I’m currently in this phase whereby God is showing me the importance of pouring out your personality, emotions, passion and desires in all that you do, especially in your relationships.
We live in a world whereby there’s so much emotional regulation going on, we regulate our behaviors and emotions according to what others would demand of us. This suppression of emotions, uniqueness and desires, is not only apparent in workplaces (trying so hard to hold back your bleeps at your boss when he/she is free to vent dissatisfaction on you), but also in other social processes, such as family relations and intimate relationships. For example, you would hold yourself back from sharing with your parents about your current struggles because you are afraid they won’t understand or they will condemn you for being too vulnerable. That is the result of taking vulnerability for granted in our human relationships - we dehumanize each other as emotion-less beings or we think that we are able to function more effectively without the input of our emotions; which makes us more of a robot instead of a human.
We are offsprings of Love, let us be reminded of that everyday. The reason we need love and we feed on love, because love is our fuel, we are love, we truly are emotional beings. We cannot belittle our emotional functions, to eradicate our emotional capabilities to feel and desire, is to eradicate what it means to be human, what it means to be alive.
We are emotional beings, God designed us in such a way that our emotions cannot be separated from our being. Suppressing our emotions, also means suppresing your performance. It affects every part of you. Emotions help us to bond and connect with others. It is not enough to connect base on our intellects alone, it is not enough to bond with someone by just sharing what you know in your head - that is if you only seek to bond with them based on intellectual knowledge alone. But if you intent to bond with their hearts, you have to connect with your heart, and speak through your heart.
We tend to take vulnerability for granted. It is so important in our relationships to be vulnerable with our hearts, vulnerable with our emotions and personalities. If we act purely based on intellectual exchange, that makes us no different from computers and robots. But we are nothing like robots. We are capable of feeling and desiring, to feel is to be alive. Before we can learn to manage our emotions, we have to embrace them, and show more appreciation for our emotional drives, otherwise we would end up caging up our emotions, instead of setting them free.
So what led me to this revelation is the recent situation between me and Kars. We found ourselves to have bonded with each other only through ‘spiritual activities’ such as praying/bible discussion, way back since the beginning. We have connected, and even fell in love with each other, just based on that ‘spiritual compatibility’ and I do thank God for a man who shares a similar spiritual foundation as I do, because that really is the tie-breaker for me in pursuit of a future spouse/boyfriend.
Then recently, there appeared to be alot of dissatisfaction in way we are communicating, like there’s a lack of appreciation and interests in other areas of our passion, other than the word of God. It seems like we have just been ‘hiding behind the bible’ while interacting with each other, and that apparently is not healthy for our relationship, because our bond is surely more than just what we know about the bible, but it’s really about sharing our lives together, and our lives is surely more than just about bible revelations, there has to be other interests that God had put in our hearts as part of our unique personalities.
While I’m not saying that the Word of God is not important, it is fundamental, but we are born-again vessels of the Living Word, no? We are the walking image of Jesus, so just by our actions, personalities and characteristics alone, should be sufficient to portray the Word of God as our being, even without quoting a single verse. I don’t know if the rest of you have encountered similar cases of ‘over spiritualizing’ your relationships, but one thing for sure it does, is to kill the simplicity of romance, pleasure and desires that one would encounter in a romantic relationship.
I believe what God wants to show us is the importance of embracing our God-given personalities and desires, letting them pour out freely in the relationship, for a deeper and more satisfying bonding. This may seem like common sense to some, but it’s really an eye opener for me and Kars, in realizing how valuable our uniquness are, and it is so important to connect with others through our personalities not just based on the biblically/politically correct behaviors.
