Being Your Best
A Woman's Guide to Personal Excellence
By Dorothy Eaton Watts
We will be presenting this booklet to you in several parts. We will run this series until we complete the booklet. If you missed any of the parts, you can catch up on the reading by checking our archive listing at the end of this article.
Chapter III
A HAPPY WOMAN
Bianca Rotschild had every reason to be bitter. In 1939, just before her sixteenth birthday, war broke out in Poland. Six years later she was the only survivor from a family of 43. All the others had died in concentration camps.
She suffered much at the hands of her captors: broken ribs, a broken wrist, a mangled leg, and a back damaged when a Nazi guard stomped on her with his heavy boots. Today she still wears a brace because of that beating. After that experience she ran outside during an air raid and prayed for a bomb to kill her. When she survived, she began to wonder what purpose God had for her life.
Back inside, she opened a book and read: “We have a right to the joy of giving so others may receive. We can give material things, we can give moral support, we can give a friendly ear, and best of all, we can give love.” Bianca realized she had two choices. She could spend the rest of her life feeling sorry for herself, harboring a spirit of hate and bitterness, or she could choose the way of love and kindness, looking away from herself to the needs of others.
That night she prayed, “Dear God! Help me through this terrible ordeal, and I vow to give myself in a true and loving spirit.”
After the war she immigrated to the United States and ended up living in a condominium complex in San Diego. It was there she found a very special way to love. Most of the residents in this particular condominium are elderly and often need a little bit of sunshine. Whenever anyone is in the hospital or laid up at home, Bianca sends a cheery get-well card. Each one she signs, “The Sunshine Lady.” Over the years dozens of people have received a card from this woman with the sunny temperament.
A neighbor commented, ‘There’s something wrong with her back, but it never seems to have any effect on her happy disposition.” They don’t know about her battle with bitterness and despair that night in the concentration camp. They only see the results.
Bianca Rothschild is an example of the happy, positive woman I want to be, one able to conquer her negative emotions.
Sometime I feel like a ship’s captain struggling to keep my vessel afloat on a stormy sea. The circumstances of the moment hang over me like a dense fog. Have I no control? Have I no choice but to drift aimlessly, at the mercy of the elements? Why do I so often get off course? What keeps me from being the happy, positive woman I want to be?
I’d like to suggest that negative emotions are the winds that blow us off course. Problems at home, difficulties at church, and temptations on the job threaten to dash us against the rocks. Like an oil tanker broken apart on the rocks, we are torn open by our troubles, spilling out angry, hurtful words.
What can we do to stay on course in spite of the difficult circumstances that come our way? How can we prevent the expensive cleanup process that follows the spilling out of our negative emotions? In my search for help to cope with negative emotions, I have discovered four biblical principles.
1. God understands our feelings. Jesus sympathizes with me. He truly can feel what I feel. Although no one else may understand my struggle, He does.“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Jesus can be touched by my feelings, for He faced similar trials. Jesus suffered emotional pain, injustice, rejection, loneliness, and grief. He longed for human acceptance. He too cried. As David Seamands points out in his book Healing for Damaged Emotions, Jesus is “the wounded healer” of our pain.
The experience of Hagar is an example of God’s ability to understand how we feel. He heard her cries in the desert. He saw each tear she shed. He understood her feelings of despair, pain, loneliness, and abandonment.
2. Contact with God transforms negative emotions. “To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isa. 61:3).
Jesus has a balm for every emotional sore spot. He can give us joy for our depression and peace for our pain. He can give love for our hatred and relief for our bitterness. He has hope for our despair and acceptance to apply to our low self-worth.
When her husband took another wife, Hannah must have felt rejection and then jealousy as that woman proved fertile. She no doubt felt discouraged and depressed, perhaps even bitter. There might have been guilt. It must have been hard for Hannah to visit the tabernacle. She couldn’t have felt like going out among people. But she made the effort to meet God, and her sorrow was turned into joy.
3. God can supply our emotional needs. “My God shall supply all your need” (Phil. 4:19).
Minirth and Meier in their book Happiness Is a Choice list 12 needs that we all share, air, food, water, stimulation, sex, love, self-worth, power, aggression, comfort, security, and relief for psychic tension.
God wants to meet all our needs, the emotional as well as the physical. He can supply us with love, acceptance, comfort, and security. He can provide us with strength to face a problem and relief from the tensions of life.
The woman at the well had tried to supply her emotional needs through a succession of men, only to be disappointed. In Christ she found the needs of her heart supplied.
Bev’s husband left her with three children to raise alone. She claimed the promise of Isaiah 54:5, and Christ became as a husband to her. In Him she found all the comfort, strength, security, and happiness she needed.
Georgia, suffering the effects of a dysfunctional family, tried to fill her need for love with church work and community activities. She chaired the music committee, played the organ, helped the homeless, led the youth, and taught a Bible class. When that didn’t meet her emotional needs, she turned to drugs. For eight years she struggled with addiction while attending church every week. No one suspected her pain. It wasn’t until she experienced God’s unconditional love that Georgia found release from her negative emotions.
4. Feelings follow actions. “And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Amon, Moab, and Mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten” (2 Chron. 20:22).
The Israelites must not have felt victorious when faced with the superior forces of the enemy, but they went to battle singing praises. The feeling of victory followed their action of victory.
Linda struggled with feelings of bitterness toward someone who had criticized her severely. She asked the Lord to replace that bitterness with love. However, the feelings didn’t come until she stepped out in faith and acted as though she loved the woman who had wronged her. She sent her a little gift. Whenever she saw her, Linda greeted her with a warm hug and kind words. Miraculously the bitterness was replaced with love. The positive feelings followed Linda’s positive actions.
One of the most difficult years of my life was the year I taught in Kitchener, Ontario, so that I could be available to help our adopted East Indian children adapt a life in North America while my husband returned to his work in Bangalore, India. We were separated for 10 months, and the loneliness I felt was terrible. I was neither widowed nor divorced, so no one seemed to understand how alone and helpless I felt. During that period of emotional pain six things helped me cope with negative feelings.
Nature. I walked for hours in the woods, identifying wildflowers and birds. I talked aloud to God on those walks. I felt the closeness of His presence, and He did indeed fill my emotional needs during those times of communion in nature.