Wellness Series
Health is expressing emotions in ways
that communicate what you are feeling to others1.
I have not only witnessed, but also
read that most patients in hospitals who have suffered heart attack, or have
high blood pressure and gastrointestinal ‘pains’ are those who have trouble
forgiving others whom they feel have
‘sinned’ against them.
Emotions are the expression of the
heart. They are strong feelings we get as a reaction to what is seen, heard,
tasted, touched or smelled. Emotions reflect
our response to how we understand our environment and the people in it. And, emotions indicate whether or not we’ve
accepted an event or have rejected an event.
Mr. Enoch was a great friend of the
Appiah family for so many years; they called him ‘Uncle’. Then, suddenly, he stopped coming round to
visit. Of course, the children asked
their parents why Uncle hadn’t come by for some time. Father never replied. Their mother always gave a big, “humph” and
told her eight and ten-year-olds to never mind their uncle. “Never mind Uncle?”
After finishing his final year at
university, eight-year-old Stephen now twenty-eight, looked into the crowd as
he walked across the stage to receive his Ph.D. certificate, and lo and behold,
he caught the image of . . . “Uncle!”
Overjoyed and annoyed, two emotions colliding and crashing, he respectfully
greeted and asked him, “Why?” With tears
in his eyes, he had no words to say to his ‘nephew’. So there it remained, a relationship riddled
with unanswered questions.
In psychology, there is a notion, or
theory called gestalt which describes
the human mind as needing to ‘see’ or ‘hear’ the whole picture, story, idea,
etc. before it can completely understand or totally comprehend what’s going on. Without a complete ‘picture’, the human mind
desperately tries to fill in the holes.
These holes can be filled with either good or bad conclusions, or
thoughts. If filled negatively, it only
adds to the problem and magnifies it with emotional bitterness—anger and
disappointment at being treated unfairly.
If filled positively, it can be overlooked, or accepted, and forgiven.
On a visitation to a hospital, I met
Stephen, thirty years later, at fifty-eight, a patient in the ICU (Intensive
Care Unit) ward where the critically (seriously) ill patients are kept under
strict observation and care. I asked
him, “Sir, so sorry for your unexpected first heart attack. What do you think could be the reason for
it?” After trying to explain in the
natural logic of man—lack of exercise, eating fatty foods, overworking to keep
the family going, etc.—I asked, “Is there anyone you feel bitter against that
you have not forgiven?”
It was in his silence that he spoke
volumes. The heart is the seat of the
soul. We are emotional beings, we
feel. And, no matter how much we pretend
not to be affected, all human beings are affected by what we hear, see, touch,
taste and smell, whether good or bad.
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| by Kenya Barris |
Being healthy is our ability to speak
out about how we feel, especially to those who hurt us. This is called communication—talking to folks
about what’s troubling you on the inside instead of trying to create the
missing pieces and getting the bigger picture to the puzzle all wrong.
For some of us, it’s easy to tell
others how we feel, but we do it to make them feel equally bad. That is not communication. Communication is the exchange of ideas in an
atmosphere of reconciliation—wanting to mutually understand how certain words
and actions affect the other person or people.
For it pleased the Father
that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all
things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having
made peace through the blood of His cross (Colossians
1:19-20).
The Bible teaches a lot about
reconciliation because that is what Jesus died for, so that we, sinful man, can
be forgiven and reconciled to God, our Father.
This reconciliation cannot be done if we do not have the mind of Christ
working in our heart as the Holy Spirit. Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
there is no true forgiveness.
We can say, “I forgive you”, but still
hold onto the pain of the insult or tragedy.
It is only the Holy Spirit, alive and overflowing in our heart, who can
truly help you to forgive, and then let it go out from your heart for
good. Yes, like a scar after a cut to
our physical body, we will still have the memory (a psychological-emotional
scar) of the pain, but we won’t allow that memory to fester again into
bitterness. That memory, if given over
to the Holy Spirit, will become our mark of victory, our testimony, our crown
at the end of our godly race toward heaven.
Pursue peace with all
people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully
lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness
springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled (Hebrews
12:14-15).
Yes, it may be difficult to ‘talk’ to
some folks because you respect them as elders.
Pray on the matter; give it to God with every detail. Leave nothing out. If your heart is contrite (sincere and
humble), God will meet you and give you a way to settle your emotions with
anyone who has hurt you. But you still
must express your emotions by ‘talking’ what you feel with an attitude of
wanting reconciliation. If
reconciliation cannot be met after you express emotions, you must do a hard
thing: Forgive anyway and let the person go out of your heart. If not, bitterness will attack it.
© 2020 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem.
All rights reserved. Published by The
Liight In Me Enterprise. No part of this
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Unless otherwise
stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright
© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
Paintings retrieved
from Black Art search engine.
1. Travis, J. (1977). The Wellness Workbook. Mill Valley, CA, USA: Wellness Resource
Center.
Take My Hand Inspirations
