Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” . . . Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. 1 Samuel 1:17-18
A few weeks back, my wife asked me to help her with a project that I assumed would take 20 minutes. Two hours, and several projects later, as I was cutting through drywall, rewiring an outlet, I expressed my frustration. I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t love-building. My resentment had been growing for those two hours while doing far more work than I intended to do on my day off. And that’s just it. It was a day off. I had nothing to do. I knew that I should have been happy to help my wife, and I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. But my emotions got the better of me and eventually, I let them guide my words. What I should have done was recognize that my emotions weren’t healthy and wrestle them to the ground. Instead, I let them out, which simply made things worse.
My emotions aren’t always healthy and sometimes must be restrained or even rejected. In the disaster of my addiction, as my life came apart, every day was a battle with anxiety. I don’t know how I got out of bed back then. I knew in my head that life would get better if I stayed sober. I truly believed that God would work all things out for good. But I didn’t feel that way. My feelings told me that my life was over. My feelings daily threatened to overwhelm me. So, daily, I had to wrestle those feelings – fear, anxiety, frustration – to the ground, subjugating them to what I knew to be right. Sometimes I had to do that a hundred times a day.
Though our emotions are real, we’re not to be ruled by them and we’re responsible for managing them. This is illustrated in today’s passage, in which Hannah achieved a profound shift in her emotions. At the beginning of the story, she was drowning in sorrow over her inability to bear children. So, she took her sorrow to the temple, where the priest Eli told her that her prayers would be answered. Hannah had faith and made her emotions follow, experiencing authentic joy. She was still childless at this point. She wasn’t even pregnant. But she believed and found peace in what she knew to be true – even though it hadn’t happened yet.
I’m not saying that emotions aren’t real or that I should always ignore them. I will insist however, that my emotions aren’t always healthy and that indulging in resentment, hatred, lust, and jealousy is terribly self-destructive. I’m saying that when my emotions are allowed to rule my life, they often make things worse. Not all emotions are bad. Joy and peace are good things. I’m simply saying I’m responsible for managing my emotions because it’s not healthy when I allow them to rule my life.