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.

Eventually, and for a multitude of reasons, I reached a point where I could no longer suppress feelings of rage and frustration. It was actually the year 2020 on the Day of Pentecost in the Episcopal tradition where I had a moment of epiphany or transfiguration, when I surrendered to the heat of my raw emotional nature and employed that fire to fuel my courage to use my voice where before I may have wavered, and to help form my identity in a new chapter of life as a leader within a ministry context.

And though it felt good to finally honor what felt like more troubling parts of myself that I had been conditioned to believe would make me unlovable or unworthy, I feared that the chaos within me, while rooted in truth, threatened to consume me. I felt that I had been lashing out, and I felt like the cold, emotionless mask that I had shed hadn’t made way for a more vulnerable me, but was instead replaced by a defensive, impenetrable, prickly armor that protected me well and also served to repel anyone who dared venture close.

I began to once again feel shame for my emotional and sensitive nature. Despite being told by trusted friends and mentors that my sensitivity was a gift, I still couldn’t help but wonder: what was wrong with me that I couldn’t seem to respond to this world in ways that were all love and light?

Then, this past summer, I was doing my homework assigned to me by a new spiritual director. She had reflected back to me that she noticed a great deal of uncertainty within me, which I confirmed. I explained a bit about my lifelong struggle to reconcile my emotions, and that I couldn’t tell if being a person so led by my feelings and my sensitivity was a way of being that brought me closer or further away from God. She had instructed me to think back over the course of my life, to moments where I could remember having a particularly strong connection to God. “You will eventually see a pattern,” she said with a quiet certainty, “and you will find that you know God’s voice, and that you will learn to trust how you are being guided.”

And so I began to recall, one-by-one, those moments: I was living in San Francisco, separated from my family, and just received word that my grandmother in the Philippines likely didn’t have much longer to live. Feeling deeply isolated and distraught at being too far away from those I loved, I turned to God in prayer.

There was the night I witnessed a brutal attack on a subway platform one night after getting off of work. I spent the train ride home seeing nothing but the image of an older Chinese woman holding the limp body of her adult son who had been knocked unconscious, his face dripping with blood; her untamed wails of anguish echoed in my mind. Feeling irreversibly pierced by the malice and violence I encountered that night, I demanded, then pleaded with God for justice, before admitting helplessly that I had no idea what to ask God for in that moment.

And there were multiple times in more recent moments growing into my identity as a leader and exploring my voice, where I often felt a deep insecurity and frustration of feeling pulled between too many ideals of who I “should” be, but was not able to embody. Feeling profoundly inadequate, I often found myself sitting before God, begging for more wisdom, or deeper faith, or more strength, in order to be the person God was calling me to be.

Each of those times, overcome by my emotions, a feeling of chaos and tension would swirl within me, from deep in the pit of my core and rising up through my body, building until I heard only a roaring in my ears like the sound of great, stormy ocean waves rolling and crashing onto a pebbled beach, and then… silence. Always, a sudden silence that seemed to snap into alignment like the last long-awaited piece of a puzzle; a moment after that silence, a clear voice, too calm and certain to come from my own mind, sometimes giving me a reassuring peace, sometimes guiding my prayers to a place of deeper compassion and solidarity, sometimes reminding me what I often so desperately need to hear: “you are exactly as you are meant to be in this moment.”

And it was then that I realized – the times that I have been courageous enough to face the full chaos of my most wild emotions and humble enough to offer them to God in full transparent surrender – and when I have been vulnerable enough to receive God’s tender mercy in return – those are the moments that I have most clearly heard God’s voice. My emotions haven’t been a stumbling block, they were my compass; my best guide in discerning which direction I was called to follow.

It was then that I was able to accept my emotions for what they always have been: a gift.

Rachel Ambasing is a 2^nd generation American of Igorot-Filipino and Chinese ancestry and has served in multiple ministry contexts within the Episcopal Church, including her most current position as the Missioner for Multicultural Ministries for the Diocese of San Diego. Rachel enjoys stargazing, yoga, and sipping on exorbitantly priced americanos from local coffee shops.