Emotional Honesty

What happens to our emotionality in strictly religious settings, where parental intentions are good, but personal gain/focus weighs too heavy (as evidenced through fear of what other’s will think of our abilities as parents when our children don’t “choose the right” which is in reality “our right” and what is best for us) and emotional coaching skills are too weak to combat a child’s natural response to withdraw and shut down emotionally and spiritually and religion is rejected or becomes something rooted in self discipline giving birth to worship for personal gain ( personal image) or solely out of duty and obligation set in personal resistance. And who is at the focus of this survival mode birthed through a need for parental approval while denying oneself? An inflated and distorted sense of “Self” or in other words a fragile core. To me this shares so many elements of Satan’s plan of personal glory through personal gain whose foundation is force and coercion.

In this way humility is lost because honest humility’s fundamental step is emotional honesty and our acceptance of our most vulnerable and emotionally raw self. Denial of our honest emotions is the foundation of pride, personal protection out of desperation and the fast current of moving our escapes to levels of addiction. The power of emotional honesty or humility and acceptance of where we are emotionally, is we are never alone in it. It is only in that moment where we can feel fully the presence of God and His deep and abiding love for us as manifested in the atonement of Christ. His encircling arms are ever present in that broken hearted moment as we are stripped of pride and swallowed in the power of His desire forgive us and love us it is impossible to not feel our own desire to open and extend our heart more to receive even more of Him if possible. In our newfound desire to be open to His influence we diligently seek to know what we can do to please Him, to serve Him and our willingness to live in accordance with our desire easily manifests in our daily practices and habits in seeking and doing His will before our own or someone else’s.

The doctrine of humility, yielding or will or a broken heart and a contrite (willing) spirit is the key to charity, the pure love of Christ and becoming like Him. It is in our constant striving to become like Christ that our happiness is ensured and His promise linked to it is fulfilled. Determination to protect and maintain a broken heart and a contrite spirit or a soft heart (towards God’s will for us and in our dealing with other’s Matt 25:40) in times of adversity expedite the opportunity for our personal growth, happiness and the Holy Ghost’s ability to sanctify us through refining. These godly characteristics further prepare us to be in His glorious presence so that we might receive in our mortality bit by bit a fullness of all that He has and all that He is, all starts with emotional honesty and acceptance of where we are and a desire to turn to Christ so that He can help us to know Him and become like Him.