Emotions

Since returning from Central America I have been very emotional.  I guess that seeing so many hurting, so many crying, so many praying, so much need, that it has all of a sudden hit me.  I feel lots more emotion.  I hurt a lot more, I cry easier – the plane ride home I cried watching Lord of the Rings (I’ve seen this movie 30+ times and have never cried, yet things are touching me in new ways), and the last Hunger Games (I don’t remember ever crying so much in a movie, the hurt in the movie hit me in a new way, a way that I don’t think I can explain to well).  I hurt with those hurting.   I’ve also had the weight of needs and hurts in certain villages we visited, on my heart.   While there, we ‘cried’ with them and prayed with them: we listened to them and embraced them – it was so touching and powerful.  Now I am continuing to cry and pray for them as though I am with them.  I don’t know how to describe these emotions, except to say that God is doing something in me.  I’ve heard that some people close off their emotions so that they don’t get hurt.  But when they do that they also can’t feel God’s full love.  From what I’ve heard (which I believe) when God opens their emotions up, they get very emotional about very little things for a while.  That getting back into emotions is an emotional process.  I think that is what is happening to me. I think I, unknowingly, shut my emotions off and left them that way.  Now that God has reopened my emotions, I am very emotional at little things, and it is going to take some time to full see all of it.  Plus, with open emotions I am now more likely to get hurt (likely), I am also able to feel God’s true love for me and other’s true love for me.