Toggles Connection Newsletter
Trophies of His Grace
Longing for Stability
—by Alaine
(From the Toggles Connection Newsletter)
I think one of the most disturbing issues we all have to face is the frustration, embarrassment and anger that we experience where our lives are changing from day to day—and sometimes from minute to minute!!!
Feeling like a “basket case” is very, very uncomfortable. Sometimes we wonder what it will be like when most of our healing is in the past and we are able to get off the emotional roller coaster we seem to be on now.
What will it be like, we wonder, when we can remember who we are ALL DAY LONG, or not be triggered for a whole week? WOW! Sounds like heaven.
I used to think that emotional stability meant that my responses to things would look similar to the “flat line” of a heart monitor, where I would not be rattled by anything that came along.
But recently, I have been looking at stability in a different way. I think stability is like riding a bumper car!!!
This is what I mean: When I was on the emotional roller coaster early on in my healing, I had intense, often violent emotional responses to things and events. Someone compared it to having vivid, individual colors of response. As I found healing, those intense fuchsias and neon blues were added to the whole palette of my emotional “colors” as the people inside “took their rightful place” i.e., were merged into me.
Now, instead of intense single colors, I have been learning how to use the whole palette of colors the Lord created me to have as I respond to each situation. I still get angry (formerly fuchsia, but now just a bright red) but it’s not such an overwhelming response and I can control how much color I give it!
It’s not that things don’t get to me or that I don’t have strong emotional responses to things, but I finally got off the emotional roller coaster!
Now, back to the theologically profound bumper car example! I was watching a special on T.V. about amusement parks. They showed nice, shiny bumper cars that were being crashed into by other cars. The thing I noticed was that although the driver was somewhat affected by each crash, most of the hit was taken by the big rubber bumper that surrounded the car and stuck out about a foot from the shiny fenders of each car.
Then, I began to think that my flat-line definition of emotional stability wasn’t accurate. It isn’t that I don’t respond to the things around me now, it’s that they don’t affect me so intensely.
It’s as though the Holy Spirit, reverently referred to here as the “bumper” of my bumper car life, takes the most impact from each hit. What I am left to deal with emotionally is only the “left-over” impact. Am I making sense?
How does this give us hope? Well, for one thing, it should help us see that we won’t always have a seasons pass on the tallest emotional roller coaster around!!! Also, it gives us a more understandable and hopefully more realistic view of what it will be more and more like as we go through our healing process.
Sometimes it’s helpful to remind ourselves that “it won’t always be this way.” We will gradually make our way down the exit ramp of the roller coaster, go through the one-way turnstile, and walk out to enjoy the fun parts of our “park”!
