My Battle
When I was teaching the parenting classes, one of the key concepts we wanted the parents to understand is the concept of react verses respond. When you react to something, it is based on emotion, you feel like yelling or retaliating or feel like not doing anything. When you respond, it is based on thought, you consider the consequences of your action or non-action. This is taught in the second week of class, but it is what 80% of the adults say is the #1 thing they learned. Most say they start working on changing this behavior in their life even before the 9-week course is completed.
Why is this such a significant number? Well, because it really hits home for most of them, all of us really. As children, many of us were taught to NOT express our emotions and then when we watch TV or Movies (or now you-tube and other media channels) we see exaggerated, overboard expressions of emotions. When we feel happy, we jump up and down or give friends high-fives, but if we feel like we have been cheated on, well we want to cause pain to whomever is responsible for hurting us. In our psyche we have convinced ourselves we will somehow feel better if we react.
I would say to one of them, “how would you react if I kicked you right now?” and after the initial shock of their teacher saying she was going to kick them, they’d say, “kick you back!”. We would then contemplate what I’d do after being kicked and so on. They noticed very quickly that things can get out of control when you let your emotions guide your actions. They realized, when looking back on personal experiences that when they react, especially in a negative way, it was more likely to escalate into an emotionally induced tornado where no one can predict the consequences.
So we come out learning how it is better to respond because we’ve been able to allow our mind to contemplate the best possible solution or outcome. We learn how when we practice this, we can get to the point where we can quickly respond. For example, when facing the question from our kids, can I have a snack? We can let them know they can have an apple or a banana, instead of saying, yes, and allowing them to chose something not as healthy on their own.
Our default is to allow our heart to lead our actions, because this is how God created us. However, because as explained above, leading with our hearts can get us into the trouble in the world, we battle with allowing our heart to lead our actions and to allowing our minds to lead our actions. As usual, God doesn’t see things in the way of the world; it’s opposite!
We all face this battle within us between our heart, our emotions and our mind, our thoughts. In the world, we train ourselves to let our mind lead as to stay out of trouble but in regard to God, it can take our mind a while to catch up with our heart. There are these mysteries of faith that are hard for our minds to make sense of because we can’t explain how it works.
This conflict between knowing God is with me in my heart and my mind thinking I can move forward without God; well, it’s a constant battle of will! It’s a struggle between my default of how I was created to allow my heart to lead my actions, and how the world teaches us that we must think before we act. So, what I’ve learned is, yes there are going to be times when I allow my will to over-ride the will of God because I think I know better. But my faith tells me that even if I do win a few rounds, God will come out as victor in the end!
