the kind of thing you can control without some kind of help. …Like anger, envy, or arrogant pride, and some others as well. So what’s the solution?
Before I try to answer that question, let me just share with you what I know for sure. Nothing works better than having faith in God’s ability to help us handle whatever is stronger than we are. Or should I say, practicing having faith in God. This works by finding out what we need to practice to help control our emotions, and diligently trusting God to know what He’s talking about when we do find out. The bible is a good place for finding out how to practice controlling our more powerful emotions.
Oh, hey! Here’s a good place for that jump start I was talking about earlier.
You’re outside. It’s nine something in the morning. You’re walking over to your neighbor’s house for something, when you notice a sixty or seventy pound dog in front of you, coming down the street. You didn’t notice him before because you were checking something on your phone.
The dog is staring at you, walking towards you like a leopard on the prowl, showing his teeth and growling like you kicked him. He’s only twenty feet away now, and you don’t have anything near you you can use as a weapon. Hello fear! Hey look. I would really appreciate it if you could please be nice enough to come back later. Now is really not a good time. I got this crazy animal to deal with right now, and I really need to think! But the only thing actually running through your mind is running, screaming, crying, or try to remember about what you read online about the best way to handle a dog attack.
This actually happened to me. -But without the phone, or thoughts about screaming or crying. And my neighbor was standing in his yard behind me.
The dog was close enough to easily catch up to me if I tried to run. I was sure he was about to force me into to making that choice. But my relationship with God helped me with almost all of the fear that was roaring to get my attention. All I had going for me was my faith that God would help me stand up to this bad tempered animal. And funny enough, right then another emotion was working on my mind too. It was the anger I felt towards the dog for his putting me in the position of possibly having to fight or flee for my health.
In the end, I knew that God was close me. I didn’t even have to think about it. I was ready to fight if I had to.
But the dog seemed to want to make our encounter a stand off. He wasn’t backing off and he wasn’t attacking. But after only about 3 or 4 seconds, my temper, and the courage God gave me to act, came together. I yelled at the dog to go away about two times and then took a small step forward. He didn’t budge, but kept on growling. I know, I know. What was I thinking? But let me continue.
I yelled louder for him to leave one final time, and took another small step forward. Now, you can believe what you want, but I say that right then and there that God took me off that dog’s mind. Because the dog turned around and left without exercising his option to hurt me. And I give God all the credit!
I wasn’t as afraid as I could have been. With God being firmly in my life I was able to control my fear emotion. And also, with His help, I was able to keep my anger under control, so that I didn’t let it control me to the point where I got reckless enough to attack the dog.
Like I said before. Some of our emotions are very powerful stuff. The more powerful ones are able to affect our judgment with ease. When we live our lives according to our strongest emotions, we become our own worse enemies.
If you are having trouble handling your strongest emotions, get yourself some help from God or somebody that knows about the side effects of strong emotions, or you can wind up getting handled. You don’t have to take my word for it. But I hear that God can work miracles in this area.
Thank you again for coming by and reading. May God grant you what you need the most.
Leave a Reply