Courage to Name Emotions

In the message on Sunday, Donna Burkland invited us to go to small groups and describe our holiday season and to ask

• Was there anything that made you feel alone?

• Was there anything that made you feel happy/joy/other emotions?

That’s exactly what Paul is doing in this passage. He’s recognizing that he can’t hold the intense emotional responses to his experiences inside himself - he needs to share them with others. He writes to his friends:

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death… - 2 Corinthians 1:8-9

Do you have anyone that you could share intense experiences with? It might be time to ask God for the courage to find someone like that or the courage to start telling those people what’s been going on with you.