Emotions, prayer and rest

I’m all over the place at the moment, but I’m also learning to set things down at Jesus’s feet and let him do the organising and arranging and timing.

I always feel my brain is an ADHD brain. It’s hyperactive, struggles to concentrate on one thing at a time and is as distractable as a puppy. It always has been. I think I can multi task, but the reality is that I start one job, get distracted by another and go off at tangents all the time. It’s why my housework is never actually completed. I might start the kitchen and as I take the tea towels up to the washing basket, see that the bathroom towels need changing, and end up cleaning the bathroom before I remember I’ve still got the kitchen to finish! At work it is a mammoth effort where I keep lists and lists and post it notes every where to Force myself to finish one job at a time. Thankfully, my list strategies do work!

Unless I am seeking solace in a good book, a story to take me out of this manic world and into another where I was just an observer rather than a participant. Or walking in the countryside, by water and mountains. Only then is my brain calm and feeling peaceful.

I’m hyper emotional too. I ‘feel’ everything around me, and am so attuned to everyone else’s emotions that I’m often exhausted with it. Just watching the news can overwhelm me and the crime dramas that my hubby enjoys leave me hurting inside for the victims for days. I can’t watch them any more. And Call the Midwife…well…

There are upsides to these things. I have a very big imagination and lots of ideas. I can visualise what something could be and add ideas from all kinds of places together to form something new and exciting. This has been wonderful in my faith. Sometimes I try to imagine how awesome and amazing God is. How vast the universe is. What heaven will be like. It’s then I feel like I’m ‘soaring on wings like eagles’.

The emotions I feel in response to news, people’s hurt, abuse, war, neglect, illness, disaster…I have learned to channel this into prayer. Prayer has become an urgent need for me. It’s a time I ‘upload’ all the intense emotion to Jesus. Sometimes my prayer is a groan of emotion for a person or situation. But giving it to Him in prayer lifts the burden from me. Just like he promised he would. So when I say to people ‘I will pray for you’ I mean it. If I feel your hurt and sad for your situation, I will take it to Jesus for you.

I have no idea why I am sharing this today. I hope it might encourage someone who reads it.

The Father Revealed in the Son. (Matthew 11: 25-28)

25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.