emotional bulimia

I just spent a little bit of time looking at my mom's Facebook page... apparently I felt the need to punch my own heart. I suppose there is no real harm in the activity itself, it allows me to break myself down emotionally and release alot of feeling. I am not one who enjoys crying, or feeling things on a deep level, and so, I sometimes struggle with building up emotions. Not even just bad ones, even some good ones. I have improved, through much work and effort, in putting my emotions more on the surface. My inability to do so began causing any number of problems, usually leading into general grumpiness, shortness, and sometimes hostility towards my wife. Whereas the buildup in often of a multitude of emotions from all across the spectrum, once you mix them all up and fence them in... they always come back out as anger.

The worry now is whether or not I am entering into what I'll call emotional bulimia. I stuff the emotions in, maybe not like I used to, but still more than I should. And then when I start to notice myself getting easily provoked, angry, grumpy, whatever, I force myself into an emotional release... purging myself of this pent-up emotional gunk. I wish I could be someone who more easily flowed through their feelings, its just not how I am best wired. Its clearly something that requires more time, and something that I have probably be neglecting lately.

Throughout His life on this earth, we see evidence of Jesus experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion. And knowing that Christ lived without sin, we can deduce easily that there is no sin found in experiencing, and expressing emotions in a proper way. The biggest take-away I see from a quick review of being Christ-like in dealing with these issues is to deal with an emotion as it reveals itself. Never does it appear that Jesus is repressing a response to whatever He may have been feeling. And by never repressing, He never overreacted. His emotions were always able to be dealt with at face value, never complicated by feelings He had yet to relinquish. Jesus didn't give in to this cycle of emotional bulimia. He simply trusted in the sovereign grace of His Father for all things, thus allowing Him to absorb whatever emotion, discern the appropriate response, and then to act upon that response at the proper time. Its an easy process to write down... yet so hard to put into practice.