I think I went on a roller coaster ride once as a kid, a very small one in a small town carnival, definitely not one on which you throw your arms up and scream. We sort of laughed at its tameness but it was still fun. It’s the big roller coasters which can really get to you. Some people love the experience of the fear, the adrenalin rush, the stomach flip flops as you plummet down a steep incline, barreling around a banked curve. Others of us love not the experience.

Riding an emotional roller coaster, however, can be worse than a real “tracks and cars” roller coaster in an amusement park. Whereas that kind of roller coaster ride lasts but a few minutes, an emotional roller coaster ride can last days, weeks, even months or, sadly, years. I’ve ridden these with their ups and downs, many times over the years. I recently got off one...again.

There are reasons God tells us to guard our hearts, out of which proceed, among other things, our emotions. It is unhealthy if we don’t, in many ways. One way in which we can get into an unhealthy state is to let our emotions take over our way of looking at things. Our perspective becomes skewed, our clear vision obscured, by things we want or want to happen rather than remaining cool and objective about what is before us, being rational, reasonable. Some people have a greater capacity for emotional coolness than others and some of us are made with a warmer emotional temperature, so to speak. I am one made that way. It is good to know these things about oneself.

If you are one of those cool and collected types who has never had a wild emotional ride in your life, maybe this won’t be interesting to you. But I’d be willing to bet you know someone, perhaps a dear someone, who is not so emotionally cool. We certainly need one another, for balance and perspective. We need also to listen to each other and learn from each other.

Even when we want with all our hearts to do the right thing, emotions can trick us. This has nothing to do with “faith”. It is all about how we naturally tend to approach life and the issues of life which arise, which call for us to make decisions. Even when the foundation of our life is grounded solidly in the knowledge of God, we must deal with our hearts, our way of looking at life and its problems, challenges. Part of growing up in Jesus is learning to let all these things coming at us in life flow through the filter of God’s clear, plain truth which is based on His character, who He is and what He demands of us, His creation. That is why it is so important to be intimate with the Word of God. The words of God. God’s talk to us. “He who has ears to hear…”.

God doesn’t put as heavy demands on us as we put on ourselves. That tricksie, devious heart of ours. Not to be trusted. We can start loading ourselves down with all kinds of fears, doubts, wonderings, burdens, expectations. Our vision gets obstructed, if you will, by all the junk we pile into the arms of our minds.

When my emotions are controlling me, rather than me controlling my emotions, I find myself focusing more and more on that one issue, it taking up more and more of my thoughts, and when that happens my mental energy is diverted from other things I should be dealing with on a regular basis. Does anyone else ever do this??? I am afraid there are many others who get caught up in this same unhealthy process. I really don’t believe I’m the only one.

It took a cold splash of reality to startle me out of my recent roller coaster ride. Very unpleasant. But just what I needed at the time. I thought I was giving things over to God, letting Him have the controls. But I wasn’t there yet. Still going round and round, up and down on that ride. I said the heart is tricksie. It is deceptive and completely sick, through and through. We cannot trust our hearts, or our emotions.

Cold hard reality stopped the ride dead. Well, maybe better say it put the brakes on hard and a bit later I rolled to a stop. Emotions are powerful parts of our make-up, part of who we are. When vision is cleared, though it is painful, we get a start on a right perspective once again. Cool down. Re-center. Then objectivity is possible.

At that point I started over, reexamining each part of the issue at hand, before the Lord, even going back over my life, the teachings of scripture and the way God has graciously worked in our lives in the past. This is akin to the Psalmists’ recounting the great acts of God in history. Very helpful exercise. I came to the same conclusions, I didn’t feel any stance I had taken, prayer prayed, was out of line, based on my cool and reasoned understanding of God’s truths, His word. I reconfirmed, in this instance, the direction I was going was right and good. One part of this particular situation, Timing, was reconsidered, though. A very important aspect of what I was dealing with.

It really doesn’t matter the issue one is dealing with. Those change all the time. New things come up in life and we must act on them. The way we deal with them is crucially important. We must be aware, self-aware, of how we tend to view life and what it throws at us. This is learned over time, and often, faithful friends can point out to us these tendencies, which they may see more clearly than ourselves. Faithful, godly counselors are of inestimable value. It was, in fact, the verbal ruminations of one of these who inadvertently threw the cold water of reality on my simmering emotions, bringing my emotional roller coaster ride to a sliding halt! Just be sure your counselors are themselves deeply rooted and grounded in the words of God, or their own perspective will be skewed from the truth of God.

Guarding our hearts is a full time job. We must not slip in our vigilance. Guarding our emotional responses, stepping back (for objectivity) and checking our emotional “temperature”, will help keep us on track. James says that wisdom from God is “reasonable”, or easy to reason with. I’m working on all this! I want to operate in His wisdom, not my own. The outcomes are so much better!