This wasn’t the first time this type of emotion had haunted me.

I remember feeling like this after having my first child. Everyone would say really lovely things, expressing joy for our growing family, while I felt overwhelmed and unsure. My sweet baby girl was perfect for the first two weeks. Then colic reared its ugly head, and she would not stop crying. As a new mom, I had no idea how to soothe her. I struggled to find my words every time anyone asked how I was. Part of me wanted to cry and tell the truth, to unload the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t sure I could do this. But who responds that way to a well-intended person?

Again, I was at a milestone moment in life where joy is anticipated, but my insides did not match. I found it hard to exactly put my finger on how I felt or answer with the expected obligatory responses. It was nearly impossible for me to respond to the obliging acquaintance who checked in on my emotional state. In these moments, I believe there is an anticipated script that we all must follow. When they ask, “How are you feeling?” that is our cue to respond with, “Abundantly joyful!” and a big smile. People will react with visceral shock if you say anything but the expected sentiment for that moment. You will feel like you missed your line and flubbed your cue. The act ends as they hurry away, scared by how off-script the conversation went. If I expressed my true feelings, I was sure they would be very nervous for my soul, not just from the conversation.

I felt like I was having an existential crisis. Was I even allowed to have one as a Christian? I was certain the answer was no, and then I felt guilty and wrong for questioning. I even wondered if I had sinned by thinking some of the hard questions that were running through my mind on repeat. As each day led to the next and time sped past like a blur, I struggled to make sense of all I felt. 

The Expected Response

I have learned from past mistakes of oversharing that there are socially expected responses. I must oblige and not speak the raw truth, but I highly value truth and don’t want to lie. So, I tend to give them a lovely sentence that relays only part of what I feel on the inside.

This started a thought process within me. If I withhold my actual thoughts, could I also be keeping them from something God had intended to use in some way? Am I experiencing an emotion different from expected because God will use that emotion to reach someone else in a way I could not have imagined? Furthermore, why do we feel we cannot be real with one another? Is it that my emotions are too big for those who stopped by for the quick check-in, or is it something even greater? Are others fearful that open and honest answers to their question must then be countered by sharing their own emotions? What would we do if we all shared and the fake facades of impeccable marble suddenly cracked?

Shouldn’t I be glad?

Returning to the crisis I felt I might be experiencing, I recently graduated with my Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts. Although it was not a spiritually related degree, as a Christian artist, I couldn’t help but reflect on the spiritual lessons I had learned in the months leading up to my graduation. At first, I couldn’t make sense of the spiritual lessons and instead just questioned everything.

Let me give you some context on what led to this questioning. I had been a very content K-12 art teacher for 11 years. Then I felt God calling me to get my master’s degree and move to the collegiate world. At first, I questioned if I understood what I felt He was saying. Instead of heeding the call and immediately going where I felt He said “Go”, I spent an entire year praying. Praying about something for a year might seem like a healthy spiritual practice, and I am sure it is what we should do at times. In this case, I may have used this acceptable spiritual retreat to delay what I should have done. In a sense, I had chosen the spiritual journey of Jonah’s physical delay. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach. Jonah boarded a ship to Tarshish and, well, you know the rest of the story. God said to me, “Go get your MFA degree. Teach at the college level. Your time in K-12 has run its course.” I didn’t go, I stayed and prayed.

Finally, at the end of that year, I could deny it no longer: yes, this was what I was being called to – to pursue my Master of Fine Arts degree. This led me to leave my job, step out in complete faith, and forge a new path. Toward the end of the procurement of that degree, I felt a little lost…and if I am honest, that little was actually a whole lot of lost.

“What’s Next?”

In the weeks leading up to graduation, if faced with the commonplace question and the quick assumption: “So, how do you feel? You must be so excited,” I wanted to say, “Oh, yes, very excited.” But that wasn’t how I felt. I had a lot of apprehension. I had worked harder on that degree than ever on anything in my life. Such effort could not be expended without a proverbial pendulum swing toward existential questions, and oh, how such questions rolled through my mind. 

Blame it on a lack of sleep or perhaps credit it to overworking myself for far too long. However, no matter the reason, I found myself approaching graduation asking things that I imagine are commonplace, though still no less complicated to answer. Questions such as, “What’s next?” “Why did I do this?” “Am I really any better off after going through all that work?” and thoughts such as “I took on getting this degree because I thought this is what God wanted, but now what? I have debt, and yet no full-time job. Did this really move me closer to what He has planned, because I feel so far away from where I thought I would be?” I find this type of questioning only proves helpful in making one feel more lost and upset.

Did I miss something?

It is easy at such moments to want to pull away from God as life’s questions bombard and a deep-seated feeling of “Did I miss something along the way?” tries to take over. I know that sort of behavior will only make me feel more lost. One day, as I did my morning Bible reading and time of prayer, I was finally transparent with the One that I needed to be transparent with, God. I cried out in all humility, explaining what I was going through. I described every frustration, every lack of confidence, everything. There were a lot of tears as I confessed and pulled from my mind all that I had been holding within. I was real, raw, and honest to the point that I felt I might be struck by lightning for having such doubts. But the great thing is, we serve a really big God, and his shoulders are broad enough to handle the heaping of our burdens onto Him.

I realized that, in part, what I felt had less to do with God and His plan, and much more to do with how I had put Him into what I thought was the plan. Some might say it this way: I had put God and my future in a box. Now that I was at that crossroads where I thought things should look different, I blamed God for things not looking how I thought they should.

God is a BIG God. He can handle my BIG feelings.

As I worked through the many emotions graduation brought, I started to read through the Psalms. I was amazed at the confidence David possessed in the Psalms. I was in awe of how he laid out his feelings, raw and unabridged, before the Lord. He held nothing back; he was honest when he was upset. I started to think about how I handle my own spiritual life. I realized that I held things back from God, as if He didn’t already know or couldn’t handle how my mind worked.

I believe this is why David was called a man after God’s own heart. When his big life emotions hit hard, he didn’t just struggle through them; he sought the Lord.

God has such a beautiful plan for each of us. That beauty doesn’t come without hardship. Like a diamond pulled from the earth, we are rough and unrefined. Hardships, life circumstances, and things we don’t understand all serve to help shape us. They sand off the rough exterior and shave away the excess, so that we are shaped into the rare and, dare I say, gorgeous diamond that He is refining us to be.

David isn’t the only Biblical character who expressed big emotions straight to God. When the nation of Israel complained to Moses as he led them through the desert away from slavery in Egypt, Moses became overwhelmed. Moses says to God in Numbers 11:14-15 (ESV), “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.”

If Biblical superheroes such as Moses and David openly shared their extreme emotions with God, then I believe that is precisely what we should do when we question life. God isn’t going to get angry at us for seeking Him out and saying, “Help me, Lord, this is how I feel, and I need your guidance.” We don’t have to suffer through deep feelings of being in uncharted waters. We don’t need to pull away from God and shrink into ourselves. We need to cry out.

Assurance of Things Hoped For

This journey of crying out to God and asking what is next started in a fairly unpretty way. I felt as if my ever-wandering heart was left tossed about as I was pushed forward with hope that began as a whisper. It starts as a whisper and ends in a shout, because hope is the foundation on which faith settles. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). There were times in this journey that I prayed for God to take away my hope. I was so tired of hoping for something, for it not to be the thing God had for me. I relied too heavily on my thoughts, leaning on what I hoped for instead of praying for God’s clear direction and guidance.

During this time of seeking God and wondering what’s next, I learned several fundamental lessons:

• I cannot try to fit my life’s dream into a God-sized box, because He exists way outside of any preconceived box.
• I cannot try to figure out where I think He is taking me.
• If I am truly trusting the Lord for all my tomorrows, then I cannot grab those tomorrows and get upset that I don’t know what they hold.
• I cannot become disconcerted that God has not given me the future in the way I think He should.
• To see God’s faithfulness, we must look back on all that He has already done, rather than forward toward what is yet to come.

When we, in our finite human minds, look forward, it is easy to feel anxiety creep in. In looking back at God’s faithfulness to us, we can see the many times He has carried us through difficulties. We can experience the gratefulness of a renewed spirit in Him. We can understand that He will be there in ways we cannot comprehend, and we can appreciate that He works in miraculous ways which we are unable to guess. Looking back, I can see clearly how much my God loves me, has cared for me, and will not forget me.

Moving forward, I must sit in that love, trust in the abundance of hope for what He will do, not hope in what I think He should. Does it answer my questions about tomorrow? Absolutely, just not in the way the world tells us we should receive answers. Knowing that God does have a plan and that it is far better than anything my hand can ever create, I learn to trust. I learn to find joy.

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