By Rachel Ambasing
Few things in my life have been harder for me to accept than the gift of my emotions.
I’ve always been a very emotional person. But like many Asian American women, women in general, or women working in ministry, I have for a long time tried so hard to control my emotions through various means of suppression because I have often viewed them as a stumbling block: an obstacle to overcome in order to be the person God needs me to be.
When I was a child, though I felt and knew both then and now that I was deeply loved by those most important to me in my life, and that everyone who had a hand in raising me did their best to respond and love me in a way that would support a healthy, happy human being, I also had a feeling that my emotional displays were bigger than the average child’s, and that many people didn’t always know how to receive them. And so I used to hide my face or myself by running out of a room whenever I failed to successfully hold back tears.
When I was growing into my womanhood, sayings like “act like a lady, think like a man” or “act like a lady, think like a boss” were popular both in my own social circles and in popular culture. Female emotionality and vulnerable expressions of disappointment, hope, longing, desire, or even joy, were always transmutated into a hardened ambition, industriousness, aggressiveness, or cockiness. If I wanted to be a “strong woman,” or a “bad b*tch” (which seemed desirable to me at the time), there was no space for tenderness or softness. I tried to entomb my more compassionate emotions in walls built of sarcasm, snark and sass, all held together by a generous slathering of “devil-may-care” bravado.
Later into my adulthood in my 30s, as I returned more regularly to church culture and resumed a regular Christian practice, I was relieved to find plenty of support from new and old friends and community members in the liberation of some of my long-suppressed emotions such as joy, hope, compassion and love. After years of fearing that I would be judged as “weak” or “less-than” for being tender-hearted, it was life-giving to feel that it was safe to express my feelings.
However, while I was welcome to express joy, hope, compassion and love, I can’t say that was the case for some of my “heavier” emotions. What of sadness or despair? What about anger I felt at personal, communal, or systemic injustices? What of confusion or frustration? Some well-meaning and devoted friends told me to pray those feelings away – that to “give in” or explore these feelings would be to give in to the temptations of the enemy. And so I was careful to try to only talk enthusiastically about my more “inspiring” witnesses of God in the world, taking care to make sure that each story was wrapped up with a positive spin on it. Vulnerability and the exploration of my shadow emotions only seemed to be acceptable if it had a happy, clean ending.
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