I’ve had plenty of experiences in my life where I struggled with emotional attachment. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that God called my attention to this tendency in a new way, and equipped me to tackle it head on. I started to understand reasons I stayed attached, even when I was never happy with it—and I got ideas to help me let go.
There is a verse in the Psalms that really hits home to me: “My soul finds rest in God alone” (Psalm 62:1). It’s a statement that I remind myself often. Because, like many of us, it’s easy for my soul to seek rest in other places. Our circumstances can easily rule our emotions if we let them. But God doesn’t want us to be at the mercy of our varied life events, or the hopeless perspective we can sometimes have about them.
Have you been praying for years for certain people or situations? I have. I know that God has called these people, and I know who they can be and the healing God has in store. I also pray for situations I yearn to improve, even after years of stagnancy. But so far, those miraculous changes I’ve longed for remain seemingly at bay.
As anyone who has navigated the world of dating well knows, romantic relationships can create some of our greatest happiness and some of our deepest heartache. They make us think, stress us out and bless us abundantly. Therefore, it’s important for us to know what a healthy, lasting relationship looks like.
Are you in the middle of God’s story for you? The middle is a tough place. Between the hope of starting out and the relief of the finish line, the middle part of the journey can be dry, stagnant and lonely. You might feel as if nothing’s happening. Somewhere we got the idea that the only things that really matter in life, are the “big” things…
Are you someone who also tends to take things personally? You may easily feel that someone’s actions are a result of what you did or didn’t do. Or maybe you often feel that people aim their nasty behavior toward you.
The truth is, taking ownership of someone else’s moods isn’t healthy or what God wants for us. When we do that, we burden ourselves for no good reason since we did nothing wrong.
At various times in the Christian walk, God can feel like a close friend, or like some vague figure in the distance. Most of us will go through times at both ends of the spectrum. But especially if you’re feeling far from God, here are some strategies you can practice to help you build that sense of closeness to Him.
For many Christians, the idea of loving yourself is one we either shy away from or we don’t give much thought to. It may be that we’re concerned that if we pay ourselves too much attention, we could become prideful and push God into the background. But there’s an important difference between selfishness and self-worth.
When Jesus saw a paralyzed man sitting by a fountain, He asked something I initially found very surprising: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6). The truth is, as crazy as it seems, we don’t always actually want to get better. We actually have reasons for holding on to things we try so hard to let go of. And we can’t move forward until we realize and address that.
Once upon a time, too many people saw God as a genie whose main purpose was to grant us our every wish. Then a backlash ensued against these ideas, speaking out about deeper truths like purpose in suffering, and the fact that our happiness is not the litmus test for what’s good. As a result, many people today state that God is not so concerned with our happiness. But while God carefully uses seasons of difficulty, it is not His sole desire for us.