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 - Continued
A HAPPY WOMAN
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.
1. 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.2. Singing. I would often sing my prayers. Using familiar tunes, I made up my own words that expressed my heartache and pain, my hope and thanksgiving. I made new verses to fit my concerns of the moment. Though I have no musical talent, there was something about the use of music that opened my heart to God’s love. I often cried as I sang, so real was my sense of God’s presence, of His concern for my needs and the needs of my family.
3. Helping others. I visited people in nursing homes. I helped with church duties. I discovered in the process that others had a lot worse problems to deal with than I did. In giving my attention to the needs of others, my own pain was eased.
4. Exercise. It’s hard to feel down after a long, brisk walk in the sunshine. I remember once when I was angry with my mother-in-law. I went for a six-mile walk. By the time I returned, the anger had been replaced with understanding.
5. Learning. It’s surprising what enrolling in a class or reading a book on a new subject can do for negative emotions. Learning something new takes the focus away from our problems and give us something interesting to talk about besides our difficulties. I made good use of the library that year!
6. Journaling. Although I have been journaling on a regular basis for only six years, this is a method I have often turned to during times of crisis. By writing out my prayers I have found emotional release and a means of sorting through my conflicting feelings. There is something about seeing a frustration or anxiety on paper that makes it manageable. Insight and strength come as I explore my feelings before God on paper.
Whenever Corrie thought of her guard at Ravensbruck, a deep, dark bitterness churned in her stomach. “I hate that man,” she said. “I can never forgive him.” “You must forgive him,” the Lord said to her in the quietness of her daily devotions. “If you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive yours.” Although she had no feelings of forgiveness in her heart, she decided to obey God and try. She wrote a letter that said, “What you meant to be harmful, God used for my good.”
But writing a letter and seeing him in person were two different matters. It was two years after the letter that she saw him. She had spoken to a large crowd, and he had come forward to speak to her. Instantly she recognized that face. A wave of horror passed over her. He stuck out his hand, “A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!” “You were a guard at Ravensbruck,” Corrie heard herself say. “I remember you. Do you remember me?”
“I don’t remember you,” he replied. “There were so many. But I have become a Christian since then. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?”
Suddenly Corrie realized that she had no control over those emotions of anger, hatred, and bitterness. How could this man expect all those horrid memories to disappear? She looked into her heart and saw no forgiveness there.
Jesus, help me! She prayed silently, I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.
Suddenly, mechanically, she thrust her hand into the one stretched out to her. And as she did, an incredible thing took place. She said, “The current started in my shoulders, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being bringing tears to my eyes.”
I forgive you, brother! She cried. “With all my heart, I forgive you.”