Posture Your Heart

What is transparency? What does it mean to be vulnerable? When your chest is weighing down with all of the words you refuse to share aloud, how do you work up the courage to be vulnerable? Is there such thing as being too vulnerable? Too transparent? Is it best to keep those feelings inside and focus on other thoughts instead? Casting aside our feelings as if they don’t deserve any say in the matter?

We hurt and we suffer, but we’re afraid to show our suffering. Afraid to be honest and admit to people that we hurt too. There are a multitude of reasons why we do this and you and I may not identify with the same ones, but I think some of the most common reasons are:

1. We’re afraid to be wrongly judged by others. 

2. We’re afraid that “someone has it worse”, diminishing our circumstances and shrinking back in fear. 

3. We’re afraid that others will dismiss our feelings with well intentioned but sometimes counterproductive advice – “You just need to do ________ more and then you’ll be fine” or “You just need to stop thinking about it so much.”

However, casting our feelings aside and refusing to confront them can eventually result in dangerous and unhealthy repercussions. And if we’re not careful to approach our feelings in a constructive manner, they can later resurface. Yes, it is important to take practical steps to healing, but not without first acknowledging that there is healing that needs to happen in the first place. If we refuse to think or talk about our pain, how can we move forward from it if all we are doing is shoving it down? A release must take place, and this often happens in the uncomfortable act of acknowledging and confronting the root of our pain.

When I hear the expression “posture your heart”, I tend to take this as setting my heart upright, looking up rather than down. Having it all together emotionally and choosing to focus on the “good” rather than how I am feeling emotionally. Sometimes I mistake this for rationalizing my feelings away as if they don’t matter. Now please do not mistake this with getting “lost” in your feelings. It is important to discern how we can use our feelings to propel us forward rather than get caught up in them. It is important to remember that there is more than one posture. And sometimes our feelings may cause us to posture our hearts upward, remembering that just because we feel a certain way that does not make it true (feelings of worthlessness, of not being enough, etc.). Those are the kinds of feelings that we need to take back to scripture and see whether or not it lines up with what God says in His word. Instead, I am talking about the feelings of loss, heartbreak, weariness, of being caught in seemingly unfair situations, the pain of our circumstances. Your feelings are valid. Emotions exist so that we may process through them, whether it be on our own, with others or with God. God does not allow us to go through our emotions on our own. Even Jesus experienced the vastness of human emotion (Hebrews 4:15).

So how do we healthily process our emotions when it has all become too much to bear? In the following verse it states “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (verse 16). But how do we know when we have reached that place of being able to healthily process our emotions?

What if I introduced to you the idea of posturing your heart not by setting it upright . . . but by bringing it low? The idea of choosing to acknowledge the intensity of your emotions and sitting through them not so you may dwell there, but so you may process through them in a way that allows you to better understand what you are feeling.  When we choose to remember Jesus sitting in the garden, taking on the full spectrum of human emotion, we also acknowledge that he did so not just for that moment but for this one now. When you are crying alone in your room experiencing the floodgates of your emotions open all at once, do you dare believe that Jesus is sitting through that pain with you? When the thoughts invade and the darkness closes in and you’re not sure if you can keep going, do you believe that Jesus is with you and knows exactly what you’re feeling? When we bring our hearts low and face the pain rather than using it as a faulty beam in a desperate attempt to hold up our hearts, it is only then that we can face the pain in a manner that is constructive rather than destructive. We are strongest not when we have it all together, but when we allow ourselves to fall apart and admit that we are hurting. Eventually, the false support beams we craft for ourselves will give way to the emotions that we have carefully and strategically placed one on top of the other in order to create a [false] sense of togetherness.

If I do not bring my heart low, how can it ever be lifted up? If I do not invite Jesus into my pain how can I ever be restored? If I am not real with my brokenness, how can I expect Christ to propel me through pain I do not acknowledge? When I invite Jesus into my pain, I allow him to process the pain with me rather than me rehearsing it over and over again in my heart and in my mind.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:15-16

We all go through seasons where our pain sometimes seems to be more constant than in others. Such seasons can be discouraging and feel never ending. But I want to leave you with this: our seasons and our pain contain only as much purpose as we allow them to. What is the purpose of your pain today? Is it to drive you further from God and deeper into yourself? Deeper into the hurt? Into the darkness? Or is the purpose of your pain to invite the Holy Spirit into it and ask the presence and power of the Lord to dwell in you there, healing the deepest, darkest and most broken parts of your soul? Don’t let your pain drive you away from your healing. Rather, let it drive you towards it. It takes only a moment of earnestly whispering “Jesus, I need you” deep within yourself in order to invite him into your pain. That’s all it takes. He will handle the rest.

With grace,

Celina