You're TOO emotional

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." 

~ Ernest Hemingway

It's 10:38 on a Wednesday night and I'm exhausted. My brain feels fuzzy, foggy, my body overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and weight of what I've seen today.

I desperately want to go to sleep... but I can't. I need to bleed first.

I aspire to one day grow into the kind of writer that can write when it's convenient. The type of person that can schedule writing in, like a dentist appointment, or a vacation to the coast. I want to be the master of my writing, and control it, rather than it controlling me.

But as a trainer trying to tame an unbroken horse... I'm not there yet.

I'm controlled by my writing... it pushing and pulling me around... stopping me midway through conversations because when inspiration strikes I have to write, and I have to do it immediately. Otherwise, like a rainstorm in Africa... it's there one moment, and flows heavy and thick and fully... and then it's gone.

But my writing is controlled by something else... something that I've spent my whole life trying to bridle, tame, and break... my emotions.

My writing relies almost entirely on my emotions... one doesn't come without the other living in full swing... which is inconvenient considering emotions and I have been sworn enemies for years.

In third grade, I remember standing on the playground, near the foursquare court with my lunchbox in one hand, and my broken heart in the other.

Kids were being kids, and in that particular instance, I came up on the short end of the stick. My feelings were hurt and I was completely clueless as to what I had done to deserve such treatment.

And then my mom said a sentence that I have fought ever since. 

"Stephanie, you're just sensitive!" 

She wasn't saying it in a condemning way at all... she wasn't chiding me for not having a thicker skin, but instead trying to explain the cause of my pain.

But that's not the way I understood it. 

I understood 'sensitive' to mean that your heart hurt. And so 'sensitive' was something I was desperate to get rid of.

Over the years, a bit after puberty hit, the word 'sensitive' transformed into the word 'emotional.'

And as I got older, and life got more complicated, 'emotional' increased.

It increased until I felt like I was on the verge of just being certifiably crazy- a feeling that rose up in me, causing me to act in ways that I couldn't explain, nor excuse... and much to my dismay, could not control.

Things like excessive amounts of alcohol, destructive relationships and shallow friendships exacerbated the crazy. My emotions were out of control, mostly because I didn't have the ability to even identify them.

I sat on my bed in my sorority house one night, the phone pressed to my ear, the most painful words I can remember hearing coming from the other end.

"I can never date someone as high maintenance as you again." 

The first and possibly only person that I had ever let see the full breadth of my emotions had thrown them all into a bag, and kicked it back in my direction... like garbage. 

And there I was, left to pick up the pieces. 

Once the tears calmed down, and the searing in my heart subsided, I vowed to myself to get rid of my excessive emotions once and for all.

Once I met Jesus, things calmed down a bit... I was able to identify my emotions, and start to maybe even dig for a cause... but that didn't mean they went away. I still found myself fighting them with all of my heart. 

I didn't even want to HAVE emotions, because to me they meant one of two things... hurt because I cared more than I wanted to, or rejection, because the depth of my emotions were just too much to handle.

Sitting here, at now 10:50 on a Wednesday night, I know that I'm different. The exacerbating factors are gone, my feet are firmly planted on the most solid of rocks and my emotions have become a pretty accurate and legitimate thermometer for what's going on in a situation.  

But although the piercing insecurity, pain and most of the lies are gone... fear was left in its wake.

What if I can't control my emotions when I get home? What if they come back, what if I find myself caring too much, or even worse, BEING too much? What if I'm really too much to handle? Too much to love? 

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of my own emotions, because they've always been looked at as such a bad thing. They're either the cause of my pain, or the reason for rejection. And so I've rejected them!

But sitting here tonight, WANTING to go to bed, I'm realizing that emotions definitely don't deserve the reputation they've gained in my life. And even more astonishingly, that they're important!  

First of all, although it is a commitment and an action... 'love' is also an emotion- a fantastic one at that. It's one that literally makes colors brighter, makes your steps lighter and brings hope into a world that can sometimes feel lonely and cold. 

Today I felt anger. I felt the kind of anger that I imagine filled Jesus as he walked into the temple, seeing it turned into a market place. 

I walked into a hospital room and saw an emaciated baby that was just moments from death. I looked into the mother's face and listened to her tell me that there was nothing wrong with her baby. I nearly screamed. I wanted to flip tables over. I wanted to jump up and yell... "THIS BABY IS DYING! CANT YOU SEE THAT!?" 

We fed the baby, educated the mom, and prayed with all our hearts for that little life, just hanging on by a thread. But still... righteous anger filled my chest today.  

And you know what?! I'm GLAD!

I WANT to be righteously angry when the time is right. Because it's that righteous anger that causes us to DO something about the injustice we see. 

On the opposite side of the emotional spectrum... 

I walked into the maternity ward yesterday morning and got to hold a two-day-old baby that had yet to be named. The parents looked expectantly at us, wanting us to name their child. So we did! We named him James Emmanuelle, letting them know that those names placed a big calling on their little boy's life. It was beautiful. I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest with joy.

Those are emotions, and they're rich and beautiful and ridiculous. They're the spark that gives color to the world... they're the fire that gives meaning to situations and inspires action in a way that nothing else can.

And until I become more seasoned and maybe even a bit more disciplined, my art, my writing, my craft, depends on my emotions. And I love that! 

I love feeling something deeply and being able to transfer that feeling onto paper. I love being able to capture an experience in words that make you feel like you were actually there. 

I heard a quote once that compared emotions to a heart monitor. There are ups and there are downs... but when you flat line, it means you're dead. Emotions are the things that remind us that we're human. They're the color and the flavor and the dimension to our experiences on this earth. 

My dear friend Christian has had a front row seat the past seven months as I've dug through what it means to be a woman and what it means to feel.

Remembering the distain I've had for my heart, he sent me something that his friend, Drew Caldwell wrote... defending the value of emotions:

"If you have ever ridden a horse, then you know that horses are big animals. They are frighteningly strong. And yet for thousands of years we have ridden these beasts and used them to accomplish our own objectives.

Like riding a horse, the issue is not whether or not your emotions are too strong. In my opinion, the stronger the better. The issue is whether or not your hands are firmly on the reins. We want to be better riders, not to own weaker horses.

Inspirational figures like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. did not accomplish all they did because of their lack of strong emotions. They did not gain a following by their stoicism or logic. They were emotional people, who demonstrated a high degree of control over where their emotions took them. Their powerful emotions worked for them, not the other way around."

This is something I'm still wrestling through. Emotions and I have been enemies so long, it's tough to overcome our hostile past. 

But I'm declaring... now and forever... that emotions are a beautiful part of who I am, a beautiful part of who we all are. 

I'm done fighting, and I'm done begging for a weaker horse. 

I'm just becoming a better rider.