Emotions are wonderful.  They lift us up to dizzying heights of ecstasy and delight.  Think of the newlywed bride.  She’s just over the moon about this knight in shining armour who has just become her husband.  Or the father in the maternity hospital holding his newborn son while tears of wonder and joy trickle down his cheeks.

Emotions are painful.  They plunge us down into the depths of grief and despair.  Think of the parents with aching hearts.  They’ve just left the hospital where the life-support system of their daughter was turned off.  Or the devastated young couple who, after many sleepless nights, have watched their business go down the gurgler.

The word ‘roller coaster’ is often linked to our emotions.  There’s the cancer patient who is in remission.  He speaks of the years of treatment as an emotional roller-coaster.  There were the highs, as moments of medical success were savoured.  There were the lows, as disappointing test results were bemoaned.

Sometimes the roller-coaster is even evident in someone’s character.  I once worked with a man who generally had a very happy disposition.  People in the office sometimes envied his delightfully positive frame of mind.  But there were other times when he hit rock-bottom and become the gloomy pessimist in the office.  In those moments no one could cheer him up and no one at work envied him.  Some people seem to live their lives at a very emotional level.

Emotions can be wonderfully positive.  Emotions can also be frustratingly negative.  So how do we keep our lives from being a constant emotional roller-coaster?  To begin with it helps to remember that emotions can be very fickle.  Feelings change with the weather... and with our hormones.  It helps if we develop an attitude that doesn’t allow our feelings to get in the way of the facts.

An older clergyman once gave me some good advice.  He said to me: Christians can sometimes get up in the morning, ready to take on the world.  They finish breakfast and go out the door with the call to bring it on... and let the devil do his worst.  But Christians can also get up in the morning and instead of saying, “Good morning, Lord!” they quietly moan, “Good Lord, morning!”  He suggested that in those moments we’re letting our feelings get in the way of the facts.

He said to me that what we ought to do when we wake up to a bad day is, to sit on the edge of our bed and ask ourselves some questions.  Did Jesus die for my sins on the cross and was he raised at Easter to give me new life in him?  Yes!  Did Jesus ascend into heaven and is he sitting at the Father’s right hand, controlling the universe?  Yes!  Has he sent His Spirit into my heart to empower me to live for him?  Yes!  Well, if all of that is true, get up and get on with life.  Make sure the facts control your feelings and your feelings don’t obscure the facts.

A certain woman approached her pastor and told him that she was leaving her husband.  Their relationship had deteriorated to the point that she felt she could no longer live with him.  Her pastor was saddened and somewhat shocked at the determination of this lady to walk away from her marriage.  He pleaded with her to do one last thing, just to please him.  She tentatively agreed and asked what he had in mind.  He said to her, “I want to appeal to you to stay with him for just one more month.  In that month I want you to genuinely pretend to be in love with your husband.  If you do that sincerely then at the end of the month I’ll send you off with my blessing.”  The women couldn’t see the sense in it but she figured that it could do no harm.

At the end of the month the woman called the pastor and told him, “I’ve decided not to leave my husband.  I’m just amazed how much he’s changed in this last month.”

The relationship between our emotions and our mindset is like the relationship between a train engine and a carriage.  Most folk think that the engine is our feeling of love and that the carriage is our mindset.  Wrong.  It’s the other way around.  Our mindset is the engine... and if we’ve got that right then the carriage with the emotions will automatically follow.

John Westendorp