Feel all the feels

So I thought about what I would write about for my first blog and so many different ideas have swirled around in my head. But in the spirit of being open, honest and transparent, I decided to write about exactly where I am. So here goes…

I recently got out of a relationship that I thought was pretty serious (marriage material serious) and it ended pretty horribly. I mean, I was and still am a bit devastated by how it all went down because whew people will do you dirty! He was very heavily involved in the church and I honestly thought I hit the jackpot, and I did, just not MY jackpot. Of course, I had told a lot of my close friends about this relationship and how serious I thought it was so you can only imagine how stupid I felt to have to tell them it was over. As you can probably imagine, everyone wanted an explanation as to why we had ended things and normally, I would’ve dished ALL THE DETAILS okay, but there was something different about this time. I had no desire to tell people what happened or why things had ended so abruptly. Part of that was from pure embarrassment, but a large part of it was because I had no idea how I felt. I had no idea what to tell people. I was all over the place and I couldn’t figure out why. And all I kept hearing in my mind was, “Aishah, snap out of it, you’ve been through worse than this.” So I started thinking, who says I have to snap out of it? Who says I have to just be over it when it just happened? Who told me I wasn’t allowed to feel when I go through difficult times? It was in that moment that I realized that to often in church, we are conditioned to just get over things. But why? Why aren’t we allowed to process things? Why can’t we acknowledge that something has happened? Does that mean that our faith isn’t strong enough? Does that make us not “as saved?”

Quite frankly, the answer is no. There is no scripture in the Bible that says that when we go through difficult times we have to be superwoman or superman instantly. The Bible never told us to suppress our feelings. Should we pray about what we are feeling, absolutely, but suppressing them? Definitely not. Jesus tells us to cast our burdens on him, how are we going to do that if we’re so busy being superwoman or superman the moment we go through something? A wise person once said, you can’t get delivered from things you’re hiding. So the lesson here is, it’s okay to feel all of the feels. All those things that come with whatever difficult situation you’re experiencing, feel them, process them, understand them. Don’t be afraid to unpack those feelings, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for wanting to understand and process what it is you’re feeling. Because once you’ve recognized a thing and gained full clarity on what it is, you know exactly how and what to pray.